Bonus: The Judges of the Old Testament

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Void where prohibited by law. 18 plus. Terms and conditions apply. Welcome to the Rapid Bull, daily edition. Where we provide a quick biblical interpretations and applications. This is a ministry of striving for eternity.

We want to start a study in the book of Judges, looking at each of the Judges. Because I think this will be helpful for us to see some patterns that we have even in American Christianity and elsewhere.

So when we look at the book of Judges, first off, it is entitled Judges. People often remember their military conquests, but these are civic leaders. They could also be military, but they're often civic leaders who God raised up for the purpose of delivering Israel from its oppressors.

The Judges were not arbitrators of law cases the way we would think of them today. But rather, they were leaders chosen by God for a specific task. And the Judges of Israel were for justice over the oppressed.

Though many were military leaders, the Judges were a civil role. And it's important to note, they were a civil role, not a religious one. That's going to be important when we look at Deborah. But it was a civil role, not a religious one.

And it was not necessarily a military one. Now we often think of the 13 Judges mentioned in the book of Judges, but there are actually more when we include Eli and Samuel. There would actually be about 15.

And for many people, at least the Jewish tradition, would believe that Samuel is the one to have written the book of Judges. And this book is going to be very helpful in understanding patterns, even for Christianity today.

Now, as we mentioned with the book of Judges, that there's 13 Judges mentioned here that we're going to look at, there's actually more Judges altogether. However, when we look at the Judges, this actually does apply to you and I today as Christians.

You say, how? Well, very simple. There is a cyclical nature to the book of Judges. There's actually seven cycles that we're going to see. And within each of those cycles, there's four elements or cycles.

So it's kind of a cycles within cycles. So first thing we're going to see is that there's four elements to all seven of the cycles. You're going to have Israel's disobedience. Then you're going to see the oppression at the hands of their neighbors because of their disobedience, which leads to Israel's repentance and crying out to the Lord for deliverance.

And the last or the fourth is that God delivers Israel by sending them a judge. However, each cycle is short-lived, usually by the death of that judge. And each of those cycles end up progressing to more overall disobedience of Israel.

And so there's going to be basically five cycles of spiritual decline that we see as they continue to get worse. There's a disobedience and falling, failing to drive the Canaanites out of the land, idolatry.

Third is intermarriage with the Canaanites. Fourth is not heeding the judges. And fifth is turning away from God to death of the judges. So you see cycles that actually apply to Christian state because we could be disobedient too.

Othniel, Ehud, and Shamgar

The first of the judges that we're going to look at is Othniel. He will be seen first actually in Judges 1, but mostly we see the account in the first 11 verses of Judges 3. Now, he is of the tribe of Judah and he is the nephew of Caleb, which is an important character when we look at Joshua and Caleb were the two spies.

They were faithful. He is his nephew from Caleb's younger brother. Now, what we end up seeing is that there was eight years of oppression here, but with him, we ended up seeing 40 years of rest in the land.

This was a time after the death of Moses and Joshua and Israel was looking for new leaders. We see that his name means God is my protection. The thing that we'll end up noticing is, yes, that Caleb and him are uncle and nephew.

And yet he ends up, Othniel ends up marrying Caleb's daughter because he ends up saying whoever would capture the city of Debar would be able to marry his daughter. And so we end up seeing Othniel does that and has his daughter.

Now, Othniel is the first judge of Israel. He's a civil leader after the death of Moses and Joshua. He is the son-in-law of Caleb, as we mentioned, and which is one of only two men to have gone through the full wilderness.

And so it could have been natural for Israel to choose him as the first judge. The next judge that we see is Ehud. Now, Ehud is from the tribe of Benjamin. And we end up seeing in Judges 3, verses 12, we start to see the people did evil in the sight of the Lord again.

In verse 15, they cried out to God. God brought to them a deliverer named Ehud. Now, Ehud was a left-handed man. Why is that important? Well, you're going to see that he is going to get a sword to his left side, not his right to where he'd use his right hand.

And that will fool people because they're usually used to right-handed warriors, and they would be looking on one side. He was able to hide it because he was a left-handed man. Now, what ends up happening?

He goes to the king of Moab. He presents himself with a tribute. He gives the tribute. The money's given. The king sends the tribute away. He's alone, and he says to the king of Moab, I have a message for you.

He goes in private, thinking maybe, I don't know, an extra bribe or something. But he goes to him in private. Now, because he was a left-handed man, he was able to take the sword that he had fashioned and pull it out.

Now, he stabs the king, shoves it into his very large body. It says he was a fat man. So far that the entire 18-inch sword goes in, hilt and all, and he kills the king. He ends up locking the door on his way out.

He escapes, and everyone thinks that the king is in his upper room. They think he's just going to the bathroom. And so no one wants to bother him until it was too late and Israel was saved. The third judge is the judge we actually know the least about, Shemgau.

Now, Shemgau is the son of Athan. We only see two verses that refer to him, Judges 3 .31 and Judges 5 .6. So we can read those verses. In verse 3 .31, it says,. And he also saved Israel. In chapter 5 .6, it says,.

And so that's basically all that we really have on him, not a whole much. We don't know really anything about his tribe and where he's from. Some think he was possibly a foreigner, not even an Israelite.

But the oppressors were the Philistines. Now, the period of rest, we don't know. But what we do know is this was, again, a period where Israel disobeyed after 80 years of peace with Moab, and now we have another judge that had to come up.

That's the pattern that we keep seeing. Israel gets delivered, and then they continue in sin. That is the pattern we see in this book, and that is a pattern we can see in our life that needs to change maybe too.

Deborah and Barak: Civil Leadership and Prophetic Judgment

Let's talk about one of the more controversial judges, and that is Deborah. Why is she so controversial? Because people don't really understand everything about what a judge is. Now, there's two people that we have to deal with here.

Deborah, who is the judge, and also referred to as a prophetess in Judges 4 and 5, and then Barak. Barak was the military leader. Now, keep in mind, we said from the beginning, being a judge was not a religious role, not necessarily a military role, but what we see is it's a civil role, though sometimes it could be religious and sometimes military.

The military role was also seen as a religious act. So note, the one who's acting in the military-slash-religious role is Barak, but he refuses to go to war without Deborah, the civil leader. That becomes an issue where Deborah herself ends up passing a judgment on Barak for not going out without her being present.

In other words, she's saying she recognizes that he's doing wrong by wanting this woman to come along with him. And the curse is that a woman was going to steal the glory from him. In other words, there's some other woman that ends up killing the king that Barak should have killed.

She's also called a prophetess. But keep in mind, this is not the office of a prophet, which would be a religious role. This is a role of someone who speaks for God. In other words, she in a civil act is declaring the things of God.

And so we have to look at both of these people when we look at the judge of Deborah, but she was a judge as a civil leader. Our next judge is Gideon. And many people know the account with Gideon because, well, it's one that kind of stands out.

So Gideon ends up being a judge. He is from the tribe of Manasseh. He basically ends up dealing with the oppressors or the Minionites. And there were seven years of oppression. Afterwards, there's about 40 years of rest because of Gideon.

And Gideon really is an example of, well, a lot of things. One, he's not so trusting of God. God wants him to go and destroy the Minionites. He's not exactly thrilled with that idea. He says, God, I need a sign.

So he puts out a fleece. He says, you know, let it be the ground wet or the ground dry, but the fleece wet. And then the reverse the next day. And so you see, he's not really completely trusting. And sometimes when we are like that, like Gideon, God says, okay, I'm going to do what I'm going to do, but you're not going to have it as easy as you might want.

So Gideon ends up going and God's like, no, no, no, you have way too many men. And he ends up saying, you need to have this test. And any men that drink the water, like a dog, well, let them go home, but we're going to have just these men.

Well, the men are just 300 men. He's going to go to war with 300 men. And what's he going to do? He's going to take pitchers and crash them together and a trumpet. And that sounds crazy, but it isn't when God is on your side.

And that's what Gideon had to learn. That's what Gideon showed. So when God is on our side, we can defeat anything. As we continue to look at the judges, our next judge is Abimelech. And we said that with Israel, each of these cycles, they went further and further into decay, moral decay.

And we see this with Abimelech, this judge. We see this in Judges chapter 9. And what you end up seeing here is Israel's action now is the judge is going against his own people. So the oppressors here are Israel.

They're at civil war. So there's oppression within. Abimelech is the son of Gideon by a concubine. So he's the son of the last judge. But if you look at chapter 8, verse 33, it says, As soon as Gibeon died, the people of Israel turned again and whored after the Baals.

And so what you end up seeing is as soon as Gibeon dies, Israel immediately this time is going right back to the wrong that they were doing. And again, now you end up seeing Abimelech comes up. Now, what's the problem?

Well, Abimelech, they made a king, which they should not have done, but they ended up making him a king. He ends up going to war and has a woman who ends up throwing something on his head and kills him as he is trying to burn a tower down.

Now, you end up seeing that that's actually a curse. He doesn't actually die. He ends up asking for his armor bearer to thrust him through in order to kill him off so that he would die not by the hand of a woman because that would have been a shameful thing in those days in his mind.

And so what you see, though, is Israel immediately went back into their disobedience. That is the pattern we end up seeing with Israel, and it's a problem. The next judge that we see in the book of Judges, we see this in Judges 10, is Tola.

Now, Tola, well, there's not a whole lot about Tola. I can actually read both verses. It's Judges 10, 1 and 2. It says, After Bimelech there arose to save Israel the son of Hura, son of Dudu, a man of Issachar, and he lived in Shammar in the hill country of Ephraim.

And he judged Israel 23 years, and he died and was buried in Shammah. So what you end up seeing is here after Bimelech, this is now the second judge during the four judges that we end up seeing that are judging during a time of civil war.

So his oppressors was Israel. It was oppression from within. The continuation was happening with Bimelech, but you end up seeing still here four judges that are serving as judges over a civil war because Israel is degrading itself more and more into moral decay.

This is the thing we end up seeing with the judges, that what we see consistent is that men were doing what was right in their own eyes. It's very similar to what we see in our country today, around the world.

Tola, Jair, and the Pattern of Repeated Apostasy

When people do what they think is right in their own eyes, it always leads to moral decay, and God must raise up a Savior, or there will be no deliverance. The next judge we have is Yair. Now, Yair is a judge again.

He's the third of the four that are during the civil war. He judged Israel for 22 years. And we don't have many verses on him either. It's Judges 10, verses 3 to 5. That's it. And what it talks about is the fact that he had 30 sons who rode 30 donkeys and had 30 cities.

And what you end up seeing in Judges 10, verse 6, is a very important line that we see again and again throughout this book. The people of Israel again did what was evil in the sight of the Lord. They served the Baals and the Ashtoreths and the gods of Syria, the gods of Sidon, the gods of Moab, the gods of the Ammonites, and the gods of the Philistines.

And so this is the consistent pattern. Israel disobeying God, abandoning God, going to live like the world, and then they cry out to God for deliverance, and God continues to deliver. This shows God's long-suffering in how he would treat Israel, that he kept sending a deliverer even though they disobeyed over and over and over again.

Sounds an awful lot like many of us, huh? We disobey God over and over and over again, and yet he still comes to save us. The fact is, it shows the character of God, that he's a God of long-suffering, a God of care, and a God who will save.

That's important, and Israel needed to learn that lesson, as well as you and I need to learn that lesson. Jephthah is our next judge, and what we see is, Jephthah was the son of a prostitute in Gilead.

He was not really accepted by the people, but when they needed a judge, when they needed a real leader, they turned to Jephthah. Now, Jephthah is, as we're seeing each one of these times that we see a new judge, his reign is shorter and shorter as Israel continues in more and more moral decline.

Jephthah, however, is most known for a vow that he made. When he went to war, he makes a vow that the first thing that he enters, when he enters back to his house, the first thing that comes out of the house, he will sacrifice unto the Lord.

And the first thing that entered, that when he came home, that leaves the house was his daughter. So many people get into the question, did he offer his daughter as a burnt sacrifice? Because that's what he said he would do, thinking maybe the first thing he saw would be a cow or something like that, we guess, but it was his daughter.

And people say, well, he couldn't have had a burnt sacrifice of a human, because that would be a violation of what God would have. So what did he do? Well, the fact that Jephthah's daughter went to weep, the fact that we see that the women of Israel for years would think about Jephthah's daughter and remember her and basically celebrate or think of having a memorial to her each year, the idea is that she was the end of the line.

She was an only daughter and never married. That would be how the vow was fulfilled, we believe. The next judge that we have is Ibsen. Now, Ibsen, we don't have a whole lot about. We actually only have a few verses, and I'll read them for you.

This is Judges 12, verses 8 to 10. And after Ibsen of Bethlehem judged Israel, he had 30 sons and 30 daughters he gave in marriage outside his clan, and 30 daughters he brought in from outside for his sons, and he judged Israel seven years.

Then Ibsen died and was buried in Bethlehem. That's all we have. And you say, well, that's not a lot. We know he judged. We don't know who he was oppressed by in his reign, but it was only for seven years that we see he reigned.

And what else does it say? Well, it talks about him having 30 sons and 30 daughters. Was that to say he was a very active man? Well, obviously he was quite active with 60 children, but there's more to that.

In this time period, at that time, to have so many children would actually be a sign of stature. This is something we can't comprehend in our culture, but in that culture when people had a lot of wives and a lot of children, it was a sign of strength.

It was a sign of authority. This is why you end up seeing that Solomon would be mentioned as having so many wives and concubines, because there would be wives that were married in. The fact that these daughters were taken from outside the clans for sons when his daughters were given to other clans was to show that peace treaties were made.

He was a very authoritative person. That's why it mentions that, and that's what we can learn from that. The next judge of Israel that we see is Elon. Now, we don't, again, have a lot on Elon. We have two verses, Judges 12, verses 11 and 12, so I will read them.

After him, Elon the Zebulite judged Israel, and he judged Israel 10 years, and Elon the Zebulite died and was buried at Ezra 'lon, the land of Zebulun. Now, here's what you end up seeing. We don't have a whole lot about him.

We don't know who his oppressors are. All we know is he was a judge of Israel for 10 years. That's it. And you say, well, what can we learn about him? There's so little that is mentioned. Well, there may be little mentioned, but we don't know who his oppressors are.

But one of the things we can even see in this little bit is that God never left his people without a leader. When they needed a leader, there was always someone that he brought up. He brings up this individual to be the judge over Israel.

Even if we don't have all the details, the purpose of this is to show that we have some rapid fire judges here. We already saw with Isband, now Elon, and we're going to see next with the next judge. Very short information about him, only two verses for each one of them before we get into the final one of Samson.

But the point is that God is being faithful to his people, even during this time, in always providing a civil leader to bring them to deliverance. Looking forward to one that would finally be the deliverer.

Ibzan, Elon, and the Last Judges Before Samson

Now we have again another judge named Adam. We don't have a lot on him again. This is the third of these three. So we had four judges that we saw that were in civil war. Then we have three that follow where we only have two verses per judge.

Let me read those two verses in Judges 12, verses 13 and 14. After him, Adam, the son of Hillel, the Paradanite, judged Israel. He had 40 sons and 30 grandsons who rode on 70 donkeys, and he judged Israel eight years.

And Adam, the son of Hillel, the Paradanite, died and was buried in Perithon, in the land of Ephraim, in the hill country of the Almachinites. Now here's the thing. What you end up seeing again, why are they mentioning so many children?

Again, it's for the same reason. The fact that he had so many sons and grandsons, it talks about his authority, his power. Now, he had these many grandsons. They all had 70 donkeys. In other words, they all rode.

They didn't walk. It's a matter of status, but he only judged for eight years. This man must have been a man that had some respectability long before he was the judge and died, because he must have had these grandsons.

They have that many. He must have had them while he was still before he judged. So you see he was a man of respect and power. The last of the judges that we're going to look at is Samson. He's one of the better-known judges, especially after the last several judges that we looked at where there were only two verses each.

For each of those three judges, we have Samson who has four whole chapters devoted to him. We know Samson because of the account of Samson and Delilah. Now, when we look at Samson, we had a long period of oppression from the Philistines, 40 years in fact, and he acted as judge for 20 years, and he was probably one of the worst judges.

Why? Well, he kept wanting to marry people from the enemy's camp. He kept wanting to be with them and not his own people. He was a strange judge because he seemed less interested in being a judge for Israel and more about getting back for himself.

He was a man of great strength. God kept him with great strength. He had a Ninevite vow, which means he wasn't supposed to touch dead things, which he did, not supposed to drink anything of the vine, which he had wine.

So he broke all of these vows. The last of them is he was not to cut his hair. You may know the account of him being extremely strong. He was a big problem, a thorn in the side of the Philistines. They finally realized the sense of his strength was his hair, and as Delilah cuts his hair, he ends up losing all of his strength.

God ends up giving his strength back as his hair grows back. He has to be brought before the pillars of the great theater when they're going to just put him on display, and he ends up collapsing the building on the Philistines and putting an end to their reign.

God was sovereign.

This podcast is part of the Striving for Eternity ministry. For more content or to request a speaker or seminar to your church, go to strivingforeternity .org.

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