d. The permanent religious value of Judges
5. The importance of the book of Judges
The period of the judges was of crucial importance in the history of Israel, for it was a period of transition. The nation which had been welded together from a rabble of slaves and other diverse groups had entered the Promised Land, with high ideals and austere moral standards, and is seen in Judges settling down in an environment dominated by Canaanite culture and religion. Moreover, there was pressure from the surrounding countries, of an occasional nature but sometimes strong. Israel was shaped by these factors and the future course of her history was, in measure, determined by the events of these two vital centuries. These trends are documented in Judges and they may be considered under various headings.
a. Politics
Israel’s political structure when it entered Canaan can be described as an amphictyony, i.e. an assembly of tribes united together by a religious bond which found its focal point in a central sanctuary with its associated cultus. This structure may be observed elsewhere in the Mediterranean area, but an unusually strong centripetal bond amongst the tribes of Israel derived from the covenant event of Sinai, with its background of the miraculous deliverance from Egypt. Israel’s traditions witness uniformly to this kind of political structure and there is incidental testimony as well. For example, during the wilderness period there was a prolonged sojourn in the vicinity of Kadesh-barnea, the name Kadesh (sanctuary), indicating that the focal point of their settlement was the sanctuary. During the first two centuries in the land the central sanctuary was located successively at Shechem, Shiloh (for a limited period), Bethel and, finally, again at Shiloh. In our commentary on the text it will be observed how this system operated. There were forces in the period of the judges, however, which tended to break down the strong political and religious bond which, ideally, ought to have characterized the amphictyonic league:
1. The incomplete nature of the Conquest made full cooperation between the tribes almost impossible. There was one group of unreduced Canaanite cities in the Esdraelon valley and a second in the Aijalon valley leading up to Jerusalem. The effect of these two wedges of Canaanite influence was to divide the tribes of Israel into three groups, northern, central and southern.
2. Geographical factors had a profound influence, since it was in the valleys and coastal plain that the main areas of Canaanite settlement were found. From west to east Palestine is divided into the coastal plain, the central mountain range, the Jordan valley and the Transjordan plateau. From north to south the three main divisions to the west of the Jordan are the region best known as Galilee, the central hill-country and the southern mountains which merge into the desert-wastes of the Negeb. As in ancient Greece these geographical factors made effective unity between interrelated groups extremely difficult.
3. These divisions made it difficult for the amphictyonic sanctuary to exert its cohesive force and some tribes must, for all practical purposes, have been dissociated from their fellows. Thus, in periods of foreign pressure, individual tribes or groups of tribes found themselves fighting for their lives with no help forthcoming from the amphictyony. We have already noted the limited areas affected by the various oppressing nations. Ideally all Israel ought to have come to the succour of the beleaguered tribes, but in practice intertribal co-operation was limited. Only in the crisis faced by Deborah and Barak do we find six of the tribes combining to face the menace; of the remainder, four put their own interests first, and two, Simeon and Judah, were so cut off from the stream of national life that they are not even mentioned.
4. It was this breakdown of the intertribal organization that led ultimately to the adoption of the monarchy, in conscious imitation of the surrounding nations. A king could summon the tribes to action and his personal leadership could weld the disparate elements together in an effective unity. The antecedent of this may be observed in the case of Gideon who, following his victory over the Midianite menace, was offered the crown, a position he ostensibly declined.12 The events which followed his death show the inclination towards the monarchy, at least in certain parts of the land. But the Midianite menace, acute as it was, was not sufficient to overcome the deep-seated aversion to the monarchy of the average Israelite, with his strong sense of independence. This was not to come until the Philistines threatened the very existence of Israel and then the nation, going against Samuel, the Lord’s chief representative, clamoured for and secured the appointment of a king. Thus the book of Judges is a highly important witness to the breakdown of the traditional political structure and to the initial steps towards the adoption of the monarchy.
b. Religion
When Israel entered into the land of Canaan its religion had already assumed its basic form and customs. It was a near-miracle that this religion survived the searching test of the crucial first centuries in Canaan. It would have been more than a miracle had such a religion developed after the settlement, with all the forces making for disintegration and deterioration pressing in upon it. In the formation of Israel’s distinctive religion the part played by Moses cannot be overestimated. He, under God, was used to weld an undistinguished, dispirited multitude into an organized and carefully regulated unity. It has already been observed that this organization took the form of an amphictyony, a union of twelve tribes sharing a common faith and grouped around a common sanctuary. Their god was Yahweh, who had brought them out of slavery in Egypt by the manifestation of his power and had entered into a covenant with them at Sinai. Their part in the covenant-relationship was to be loyal to him and to keep his commandments, which may be divided into two categories. There were the casuistic laws, which have many parallels in other law-codes of the second millennium BC, those of Israel being distinguished by a more humanitarian note and by an emphasis on persons rather than on property. The second group contains what are known as apodictic or apodeictic laws, the feature of these being their categoric character. They are introduced by ‘Thou shalt …’ or ‘Thou shalt not …’. Israel was to obey these laws without question because Yahweh so willed. It is generally agreed that this class of law is distinctively, if not uniquely, Israelite. The cultus of the nation had a background of the harvest festivals which were commonly observed throughout the Fertile Crescent, but they received through Moses a complete reorientation and were made to celebrate the saving acts of God on behalf of the nation. It is of the highest importance to observe that the stress in the genuine Israelite religion was on a God in history, not simply, as in the cults of Canaan and elsewhere, on a god in nature. Similarly the sacrifices of Israel can be paralleled amongst her neighbours, as has been made abundantly clear through archaeological discoveries at Ras Shamra, the ancient Ugarit.13 But again the genius of Israel’s faith is apparent in the adaptation of these already existing forms.
It may be assumed, once the basic historicity of the events narrated in the book of Exodus is accepted, that Moses was conversant with the kind of religion that was practised in the land which he planned to occupy. This religion was, basically, a nature cult, designed to enlist the aid of the Baal pantheon and ensure the fertility of the land. This took the form of a mimetic ritual in which male and female cult-prostitutes featured, seeking to promote the action of the gods in the wider sphere of nature. In Canaan in particular, the religious life of the community had been debased to the lowest level. It is against this background that the command to exterminate the Canaanites must be seen. Israel, with its more austere morals and loftier faith, became the agent of divine judgment upon the Canaanites. Since God is both sovereign and righteous, and therefore active within history, this is only to be expected and it has been paralleled in the history of the nations many times subsequently. But the divine command was also prophylactic. It was designed to safeguard the life of the nation from the corroding influences of Canaanite life. And since the purposes of God through Israel were redemptive, a redemption in which the whole world was ultimately to share, the importance of an Israel dedicated and uncontaminated is apparent.
This, then, in broad outline and with inevitable generalizations, was the situation which existed at the beginning of the period of the judges and we trace in the book of Judges the failure of Israel to remain loyal to her God.
1. It is clear that not all Israelites shared the lofty faith and high ideals of their leaders, Moses, Joshua and the elders. This is hardly surprising when the background of servitude in Egypt is considered, together with the presence of the mixed multitudes which attached themselves to Israel. The grumbling and the disobedience of the wilderness period were ominous portents of the future life in Canaan, whilst Joshua 24:15 shows that a living memory of past paganism lingered in the minds of many.
2. The incomplete conquest and the failure to exterminate the inhabitants of the land was Israel’s undoing. Joshua, towards the end of his life, had exhorted his hearers that they ‘come not among these nations, these that remain among you; neither make mention of the name of their gods, nor cause to swear by them, neither serve them, nor bow yourselves unto them’ (Josh. 23:7), but the measure of their failure to comply with his commands was the measure of their failure to achieve all that God had promised them. They were content to settle down amongst the Canaanites and they lost the incentive to possess the whole land. Judges records both the fact and the effect of mixed marriages (3:5, 6), in which the question of the relationship of Yahweh and the Baal gods would become an acute family problem. Whenever two groups of peoples come into contact there is an inevitable tendency to syncretism, the gods become identified, or, in the case of a conquered country, their gods find an inferior place in the pantheon of their conquerors. This process is not conscious or deliberate, but it is nevertheless real. In the case of Israel there would seem to be a very specious reason why she should give attention to the gods of the land into which she entered. The God of Israel, Yahweh, was to the majority of the Israelites associated with the wilderness in which they had spent the earlier part of their lives. His superiority over the Baal gods had been demonstrated in the victories gained over the inhabitants of Canaan. But the gods of the land controlled the rain, springs and vegetation on which they would depend in their future settlement, at least, so the average Israelite, scarcely removed from polytheism, would argue. There was no conscious forsaking of Yahweh, but mixed marriages, the need to give deference to the forces controlling fertility, and the powerful appeal of Canaanite worship to the lower and more sensual nature, were all factors which led inevitably to an easy-going syncretism. Baal was identified with Yahweh, and Yahweh was worshipped, in degree, with the forms of Baal worship. This was, in fact, to be characteristic of the nation until after the destruction of Jerusalem in 587 BC. The prophets Hosea, Isaiah and Jeremiah in particular speak of their worship in terms of spiritual adultery, as ‘going after Baal’, a charge hotly repudiated by a people who were unconscious of the fact that they were not true Yahweh worshippers. In the course of the commentary we shall observe the course of this moral and spiritual declension. At the moment we are concerned to point out the fundamental nature of this apostasy. During the judges’ period the nation, heedless of the clear warnings of its earlier leaders, took a wrong turning that was to have disastrous consequences.
3. Closely associated with the foregoing, there was a decline in the standard of leadership. The editor observes that ‘the people served the Lord all the days of Joshua, and all the days of the elders that outlived Joshua, who had seen all the great work of the Lord …’ (2:7). From that point on there was no-one remotely comparable with Moses, Joshua or Phinehas until the Lord raised up Samuel. Our appreciation of these stirring tales of the judges does not blind us to the blemishes in their characters, although the strength of their underlying faith in the Lord is unquestioned. Ehud was but a cowardly assassin; Gideon led the people astray after his victory over the Midianites; Jephthah, with his unfortunate personal background, appears as an opportunist, in spite of his many admirable qualities; and the stories of Samson sadden rather than inspire and leave us wondering what he might have achieved, if he, like Caleb, had ‘wholly followed the Lord’. We observe here the basic honesty of the narratives of the Bible. There is no attempt to whitewash the principal characters; their faults are clearly depicted and the focus throughout is on the infallible God, not fallible man.14
4. A point noted already must be briefly repeated here. The forces which made for disunity and division had a corresponding effect in reducing the effectiveness of the central sanctuary. Where there is a strong, central authority controlling the political, social and religious life of the community, there is little possibility of deviation. This did not obtain during the major part of the period of the judges and there was little to check the drift away from the standards set in the law of Moses.
5. It is possible, of course, to overdraw the picture and, as a corrective, we must observe that the tribal structure itself remained intact. Chapters 20 and 21 show the amphictyony in action against the offending tribe of Benjamin, and, just beyond the period of our text, we observe that external pressure from the Philistines, together with the leadership of a true man of God, Samuel, were to bring in a new unity which had been largely absent in the preceding century and a half. Even this unity had its limitations, for there was an irreparable gulf between north and south that stemmed from the period of the judges; it manifested itself frequently during the reigns of David and Solomon and was ultimately to issue in the formation of the rival kingdoms of Judah and Israel.
c. Moral problems raised by the book of Judges
Frequent references to the moral and religious shortcomings of the judges will be found in this commentary. These are dealt with in their context, but a more general discussion of the issues involved is necessary. Unquestionably the problem becomes acutest in connection with Samson, a charismatic individual, yet one who appears sensual and completely irresponsible. He seems to have little, if any, religious fervour and his Nazirite vow, irregular and limited as it was, did not separate him from evil. Even his patriotism is suspect, for his actions seem to have been actuated by purely selfish motives. It is not surprising, therefore, that some Christians have found the stories a real embarrassment. The difficulty is increased still further by the fact that Samson is included in the list of the heroes of faith in the New Testament (Heb. 11:32).
There is also a particular problem within the general problem. It was when the Spirit of the Lord came upon Samson that some of his questionable feats of strength were performed (e.g. 14:19). We are accustomed to think in terms of New Testament doctrine which associates the possession of the Spirit of God with uprightness of character (e.g. 1 Cor. 3:16, 17; 6:18–20). What was the association of Samson’s anointing with morality of life? Was he responsible for his actions when possessed by the Spirit of God? What is the relationship between these narratives and the teaching of the New Testament? These are some of the questions which suggest themselves to the reader. It may be that no answer can be given which will fully satisfy every enquirer, especially within the limitations of this discussion. But the following suggestions and observations are advanced:
1. Samson was a man of his age, and that age was one of declension and apostasy. In these narratives we have a mirror of the prevailing conditions which is of inestimable value, albeit negatively. Not only was this a period when New Testament standards were still far distant, but even the standards of the Mosaic covenant were lightly regarded. The book of Judges is a faithful witness to this sombre but significant fact.
2. The purpose of the editor must be taken into account at this point. We have observed in our consideration of the structure of the book of Judges that there is a framework of editorial comment of a religious nature. This is less evident in the Samson narratives. It has been suggested that ‘they became so firmly fixed in tradition that even the editor of our book could do little to adapt them to the needs of the age in which he lived’.15 Might it not be that he did not wish to adapt them in this way? If his concern was to trace the moral, political and religious decline of the period, these stories give eloquent support to his thesis without adaptation.
3. It was widely believed throughout this period that unusual power of any kind was a unique endowment from the Lord and an evidence of the working of his Spirit. Conversely, any abnormality was attributed to the possession of, or by, an evil spirit from the Lord, as in the case of Saul (1 Sam. 16:14ff.). Samson was a man of supernatural strength; therefore he was a man supernaturally endowed by the Spirit of the Lord. But it is too facile an explanation to leave this point simply as the popular (and possibly erroneous) reason advanced for Samson’s great strength. We must ask whether this is a valid conception. Or is its validity limited to the unenlightened views of this period?
Throughout the Old Testament we find that events are related directly to God himself. Thus the Lord is said to harden Pharaoh’s heart (Exod. 4:21; 7:3, 13, etc.); it is, as we have already mentioned, an evil spirit from the Lord that troubles Saul (1 Sam. 16:14); the Lord puts a lying spirit in the mouths of the false prophets (1 Kgs 22:23). This has created problems for the Christian. Some would explain these phenomena by reference to secondary causes, or by the laws of psychology, or to God’s permissive will. Yet the witness of the Old Testament is accurate. For if God is sovereign, then that sovereignty must be taken seriously and all events and facts must be considered in relationship to it. Similarly, any reference to the laws of psychology is valid; but it must be realized that all law which is true must be an expression of God’s sovereign manifestation within the universe. It is in this realm of ideas that the difficult expression of 14:4, ‘he was seeking an occasion against the Philistines’, finds its explanation. This incident, wherein Samson sought a wife from among the Philistines, was part of God’s overruling of history. We have discussed elsewhere16 the part played by Samson’s lone exploits against the Philistines. He himself was not actuated by worthy motives, but without his exploits Israel could easily have succumbed to Philistine influence.
4. It is apparent that God may make a man a vehicle of his revelation, or a channel of power, quite apart from the quality of life of the individual concerned. In the Old Testament we find him employing the most unlikely agents. He used Balaam, a timeserving, non-Israelite prophet (Num. 22–24); there is the possibility that Shamgar was a non-Israelite (Judg. 3:31); the heathen monarch Nebuchadnezzar is described as his servant (Jer. 25:9; 27:6; 43:10); Cyrus, the Persian king, is styled ‘my shepherd’ and ‘his anointed’ (Isa. 44:28; 45:1), although it is specifically pointed out that ‘you do not know me’ (Isa. 45:4). There is an inscrutable element in this fact of God’s choice which is not completely open to man’s understanding. From the human standpoint we may question how God could equip and employ a man like Samson. But the fact is that he did, and while the details of Samson’s life may cause embarrassment to the modern reader, the value of the part which he played in the history of Israel is evident.
It is equally clear that, in this period, the coming of God’s Spirit upon a man is not to be equated with the fuller teaching and revelation of the Holy Spirit in the New Testament period. A charismatic anointing did not necessarily produce holiness of life. A certain limited range of activity was employed for the outworking of the divine will. The man so endowed was still accountable to God and his life ought to have been lived in conformity with the revelation and instruction already given. Samson failed abjectly at this point.
5. Finally, the book of Judges must be seen in the total context of the revelation of God in and through the Scriptures. This revelation is redemptive in its nature and purpose. It covers the unfolding of God’s character and it culminates in the New Testament. In the Old Testament period God was dealing with material which was often intractable and unresponsive. Whilst there were periods of great spiritual advance, such as the Mosaic period, or the time of the great eighth-century prophets, there were also times of regression. The Old Testament period is not a plane. It is a pathway, often tortuous, sometimes descending rather than ascending. But it is not aimless, and with the New Testament it forms one great and complex movement. The ages of spiritual and moral degeneracy are delineated accurately. The period of the judges was one of the ‘dark ages’ of Israel’s history and the irregularities and problems contained therein must be set against this general background. In its own way it is a faithful witness to the fact of man’s frailty and to his need not of a merely temporal deliverer, but of an eternal Saviour who can effect a perfect redemption.
d. The permanent religious value of Judges
1. God is righteous. Attention has already been drawn to the sombre nature of the narrative which we are studying, and an attempt has been made to account for the moral and spiritual decline traced by the historian.17 Some parts of the Old Testament make a positive appeal to us, exhorting us to the life of uprightness and integrity by direct command and instruction, or by illustration and inspiration in the life of a godly man. But in Judges the appeal is negative. As the reader observes the results of a nation’s apostasy he is warned rather than edified. This is not formulated in abstract principles but in living examples, particularly in the last five chapters. One can almost hear the warning voice of the Holy Spirit, ‘Beware lest you also fall into temptation and a similar fate befall you.’ But behind this record of a nation which had lost its first love, vision and purity there is the unmistakable picture of a righteous God. It is true that the low standard is accounted for in part by the absence of authoritative human leadership, with every man doing ‘that which was right in his own eyes’. But the editor underlines the fact that the misery which overtook the people was due to their forsaking of a holy God. Their sin was not an insignificant thing, to be passed over lightly; it was an affront to God’s righteous being and as such was visited by stern and painful judgment. A nation that forsakes the Lord, or lowers and compromises his standards, cannot hope to prosper in any ultimate sense.
2. God is sovereign. This facet of the eternal character of God is, of course, implied in the preceding paragraph. He orders all the forces of nature and history in accordance with his own righteous will, thus working out his judgment upon the nation. This sovereign power, however, is also revealed in his saving activity through the various judges who are men upon whom his Spirit has come. This supernatural endowment means that deliverance is gained from nations numerically stronger than Israel itself. The account of the reduction of Gideon’s army from an original 32,000 to an insignificant 300 and the consequent crushing of the host of the Midianites is a telling illustration of the view that the victory was the Lord’s who fought for them (cf. Ps. 20:7; 118:6, 7). The same truth is illustrated vividly in the Song of Deborah, where the forces of nature are depicted as participating in Israel’s sweeping victory over Sisera. The book of Judges recounts the exploits of the judges, but the focus of attention is not on the individual but on the ever-present and all-powerful God. Gideon, the greatest of the judges, was conscious of little but his own inability and lack of qualifications (6:11–15), but the key to the situation was the divine promise, ‘But I will be with you, and you shall smite the Midianites as one man’ (6:16). Throughout Israel’s long and chequered history the Hebrew historians, prophets and poets retained a profound consciousness of the Lord’s sovereignty. It may well be necessary to remind the people of God in our own troubled generation that this sovereignty remains unimpaired. He is still on the throne.
3. God is gracious and longsuffering. The cycle of sin, servitude, supplication and salvation is repeated so frequently in Judges that it almost becomes monotonous. We must be on our guard against such an attitude, for it could so easily blind us to fundamental truths. The first is the downward bias of the human heart, mind and will and man’s incurable reluctance to profit by experience, either his own or that of a previous generation. One wonders how Israel could be so blind to the evident lessons of its history until one looks at one’s own heart and experience. But there is a reverse side to this coin. In contrast to man’s multiplied misdemeanours there is the constancy of a God who is always ready to hearken to the cries of his wayward people and to intervene on their behalf. He does not act precipitately to blot out the very name of a nation that had treated him so shabbily. His arms are stretched out still to welcome the penitent supplicant. The forbearance of God and the wonderful possibility of a new beginning through his grace strikes a glad note in this book which cannot be silenced by the discordant sounds which appear to predominate.
4. The importance of faith. As we consider the characters of the individual judges we shall not discover much of moral grandeur to inspire us, but we shall often observe that quality of faith which cooperates with the Lord and enables him to reveal his might. It is this aspect which the writer of the Epistle to the Hebrews takes up when he includes so many of the judges in his catalogue of the heroes of the faith. ‘And what shall I more say? for the time will fail me if I tell of Gideon, Barak, Samson, Jephthah … who through faith subdued kingdoms …’ (Heb. 11:32, 33, RV). Thus these men who achieved so much as God worked through them witness to our own generation, reminding us that the people that know their God (and how immeasurably greater is the revelation of God granted to us!) and have faith in him can do mighty things (cf. Dan. 11:32).