June 25, 2019: Day 59 – Judges 1

We find ourselves in a new book of the Bible.  Judges was written as the bridge between the time of the conquests of the people of Israel and the time of the kings for the people of Israel.  What we find in the first chapter is the continuation of the conquests that we had from Joshua with a few interesting stories thrown in there.  

You find the story of the king who was conquered and so had his thumbs and his big toes cut off. I’ll never forget when I was a kid my dad used to pretend to be the big toe biter, but I never knew that there was actual Scriptural backing to that monster.  Who knew?  Then you have  the people of Israel led by Caleb who puts up a bounty if someone attacks a certain city first.  That bounty happened to be his daughter, who was pretty shrewd.  She realized that if she is going to be given away then she might as well get something out of it.  She asked her dad for land, he gave it to her.  

The stories continue and we find that there is a very large number of lands where the Canaanites were not driven out, but allowed to live and reside among the people of Israel as conquered people.  They basically served as slaves.  We will see as time progresses that this decision was probably not the best.  The Lord did tell them to slaughter all the inhabitants.  I know, probably not the most humane approach, but we will see how the Canaanites do become a thorn in the side of the Israelites as time inexorably moves  on.