Blogging Through the Book of Mormon

Last we heard, Israel was ready to fight the Midianites and Ammonites because they were encroaching on their land and had formed an army against them, and Israel was looking for a general to lead the into battle. Apparently, some time earlier, there was a man named Gilead who had many sons with his wife but also had an illegitimate son with a prostitute as well. TB makes a couple of notes here, first that some scholars argue that this woman wasn’t a prostitute but it is mistranslated to mean concubine. TB disagrees with that and says that this is just them reaching and that the Hebrew word used to describe this woman is ever only used to mean “prostitute” in any other place in the Bible. Second, this just demonstrates how far Israel has fallen because not only was prostitution popular among Israelite men, but that Gilead recognized this prostitute’s son as his own showed that even high ranking men committed constant adultery. But it was unusual that Gilead recognized this kid as his ow...

Chapter 10 covers 3 judges really quickly and is a pretty short chapter. The first comes after Abimelech who’s name is Tola. He’s from Isaachar, judges Israel for 23 years and he dies. The second is Jair from Gilead, not sure which tribe that is, I think Gad, and he judges Israel for 22 years. He has at least 30 sons all who rule the 30 cities that he judged and he died. The Israelites were quick to turn around to evil as soon as Jair died and they started worshipping these other gods. It’s important to note that these other gods did not replace worshipping the God of Israel, but instead they just incorporated them into his worship too, which is a problem. It’s also interesting to note that the people turn to wickedness after these righteous judges die which is a demonstration to just how important righteous leadership is. It’s also an interesting commentary on how easily persuaded human beings are, which begs the question, if all it takes for a whole group of people to be relatively r...

There is a lot going on in chapter 9 and it is the story of Abimelech, who is NOT a judge and was mentioned at the end of chapter 8 as being a son of Gideon but the only one born to a non-Israelite concubine from Shechem. He’s part Canaanite and part Hebrew but is seems implied that he knows that he’s the son of the Israelite ruler, but he’s at odds with his full Hebrew brothers and apparently not being given the respect and status that he felt that he deserved. Abimelech goes to his mother’s family in Shechem and convinces them to make him king over the land. I don’t know why these people would agree to this, but Abimelech must have been super charismatic or something. For some reason, Abimelech’s brother’s being alive is part of the problem so his family takes 10 pieces of silver out of the temple of Ba’al and hires some assassins and they all go over and kill 69 of Abimelech’s 70 brothers, with only the youngest son escaping, named Jotham. He goes and hides himself in the mountain...

There had been a great victory over the oppressive Midianites where only 300 Israelite soldiers killed 120,000 Midianite men “who drew a sword,” this left 15,000 on the run trying to get back across the Jordan river. I was thinking this morning about my thoughts that these numbers couldn’t be right and the thought came to me, “what number would it take to make you believe in the power of God?” meaning what kind of translation error or what kind of actual force gap would it take for me to believe that God is powerful enough to do this work? Either I believed it as is or I didn’t. Even if the numbers weren’t completely accurate for whatever reason, what would I need to see to believe if what we have now isn’t enough? It was a powerful conviction for me. Anyway, what’s fascinating to me is that there has been this huge, miraculous victory by Gideon and only 300 soldiers, and then the problems with his own people start rolling in. It’s like when Jesus healed the blind man and the Pharisees...

After the second night that Gideon received a sign from the Lord with the dry fleece, he’s finally convinced that he is the one chosen by God to deliver Israel from the oppression of the Midianites. Before asking for the sign, Gideon had called for troops from the other northern tribes and about 32,000 men had responded to his call, which is a fair amount, but that’s nothing compared to the 135,000 Midianites that they were facing. That 135,000 number comes from the next chapter, Judges 8 which we will get to next time. Even with those odds of like 4:1, even that God told Gideon that 32,000 were too many people “lest Israel vaunt themselves against me, saying, Mine own hand hath saved me.” This must have been very daunting to Gideon because even with the 32,000, going against 135,000 would have required a great amount of faith for any military leader. God tells Gideon that the 32,000 were too many men and to excuse any man who “is fearful and afraid, let him return and depart early,” ...

Gideon has already asked for a sign from the angel of God that he was real and chosen, and even though he didn’t ask for anything specifically, just that the messenger wait until he got back with some food, but still a sign that everything was legit. When Gideon came back with the food, the angel touched it with his staff and it burned up, that Gideon took for a sign. Now an army has gathered and Gideon is supposed to lead them and he comes to God again asking for a sign, but this time he’s specific. Gideon asks “If thou wilt save Israel by mine hand, as thou hast said, Behold, I will put a fleece of wool in the floor; and if the dew be on the fleece only, and it be dry upon all the earth beside, then shall I know that thou wilt save Israel by mine hand, as thou hast said.” It seems that at night before going to sleep, Gideon put a fleece of wool on the ground and asked God for the sign to be that the morning dew would only accumulate on the wool fleece and all the rest of the ground w...

The spot where Gideon saw the angel and poured the food on the rock, Gideon made an alter there “and called it Jehovah-shalom: unto this day it is.” Just a note about the “unto this day” because it’s said a lot in these recent books, TB says that this means that whoever is writing these books, knows about and has seen these monuments during his lifetime. Just an interesting note. That same night after Gideon had talked with the angel, God comes to him and say to take his father’s young bull and destroy the altar of Baal “that thy father hath, and cut down the grove that is by it: and build an altar unto the Lord thy God upon the top of his rock.” A couple of notes about this statement from God to Gideon. First, I don’t know if this came to Gideon in a dream or if it was just told to him, I think I’d like to know just out of curiosity. Second, the phrase “that thy father hath” TB says it indicates that Gideon’s father is the care taker of this pagan worship idol, Gideon’s father, an ...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...