Wednesday
Wednesday
Judging the Judges
Everything that was written in the past was written to teach us.
Romans 15:4
Paul wrote about Old Testament characters: “These things happened to them as examples and were written down as warnings for us” (1 Cor. 10:11). By “these things” he meant God’s judgments on the Israelites’ idolatry, immorality, and unbelief. So if they are examples, they are mostly bad examples to be avoided, not good examples to be copied.
We should have no hesitation, therefore, in criticizing some of the judges’ behavior. True, Samson and Jephthah are celebrated among the heroes of faith in Hebrews 11:32, since they were loyal to Yahweh even when surrounded by Baal worshipers. But some of their conduct was deplorable. Samson behaved like an adolescent exhibitionist, and Jephthah should definitely not have sacrificed his daughter to his vow. We know this because child sacrifice was one of the main evils that Yahweh abominated in Canaanite culture.
Not all Israelite people and leaders, however, had been sucked into the vortex of prevailing evil. A beautiful exception was Ruth, whose story is told immediately after the book of Judges. A Bethlehemite couple, Elimelech and Naomi, with their two sons, were driven by famine into the land of Moab. Both sons married Moabite women, one of whom was Ruth. In the course of time, all three husbands died, and Naomi was left with her two daughters-in-law. One of them returned to her Moabite family, but Ruth refused to do so. “Your people will be my people,” she said to Naomi, “and your God my God” (Ruth 1:16). She had evidently believed in Yahweh, “under whose wings” she had “come to take refuge” (Ruth 2:12). Then, by a remarkable series of divine providences, a relative of Naomi’s named Boaz became Ruth’s kinsman-redeemer and married her. Then in due course they became the great-grandparents of David.
The book of Ruth is a touching story of faithfulness in the midst of almost universal disloyalty, a shining light in the dark age of the judges.
For further reading: 1 Corinthians 10:1–11