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Ruth - An Introduciton

The book of Ruth is very short, only 4 chapters and only 85 verses total. We’re going to do an introduction because honestly, I didn’t want to listen to 2 more hours of lectures about chapter 1 today, I was tired and wanted to listen to music, so this will be short. There are a couple of interesting tidbits that TB discussed about the book of Ruth that I thought were noteworthy. First, Ruth is only one of two books in the Old Testament about gentiles, the other being Job. I didn’t know that Job was a gentile so that will be interesting to discuss when we get there. Secondly, Ruth is only one of two books about women in the entire Bible, the other being Esther. TB made some interesting comparisons between the two. Ruth was a gentile who lived among the Jews, Esther was a Jew who lived among the gentiles. Ruth eventually married a Jew, whereas Esther married a gentile. This was interesting, “God’s name is mentioned a number of times in the book of the gentile Ruth, but it is not mentione...
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Destruction of Benjamin - Judges 20 & 21

The last two chapters of the book of Judges has a lot going on and are honestly just horrific. They deal with what happens after the concubine of the Levite is raped to death in Gibeah and he cuts up her body and sends it to the leadership of each tribe. After the leaders get their body piece and find out what happens, they decide that something needs to be done and calls the Levite to them and ask him what happens. He lies and says that the men of Gibeah were trying to kill him and they took his concubine and raped her to death. That’s not what happened, they wanted to rape the man so he GAVE his concubine to them to save himself. Interestingly, I think the tribal leaders would have probably been more upset if he had told the truth that they wanted to rape him because men like that get real upset over gay stuff. Anyway, the leaders all agree that this is abhorrent behavior and now something needs to be done about it. It's important to remember that Gibeah, where this evil was com...
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Gibeah - Judges 19

Chapter 19 has a story in it that has always horrified me and so I’m glad we’re getting into it because there’s been a lot of clarity for me. Again, I always thought that if it was in the scriptures then it was good and I could not for the life of me see how this was good, but now I see that it’s not good and it’s included in the scriptures to illustrate just how evil parts of Israel were at this time. It’s also important to note that this event occurred before Micah, so again, not in chronological order. There was a Levite how took a concubine. The story refers to her as the concubine and him as the husband but those words don’t make sense to me because she’s not his wife, but in that time the woman wasn’t just a mistress, she had some rights as a companion but not the full rights of a wife. He was the husband regardless, but getting those two roles straight was harder for me. This Levite and his concubine had a fight and she left the city that they lived in and went back to live wit...
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Micah - Judges 17 & 18

Chapters 17 and 18 are about one story, so we’ll be studying them together. A couple of things about the rest of the book of Judges, consisting of chapters 17-21. First, these are known as the Appendices chapters because they aren’t about Israelite judges at all. Second, they happen chronologically BEFORE any of the other incidents in Judges that we’ve already gone over. In fact TB notes that the story from chapters 17 and 18 actually happened about 200 years before Samson. Thirdly, the IM notes “In the closing chapters of Judges the writer turned from stories of Israel’s heroes to two incidents that illustrate the low state of religion and morality in the days when Israel forsook her covenant with the Lord and everyone ‘did that which was right in his own eyes.’ The stories… are samples of Israel’s worst days. Nothing in the stories show the Israelites doing what was right.” I almost wish that these chapters were at the beginning of the book of Judges just so that we could see how far...
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Samson 5 - Judges 16

Here is our final chapter with Samson, and again, like everything he does, it’ wild. The 20 years of judging Israel mentioned at the end of the last chapter doesn’t indicate how the judging went, it if was done righteously (doubtful by his history) or if it was just something else. What is clear though is that it seems that neither he nor the people of Israel did what God wanted and severed their relationship with the Philistines. Case in point, Samson goes down to Gaza to find a prostitute to have sex with and he does and falls asleep. The Philistines find out that he’s there and wait outside so that they can kill him in the morning. Samson must have felt that something was off and so he leaves in the middle of the night and takes the doors to the gate of the city off their hinges and carries them out of the city. I didn’t understand why he would take the doors off, why not just leave, but it must be that Gaza was a gated city and those gates were locked at night so he had to open the...
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Samson 4 - Judges 15

What’s really fascinating to me about the story of Samson is just how psychopathic he seems, like genuinely unhinged, it’s wild. I’m not saying his parents were perfect, but he seems to have been raised in a strong Hebrew household by good parents, and he turned out this way, it gives a little bit more perspective about when kids turn out so wildly maladjusted even though they had a good upbringing. Remember, Samson did not consummate the marriage to this girl that he wanted so badly, and she was given in marriage to another man, so technically not only was Samson not married to her, but she was the wife of another man. Samson left the wedding and went home after killing all those men for their clothes to give to the wedding guests after they “solved” his riddle after threatening the girl and her telling them the answer. After waiting quite some time, Samson shows back up at her house and demands, “I will go in to my wife into the chamber,” meaning her personal bedroom chamber. Obvio...
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Samson 3 - Judges 14

There is a lot going on here in chapter 14 and we’ll be using a lot of cultural context here to understand what’s really going on. According to TB, Samson lived up in the foothills at about 800 feet elevation in a town named Tzorah. Below them was a Philistine city called Timnah and one day while Samson was down in the Philistine city, he saw a woman and saw one of the “daughters of the Philistines” and wanted her to be his wife. Interestingly, TB suggests that the phrase “saw a woman” “means more than to notice her existence; it means he saw her unveiled face, meaning from typical Middle Eastern cultural norms this was an immodest girl.” I’m not the expert on these matters, and he clearly knows more than me, and I put this out there because I thought that it was interesting because it possibly speaks to her character, but I’m going to take it with a grain of salt. I’m always wary of a man condemning a woman as being immodest, regardless of who either party is, it could be true or it c...
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