Judges 3

Division 2. (Judges 3:5-16.)Bondage and Deliverances. In the second division we have the history of the captivities and deliverances which fill the body of the book. In these we find the exemplification of the Lord’s words that he that committeth sin is the bondservant of sin." (John 8:34, R.V.) In the shadows of spiritual things which are presented here, we shall find how truly it is the sins committed by them that lead men captive. We shall find, also, as we might be sure beforehand, the deliverance in each case to figure what is truly that -the deliverer being, in fact, the divine Judge, and acting in this character.

Judges 3:1-31

Subdivision 1. (Judges 3:5-11.)The first step toward ruin -independence of God. The first of these captivities gives us the root-principle of all, which is indeed but sin, and sin has but one definition in Scripture -“lawlessness” (1 John 3:4): rightly so given in the Revised Version, where the common one has “the transgression of the law.” This the word does not mean; and the real thought is a much deeper one. Where law is, sin manifests itself in the transgression of it: of that there is, of course, no question; nay, it was the purpose of the law to manifest it, and “by the law is the knowledge of sin.” (Romans 3:20.) “I had not known sin,” says the apostle, “except the law had said, Thou shalt not covet” -“lust;” “but sin, taking occasion by the commandment, wrought in me all manner of lust” (Romans 7:7-8). Sin therefore is deeper and more radical than even the “lust” which it works. Sin is the parent; lust is the child. “Lawlessness” is the unsubject spirit of self-will, which in the creature away from God shows itself as want, in cravings which find no satisfaction, and thus rule the man. “Their god is their belly,” says the apostle, of such. (Philippians 3:19.) This is the misery of the creature out of the creature’s place, of independence on the part of one who is necessarily dependent. This is what is seen in the people here. They forget Jehovah their God, form alliances with the people round them after their own will, and end in bondage to false gods -the Baals and the Asherahs, or images of Ashtoreth. Jehovah sells them therefore into the hand of Cushan-rishathaim, king of Mesopotamia, and they serve him for eight years. This king of Mesopotamia, what does he represent? If it be indeed the chain of our own sins that holds us, then he should in some way be the reflection of the people’s condition. His name is a remarkable one, meaning “blackness of double wickedness;” and the dual form here one can hardly avoid connecting with that of the country over which he rules, which is literally “Aram of the two rivers.” Aram means “exalted,” and is taken generally to refer to the “high land” of Syria, as contrasted with the Canaanitish “lowland;” but, whatever truth there may be in this, we may be sure it does not exclude that spiritual application for which we are in search all through, and which as such is necessarily of so much higher importance. Aram was the fifth son of Shem, whose children taken together, and with his own, present a group of names of remarkable significance. Shem means “name,” and his blessing is in his connection with Jehovah his God, who reveals Himself to him, makes him, that is, to know His Name. Shem is thus marked out as the vessel of divine revelation. His sons’ names seem to carry on this thought, the numerical order certifying it throughout. Here we have —

1. Elam, which, as a form of olam, is the ordinary Hebrew word for “everlasting.” This is the first and simplest thought of God, the first word of revelation as to Him.
2. Asshur, “step,” speaks of it as progressive. Only little by little has God, in fact, been able to declare Himself (Hebrews 1:1); hindered, as is plain, by the needs of man himself; who had to be prepared to receive the revelation. Nay, when the dispensations were ready, man was not; and He in whom at length God spake to man face to face was taken by wicked hands, crucified, and slain. Yet this also was in the counsels of God for the meeting of man’s deepest need, as we well know; and thus alone was accomplished the full manifestation of Himself.
3. Three is the number of manifestation, and if the names here speak as we credit them with doing, Arphaxad (properly Arphachshad) should give voice to this. It is confessedly a difficult word to interpret, and the meaning assigned by Ewald, “stronghold of the Chaldees,” spite of its acceptance by some authorities, seems everyway strained and fanciful. “One that heals,” or “releases,” has been suggested with much more probability; but this in fact only accounts for the first two syllables of the name, to which the last would add the thought of pouring out, our own word “shed” being probably derived from it, and certainly its equivalent. But how clearly and appropriately would “remitting by shedding forth” speak of the great mystery of the Cross, the mystery in which God is truly manifest! How can it be accounted for, that every thing so perfectly fits together but by the truth of what is so consistently shown forth?
4. Then, in the fourth place, which we know to be that of the creature, we have what as fully agrees with it, yet how strangely in the revelation of God -Lud, “born”! Yet so must He be, who, being God, becomes the Saviour of men, to remit by shedding forth: and “without shedding of blood is no remission.” Coming down, then, to man’s estate, and as man dying for us, He rises up into the place of power -power acquired by suffering; and of this —
5. Aram, “exalted,” under the number which speaks of reward, fittingly and finally speaks. Thus the series is evidently complete. That we may adopt every safeguard against deception, however, let us, from the same genealogy in Genesis, consider in the same way the sons of Aram, who ought, one would say, to continue this line of thought, and speak of the fruits of this exaltation of the man Christ Jesus to the place where now we know Him. The sons of Aram are four: “Uz and Hul and Gether and Mash;” and this is as far as his line is continued in Scripture. (1) Uz, from atzah, “made firm.” This is numerically plain, and plain also in its application to the risen and glorified Saviour. The abiding place He has taken as Man, He has taken also for men, His people. Our position is the fruit of His position: we are one with Him -identified with Him -“accepted in the Beloved;” and this is evidently the fundamental blessing for us in connection with His exaltation. That is, Uz is, in spiritual order, as well as in the genealogical table, the first son of Aram. (2) Hul is the second son. And Hui (chul), from chalal, would mean “opened, penetrated, entered into.” This under the number of association, fellowship, and in the connection in which we find it here, cannot be for a moment doubtful as to its meaning. Christ exalted has entered the sanctuary for us the veil is rent, and God is in the light: our fellowship is with the Father and the Son. This too is in perfect spiritual order: Hul follows Uz at once, but could not precede him. (3) We have Gether -a very difficult word. Gesenius, collating with the Syriac, gives it the meaning of “dregs, sediment” -every way an unlikely and unsuitable one. If Hebrew, it would seem to be a contraction from two words, which may be gahah and jether. The first of these means to “heal, restore”; the second we have had in its intensive form in Jattir (page 110, n), and means “excellence,” or “exceedingly more.” If Gether might thus speak of a restoration going beyond the original condition, it would suit the number, which is that of revival, recovery, and the line of thought as well. Yet this interpretation is, of course, conjectural only, to be held only as long as there is nothing better. (4) Mash, from mush, is to “feel” -to “know by feeling”; and, in the fourth place, shows what the Lord as man has taken up with Him to His place of exaltation. Its appositeness in this series of names of the ascended Lord, none will deny. And thus the meaning of Aram, as we have taken it, seems confirmed on all sides. Beautiful, however, as are these names thus joined together, we easily understand how in a world like this, and as connected with the human generations for which they staid, they soon scatter and fall away from one another, and thus lose their meaning and their beauty as united. The sentences become but broken words, capable of very different, even of opposite, suggestion. The Shemite families, as they scattered and multiplied into nations, lost almost entirely the promise of their origin. Their primitive worship became corrupted into a dark and debasing idolatry; and the Aram-naharaim of the book of Judges is ruled over by the ominous king whom we find now tyrannizing over Israel. The resemblance of Mesopotamia to Egypt is striking enough. They are alike oases which interrupt a broad belt of desert land which stretches from West to East across Africa and Asia, “reaching from the Atlantic on the one hand nearly to the Yellow Sea on the other.” It is a low level plain as far as the country we are speaking of, afterwards rising in high plateaus “having from 3,000 to near 10,000 feet of elevation.” “Where the belt of sand is intersected by the valley of the Nile, no marked change of elevation occurs; and the continuous low desert is merely interrupted by a few miles of green and cultivable land, the whole of which is just as smooth and flat as the waste on either side of it.” Egypt, as we know, is the product of its great river; and so also with the country with which we have now to do. “Known to the Jews as Aram-naharaim, or Syria of the two rivers; ’to the Greeks and Romans as Mesopotamia, or the between-river country’; to the Arabs as Al-Jezireh, or ’the island,’ this district has always taken its name from the streams which constitute its most striking feature, and to which, in fact, it owes its existence. If it were not for the two great rivers -the Tigris and Euphrates -with their tributaries, the more northern part of the Mesopotamian lowland would in no respect differ from the Syro-Arabian desert on which it adjoins, and which in latitude, elevation, and general geological character, it exactly resembles. Toward the south the importance of the rivers is still greater; for of lower Mesopotamia it may be said, with more truth than of Egypt, that it is ‘an acquired land,’ the actual ‘gift’ of the two streams which wash it on either side; being, as it is, entirely a recent formation -a deposit which the streams have made in the shallow waters of a gulf, into which they have flowed for many ages.” (Rawlinson.) Thus both Lower and Upper Egypt are represented in what is indeed Aram of the two rivers. And to this we may add the name of the king as a further link. Chushan and Cush are radically the same, and the Cushite kingdom of Nimrod had long before been established on the Euphrates. But Cush was the brother of Mizraim, the founder of Egypt, and the Cushites derived from Egypt their religion. One branch of them were the Ethiopians of history, whose name with those of Cush and Ham speaks of their dark complexion. This Hamite kingdom among the Shemites is itself an evidence of degradation, which the emphatic title of “doubly wicked” for the king confirms and intensifies. As already said, one can hardly help connecting it with the “double river” of the land over which he reigns, and this would be strictly according to the similitude of Egypt, whose river became their dependence, sustaining them in their independence of heaven. Man’s blessings lead him thus (how often!) away from the Giver of them; and the greater the blessing, the farther from God: the greater the goodness He has shown, the worse the corruption of it. Now Aram, as we have seen, speaks of humanity exalted in Christ, man in the fullest blessing he can know, and thus in the typical application the intensity of evil connected with it here may be accounted for. Even the apostle, after being taken up to Paradise, needed a thorn in the flesh to prevent self-exaltation. And the professing Church, how soon did it become lifted up with pride, to fall into depths of unimaginable wickedness! Babylon stood in lower Mesopotamia, and thus we may see how consistent are the surroundings of the picture put before us here. In its fruits, however multiform, evil is, in its essential principle, absolutely one. The creature leaving the creature place -setting itself up in independence of God: -this is its character at bottom ever. Thus the light is darkened with us, and the terrible slavery to a depraved will results. We need not, therefore, be at a loss as to what Chushan-rishathaim represents. The first step on the downward path to ruin is always the same. Othniel is here the suited deliverer. No details of the warfare are recorded at all; our eyes are kept fixed upon the man himself. It is repeated for us that he is in close relation with Caleb, the “whole-hearted,” and the son of Kenaz, “recipient of strength.” His own name is more doubtful: from the Arabic it has been taken to be “lion of God”; Jerome gave it as “my time is of God”; others again give “God is power.” In any case the consciousness of dependence is emphasized, and its relation to single-eyed obedience; and thus we have what is the key-note of victory over the king of A ram. Let us remember, although we shall not have the mere repetition of this in after-deliverances, that this is really fundamental to them all. Not till we get back to this is the path of departure retraced to its beginning, and the restoration of the soul effected. Notice the order here: “and he judged Israel, and went out to war.” Thus he prevails. Subdivision 2. (Judges 3:12-31.)The Moabite and Philistine inroads: profession.
6. In the second captivity it is Moab into whose hands they fall; and now we begin to see the definite forms of evil that have afflicted the church. Moab, if we have interpreted rightly, stands for mere profession (Deuteronomy 2:8 sq. n.); and it was not long before this condition, in fact, arose. The first parable of the kingdom (Matthew 3:1-17) prepares us for it. The epistles show us the increase of the false disciples, for which the epistle of John provides tests. The book of Revelation shows us the church at Sardis already dead, and others in various not far removed conditions. Church-history, outside of Scripture, too sadly confirms what such things imply: the church proper soon becomes what is sorrowfully known as the church invisible. Eglon is king of Moab at this time. His name we have seen as that of one of the cities of Canaan taken by Joshua, and it should have the same significance. There we saw it as reminding us of the perpetual revolution of earthly things, like that of the earth itself, swinging in its yearly orbit. So with the changing seasons all things change and pass -everything fair in its season, and only for its season. Now the church, becoming characteristically profession merely, comes under this law of change and decay, under which the world is. Earthly conditions influence and give it shape.

Providences -“bit and bridle” -rule it, and not Scripture. It becomes the creature of circumstances, exalted by the favor of man, depressed if this is withdrawn. The world, under its law of change and decay, was no such mystery to the wise man in Israel as the phases of the church are to the man who has been taught of God its principles and privileges. And the fundamental reason for this condition, next to and proceeding from the root of independence which we have already looked at, is to be found in a Moabite conquest -such as here the history of Israel so vividly depicts. With the Moabite, Ammon and Amalek come into the land; and this is perfectly simple and intelligible. An unconverted profession gathers to itself all heresies and makes room for all the lusts of the flesh. Then they take the “city of palms” (Jericho, without the name -Deuteronomy 34:3), and the world revives there under Moabite protection and the cover of practical righteousness, which the palm-tree, as we know, represents. This is always the strong point for the professor: “He can’t be wrong whose life is in the right.” Moab’s limit, however, as we find presently, is at Gilgal.* The memorials of death passed through and a resurrection standing will necessarily be outside of Moab’s possession. All this is of quite simple interpretation to any who have learned the lessons of the book of Joshua.
As to the deliverer, he is Ehud, the son of Gera, a Benjamite and it is Benjamin’s territory upon which Eglon has obtained lodgment. This, again, is simple for a spiritual mind. For Benjamin, standing for Christ in us, it is here that we find what most of all the life of mere profession denies and sets aside. Thus, too, it must be with Benjamin that deliverance lies. Then he is Ehud, from the same root as Judah, which, as we have seen, speaks literally of confession, the opposite of mere profession. Ehud is the “confessor,” and the son of Gera -that is, as it would seem, “rumination,” that heart-meditation by which the things of Christ are appropriated and become the possession of the soul. Ehud is, then, the God-prepared deliverer for Israel in their present emergency. The details of the deliverance, however, are less easy to understand. The dagger or sword (according to the root-idea, the “implement of destruction”) would stand, according to Ephesians 6:1-24 for the “word of God.” Ehud, like many other Benjamites of his day, was “bound of his right hand,” and uses it with his left. Does this speak of the infirmity in which the man in Christ glories, that the power of Christ may rest upon him? From Gilgal, with its inspiriting memories, Ehud turns back to Eglon, and escapes beyond it again to Seirah, “the rugged.” Then he sounds a trumpet in Mount Ephraim, out of which the children of Israel hasten in response, and Jordan, which, by the power of God, Israel had passed over dry-shod, becomes the effectual doom of Moab, not a man of whom escapes their enemies’ swords. So much we may in some measure apprehend; but it is a meagre enough account of a great deliverance. 2. Next we hear of Shamgar, and a victory at great odds over the Philistines. Whether the Moabite inroad had encouraged their attack or not, it is given as something contemporaneous with or following upon it. And the spiritual connection is quite evident, if the Philistines represent the Judaistic development of the world-church, perfected in Rome. To this the Moabite condition of unconverted membership -impossible, of course, in the body of Christ -is a necessary preliminary. The Philistines, however, do but show themselves as yet: the time of the captivity to them is later, and ends the series. At present Shamgar’s bold deed is decisive as deliverance. Shamgar’s name seems but the inversion of Gershom, and to have the same meaning -of a stranger (or sojourner) there. He is the son of Anath, which means “answer”: here speaking, as it seems, of the response of heart to that deliverance call which invites us forth to pilgrimage. Such an one is surely the fit deliverer from the world-church, and for the present Shamgar’s ox-goad avails.