Judges- Looking for Hope When the World Gets Darker

Judges is a wild book.

I say that fully realizing that we’ve already covered some incredible story lines thus far on our journey through the Old Testament. God spoke an entire universe into existence, made a covenant with Abraham that depended entirely on His own faithfulness, led His people out of slavery, established laws to sustain them as a country, and marched them into the Promised Land.

And now, immediately following the death of Joshua, the people have forgotten their God. Again.

The book of Judges spans a few hundred years and tells the stories of multiple people God raised up to lead His people. Historically, it takes place during the end of the Bronze Age and the beginning of the Iron Age. As the Israelites are taking control of Canaan, the world is rapidly advancing around them.

Consider God’s instructions to take over the land and eliminating the people there. How great the temptation for the recently freed, exhausted, traveling Israelites to leave in place the thriving cities settled on lush landscapes! The people of Canaan are superior to the Israelites in almost every way- trade, architecture, civil organization, art, and much more. But their religious systems feed into their cultures and are highly sexualized, proving to be a temptation of its own for the incoming Israelites.

The final line of the book sums it up:

In those days there was no king in Israel. Everyone did what was right in his own eyes.

Judges 21:25

On a personal and quite transparent note, Judges is one of the hardest books of the Bible for me to read. The stories go from gruesome to barbaric and challenge my understanding of God’s sovereign goodness as the total depravity of mankind is on full display.

Ink seems to rage over its pages, painting pictures of massive military conquests, betrayal, human dismemberment and mutilation, child sacrifice, and horrific sexual abuse. By the end of the book, I’m quite literally sick to my stomach.

If you read the whole book in one sitting, the pattern the author is showing becomes painfully obvious. The Israelites do evil before God. God brings in another country to oppress them. The Israelites cry out. God sends a judge to deliver them. They have a short period of peace and then the cycle starts again.

Around the death of Joshua, the Israelites are set up for success in conquering Canaan. God has proven Himself faithful in keeping His covenant, but Israel is determined to do things her own way. As they take land, not every tribe completes the conquest. Tribe after tribe leaves the inhabitants of cities alive or allow them to stay, sometimes forcing the people to be their slaves.

The angel of the LORD comes to them and says:

“I brought you up from Egypt and brought you into the land that I swore to give to your fathers. I said, ‘I will never break My covenant with you, and you shall make no covenant with the inhabitants of this land; you shall break down their altars.’ But you have not obeyed My voice. What is this you have done? So now I say, I will not drive them out before you, but they shall become thorns in your sides, and their gods shall be a snare to you.”

Judges 2:1-3

Their response is fascinating to me.

As soon as the angel of the LORD spoke these words to all the people of Israel, the people lifted up their voices and wept.

Judges 2:4

They were right to weep at His condemnation of their actions. They were right to weep at the consequences He foretold.

But the author does not say they repented.

They offered a sacrifice but there is no record of them turning from their ways and obeying the voice of the LORD.

Only a few verses later, their calamity begins.

And the people of Israel did what was evil in the sight of the LORD and served the Baals. And they abandoned the LORD, the God of their fathers, who had brought them out of the land of Egypt. They went after other gods, from among the gods of the peoples who were around them, and bowed down to them. And they provoked the LORD to anger. They abandoned the LORD and served the Baals and the Ashtaroth. So the anger of the LORD was kindled against Israel, and He gave them over to plunderers who plundered them. And He sold them into the hand of their surrounding enemies, so that they could no longer withstand their enemies. Whenever they marched out, the hand of the LORD was against them for harm, as the LORD had warned, and as the LORD had sworn to them. And they were in terrible distress.

Judges 2:11-15
emphasis my own

God begins to raise up judges to deliver them, but they did not listen to the judges, or at least never for very long.

Note the language Scripture uses as the reason for why they did not listen:

…for they whored after other gods and bowed down to them.

Judges 2:17
emphasis my own

I don’t think this wording is a coincidence. God sees their idolatry as adultery against Him. He is fully justified in His anger against them.

He delivered them out of slavery and carried them into a land flowing with milk and honey. But the love and provision of this holy God was not enough for them. They longed for the sensual worship of the pagan gods and indulged themselves however they pleased.

God uses this language and analogy all throughout the Old Testament. In multiple books, He paints the Israelites as prostituting themselves and Himself as the husband. Rightfully jealous, but perfect in His steadfast love.

For the LORD was moved to pity by their groaning because of those who afflicted and oppressed them.

Judges 2:18b
emphasis my own

As He is moved in compassion towards His people, He raises up judges to deliver them from the people who overtook them. In multiple places the author says that the Spirit of the LORD came upon the judges. What a thought! This detail becomes beautiful to the modern Believer when you consider what it looks like for a person under the power of the Spirit to dwell in a land of people bent on wickedness.

God even raises up a woman as a judge. In a time where women were seen as little more than property, God uses Deborah the prophetess to judge Israel. She calls upon a man named Barak, telling him God has commanded him to lead an army against their enemies. He refuses to go unless she goes with him, but in a humorous response (at least to me) she tells him:

“I will surely go with you. Nevertheless, the road on which you are going will not lead to your glory, for the LORD will sell Sisera into the hand of a woman.”

Judges 4:9

Sure enough, Barak follows her instructions and defeated an army, minus one general who escaped: Sisera. Sisera flees on foot until he comes across a woman named Jael who lures him into her tent, offering to hide him with a rug. When he falls asleep, she drives a tent peg through his skull into the ground!

From this point, the judges in the rest of the book begin to show more character flaws. The author is likely giving these details to contrast how depraved the nation of Israel is becoming.

Gideon is a coward but who could blame him in such wicked days? Even though God promises to go with him, he repeatedly asks for signs, as if God’s presence is not enough. When he cuts down the altars to false gods and builds one to the true God of Israel, he does it at night because of his fear of his family. He eventually leads a small army of 300 men to a miraculous victory by blowing trumpets and smashing jars around the enemy’s camp.

After his victory, he takes a page from Moses’s brother, Aaron’s playbook. He asks for the earrings and garments of the defeated kings of Midian that the people had taken as spoils and makes them into an ephod. An ephod was a type of garment worn by the high priest as he communicated with God.

And Gideon made an ephod of it and put it in his city, in Ophrah. And all Israel whored after it there, and it became a snare to Gideon and to his family.

Judges 8:27

There was only supposed to be one ephod in Israel. While the specifics are unclear, the ESV Study Bible notes, “By setting up another ephod in his own city, Gideon may have been making it his own to use, at his own whim. Ultimately, it became a snare to Gideon and his family.”

While Gideon is remembered as a great hero of the Bible, his story begins to show the cracks in the judges’ character. He outwardly refused to lead the people as king, but his intentions could be questioned. His son, whose name means “my father is king,” also becomes one of Israel’s greatest problems.

As the pages turn, the judges become more and more complicated. Their sins become more and more obvious.

The wording of his vow makes the reader think he intended to offer an animal sacrifice, but scholars argue that the original grammar also “allows for ‘whoever’, in which case Jephthah would have intended to offer a human sacrifice all along.” (ESV Study Bible)

Regardless, he was legally allowed to break a vow that would lead to sin, but he followed through with the abomination of murdering his daughter.

Some chapters later, Samson comes along. One thing I find interesting in the wording in his tale is the phrase repeatedly used before a victorious feat: the Spirit of the LORD rushed upon him. His is a story many already know. He was a man dedicated to the LORD from before his conception, but he spent most of his life bowing to the lust of his own eyes. In a horrid twist of events, his eyes are ultimately put out, and he ends his life in one final victorious war cry against the Philistines.

Later, a man named Micah also makes an ephod, as well as a shrine and household gods. He goes as far as to ordain one of his sons and a Levite as priests. His story continues until an innocent city is burned to the ground, and the carved images are honored with false priests for centuries.

The most sickening story, to me, begins in chapter 19. The total depravity of Israel is on full display at this point. The Israelites have spiraled further and further from Yahweh as judges have come and gone. The story mimics the tale of Lot so closely, it is impossible to ignore. A Levite’s concubine is thrown into the street and abused in heinous ways, but worse than Sodom and Gomorrah is her husband’s calloused heart. He gruesomely divides her battered body into twelve pieces and ships it to the twelve tribes, ultimately leading to a civil war.

The book ends in utter despair.

In those days there was no king in Israel. Everyone did what was right in his own eyes.

Judges 21:25

And to be honest with you, by the time I’ve finished reading these stories, I want to be finished writing this as well.

I think this might be the author’s intention. The book of Judges is meant to shock us.

But if we think our sin is any less abhorrent to God than those listed in this book, we deceive ourselves. Our sin, no matter how little we perceive it to be, marks us to our core. It is an abomination to a holy God.

While my hands are not stained with most of the evils detailed in Judges, they are dripping with sin of my own. If I’m not careful, pride will find a sliver of light and begin to work its way past the doorframe of my heart. I will think that my “lesser” sin means I’m in less need to be saved from it.

In Judges, God is displaying the slow fade of the heart of Israel. And while the book ends in despair, it is unapologetically telling the reader what Israel needs: a king.

What the modern reader can take from this story is the ultimate need of every human heart: a Perfect King.

When we look back to the law given to Moses, we know this was God’s intent all along. He already provided the laws specifically for the future kings. He watched from His throne as the judges moved through history according to His plan, knowing that a few centuries later, He would provide a good king for Israel- David.

And because He sits outside of time, He knew that after David, Israel and the rest of the world would need an even better king- Jesus.

So when my heart breaks at the stories in Judges and my stomach churns at the gory evil detailed on its pages, I start looking for God’s goodness. Because in pages like those, what hope do we have other than to find something good?

At first it might be hard to see. But if you look closely, you remember the pattern. When Israel sins and is punished, God always intervenes. Every single time. He sends a judge to bring the people out of oppression. Why? Because He promised He would and because He loves them.

Remember His covenant with Abraham? Abraham did not walk through the carcasses. He didn’t sign the covenant on the dotted line. God’s promise doesn’t rely on the faithfulness of Israel. It stands on the solid rock of His own faithfulness.

Seven books into the Old Testament, we are washed in the grotesqueness of the sin of others, and hopefully can then see our own sin in the correct light. Every lie, every lust, and every injustice is rebellion against the King.

Think back to the pattern- every time Israel sins, they are punished. Why? Because a holy God will not tolerate sin, even if it persists for a season. We must remember this because He has not changed.

Our sin will be punished. The wages of sin is death. Romans 6:23

“The Cross is the danger signal to you. It warns you that if God spared not His only Son, He will not spare you. It is the lighthouse set on the rocks of sin to warn you that swift and sure destruction awaits you if you continue to rebel against the Lord.” Charles Spurgeon

Friend, I beg you, if you look at your own hands and see the stain of sin, repent.

Repent and believe this good news that God provided a way to be rid of it once and for all. Jesus alone is the solution to the sin that runs rampant through Judges and in our world today.