d. The effect of the broken covenant (2:1–5)
d. The effect of the broken covenant (2:1–5)
In this section the Lord faces the people with the evidence of their infidelity. The angel of the Lord is regularly used in the Old Testament to denote the manifestation of the Lord himself in a theophany. Some scholars find the idea of an angel journeying from one place to another a difficult concept and suggest that the word should be translated literally as messenger (RV mg) and interpreted as a prominent leader amongst the Israelites, possibly Phinehas. This difficulty is removed when the movement is related to the change in site of the amphictyonic shrine, with its tabernacle and the ark of the covenant. Throughout the wilderness period the Shekinah Glory, the evidence of the Lord’s presence in their midst, had been associated with the tabernacle. Now, after the closing of the initial stages of the occupation of the land, the central sanctuary was moved from Gilgal, between the river Jordan and Jericho, to a more suitable location. Bochim means ‘weepers’ and its position is unknown. The LXX at this point reads to Bochim and to Bethel and to the house of Israel, a reading not without its difficulties but one which does suggest the connection of Bethel and Bochim, a conjecture strengthened by the fact that the sanctuary is found at Bethel elsewhere in Judges (20:18–28; 21:1–4). The offering of sacrifice (5b) would normally be at the central shrine. Another indication of the connection between the two may be found in Genesis 35:8 where Deborah, Rebekah’s nurse, was buried beneath ‘the oak of weeping’ in the vicinity of Bethel. Such a play on place names was typically Hebrew.
Our appreciation of the covenant-idea has been immeasurably deepened in recent years by archaeological evidence of Mesopotamian treaty forms and, in particular, of Hittite suzerainty treaties.4 In these a set pattern is apparent. The great Hittite king first declares his name, his splendid character and his mighty works on behalf of the subject peoples. Then, in the main body of the treaty, the various stipulations to be observed are set forth, one of the chief of these being loyal obedience to the great king. The gods are then invoked as witnesses, and blessings and curses are invoked upon the obedient and disobedient respectively to complete the treaty. Many scholars have seen certain parallels to this form in Exodus 20, Deuteronomy 1–28 and Joshua 24.
The emphasis here is on the broken covenant. The Lord had been faithful in the fulfilment of his promise to the patriarchs (cf. Exod. 33:1; Num. 14:23; 32:11; Deut. 1:35; 10:11; 31:20, 21, 23; 34:4; Josh. 1:6). He had brought them up out of Egypt and into the Promised Land. In this and every situation no blame could be attached to the Almighty, who could not act in a way inconsistent with his own righteous nature. But the covenant was not unconditional. Israel was required to be loyal to her Saviour-God and obedient to his commandments, ‘by loving the Lord your God, by walking in his ways, and by keeping his commandments and his statutes and his ordinances, then you shall live and multiply, and the Lord your God will bless you in the land which you are entering to take possession of it’ (Deut. 30:16). Israel was, in particular, to make no covenant with the Canaanites and no compromise with its debased religion (Exod. 23:32, 33; 34:10–16). The nation, in its failure to obey these injunctions, showed itself, not for the first or the last time, unfaithful to the Lord and it suffered as a consequence. The prevalence of mixed marriages with the Canaanites inevitably compromised the purity of the worship of Yahweh, and in the generally low spiritual atmosphere a superstitious deference was paid to the local gods deemed responsible for the fertility of the land.
The Canaanites were eventually to disappear as a people.5 They became assimilated into the nation of Israel which thereby showed its superior virility, but the leaven of Canaan eventually permeated the whole nation. Nowhere else in the sacred record, perhaps, are the disastrous effects of compromise seen so clearly as in this chapter of Israel’s history. Absolute loyalty and obedience and the rejection of the claims of expediency and selfishness are required of those who would follow the Lord. But the graciousness of God became the more apparent through this sad chapter of events. He did not cast off the nation irrevocably because it had broken the covenant. Rather he raised up judges and, later on, prophets, to woo and to win the nation back from its infidelity. And even when his final judgment fell upon the nation in the catastrophes of 721 and 587 BC he did not abandon his redemptive purposes, but, working through a purified remnant, prepared the way for the New Covenant, sealed by Christ’s death, with a new and inward dynamic making for that filial obedience so sadly lacking in Israel’s chequered history. Truly it can be said of our God, I will never break my covenant with you (1).
Confronted with their sin the children of Israel wept, but in the light of their subsequent history it may not be unjust to regard their tears as superficial. Certainly there was no evidence of a true and abiding repentance. The Lord is not deceived by the external expressions of repentance; he looks for the rent heart, not the rent garments (Joel 2:12–14; cf. Ps. 51:17).
3. The Hebrew text reads ‘they shall be as sides to you’ and most scholars favour a minor emendation of the word ‘sides’ (ṣiddîm) and read ‘they shall be adversaries (ṣarîm) to you’, linking the text more directly to the earlier warning in Numbers 33:55 and Joshua 23:13. Another view compares ṣiddîm with the Assyrian ṣaddu meaning ‘net’, ‘snare’ or ‘trap’ and makes the whole section a sustained metaphor, in other words the inhabitants will be traps into which the Israelites will stumble by being led astray to worship the gods of the country, and the gods will be the striker which pins them down so that they cannot escape.6 Here the reference is to a type of bird snare still familiar in Palestine in which the victim, flying into a trap, actuates a spring which causes it to be knocked down or pierced.