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Gideon - Judges 6:1-21

Here we have another example of Israel turning away from God and worshipping the pagan idols of the Canaanites surrounding them. Because they turned away from God, God allowed them to be “delivered into the hand of Midian seven years.” It says that because of this oppression from the Midianites “Israel made them the dens which are in the mountains, and caves, and strong holds.” It says that the Midianites would come rob Israel every year at harvest and take all their food and animals that they had made for themselves, “and Israel was greatly impoverished because of the Midianites.” The IM explains, “The Midianites and Amalekites were the children of the desert who, through their roving habits which begot naturally a desire for plunder, led them into a systematic practice of robbing the Israelites… For seven years Israel was thus impoverished, and adopted every means at their command to conceal their property and to hide themselves from the dangers of slaughter by the Midianites. In tha...
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Song of Deborah - Judges 5

Chapter 5 gives a lot more details about the battle that happened in chapter 4 because it’s a song that everyone agrees Deborah wrote. TB spends over 3 hours discussing this chapter but I’m just going to go over what I thought was interesting. One reason I’m not going to get into too much detail with this chapter is because TB says that even amongst Biblical scholars, this chapter is difficult to understand simply because it contains so much cultural reference that it’s hard to decipher. So if THEY can’t do it, surely I stand no chance. Verse 2 begins the song “Praise ye the Lord for the avenging of Israel, when the people willingly offered themselves.” I’m not a translation expert or anything but I like the caveat here that God did indeed deliver victory to Israel but only AFTER “the people willingly offered themselves,” which to me means after they repented. The victory didn’t come because God felt like it, it came because the people had been sufficiently humbled by the hardships at...
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Sisera & Jael - Judges 4:11-24

Deborah and Barak are gathering their army to go defeat Sisera and the narrative makes a switch to talking about a Kenite family who was a relative of Moses’ father-in-law Jethro. This family in introduced and the main leader is the one who showed Sisera where the Israelites “was gone up to mount Tabor.” This shows a couple of things, first that Sisera and his army had left the secure compound that they were staying and were instead pursuing an enemy army up a mountain. Looking back at God’s command for Barak to take the army to Mt Tabor, it doesn’t make logical sense. If God gave a command, “go fight your enemy and you will win,” you would probably take your army to where that enemy was at to fight them, it wouldn’t be logical to go to a completely different place where your enemy wasn’t in order to fight them. So the command to go to a completely unrelated place and get ready to fight is illogical, but that’s where God works so much of the time, in the illogical. Barak obeyed God’s o...
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Deborah the Prophetess - Judges 4:1-10

When I was a kid, we had an activity in my primary class where we had to dress up like a prophet and I didn’t want to dress up like a boy prophet but I was told that girls can’t be prophets, so I had to pick a boy. Well, I persisted and finally someone came up with a girl prophet that I could dress up as, Deborah. I wore a bath robe and most of the old primary teachers clutched their pearls because girls cannot be prophets, and I was being rebellious. Anyway, I always wanted to learn more about Deborah and today is my chance so I’m excited. After Ehud died, Israel quickly turned again to wickedness and became indentured to “Jabin the king of Canaan, that reigned in Hazor; the captain of whose host was Sisera,” for 20 years. Jabin had 900 iron chariots which Israel was scared of and used those chariots as a reason why they couldn’t deliver themselves. Deborah, “A prophetess… judged Israel at that time.” The IM asks, “How was it that a woman, Deborah, led Israel?” The initial reason give...
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3 Judges - Judges 3

Chapter 3 covers 3 of the Judges that delivered Israel from captivity. Israel did not obey God and instead married among their Canaanite neighbors and worshipped their gods, “and the children of Israel did evil in the sight of the Lord, and forgat the Lord their God, and served Baalim and the groves.” The IM notes “the groves were local worship centers for heathen gods and included a tree of pole and altars, often among groves of trees.” Because Israel turned away from God, God delivered them into the hands of their enemies and they “served” other kingdoms I assume this means some type of servant status or like a tributary type arrangement. Part of Israel became indentured to “Chusham-rishathaim” for 8 years and then they “cried unto the Lord, the Lord raised up a deliverer to the children of Israel, who delivered them, even Othniel the son of Kenaz, Caleb’s younger brother.” There isn’t really a big account of what happened, just that Othniel “judged Israel, and went out to war: and t...
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The Cycle Starts - Judges 2

Israel is struggling to defeat the Canaanite inhabitants of the land that the Lord commanded them to remove, and many didn’t even try to remove them at all. Many tribes defeated them enough to make them indentured to Israel but wouldn’t finish the job, and some other tribes didn’t even bother trying. After Joshua died, and all that generation, the people began to worship the gods of the Canaanites instead, or at minimum, in addition to Jehovah, and He is not pleased. God sends an angel “up from Gilgal to Bochim,” to condemn the people. TB notes that it’s possible that instead of an actual supernatural angel, this could just be an unidentified prophet of some sort, that’s why he’s described as coming from Gilgal to Bochim because an angel could just arrive there. Anyway, this angel reminds Israel that God delivered them from Egypt and gave them this promised land, and promised “I will never break my covenant with you.” But if Israel breaks their covenant with God by worshipping other go...
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Some Defeat, Some Victory - Judges 1

Now that Joshua has died and most of the leaders in that generation, Israel pretty quickly turns away from God and more into tribal identities. The IM gives a synopsis of the book of Judges, saying, “In Judges we learn that because the children of Israel failed to remove wicked influences from the promised land, they became entangled in sin and were then afflicted and often conquered by their enemies. After they cried unto the Lord for help, He sent judges to deliver them. However, the Israelites soon returned to their sins. This pattern is repeated multiple times throughout the book.” TB says that the book of Judges spans about 400 years from the death of Joshua until the reign of king Saul. What happens immediately after Joshua’s death, “the children of Israel asked the Lord, saying, Who shall go up for us against the Canaanites first, to fight against them?” I’m not exactly sure who they asked specifically, probably the high priest at the time because TB says that anytime there’s a...
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