Handsome Men (part 1)

There was a Benjaminite named Kish… He was a prominent person.  He had a son named Saul, a handsome young man. – 1 Samuel 9:1a,2a  (NET)

Israel is going to receive its first king.  The author reports that “the Lord said to Samuel, ‘Do everything the people request of you.  For it is not you that they have rejected, but it is Me that they have rejected as their king.  Just as they have done from the day that I brought them up from Egypt until this very day, they have rejected Me and have served other gods” (8:7-8a).  One should here recognize the fact that the proximate cause of Israel’s request for a king stemmed from Samuel. 

You see, “In his old age Samuel appointed his sons as judges over Israel… But his sons did not follow his ways.  Instead, they made money dishonestly, accepted bribes, and perverted justice” (8:1,3).  It was for this reason that “all the elders of Israel gathered together and approached Samuel” and “said to him, ‘Look, you are old, and your sons don’t follow your ways.  So now appoint over us a king to lead us, just like all the other nations have” (8:4a,5). 

So some may point fingers of blame and rebellion at the people of Israel, and one can certainly understand the words on offer from the Lord to Samuel, comforting him by saying that it is the Lord of Israel that has been rejected and not him, but it must be borne in mind that it is Samuel’s sons that are the issue.  Had Samuel been a better father he might have prevented Israel from traveling the route of monarchy.  Without getting off track, this issue of being a poor father can serve to partially explain David’s affinity for Samuel.  At the same time, however, part of the covenant God’s words to Moses included an insistence that the people would indeed ask for a king, with the Creator God giving directions as to the proper response, so there was always an aura of inevitability about the whole thing.

Samuel then goes to seek out a king to set over the people of Israel.  Because the story introduces Saul immediately after “The Lord said to Samuel, ‘Do as they say and install a king over them’” (8:22a), the reader knows that, when hearing the description of Saul, that this is the one that the God of Israel has chosen to be anointed as king over His people.  It is said that Saul was “a handsome young man.  There was no one among the Israelites more handsome than he was; he stood head and shoulders above all the people” (9:2). 

Whether one realizes it or not, this is the beginning of a pattern as it relates to the monarchy.  Also, through a continued paying of careful attention, this talk of a man being handsome, when presented to a people that absolutely defines themselves by the story of exodus, with that story naturally including the story of Joseph (which explains how Israel came to be in Egypt in the first place so that there could be a resulting exodus), could very well remind the people of Joseph, who was described as being “well built and good-looking” (Genesis 39:6b). 

Samson's Hair (part 1)

Finally he told her his secret.  He said to her, “My hair has never been cut, for I have been dedicated to God from the time I was conceived.  If my head were shaved, my strength would leave me; I would become weak, and be just like all other men.” – Judges 16:17  (NET)

The story of the maddeningly enigmatic character, Samson, begins in a familiar way for the Hebrew Scriptures, which is with a barren woman.  It is said that there was “a man named Manoah from Zorah, from the Danite tribe.   His wife was infertile and childless” (Judges 13:2).  The God of Israel steps into this situation, and the “The Lord’s angelic messenger appeared to the woman and said to her, ‘You are infertile and childless, but you will conceive and have a son” (13:3). 

Immediately upon hearing this, one is reminded of the stories of Abraham and Sarah, Isaac and Rebekah, and Jacob and Rachel.  Because the patriarchs of Israel had all experienced, to an extent, what was now being experienced by Manoah and his wife, those hearing this story already know that there is going to be something special about this child.  They know that the Creator God of Israel has a special purpose in mind for this family, in line with His larger purposes for Israel.   

From the angelic messenger, Manoah’s wife is said to have received explicit instructions in relation to the treatment of the boy that is going to be born to her.  The messenger tells her, “Now be careful!  Do not drink wine or beer, and do not eat any food that will make you ritually unclean.  Look, you will conceive and have a son.  You must never cut his hair, for the child will be dedicated to God from birth.  He will begin to deliver Israel from the power of the Philistines” (13:4-5). 

With this, thoughts are moved beyond the patriarchs of the nation to Israel itself.  This mention of ritually unclean foods hearkens to the Mosaic law, and the use of “son” is a reminder that in the Exodus narrative, which was intensely programmatic and definitive for Israel, the Creator God refers to Israel as His firstborn son (4:22).  Naturally then, like Samson, Israel was a child dedicated to God from its birth, with certain restrictions in regards to ritual purity.  If one was to think big picture, then Israel, ultimately, was going to be the means by which the Creator God acted in history to deliver the whole of His creation from the power of death.  Thus, Samson becomes a microcosm of Israel. 

When Manoah is given the privilege of encountering the angelic messenger and the instructions are recounted to him, he is told “Your wife should pay attention to everything I told her.  She should not drink anything that the grapevine produces.  She must not drink wine or beer, and she must not eat any food that will make her ritually unclean.  She should obey everything I commanded her to do” (13:13b-14).  Fascinatingly, the very thing upon which so many focus when it comes to Samson and the sign of his covenant, which was the instructions related to his hair, is not reiterated to Manoah. 

Instead, the messenger tells him, twice, that his wife should pay attention to everything that she has been told to do in regards to her and her son.  In this case, she has received further instruction and it is going to be incumbent upon her to share these instructions with her husband.  It is also incumbent upon her husband to trust his wife in regards to this matter of their son’s hair, which provides an interesting twist to the dynamic of the story, especially within a society ordered around patriarchal dominance.  The report of this situation is yet another compelling reversal of social norms, as it elevates this woman and forces her husband to rely on her in a way that was quite uncommon and potentially revolutionary in that day and age. 

...Like A Gentile Or Tax Collector (part 10)

The second Scriptural use of “seventy seven” is in the book of Judges.  In the eighth chapter, as part of the story of Gideon (which would have been a very popular story for an occupied people such as the Israel of Jesus’ day, or a persecuted people such as the early church communities), Gideon is said to have “captured a young man from Succoth and interrogated him.  The young man wrote down for him the names of Succoth’s officials and city leaders---seventy-seven men in all” (8:14). 

It was at Succoth that Gideon, with he and his three hundred men pursuing the Midianites and exhausted, requested loaves of bread for his army.  The men of Succoth refused.  Gideon vowed vengeance and eventually took that vengeance, executing the city’s men (8:17).  Presumably, those executed first, if not exclusively, were those seventy-seven.  Again, if Jesus is speaking of the need for forgiveness instead of vengeance in the face of wrongs that are done, then it is more than possible that His insistence that forgiveness be offered seventy-seven times might very well be offered with this story in mind as well. 

The third and final use of “seventy-seven” in the Hebrew Scriptures comes from the book of Ezra.  Ezra is a post-exile work, chronicling the trials and travails of the Creator God’s people as many exiles returned to the land of their inheritance, joining those who had been able to remain in the land, and seeking to rebuild the Temple.  There, in the thirty-fifth verse of the eighth chapter (which, based on what is to be found there, seems as if it should be located after the second chapter), it is written that “The exiles who were returning from the captivity offered burnt offerings to the God of Israel, ninety-six rams, seventy-seven male lambs, along with twelve male goats as a sin offering.  All this was a burnt offering to the Lord.” 

Also in the eighth chapter, Ezra presents the record of his group’s travel to Jerusalem with the expressed purpose of re-building the Temple of their God.  Reading there, one finds “On the twelfth day of the first month we began traveling from the Ahava Canal to go to Jerusalem.  The hand of our God was upon us, and He delivered us from our enemy and from bandits along the way.  So we came to Jerusalem, and we stayed there for three days” (8:31-32). 

This itself is an interesting point of comparison, as Jesus Himself, in a way, was traveling to Jerusalem.  It will not be too far down the road in Matthew’s narrative that Jesus will be seen to be triumphantly entering Jerusalem and dramatically entering the Temple.  Of course, later on, as part of Jesus’ “trial,” there will be testimony that Jesus had said “I am able to destroy the Temple of God and rebuild it in three days” (26:61b), which is an allusion to an underlying motif of the Jesus tradition, not explicitly heard in Matthew, that Jesus saw Himself as a replacement for the Temple. 

The parallels with Ezra, and with the words previously quoted, are quite striking.  If Ezra is in mind when Jesus speaks words in regards to forgiveness (and based on what follows immediately thereafter, this doesn’t seem to be a stretch at all), then He is calling attention to the wider context and story in which this use of “seventy-seven” is to be found.  For those that will be hearing Matthew’s story, which will occur well after the Resurrection and after the various components of the oral (and written, to be sure) Jesus tradition have been relatively fixed, the resonances between the Ezra passage and Matthew’s narrative practically jump off the page. 

Only Son (part 16)

This scene first introduced into the Scriptural narrative through the Adam story, would repeat itself, on the whole, with Israel.  Primarily, the covenant people would repeatedly fall into idolatry.  Therefore, rather than perpetually enjoying the blessings of their God (though the record suggests that there were times of great blessing), times of cursing were their regular lot.  The cursing was exile, meaning they were relegated to a place outside of their God’s purposes for them.  This generally meant subjection to a foreign power (whether inside or outside of their promised land, though even in the exiles, the land was not emptied), which can be regularly seen from the time of the Judges (following the death of Joshua), right on through the entirety of their history that led up to Jesus. 

Their God’s cursing meant death, destruction, shame, and exile, which meant that Israel, which defined itself as a people according to their exodus, was in almost constant need of exodus.  Because shame and exile were the equivalent of death, Israel was constantly in need of resurrection.  They were in constant need of eternal life, which would mean rescue, deliverance, redemption, salvation, restoration, and new creation (not an endless eternity in heaven after death), all of which are well summed up in “resurrection.”  Their position however, because they did not trust a God that is shown forth as having continually proved Himself to be faithful in both blessing and cursing, was that of constant perishing. 

The Creator God’s intention for Israel was for it to be a light to all the world.  Not only does their history suggest that did they not achieve this, but by the time of Jesus, Israel is shown to have turned almost completely inward, choosing only to be a light for itself, to what would appear to be the exclusion of the rest of the world.  Clearly, this was not what the covenant God intended for His one and only son, be it Adam or Israel.  Thus, taking all of this into consideration, as would Nicodemus, it could be said that the Creator God of Israel loved the world that He had created so much, that He raised up Israel, His son (after the failure of Adam), and gave him a commission and an ordination to be the representative of His love and power into the world. 

This, of course, would be completely contingent on Israel believing in Him and in His covenantal promises.  Had they believed, then they, and the world through them, would have enjoyed eternal life.  However, they are shown to have not believed wholeheartedly in their God, so ultimately, the perishing of an almost continuous exile had been their experience.  Because of that, the world did not experience the Creator God’s glory and redemption, but remained in its perished condition as well.          

It has been demonstrated that both Adam and Israel were positioned as sons of God.  This has been done so that it would be possible to rightly comprehend the engagement between Nicodemus and Jesus, with its rooting in Jewish hope and expectation according to the history of the world and the history of Israel.  Both of those histories are related to the redemptive history that had been playing out according to the Creator God’s covenant faithfulness, and this is the framework that has been built for an understanding of Jesus and His mission. 

By using the language that is to be found in John 3:16, one can not only find that Jesus understands Himself along this historical-redemptive line, but that Jesus also wants Nicodemus to understand His purposes according to the historical-redemptive pattern set forth in the history of Israel as a nation, and in that of mankind as recorded in the Hebrew Scriptures. 

Collapse Of The Temple (part 1)

Samson said, “Let me die with the Philistines!”  He pushed hard and the temple collapsed on the rulers and all the people in it.  He killed many more people in his death than he had killed during his life. – Judges 16:30  (NET)

Before famously bringing down the Philistine temple on top of him, Samson, who had been grinding in prison (Judges 16:21), was called out to entertain the assembled people.  It is said that when his enemies “really started celebrating, they said, ‘Call Samson so he can entertain us!’  So they summoned Samson from the prison and he entertained them.  They made him stand between the two pillars” (16:25).  These, presumably, were the two main pillars of the Philistine temple of their god, Dagon. 

While there, “Samson said to the young man who held his hand, ‘Position me so I can touch the pillars that support the temple.  Then I can lean on them’.” (16:26)  Standing before his enemies then, “Samson called to the Lord” and he said, “O Master, Lord, remember me!  Strengthen me just one more time, O God, so I can get swift revenge against the Philistines for my two eyes!” (16:28)  With that, it is reported that, “Samson said, ‘Let me die with the Philistines!’  He pushed hard and the temple collapsed on the rulers and all the people in it” (16:30a). 

Now, though all analogies eventually break down, one can here find an analogy between Samson and Jesus.  How so?  In His day, and though this should be taken as a loose analogy, Jesus, if He saw Himself in the role of Samson, could very well have considered the authorities that controlled the Jerusalem temple to be Philistines.  Though the temple was supposed to be the house of Israel’s God, the glory of the Creator God (the shekinah) was not recognized to be dwelling there. 

Ultimately then, it could have been appeared to be a temple that existed for the honor and power of the men who controlled it.  Sad stories such as that of the widow and her mite illustrate this quite well.  In this way, one could almost consider it to be the counterpart to the Philistine temple. 

It is well understood that part of Jesus’ message was that He was the actual Temple of Israel’s God---the place inhabited by the Spirit of the Creator God, and the place at which the realm of the Creator God overlapped with the realm of those that bore the image of the Creator God (where heaven and earth came together).  In this same vein, Jesus even spoke of Himself and His body as a Temple, saying “Destroy this Temple and in three days I will raise it up again” (John 2:19). 

Indeed, it is insisted that in Jesus dwelt the glory of the covenant God of Israel (the shekinah), as is stated in the first chapter of John (1:14).  Thus, the temple that then stood in Jerusalem, with its corrupted hierarchy under which the covenant people experienced a veritable grinding for the “entertainment” and enrichment of those that sought to maintain their place and prestige, could now be considered to be illegitimate and redundant. 

Psalm Of The King (part 4 of 5)

Additionally, one can rest fairly assured that part of Jesus’ prayers in the Garden of Gethsemane, before He was made to embark upon the ordeal of the cross, was that His life be sustained; and that when He went down into death, taking the Creator God’s cursing and going into exile on behalf of all God’s people (because He is demonstrated to have understood Himself to be Israel’s Messiah, with all of the implications of unending rule and kingship associated with that position), that He be granted the redemption of physical resurrection to new life---the deliverance from exile---that was the great hope and expectation of Israel.  In union with Him, that same hope that animated much of Israel belongs to all believers as well.  

Moving on to the fifth verse of this Psalm, Jesus and others would find “Your deliverance brings him great honor” (21:5a).  Similar to the way in which “blessings” would have carried a specific connotation for the Psalmist, for Jesus, and for the people of Israel, the use of “deliverance” would have a deliberate reference attached to it as well.  “Deliverance,” when used by the people of Israel (and most likely the Psalmist as well), pointed to exodus---to redemption.  Again, these words are not to approached apart from their own terms, and they are certainly not to be informed by twenty-first century mindsets.  The modern observer must take the contextual approach that goes beyond the use of language, making every attempt to understand the terminology in its historical, philosophical, theological, political, cultural and social setting as well, with no disconnect between any of those things. 

For Israel, “deliverance” was deliverance from exile, and along with the memory of the Babylonian and Assyrian experiences, as highlighted in the historical narrative of Israel and in the prophets, the Deuteronomic description of exile would have loomed large in the popular imagination.  In the area of deliverance, Israel’s story includes the story of their covenant God delivering His chosen people from Egypt.  Their God is then reported to have delivered His people from a variety of oppressors through the time of the Judges. 

Enhancing the understanding of exile and deliverance (or exodus), the record of Judges demonstrates that exile entailed much more than simply Israel being away from its land.  The idea of exile included the Creator God’s people not ruling themselves in their own land.  Because of that, this concept can be carried forward into His own day, as Jesus would have done, building on Ezra and Nehemiah’s declarations that the exile was continuing even though the Creator God’s people had returned to their land, and it can be verified that the people of Israel (by and large) still saw themselves as a people in exile.  This ongoing conception of exile from God’s blessings, among other things, was a major impetus behind the attempts at revolution in the centuries leading up to, and the century following Jesus’ life, death, and Resurrection. 

Part of the anticipation for their messiah, which was connected with the vision of Daniel and the four hundred ninety years attached to that vision that would culminate with the coming of the messiah (regardless of when Daniel was composed), was that the messiah, their king (Son of God, Son of Man, Son of David---all kingly terms that would eventually be vested with divine significance because of the post-Resurrection realization, by His disciples, that Jesus had been the physical embodiment of God in His saving action on behalf of His chosen people) would bring Israel’s long exile to an end once and for all.  

Beginning Of Deliverance (part 2 of 2)

What follows?  As the story goes, “The Lord’s angelic messenger appeared to the woman and said to her, ‘You are infertile and childless, but you will conceive and have a son” (Judges 13:3).  Clearly, this is understood to be a miraculous intervention.  Though infertile, this woman was promised a son.  This is not an uncommon story within Israel’s controlling narrative.  In the midst of cursing (both nationally and individually), the Creator God breaks in and chooses to render a blessing to one of His chosen people.  The messenger repeated the report, saying “Look, you will conceive and have a son” (13:5a), adding “You must never cut his hair, for the child will be dedicated to God from birth” (13:5b). 

With that said, we of course find that we are in the midst of the story of Samson.  It is said of him that “He will begin to deliver Israel from the power of the Philistines” (13:5c).  In this, we are able to hear the message of God’s salvation, not just in that He will be providing rescue and deliverance for His people Israel, but from our post-Christ event position, we can hear the message of deliverance for those that would come to be His covenant people through believing and declaring that Jesus is Lord through (faith).  In addition to that, we also hear the message of the salvation of the Creator God that is going to be extended to His once very good creation.  How so? 

As can be here seen, it is in the midst of Israel’s evil that God enters in for the purpose of providing His blessing.  If we make a wider application, appropriately thinking of Israel’s story (both as a people and as a land as a microcosm of all peoples and the entire creation), we can look to Israel as being representative of all peoples.  With that, we can then transpose the Samson story to see the promised son as Jesus, as the same Creator God (that is to be understood through the Israelites narrative that stretches back to the creation and Adam) breaks in to history amidst a race of people condemned to experience nothing beyond the wrath of God (as understood by Israel---the Levitical and Deuteronomic curses?), to deliver the blessing of His salvation---the renewal, re-creation, restoration, and life of the age to come in the here and now to be had through union with Christ---to people of all nations. 

In the Christ (a very Samson-like figure) and in His people, the kingdom of heaven has been established on earth, and is daily extended as His lordship is declared over all rulers and all powers.  Through His people, which is the renewed Israel under the new covenant marker of faith in Jesus as Messiah and Lord of all, the Creator God demonstrates His power, as it flows through His people as vessels for the communication of the Gospel in both word and deed, as they participate in His purposes for His creation.  Just as we can see the gift of a Son into the midst of fallen humanity as God’s faithful action for the salvation (deliverance from exile from the ability to rightly bear the divine image) of those that He declared to be His people from before the foundation of the world (all peoples, not national Israel alone---the inclusion of Gentiles in the covenant family was not a surprise, but always God’s intention, as is fairly clear from the Abraham story and the initial announcement of the covenant), we can also see a foreshadowing of God’s intention to restore and renew a world of His creation that was marred by that fall, when we read about the fact that this promised son would “begin to deliver Israel from the power of the Philistines.” 

Through Samson, there would not be a complete deliverance, but a beginning.  So too can we understand, through the power that is unleashed in a marred world by the proclamation of the Gospel, as a measure of that power that raised up Jesus from the dead is graciously shared, by the Spirit of God, through His people, that even the creation itself is beginning to be delivered from the power of death under which it is held and under which it groans.  Creation’s complete renewal will be consummated upon Christ’s return, in conjunction with the resurrection of His people, as they are brought forth into a renewed physicality in the exact same way that Jesus was brought forth from the grave.  This beginning of the deliverance of creation (His people and this world) from the bondage of death to which it was unwillingly subjected by mankind’s rebellion against God, occurs because of the deliverance from that same bondage that is realized by those that share in eternal life, here and now, through their union with Christ.   

Beginning Of Deliverance (part 1 of 2)

 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. 

Faithfully Turned Over & Overwhelmed (part 2 of 2)

How do the implications of Leviticus and Deuteronomy relate to the text with which we began?  Israel is said to have done evil, and is subsequently subjected to Midian.  This is to be understood and being in accordance with the covenant of their Creator God.  So having done evil, it can be said that the Lord faithfully turned Israel over to Midian.  Faithfully?  Yes, for Israel’s God is understood to be faithful to His promises.  If He was not, and if the Scriptural record could not be looked to as the record of that faithfulness, then Israel would not be recognize Him as a God that was worthy of trust. 

The Scriptural narrative informs Israel that through Moses, God had warned His people, saying “if you ignore the Lord your God and are not careful to keep all His commandments and statutes I am giving you today, then all these curses will come upon you in full force” (Deuteronomy 28:15).  Moses begins outlining curses and comes to the point where he says, “The Lord will allow you to be struck down before your enemies” (28:25a), which sounds suspiciously like being turned over to and overwhelmed by Midian. 

With our return here to Judges then, we read that “Whenever the Israelites planted their crops, the Midianites… would attack them.  They invaded the land and devoured its crops…  They left nothing for the Israelites to eat, and they took away the sheep, oxen, and donkeys.  When they invaded… they were as thick as locusts… They came to devour the land” (6:3-5).  Looking again to the curse tradition as recorded in Deuteronomy, in an effort to make sense of the plight of Israel, what do we find?  “You will plant a vineyard but not even begin to use it.  Your ox will be slaughtered before your very eyes but you will not eat of it.  Your donkey will be stolen from you as you watch and will not be returned to you.  Your flock of sheep will be given to your enemies and there will be no one to save you” (28:30b-31).  In Judges we can read that their invaders were as thick as locusts that devour the land, and in Deuteronomy, we find that “You will take much seed to the field but gather little harvest, because locusts will consume it” (28:38).  Clearly, the author of Judges well understood the terms of God’s covenant, along with His blessings and curses---his worldview shaped by the Levitical and Deuteronomic traditions.   

Yes, and that tradition includes the sense that their God will fulfill His promises.  The faithfulness of Israel’s God is not limited to doing only what His covenant people will view and agree upon as good (blessings), though all things to which God subjects His people (even His curses) are ultimately for the working of His good.  The words of this message are not offered as a warning, but rather, as a reminder of the steadfast, promise giving and promise fulfilling nature of that God.  Though we can read about His people suffering for their failure to perform as God would have had them perform in accordance with His covenant with them, and though we can read about the curses that could and would come upon His people as a result of those failures, and though we can certainly accept them as warnings about the wrath of that God in response to sin (word and deed not in keeping with His covenant, failure to bear the divine image), we are best served by letting these things remind us of the steadfast love and faithfulness of the God that reached out and chose a people for Himself---a renewed Israel---by and through which to bring the blessings of that God into the world. 

Faithfully Turned Over & Overwhelmed (part 1 of 2)

The Israelites did evil in the Lord’s sight, so the Lord turned them over to Midian for several years.  The Midianites overwhelmed Israel. – Judges 6:1-2a  (NET)

Along with many other things, including being something of a story or script that the people of the covenant are expected to understand and use to guide their actions in and for this world, the Bible can certainly be understood as the record of the covenant faithfulness of the Creator God of Israel.  The Hebrew Scriptures reflect the way that Israel understood and came to understand their God.  With the composition and collection of these writings, Israel would possess something that served as a constant reminder and evidence of His faithfulness to His covenant, of His faithfulness to His covenant people, and of His faithfulness to His covenant promises.  The idea of a covenant-making-and-keeping-God would be top of mind for a member of the Israelite people, so that even though a modern reader may miss it at first glance, what is to be found in this verse points back to the covenant and faithfulness of Israel’s God. 

What is to be understood when we read that “The Israelites did evil in the Lord’s sight”?  As we comb through the book of Judges, we find a highly representative example that “The Israelites did evil before the Lord by worshiping the Baals.  They abandoned the Lord God of their ancestors Who brought them out of the land of Egypt.  They followed other gods…  They worshiped them and made the Lord angry.  They abandoned the Lord and worshiped Baal and the Ashtoreths.” (2:11-13).  This made the Lord “furious with Israel” (2:14a).  We also find that “they prostituted themselves to other gods and worshiped them” (2:17b).  We read this while remembering that this narrative will be compiled after the fact, as part of the story by which later generations would define themselves.  

It is said that “When a leader died, the next generation would again act more wickedly than the previous one.  They would follow after other gods, worshiping them and bowing down to them” (2:19a).  To drive the point home further, the writer repeats himself, saying “The Lord was furious with Israel” (2:20a).  What was the basis for the fury?  Naturally, it can be presumed that it was the idolatry, but more specifically, it is said that it was because “This nation has violated the terms of the agreement I made with their ancestors by disobeying Me” (2:20b).  This is covenant language.  We can take these words from the second chapter, safely apply them to the sixth chapter, surmise that Israel’s doing of evil was something along these lines, and rightly understand the coming execution of the Lord’s fury. 

Now, when we read about terms of agreement with ancestors in conjunction with references to being brought out of the land of Egypt, we should be mindful of what it was that their God was said to have demanded of His people following the exodus, which was the ultimate defining event for the nation.  In the twenty-sixth chapter of Leviticus (26:1-2), which may very well have been composed after the time period of the stories of the book of Judges (the Israelites of that period may not have had a written Leviticus as a guide, but written accounts of both, all understood together and instrumental in the self-definition of the covenant people and their relationship with their God, would certainly have been available to Israel at the time of Jesus, along with the earliest members of renewed Israel that is the people of the covenant through belief in Jesus as Lord,), we find Israel’s God insisting that His people refrain from idolatry, that they keep His Sabbaths, and that they reverence His sanctuary (the place of His presence).  Thus, even if there was not a composed Leviticus at the time of the Judges, the author of the Judges assesses the behavior of the people according to the basic principles of honoring their God that are offered therein, thereby suggesting at least a strong oral tradition. 

If they were to have success in these areas, then they would experience the blessings that are to be found outlined in the twenty-eighth chapter of Deuteronomy, which is another text, possibly composed later than Judges, but which offers thoughts of which the author of Judges seems to be aware.  On the other hand, failure in these areas would bring the curses that are to be found in the same chapter.  Regardless of the time of composition, it seems obvious that Israel’s actions in the Judges time period are to be judged against the ideals of Leviticus and Deuteronomy.  Additionally, their experience is explained as the response of their God, with that response understood in accordance with those same ideals.