Summary #14

Weekly Summary
Judges 8 - 1 Samuel 3

In our last post, we meet Gideon, our reluctant judge. After hiding in a wine press, taking down altars at God's command in the middle of the night, and demanding several signs, he finally ponies up and calls his people to fight the Midianites. God winnows the men down from a reasonable fighting force of 32,000 to a paltry 300 men against a huge army. The battle strategy that God gives them? Make a lot of noise. So they do, and the Midianites are defeated. Another battle follows, but this one does not seem as God-directed, and Gideon has some trouble convincing the rest of the Israelites to come and fight alongside him, but eventually, they won. When the Isrealites tried to make Gideon a king, he declined, but made another ephod (God had decreed there be only one, given to the high priest), and named his son "Son of the King". Hmm.

True to form, after Gideon dies, the Israelites turn to other Gods. His son, Abimelech, goes to his mother's people, the Shechemites, and gets their support for his leadership, and then kills all of his brothers except the youngest, who escapes, but curses Abimelech for his treachery. Abimelech takes his position as ruler of Israel for three years, and then Shechem revolts, and decides that they want a different leader. Turns out they deserve each other, these Shechemites and Abimelech, and in the end they destroy each other: Abimelech traps them all in a tower and burns it, but a woman drops a millstone on him and kills him. The curse of the youngest brother is fulfilled.

So after Abilelech is killed, we see Tola and Jair as the next judges of Israel, and then, of course, Israel "once again did what was evil in the sight of the Lord" and turned to other gods. So they are defeated by the Philistines and the Ammonites. After pleading with God, he raises up the son of a prostitute to lead the Israelites out of bondage: Jephthah, who takes on the Ammonite king first with logic, which is ignored, and then with the sword. On his way to the battle, Jephthah vows that if God is with him, he will make a burnt offering of whatever comes out of his door on his return. Tragically, that turns out to be his only daughter, who greets him after his victory over the Ammonites. He follows his vow, with much sorrow. Ephraim is in a snit again, saying that they weren't asked to help in the battle (they had had the same complaint against Gideon), and they revolt against Jephthah, who takes them down. All this happened in the six years that Jephthah ruled Isreal. He is followed by Ibzan, Elon, and Abdon.

Color me surprised: the Israelites again "did what was evil in the sight of the Lord". This time they are given over to the Philistines for forty years. A special child is born, whose birth is foretold by an angel, and who is raised as a Nazarite - nothing from the vine, no cutting his hair, and he shouldn't touch anything that is dead. Samson chooses a Philistine for a wife, despite his parents' plea that he marry a nice Jewish girl. On the way to the wedding, he kills a lion, then later finds that bees have made honey in the carcass. He eats the honey (defying the ban on touching dead things), and then taunts his wedding guests with a riddle about the whole thing. The guests get his wife to wheedle the riddle out of him, and when they come up with the answer, Samson is so mad that he kills thirty Philistines, and while he is gone, his best man sleeps with his wife. Wedding feast gone wrong....

Outraged that his father-in-law gave his wife permanently to the best man, Samson burns the crops of the Philistines. The Philistines retaliate by burning his wife and her father. Sampson declares that he will avenge this, and at this point, 3,000 men of Judah take on Sampson and tell him to knock it off - in fact, they are going to deliver him to the Philistines to make sure they're not at the bad end of a war. Sampson agrees to go, but only bound, not attacked by the Judeans. When they deliver him bound to the Philistines, the new ropes practically dissolve, and Sampson kills 1,00 Philistines with the jawbone of a donkey. He continues his feats of strength until he is undone by Delilah, who gets the answer to his strength out of him the same way his wife did, and betrays him just the same. God's strength leaves Samson, and after being captured and enslaved by the Philistines, Samson finally turns back to God and asks to do his will. God gives him his strenght back, and he brings the roof down on them in spectacular fashion.

Later, things just fall apart in Israel: people make idols and tribes make war with each other. A Levite takes a concubine, and when he tries to find hospitality in Jerusalem, it turns out things are just as bad as they were in Sodom and Gomorrah. Israel goes to war with the tribe of Benjamin, and since they swear that none of their daughters will marry anyone from that tribe, the Benjamites must find their wives from conquered clans or unsuspecting dancers. Things are truly a mess in Israel.

During the time of the Judges, when things are falling apart all over, we get a wonderful story: the story of Ruth, a Moabite widow of an Israelite, who travels to Bethlehem with her mother-in-law. She claims the Israelite God for her own, and vows to take care of her mother-in-law. This story of a kinsman-redeemer is beautiful, and Boaz, a relative, saves Ruth (and her mother-in-law) from poverty by marrying her. They produce a son, Boaz, who is the grandfather of king David. God truly uses the uncelebrated, the outsider, to bring glory to his name.

Well, it's on to Samuel. Will Israel ever find a way out of this cycle of desperation? Will they ever grasp the importance of following only one God? Of doing what was commanded? Tune in next week...