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Today, we bring to a close the book of Judges. We see how wicked and sinful Israel, the people of God, behaved, and yet God spared them and showed mercy to them, and we have salvation because He did, when we understand the text.
This is when we understand the text studying God's word to reach all the riches of full assurance in Christ. Find all our videos online at www .wtt .com, as well as links to follow us on Facebook and Twitter.
Here's your teacher, Pastor Gabe Hughes. Thank you, Becky.
And greetings, everybody. Open your Bible to Judges 20. We've got two more chapters left in Judges, and then we'll finish up today. So where do we go next? When it comes to our Old Testament study on Thursdays, what are we doing after we finish Judges?
Well, next week, we're going to keep right on going into the book of Ruth. In fact, the things that happen in Ruth take place at the same time as the events that we're reading about in Judges. We don't know exactly where that falls in the timeline, but it's during the Judges time period.
Now, when it comes to the chronological events as they're listed in the book of Judges, all things considered, Judges ends with the death of Samson at the end of chapter 16. What we're reading about here in chapter 17 through 21 happened much earlier.
These are not events that happen immediately after Samson. We're going back and looking at another event that took place in Israel apart from the leadership of the Judges. Samson was only about 50 years older than Saul.
So it goes from Samson to Eli to Samuel to Saul being anointed as king. So we get to those events when we get to 1 Samuel. But in the meantime, we're going out of chronological order to read about these events in chapter 17 through 21 and then also the book of Ruth.
And then we jump back into the chronology with 1 Samuel chapter 1. OK, so let's get to Judges chapter 20. First of all, we want to recap some things that we talked about last week. In chapter 19, we read a story that is eerily similar to a story that we read in Genesis chapter 19 when God had decided he was going to wipe out Sodom and Gomorrah with fire and brimstone in judgment.
And he sent two angels into Sodom to rescue Lot, Abraham's nephew, and his family from the wrath that was to come. There were men of Sodom that came upon that house, and they said to Lot, send those two visitors out to us that we may know them, that they would do to them what Sodomites were known to do.
OK, and Lot wouldn't allow them to. And the two visitors struck all of the men outside with blindness so they couldn't do anything. And then Lot and his family were able to escape. Well, here in this story, in Judges chapter 19, a Levite and his concubine come to Gibeah in the tribe of Benjamin, and they're staying in the square.
And a man sees them there and he says, you can't stay here. Please come into my home. And so the Levite does. And then the men from the tribe of Benjamin come upon the house and they say, send the Levite out to us so that we may know him, that we may rape him, just as the Sodomites were trying to do to the two visitors in Lot's home.
The man says, please don't do this wicked thing. Take my virgin daughter, take this man's concubine. The men of the tribe of Benjamin wouldn't listen to him, but he took the concubine anyway and shoved her out the door to those violent Benjamites, and they violated her.
And from what we gather from the story, she died. And the Levite that next morning, when he saw her there, he put her on his donkey and then he took her and he cut her up into 12 pieces and sent her out to the 12 tribes of Israel.
And in verse 30, it says, and all who saw it said, such a thing has never happened or been seen from the day that the people of Israel came up out of the land of Egypt until this day, consider it, take counsel and speak.
The other eerie thing about this story, Philo, who was a Jewish Hellenistic philosopher, lived in the first century. OK, so he wrote a thousand years after the events that we're reading about here in the Book of Judges.
Keep that in mind. Philo wrote that smoke was still rising from the area where Sodom and Gomorrah used to be. You could still look in the direction of Ur and see smoke rising from that land as a reminder of the wrath of God poured out upon the wickedness of man.
And he so utterly destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah that for thousands of years, nothing was able to dwell there or live there or grow there. And so if Philo could still see the smoke in the first century, you know, they could at the time of the Book of Judges.
You think about Sodom and Gomorrah's destruction happened during Abraham's days. And then his grandson, Jacob, he had a son named Joseph, who was sold into slavery in Egypt. Joseph rose to prominence during the years of the famine.
Jacob and his sons and their families, they all moved to Egypt to be there with Joseph. And then it was their offspring, 400 years later, would become the slaves in Egypt. Moses comes in, tells Pharaoh, let my people go.
He frees the captives. They go into the desert, wander around in the desert for 40 years, which God submits them to because of their rebellion against God. And then they inherit the promised land. They come back into the land of Canaan where Abraham was at the time of Sodom and Gomorrah.
They come back into that very land where smoke was rising from the place God had destroyed those cities and they knew the story. And now they were able to see it with their eyes. This is the result of the wrath of God.
And yet, despite that reminder, the tribe of Benjamin repeats almost verbatim the same scenario in Gibeah that happened at Sodom during the days of Abraham. This is how total the wickedness was happening in Israel and how quickly they had fallen into such sinfulness after being given the promised land by God.
Now, Israel's wickedness is not as total as Sodom and Gomorrah was. There was no righteous person to be found in Sodom. But in Israel, there are still men who are deeply disturbed at what it is that they have heard about happening in Benjamin.
And that's what we're going to read about in Judges chapter 20 is Israel's response to what happened at Gibeah. So let's read here Judges 20 beginning in verse one. Then all the people of Israel came out from Dan to Beersheba, including the land of Gilead, and the congregation assembled as one man to the Lord at Mizpah.
And the chiefs of all the people of all the tribes of Israel presented themselves in the assembly of the people of God, 400 ,000 men on foot that drew the sword. Now, the people of Benjamin heard that the people of Israel had gone up to Mizpah.
So you know that they had to be worried. And the people of Israel said, tell us, how did this evil happen? So they're asking the Levite, how did this thing happen with this concubine that she was killed?
You cut her up and you sent the pieces out to the different tribes in Israel. So verse four, the Levite, the husband of the woman who was murdered, answered and said, I came to Gibeah that belongs to Benjamin, I and my concubine to spend the night.
And the leaders of Gibeah rose against me and surrounded the house against me by night. They meant to kill me and they violated my concubine and she is dead. So I took hold of my concubine and cut her in pieces and sent her throughout all the country of the inheritance of Israel, for they have committed abomination and outrage in Israel.
Behold, you people of Israel, all of you give your advice and counsel here. And all the people arose as one man saying, none of us will go to his tent and none of us will return to his house. But now this is what we will do to Gibeah.
We will go up against it by lot and we will take ten men of a hundred throughout all the tribes of Israel and a hundred of a thousand and a thousand of ten thousand to bring provisions for the people that when they come, they may repay Gibeah of Benjamin for all the outrage that they have committed in Israel.
So all the men of Israel gathered against the city, united as one man, and the tribes of Israel sent men through all the tribe of Benjamin saying, what evil is this that has taken place among you now?
Therefore, give up the men, the worthless fellows in Gibeah, that we may put them to death and purge evil from Israel. So they're giving Benjamin a chance to just surrender the guys that had committed this abomination before the Lord, violating this concubine to her death.
But the Benjamites would not listen to the voice of their brothers, the people of Israel. That means that all of the tribe of Benjamin, therefore, was united in this evil instead of singling out the men who perpetrated it.
Verse 14, then the people of Benjamin came together out of the cities to Gibeah to go out to battle against the people of Israel and the people of Benjamin mustered out of their cities on that day. Twenty six thousand men who drew the sword besides the inhabitants of Gibeah who mustered seven hundred chosen men.
Among all these were seven hundred chosen men who were left handed. Everyone could sling a stone at a hair and not miss. And the men of Israel, apart from Benjamin, mustered four hundred thousand men who drew the sword.
All these men were men of war. So you've got four hundred thousand against twenty six thousand doesn't look like really good odds for the tribe of Benjamin. But the important figure there is the seven hundred chosen left handed men who could sling a stone at a hair and not miss.
OK, this was basically the artillery of the day. And I don't know if you've ever seen like the Greco Roman sling throwing the way that they do that. There's a video I've seen on YouTube. I don't know what it's called.
Maybe you could go look it up. But there's a guy demonstrating how this form of slinging stones worked. And it wasn't you put a stone in the sling, you spin it over your head and throw it. That's not the way that it worked.
It's just one swift overhand motion. But you're talking about a leather strap and the amount of torque or the amount of velocity that's on that stone at the end of the strap versus how fast your arm is going around.
OK, the stone is moving a lot faster than your arm is. And so a skilled slingsman was pinpoint accurate and deadly with a single stone would not have had to peg a person multiple times. One stone would have killed him.
In fact, the stone that David slung at Goliath, that's that's probably the most famous sling story in the Bible. Of course, the stone that David hurled at Goliath went through his head and killed him when it says that the stone sunk into his forehead.
It means it went through the bone in his forehead, into his brain and killed him. Goliath was dead before he hit the ground. And it says that the stone hit him and he was dead. David runs over and grabs the sword and cuts Goliath head, cuts Goliath's head off to show to demonstrate to the Philistines that he's dead and also to keep his head as a trophy because then he goes and runs around with it.
So anyway, the a sling thrower was a deadly soldier to have in an army. And so these 700 men that are able to sling a stone at a hair and not miss, that's not hyperbole. They really were that accurate with their stones throwing.
Anyway, the video that I was talking about on YouTube, there's a guy that throws a stone at a piece of corrugated steel. The stone goes right through the steel, just a rock going through that, punching through that steel.
So deadly men with some deadly slings. Now, the writer of Judges, which many in Jewish history believe to be Samuel, the writer of Judges is being ironical when he writes that there were 700 men who were left handed.
Everyone could sling a stone at a hair and not miss. Why is it really necessary to say that those men are left handed? Because the name Benjamin means son of my right hand. So there's an irony going on here, the way that the writer words this to say that the tribe of Benjamin.
Now, you remember the right hand is a position of honor. A person who sits at the king's right hand sits at a position of honor. We talk about Jesus sitting at the right hand of God, God holding us up with his right hand, as the prophet Isaiah says.
So for Jacob to name his son Benjamin, son of my right hand, means that he's the favored son. But the tribe of Benjamin behaved in this wicked sinfulness in such a way. And the writer of Judges is displaying them as having fallen so far from being Jacob's chosen that they are living apart from the rest of the children of Jacob.
So that's what's being demonstrated there by describing the men of Benjamin as being left handed. OK, so now you've got these deadly slingsmen coming up against 400 ,000 men in Israel. We read in verse 18, the people of Israel arose and went up to Bethel and inquired of God, who shall go up first for us to fight against the people of Benjamin?
And the Lord said, Judah shall go up first. Now, this is another indication that the events that we're reading about here happened early on in the book of Judges. If you were to lay these things out chronologically, because Judah was the first tribe of Israel to make war against the other cities in the land of Canaan, they were supposed to continue to drive out the Canaanites.
Though they had inherited the land, there were still other pagans that needed to be forced out of the land. And so Judah, up to that point, was the most successful tribe in Israel in terms of making war.
So they get to go up first against Benjamin. Verse 19, then the people of Israel rose in the morning and encamped against Gibeah. And the men of Israel went out to fight against Benjamin. And the men of Israel drew up the battle line against them at Gibeah.
The people of Benjamin came out of Gibeah and destroyed on that day 22 ,000 men of the Israelites. So you have 26 ,000 Benjamites, and they managed to kill 22 ,000 Israelites. But the people, the men of Israel, took courage and again formed the battle line in the same place where they had formed it on the first day.
And the people of Israel went up and wept before the Lord until the evening. And they inquired of the Lord, shall we again draw near to fight against our brothers, the people of Benjamin? And the Lord said, go up against them.
So the people of Israel came near against the people of Benjamin the second day, and Benjamin went against them out of Gibeah the second day and destroyed 18 ,000 men of the people of Israel. All these were men who drew the sword.
Then all the people of Israel, the whole army, went up and came to Bethel and wept. And they sat there before the Lord and fasted that day until evening and offered burnt offerings and peace offerings before the Lord.
And the people of Israel inquired of the Lord for the ark of the covenant of God was there in those days. And Phineas, the son of Eliezer, son of Aaron, ministered before it in those days, saying, shall we go out once more to battle against our brothers, the people of Benjamin, or shall we cease?
And the Lord said, go up for tomorrow. I will give them into your hand. This is another indication that these events happen early on in the in the book of Judges, because Phineas is mentioned in the book of Numbers.
He's the guy that grabbed the spear and killed the guy with the Moabite woman who was bringing that plague upon Israel. And then once they were dead, then the plague stopped. God's wrath upon Israel came to an end.
So Phineas is that guy who is ministering before the ark. So he was obviously still alive during this particular time. So now, verse twenty nine. So Israel set men in ambush around Gibeah and the people of Israel went up against the people of Benjamin on the third day and set themselves in array against Gibeah, as at other times.
And the people of Benjamin went out against the people and were drawn away from the city. And as at other times, they began to strike and kill some of the people in the highways, one of which goes up to Bethel and the other to Gibeah.
And in the open country, about 30 men of Israel and the people of Benjamin said they are routed before us as at the first. But the people of Israel said, let us flee and draw them away from the city to the highways.
And all the men of Israel rose up out of their place and set themselves in array at Baal Tamar. And the men of Israel who were in ambush rushed out of their place from Mera Giba. And there came against Gibeah ten thousand chosen men out of all Israel.
And the battle was hard, but the Benjamites did not know that disaster was close upon them. And the Lord defeated Benjamin before Israel and the people of Israel destroyed twenty five thousand one hundred men of Benjamin that day.
That's almost the entire tribe of Benjamin. All these were men who drew the sword. So the people of Benjamin saw that they were defeated. How how were the Benjamites so successful even up to that point?
How is it that they weren't so terribly outnumbered from the very beginning of this conflict? Well, in Jacob's blessing of his sons, which we read about in Genesis forty nine, he says this of Benjamin.
Benjamin is a ravenous wolf in the morning, devouring the prey and at evening dividing the spoils. So this is somewhat prophetic, but it also describes the nature of Benjamin. He was a very violent man and his offspring would be a very violent tribe.
It's from the tribe of Benjamin that we would get King Saul. And it's also from the tribe of Benjamin that we would get the apostle Paul. And remember what he did before he became the apostle. He was Saul and he killed Christians.
So we see him being very ruthless in in the New Testament as well. And of course, Saul was a ruthless warrior. And the way that he led Israel against the Philistines and against their enemies. And so the tribe of Benjamin, very violent people.
And because of the ruthlessness by which they live, they were able to be this successful against Israel, even though they were so outnumbered. But there is yet a remnant of Benjamin that remains. And the people of Israel are going to do what they can to ensure that Benjamin will still survive.
And that's significant to us here, because, again, from the tribe of Benjamin, we get King Saul and the apostle Paul. Now, we're going to go ahead and skip to chapter 21. The rest of the verses at the end of chapter 20 just detail that battle between the Benjamites and the Israelites.
So Judges chapter 21. Now, the men of Israel had sworn at Mizpah, no one of us shall give his daughter in marriage to Benjamin. And the people came to Bethel and sat there till evening before God. And they lifted up their voices and wept bitterly.
And they said, oh, Lord, the God of Israel, why has this happened in Israel? That today there should be one tribe lacking. And the next day the people rose early and built there an altar and offered burnt offerings and peace offerings.
And the people of Israel said, which of all the tribes of Israel did not come up in the assembly to the Lord? For they had taken a great oath concerning him who did not come up to the Lord to Mizpah, saying, he shall surely be put to death.
And the people of Israel had compassion for Benjamin, their brother, and said, one tribe is cut off from Israel this day. What shall we do for wives for those who are left since we have sworn by the Lord that we will not give them any of our daughters for wives?
And they said, what what one is there of the tribes of Israel that did not come up to the Lord to Mizpah? And behold, no one had come to the camp from Jebesh Gilead to the assembly. For when the people were mustered, behold, not one of the inhabitants of Jebesh Gilead was there.
So the congregation sent 12 ,000 of their bravest men there and commanded them, go and strike the inhabitants of Jebesh Gilead with the edge of the sword. Also, the women and the little ones. This is what you shall do.
Every male and every woman that has lain with a male you shall devote to destruction. And they found among the inhabitants of Jebesh Gilead 400 young virgins who had not known a man by lying with him.
And they brought them to the camp at Shiloh, which is in the land of Canaan. Then the whole congregation sent word to the people of Benjamin who were at the Rock of Ramon and proclaim peace to them. And Benjamin returned at that time and they gave them the women whom they had saved alive of the women of Jebesh Gilead.
But they were not enough for them. So you think 600 Benjamites, 400 women. And the people had compassion on Benjamin because the Lord had made a breach in the tribes of Israel. Then the elders of the congregation said, what shall we do for wives for those who are left since the women are destroyed out of Benjamin?
And they said there must be an inheritance for the survivors of Benjamin that a tribe not be blotted out from Israel. Yet we cannot give them wives from our daughters for the people of Israel had sworn cursed be he who gives a wife to Benjamin.
Now, this was probably a rash oath that was similar to, you know, Jephthah, who rushed to make a rash oath before the Lord as well. So it wasn't necessarily intended by God that the daughters of Israel shouldn't be given to the tribe of Benjamin.
But nonetheless, Israel had made this vow and so they weren't going to go back on it. So they needed to find something else for Benjamin that they would be able to have wives and continue on through offspring.
So they said, behold, there is the yearly feast of the Lord at Shiloh, which is north of Bethel on the east of the highway that goes up from Bethel to Shechem and south of Labona. And they commanded the people of Benjamin saying, go and lie an ambush in the vineyards and watch if the daughters of Shiloh come out to dance in the dances, then come out of the vineyards and snatch each man from his wife, snatch each man, his wife from the daughters of Shiloh and go to the land of Benjamin.
And when their fathers or their brothers come to complain to us, we will say to them, grant them graciously to us because we did not take for each man of them his wife in battle. Neither did you give them to them, else you would now be guilty.
And the people of Benjamin did so and took their wives according to their number from the dancers whom they carried off. Then they went and let this be a lesson to you. Dancing is a sin, OK? Sorry, I'm a Southern Baptist minister.
I had to fit that in there somewhere. Then they went and returned to their inheritance and rebuilt the towns and lived in them. Last few verses, verse 24, and the people of Israel departed from there at that time, every man to his tribe and family, and they went out from there, every man to his inheritance.
In those days, there was no king in Israel. Everyone did what was right in his own eyes. And that's the way we end the book of Judges, talking about the sinfulness of Israel. And, you know, this is every single one of us before we come to Christ.
We are all doing what is right in our own eyes. As we read from the prophet Isaiah, all we like sheep have gone astray. We have turned every one of us to his own way. And the Lord has laid on him the iniquity laid on Christ, the iniquity of us all.
I read from that chapter earlier this week. So we read from the apostle Paul in the book of Titus in Titus chapter three, verse three, for we ourselves were once foolish, disobedient, led astray slaves to various passions and pleasures, passing our days in malice and envy, hated by others and hating one another.
This is who we were when we lived in our sinfulness, doing what Paul described to the Ephesians in Ephesians chapter two, carrying out the desires of the body and the mind. We were living as though we had no king, no king in heaven, nobody who ruled over us and commanded us by his holy and sovereign righteous decrees.
We just did what was right in our own eyes. And what we deserve for that was the wrath of God, the wrath of God that Israel deserved because of this sin as well, the sins that they had committed. And yet God did not wipe them all out, but did punish Benjamin because of their sins.
We read in Titus three, four, but when the goodness and loving kindness of God, our savior appeared, he saved us not because of works done by us in righteousness, but according to his own mercy, by the washing of regeneration and renewal of the Holy Spirit, whom he poured out on us richly through Jesus Christ, our savior, so that being justified by his grace, we might become heirs according to the hope of eternal life.
My friends, my brothers and sisters, what it is that we deserve for our sin is to be treated like Sodom and Gomorrah. What we deserve for our sin is to be treated like those twenty five thousand one hundred inhabitants of Benjamin who were wiped out, who were punished because of this wicked evil thing that they had done against this Levites concubine, the sin that they carried out that was very similar to what had happened in Sodom and Gomorrah hundreds of years before.
And yet God showed mercy to them, not wiping them out entirely, but even preserving that tribe so that King Saul would come about and eventually the Apostle Paul, who would write most of the New Testament for our instruction, that by the words of Paul, we would know the gospel and the instructions of living out that gospel in Christian life and how grateful we are that the Lord was merciful so that we would have this salvation in Christ Jesus, our Lord.
And so God has not dealt with us the way that we deserve. He has dealt mercifully with us. He has spared us the judgment of our sin and our unrighteousness and instead has made us fellow heirs of the kingdom of God through Jesus Christ, our Lord.
So let us not let the day go on anymore in the sins in which we live. Repent before God and ask him to continue to make righteous that which was unrighteous, shaping us in the image of Christ. Let us pray, Lord, as we as we wrap up our reading, our study of the book of Judges.
How merciful a God you are and how patient you are with us when what we deserve is destruction and death, as all of Israel had deserved these things because of their sin and their wickedness. And yet you spare them so that the Messiah would come through Israel so that we would know salvation through Jesus Christ.
The wages of sin is death, and that's what we deserve. But the free gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ, our Lord. Let us continue to rejoice in you for this wonderful gift of grace that we have through Christ.
That we continually seek you in repentance to be made holy and righteous, purging from us any evil thing so that with our bodies we submit to you as living, holy sacrifices before the Lord. And this is our spiritual act of worship, according to Romans 12. 1.
Continue to lead us in these things by your patient, loving mercy, and then let us display this same love and mercy and grace to others around us, sharing the gospel that saves and brings us to new life in Christ.
And we pray these things in Jesus' name. Amen.
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