PSA Bible Reading Challenge 2023-2024

What a beautiful song of triumph.  It reminds me a lot of a song about those who are champions.  Here is a clip of what I am thinking. 

But look at all the people who are represented in this song of conquest in Judges.  You have the every day Israelites who are depicted as prospering even in the midst of war.  I love in vs.7 where you see what would have been the lower class, there was no middle class, who prospered because of the plunder of the various conquests.  What a great image where you see all of society able to prosper and not just the wealthy, not just those who were present to gather the spoils.   What a great image.

Then Deborah is extolled as someone who is called to wake up.  Not sure what that is about.  Barak, the general who really called Deborah’s leadership into question, is definitely given a bit more credit than Deborah is here, as the battle is seen much more through his lens than anyone else.  Then you have at the end a somewhat poignant rendition of Sisera’s mom waiting for him to come home.  I think it is interesting that it isn’t his wife, but rather his mom.  His mom is wondering why he is so late in coming home.  I know, it must be because he is trying to discern what I would like best out of the spoils that he has gathered up.  It never enters his or her mind that they would lose.  It is just the lowly Israelites and we have chariots of iron.

There was peace for another 40 years.  Keep in mind that this number 40 means something.  For 40 years the people wandered in Israel and were weeded out.  It seems like that once a generation passes the new generation needs to relearn how God is faithful and what God is really able to do.  It seems like the same is true for us as well.  Once a generation passes, like the greatest generation, my generation forgets what it took to make us who we are today.  But in matters of faith I hope that we are able to pass down our faith in a way that the next generation knows who God is because of how we raised our children.  You can’t inherit faith, but you can place your children within a context that they are exposed to it in a positive way.

This has to be one of my favorite chapters in the Bible, and not because some guy gets a tent peg in his head.  I mean, that’s neat and all, but not why I like this chapter.  But I did include a Baroque depiction of it by Gentileschi.

But aside from that very powerful story which we find at the end of the chapter, we can’t overlook the beginning of the chapter which introduces to us to our next judge, my favorite judge: Deborah.  

We once again get the heads up that the people of Israel did what was evil in the sight of God.  We then get a clear description of the people who were oppressing the Israelites, which would have been the Canaanites.  But not to worry, along comes my favorite judge, Deborah.  She was a prophetess who lead Israel with sound judgment and good leadership.  She called her primary general, Barak, to go and take out the Philistines, and he basically said: Not unless you go first.  And in short, Deborah said, okay, I’ll go first, but you just need to know that a woman is going to be the victor in all of this.  It may not be me, but it certainly will not be you.  

I love the part where she lays out the battle plan, you don’t often see leaders of the Israel lay out the battle  plan in the way that Deborah did.  They conquer the fierce Canaanites and their chariots of iron  and  Sisera is slaughtered by Jael.  This is a chapter that we should not forget, especially if you are ever in a discussion about roles of women in leadership.  Deborah was placed in that position by God and she governed and did all things  that God had asked her to do. 

We begin the journey of Israel through the judges.  We read about Othniel who was raised up first as a judge and as a  result was successful in his battle against Cushan-rishathaim.  Remember him from the bounty in chapter 1.  This is probably the same story from that one, but here we find out that he was given the role of judge over the people of Israel, as a result there was peace in the land for 40 years.  

Next came Ehud who drove a sword into a very well proportioned ruler.  That story has always intrigued me because it is by trickery that Ehud kills the ruler.  Of course the people of the ruler are in disarray and so the Israelites are able to take over and then there is peace in the land for 80 years under the rule of Ehud.  I always thought it was better to win by, well, being better.  But I guess there is room for trickery as well.

Next we find Shamgar, but besides being really good with an ox-goad, we don’t know much about him.  What exactly is an ox-goad and how do you kill 600 people with it? 

Okay, I guess that makes sense, but wow, that is quite a person who is able to do all that.

But look at vs. 7, and then again vs.12 and you see that phrase repeated which I told you about: “The Israelites again did what was evil in the sight of the Lord.”  Just remember that these are words that we never want to hear in relationship to us.  

This is a test, this is only a test.  If you look at vs.22-23 you see that the Lord was testing the loyalty of the Israelites by not driving out all of those nations that were in the land, you know, all those nations that we mentioned last chapter that the Israelites had not driven out of the land.  The reason why he did not drive them out was because he wanted to see if the Israelites would turn back and worship false gods, which seemed to be their default.  So this was a test.

Interestingly enough under Joshua and all of his generation the Lord did marvelous things and they remembered all that He did and worshiped the Lord, and the Lord only did they worship.  But then we see in vs.10 that the generation that came after them: “Did not know the Lord or the work that he had done for Israel.”  Then comes the most common phrase that we find in Judges: “Then the Israelites did what was evil in the  sight of the Lord.”  We find this repeated over and over again.  

If you look at vs.16 then you can see what God did as a result of them doing evil in the sight of the Lord.  The  Lord raised up judges.  The responsibility of these judges was to make sure they were delivered from those who plundered them.  By the way, the ones who plundered them were the ones that they had not driven out of the land when they had a chance, as Joshua had commanded them through the Lord.  I told you it wasn’t a good idea to keep them around.  But look at vs. 18-19 and you see  that God was raised to pity because of the state of the Israelites and then he would appoint a judge.  But, once a judge came around, things got back to order, but then once the judge died, what was that phrase again?  “Then the Israelites did what was evil in the sight of the Lord.”  

As a result God says that the Israelites are going to have a hard time, a really hard time keeping the land that they now occupy.  Yeah, that’s a bit of an understatement.  

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.

You can’t read this chapter without highlighting vs.15, and especially the last  part of that verse: “As for me and my household, we will serve the Lord.”  These are the words of Joshua as he sets up a juxtaposition between what God had done and the requirement that God has which is that the people will serve Him and only Him, as opposed to the other gods which are present in the lands that they overtook.  Joshua tells them, you  have a choice, you can serve the God that I serve, or serve the gods that the people in the land serve.  I’m going to serve the Lord God, and so is my family.

So Joshua goes over all the historical background from the time of Abraham to the current day which took them into and out of Egypt and then into the promised land.  Remember that throughout this time the underlying theme  is that God is one, God is jealous, you are to have no other gods before me, if you do have other gods before me then I am not going to be on your side, and by the way, you want me on your side, trust me.

Joshua dies and so ends our chapter and our book of the Bible of Joshua.  This ends the whole series of promises that God made to the people of Israel that they would inherit the promised land.  They have inherited it, now they just have to rule it.  That comes next.

So it is pretty important that we only serve one Lord and God and that God be the God of Israel.  Joshua is in the sunset of his life and he wants to be sure that he leaves behind the nation in a healthy state and he can think of no other way to leave the nation in a healthy state than if they understand that they have to set up parameters to ensure that their progeny will only serve the Lord God.  

This has been,  and will continue to be, the one theme throughout all of Scripture, including when Jesus walks upon the earth.  Love the Lord your God with all your heart, mind, soul, and strength.  In an age of relativism where we often hear that it doesn’t matter what we worship or who we worship, as long as we are good people, this message of Scripture comes to us very directly and says: Well, no, actually it does matter.  It matters quite a bit.  But this message that Joshua gives: do not marry people who do not believe fundamentally the way that you believe, just might be seen as being narrow minded and not something we ought to pursue. 

I am going to embrace this command in a way that might be somewhat contradictory.  I would participate in a service where people of different religions are getting married.  And by different religions I don’t mean a Baptist and a Presbyterian.  We are the same religion, we are Christians.  But I mean a Jew and a Christian, or a Muslim and a Christian, I would take part in this service.  But, I would take part only if I could proclaim the good news of the Gospel in that service.  

The tribes are getting settled and being sent out to their lands by Joshua when an “event” happens.  Isn’t it interesting when events  happen in families?  Over the generations those events become much larger than they ever were.  We have two and a half of the tribes who were accused of building an altar, with the assumption that this altar was in order to worship and sacrifice to false gods.  The other tribes sent representatives because the last “event” which took place at Peor was a really bad memory for everyone involved.   If you want to remember that event yourself you can go to Numbers 25:3-5.   Yeah, not good memories.  People being impaled and the Lord not really happy.

Sooo…, in order to avoid all that impaling and the rest of the Israelites being punished for these few wayward tribes it would be best if we send representatives and try to convince them to turn from their ways.  They do, they send their representatives.  The response they get is fascinating.  So, the concern was that these few tribes were already beginning to worship false gods.  But their response, however, is that they built this altar as a witness or a reminder that they were people of the Lord.  If in the generations to come the other Israelite families might accuse them of not being true believers they could point to this altar and say, no, that is not correct.  Our ancestors built this altar as a memory of our faith in the one true God.

So basically this was built in order to stave off any future naysayers on the other side of the Jordan.  Nothing like starting off with just a touch of conspiracy theory.  All ends well.  

So in this chapter we find the families of the priestly class who were kind of assigned to towns within the land that the Lord had given to the other families.  They were not given land, which we saw underlined a number of times that the family of Levi, the priestly class, would not receive land, but rather towns in which they were supposed to dwell.  The assumption is that in these towns that they were given they were to establish the temples, the places of worship, a place where God would be glorified.  Remember, we do not have the temple just yet, that is going to come later, so regionally they had to worship God in some place.  Those places would have been the towns where the priests resided, at least logically it makes sense.

Notice also that all of the towns of refuge, where people were allowed to go in order to be protected by the law, were given to the Levitical, the priestly families as described in this chapter.  So it means that wherever people had to flee there would definitely be a pastor, or a rabbi, in that town that they would be able to visit and see.  This is very, very significant and forward thinking.  It wasn’t like these sanctuary cities were set up randomly.  They were set up with the thinking that the people who are going to be using the sanctuary cities would need spiritual and emotional support.  

This is a very civil chapter.  You wouldn’t think that there would be a deliberate establishment of refugee cities in the Old Testament, but here we find the establishment of them.  These were cities where if you killed someone by mistake you could flee there before the family took out their vengeance on you.  Notice that these cities were established not just in one location which would have made it difficult for all people to go to that spot.  But in this scenario there would always be one that was close enough to flee without any problems.  It seems like there were five cities spread out, even one in the wilderness.

Notice that the cities are not established as permanent bases almost as if the person is playing hide and go seek, that whenever they are in those cities they are forever safe.  No, they have to wait there until basically the trial rolls around.  These cities keep the person safe until the trial happens.  They cannot have the death of someone avenged because they are in those cities.