Judges 2

Judges 2:6-3

ISRAEL UNDER THE JUDGES Judges 2:6 to Judges 16:31 The New Generation — Apostasy and Judgment (2:6-3:6)

We have in these verses a picture of the state of affairs that followed the Conquest. Actually verse 6 seems to connect with Joshua 24:28, where we likewise read that Joshua dismissed every man to his inheritance. Thus Judges 1:1 to Judges 2:6 seems to be an insertion that breaks up the continuity. Joshua’s burial is described and the details of Jos 24:29-31 are repeated; Timnath-heres is evidently another name for Timnath-serah (Joshua 24:30). After Joshua’s generation — that is, his contemporaries — died off, a new generation arose which became enamored of the agricultural gods of Canaan, the Baals and the Ashtaroth, and did not know the Lord, who had brought Israel from Egypt. The implication is that the new generation did not know God by firsthand encounter in historical events, and thus found it easier to fall into apostasy.

We have already discussed this situation in the Introduction and shall not repeat it here. The Canaanite deities Baal and Astarte are given in their plural form, a reminder that every locality had its own peculiar form of the deities. Since the process of settlement was one of absorbing rather than exterminating the inhabitants, and since the way of life was increasingly agricultural, we can understand that the Israelites in any locality would tend to fall into the religious practices of their neighbors and forget the God of their wilderness experience. At least a generation away from their great deliverance, and with pressing agricultural rather than pastoral needs, they turned to deities who were supposed to protect and extend fertility.

The editor of Judges proceeds to outline the scheme we have already discussed in the Introduction — apostasy, judgment, repentance, and deliverance in successive cycles. Native oppressors and foreign invaders plundered Israel. We note that the divine judgment of Israel is not in some catastrophic intervention but rather through the normal processes of history — oppression and invasion. This is characteristic of the prophetic view of history and judgment, whereas later apocalyptic thought (represented in the Old Testament fully by Daniel and also in anticipation by Joel, Ezekiel 38-39, Zechariah 9-14, Isaiah 24-27) emphasized catastrophic intervention of a supernatural variety and heightened the effects in the description of such judgment in order to underline its supernatural aspect. Israel’s repentance under the judgment is a reminder that in Old Testament thought the divine wrath has an evangelizing motif. Judgment is God’s work to make men realize their sin and moral bankruptcy and so turn back to him.

God’s forgiveness was given historical expression in the appearance of the judges or deliverers, endowed with special gifts of prowess and military skill because the Spirit of the Lord rested on them. We note that these deliverers or saviors can be described as saving Israel. This is a reminder that, in the early days, salvation was thought of in physical and material terms. It was a part of the divine education of Israel that the nation had to be led through the outward to the inward, and to learn that salvation ultimately means deliverance from the inward bondage of sin and not merely deliverance from the outward tyranny of military oppressors.

Judges gives a picture of Israel’s repeated infidelity. The nation persists in transgressing the Covenant. Here the reference is to the relation which God established with his people on Sinai. We shall discuss the idea of “covenant” as a mutual bond between persons later, when we come to the story of David and Jonathan. It was a significant aspect of Israel’s faith that the relation among men could, under the guidance of revelation, be used as an image to express God’s relation to the nation. Such an image debarred any idea of a relation of natural descent whereby God was ancestor of Israel.

He was under no natural necessity to care for them. The bond between him and his people was a moral bond. At the human level, two parties entered into a covenant by the mutual imposition and acceptance of obligations, but at the divine level, it is God who initiates the Covenant and who decides the terms by which it must be regulated. He chooses Israel and demands moral obedience, laying upon the nation the moral obligations of the Decalogue. On his part, he promises to be faithful to his Covenant, and Israel, in accepting, does likewise. Hence, to break the Covenant by failing to fulfill its obligations and obey God’s will is equivalent to treachery.

It is transgression of the Covenant, and God will not allow such defection to go unpunished. Persistent defection must lead to a state of affairs in which Israel is continually reminded of its sin. Hence, the continuance of the Canaanites in the midst of Israel and of the foreign nations in its borders was held to be a test of Israel’s faith. In judgment and in mercy, God was confronting Israel with his Covenant demands.

The closing verses of this section (Judges 3:1-6) list the nations with whom Israel dwelt in contention. The five “lords” of the Philistines were the five “tyrants” who, in the Aegean style, ruled in the five city centers of the southern Philistine coastal area. The “Hivites” is a reference to the Humans who penetrated like the Hittites (also mentioned) down into this area and left behind pockets of settlers. The “Sidonians” were the Phoenicians in the northern coastal area. The “Jebusites” survived as a separate people into David’s time. The ultimate fate of these peoples is indicated in verse 6.