The Israelites again
did evil in the Lord’s sight, so the Lord handed them over to the Philistines
for forty years. – Judges 13:1 (NET)
Round and round they
went. With the use of “again,” it appears that the author wants to make
it clear that this was an almost never ending cycle for Israel. Israel
did evil, they were turned over to their enemies, they cried out for a
deliverer, and their God is understood to have provided them with a measure of
redemption which would eventually be forgotten and the cycle would begin
again. It is both quite unfortunate, along with being the pronounced and
prominent theme of the historical book of the Judges.
Prior to the subjection
to the Philistines that is implied in the text, Israel has been subjected to
Aram-Naharaim (3:8), to Moab (3:12), to King Jabin of Canaan (4:2), to Midian
(6:1), to the Philistines and Ammonites concurrently (10:7), and now here in
the thirteenth chapter, to the Philistines alone. This time it will be an extended period of
time, forty years, which would be designed to call to mind a number of things
from what would have been the collective and self-defining historical narrative
tradition of Israel (forty days of rain in the flood story, Isaac taking a wife
at the age of forty, the forty years of wilderness wandering, Moses’ forty days
on the mountain, and more). Forty,
clearly, is a significant number that will resound throughout Israel’s history.
With that in mind, we can venture forth
to see what can be learned from the example of Israel that has been set before
us.
After the initial
information about the then-current situation that is provided in the first
verse of the thirteenth chapter, we quickly come to learn about “a man named
Manoah from Zorah, from the Danite tribe” (13:2a). Sadly, we are informed
that “His wife was infertile and childless” (13:2b). Now, since we must
always endeavor to keep in mind that one of the overarching and underlying and
dominant themes of the story of Scripture is the faithfulness of Israel’s God,
and that this faithfulness is demonstrated within the controlling narrative of that
God’s covenants, our learning about the condition of Manoah’s wife, together
with the fact of Israel’s return to evil (idolatry, violation of the Sabbaths,
non-reverence of the Lord’s sanctuary), should cause our thoughts to turn to
the books of Leviticus and Deuteronomy (or at least the then-prevailing oral
tradition that would eventually come to be codified in those works) and to the
promises of their God (the blessings and the curses) that are associated with
His covenant with Israel.
If we were to look
through the list of curses that are associated with the people of the covenant
God doing evil (failing to respond to the grace of their God in the prescribed
manner, and thereby bringing dishonor and shame to their God), though the whole
of which would be brought to mind by mention of subjection to another people,
we would also see that such subjection could be considered the pinnacle of the
experience of cursing. Ironically, if
the covenant was kept, God intended Israel to be blessed by and be a blessing
to all peoples. Failure would lead to
the exact opposite situation.
In line with mention
of a childless woman, even though infertility and a dearth of children are not
specifically named in the list of curses that Israel’s God promised to bring
upon His covenant people if they failed in their covenant responsibilities, we
do find God promising the blessing of greatly multiplying children (Deuteronomy
28:11) for their faithfulness to the covenant and its concurrent
responsibilities. So by a natural and logical extension, failure and evil
would lead to the opposite of the multiplying of children, which would be
barrenness and childlessness.
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