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Judges 1 Commentary
Written and edited by Glenn PeaseINTRODUCTION
 
1. The book of Judges is filled with tragedy and humor, and though thiscommentary will deal with all of the tragedy, it will focus on the humor that is oftenneglected in the study of this book. The first thing about it that is funny is the nameitself. Judges gives us an image of men and women with long black gowns holding agavel and keeping order in the court as they make judgments on people who arebrought to trial. The judges in this book do not bang gavels on their desk, but,instead, they bang farm instruments and animal bones on the heads of theCanaanites, and by this strange means bring some order to the nation. Shamgarbanged his ox goad on the heads of 600 of the enemy and sentenced them to death,and Samson banged his jawbone of an ass on a thousand of them and pronouncedthe verdict guilty, and sentenced them to capital punishment They were what youcall hanging judges for sure, but they were not really judges as we think of them.They were more like Robin Hood and war heroes. They were not behind a desk, butout in the field with hands on executions. They were judge, jury and executioner. If these Judges ever got together and formed their own company a good name wouldbe, "Sears, Burns, Hurtz and Hollers." They were devastating when they passedsentence on any people or town, and there was no appeal, for there was usually noone left to appeal.2. James Jordon sees the head bashing as fulfillment of the promise to send one whowill crush the head of the Serpent. "Thus, throughout the Bible marches The Seed.He is the one born of The Woman who will crush the head of The Serpent. Genesis3:15 "And I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between youroffspring [ Or seed ] and hers; he will crush [ Or strike ] your head, and you willstrike his heel." We shall meet him several times in the book of Judges. Indeed, thecrushing of the head of the enemy is one of the most obvious themes in the book:Ehud kills Eglon, political head. Jael crushes Sisers’s head with a tent peg. Gideondestroys the four political heads Zebah, Zalmunna, Oreb, and Zeeb. Abimelech’shead is crushed by a rock, again by a woman. Samson destroys all five heads of thePhilistine cities, by crushing them with rocks." The concept of head hunter wasquite different in that day from ours. We can get some idea of how the Caananiteswere despised by a contemporary joke.
 
3. One day, as the truck driver was driving along he saw a priest hitchhiking. Hethought he would do a good turn and pulled the truck over. He asked the priest,"Where are you going, Father?" "I'm going to the church 5 miles down the road,"replied the priest. "No problem, Father! I'll give you a lift. Climb in the truck." Thehappy priest climbed into the passenger seat and the truck driver continued down
 
the road. Suddenly the truck driver saw a lawyer walking down the road andinstinctively he swerved to hit him. But then he remembered there was a priest inthe truck with him, so at the last minute he swerved back away, narrowly missingthe lawyer. However even though he was certain he missed the lawyer, he still hearda loud "THUD". Not understanding where the noise came from he glanced in hismirrors and when he didn't see anything, he turned to the priest and said, "I'msorry Father. I almost hit that lawyer." "That's okay", replied the priest. "I got himwith the door!" We are only kidding mostly about hate toward lawyers, but it wasall real toward the pagans around Israel.4. The parallel of it all in the Christian life is that we, like Israel, are delivered bythe grace of God from the bondage to sin, but as we drift away from the joy andthrill of our spiritual experience we tend to get more worldly and many slip backinto a life that is more about the idols of the world than about the Lord and his will.We cease to hate the sins that we left, and do not pursue taking to ourselves all thatwe are redeemed to experience in the godly life. This can lead to all kinds of negativeexperiences in life that call for repentance and renewal. Some people are like thisbook and go through the cycle over and over just like Israel did. What is theproblem? It is lack of hate. What a paradox! The key to a life of love with consistentobedience to God demands the balance of hate for what God hates.5. When we think of Judges we also think of those three who pass judgment onyoung people who perform to become an American Idol. Paula with her "You tookthat song and made it your own." Randy with his "That was a little pitchy," andlast but not least Simon with his "That was the worst performance I've ever heardin my life." These also do not give us any insight into the Judges we are about tostudy. Simon is the epitome of kindness compared to the Judges of this book. Theyonly have one comment, "You are dead men!" They never say anyone is innocentand deserves a second chance. They never offer hope of a better tomorrow, for theirgoal is to make sure there is no tomorrow for those they go after. Judge is theirname and judgment is their game. They are tools in the hands of God to bring judgment on people who have gone so far off the path of God's plan for people thatthey can never be brought back. They have to be eliminated, but because Godpromised he would never do that awful job of elimination by a flood again, he had touse these warrior types to do the job. The result is, these Judges are not very funnyin the sense of making jokes and wisecracks, but they are funny in the sense of beingso incongruous as tools for good, when they are so far from good themselves. Theyare paradoxical people who are good at being bad, and very bad at being good. Youwill get it when we get to them.6. When Moses died God appointed Joshua to take over as the leader of the nationand its forces to take over the Promised Land, but when Joshua died there was noone appointed to fill that role. Now it was up to each tribe to take control of itsterritory, and God raised up these judges from different tribes to help them rid theland of the enemies of God's people. They were primarily what we would callwarriors. God is called a Judge in 11:27. They were used of God to deliver hispeople from the people he used to punish them. Max Frazier, Jr. called them
 
Rascals used by God. They were not always the best of men. God has to use what hehas to work with, and often all he has is very flawed people. The good news is thateven though we fall far short of the ideal we can be used of God to achieve his will.7. Constable wrote, "Though the judge enjoyed great prestige, he was in no sense aking. His authority was neither absolute, nor permanent, nor in any case hereditary;it rested solely in those personal qualities (the charisma) that gave evidence that hewas the man of Yahweh's spirit. It was a type of authority perfectly expressive of thefaith and constitution of early Israel: the God-King's direct leadership of his peoplethrough his spirit-designated representative. . . .
 
8. This book was written by Samuel according to the Jews, and somewhere between1054 and 1004 B. C. Joshua, the book just before Judges, covers about 35 years of history, but Judges covers about 300 years of Israel's history. Joshua is all aboutsuccess in Israel defeating the enemy and taking control of the land, but Judges ismostly about the failure of Israel to hold the land against the enemy within. It was aconstant struggle for the people to stay loyal to God, and so they had to be judgedand punished by the enemy taking control of them. They would live as slaves of thewicked people they were supposed to have driven out, and then they would repent of their sins and God would give them another chance, and the judge would be raisedup to lead them to victory again. But it would not last, and the vicious cyclecontinued over and over. It is the well known story of alcoholics and gamblers whoget saved out of their bad habit that ruins their lives, and then after this greatvictory they fall back into it and destroy all that they won by their victory. It is thestory of those who become Christians and are so delighted to be a part of the familyof God, but after awhile they fall back into the ways of the world and becomebacksliders. When their backsliding does not satisfy they repent, and get back ontrack with God, but later they again fall, and on goes the cycle due to lack of commitment and consistency. This book is a study of human nature when self is thehighest value in life.9. The period of the Judges lasted for about 340 years…from around 1390 B.C. to
 
1050 B.C. Another way to say that is that the Judges ruled in the period between
 
the death of Joshua and the installation of Israel’s first king…King Saul.
 
10. SOVEREIGNTY OF GOD AND FREE WILL OF MAN
 
This book makes both so clear that there is not mistaking the reality of both.Theologians try to make it an either/or type decision, but it is not, for it is both/and.God did not will all of the disobedience and need for repentance, for it was all so outof his will that he punished his people severely over and over. If God willed thesinful disobedience to his revealed will, then he is the author of evil, and that isrejected by the Scripture for it is said that God is light and in him is no darkness atall. So the reality of sinfulness in his own people is perfect proof of the free will of man to do what God does not will. WE see an omnipotent God not able to give hispeople the whole land because his people were to be the agents of his power, andthey quit. they pulled the plug on the power and gave up. They stopped trying, andsettled for partial obedience, which is also partial disobedience. They did not finishthe job assigned, but left it unfinished.
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