Conquest and compromise

Judges is the next history book after Joshua. Judges 1:1 says, “Now after the death of Joshua it came to pass, that the children of Israel asked the LORD, saying, Who shall go up for us against the Canaanites first, to fight against them?”

Jordan explains, “Joshua dies and Judges is just like Joshua was at the beginning of the book when after the death of Moses, the servant of the Lord, the Lord spake unto Joshua.

“Joshua connects with Deuteronomy and then Judges connects with Joshua and what you’re seeing is the next step in the life of Israel. They’ve gone in, they’ve possessed the land, crossed over, gone in and possessed it under Joshua and then Joshua gives the charge to the new generation; the next generation of people who are going to be in the land and be given the charge to be faithful like their fathers had been.

“That’s about where the similarity ends because there’s a great contrast between the Book of Joshua and the Book of Judges. Joshua’s a book of conquest. Judges is a book of compromise. In Joshua there is a spiritual upward trend; progress and victory is being won. In Judges there’s a spiritual downward trend where defeat is becoming evident.

“In Joshua one man is prominent. In Judges there is no prominent person. Nobody’s prominent. The main theme of the book is that everybody just does whatever they want to do. There aren’t any real leaders.

“In Joshua you see the faithfulness of God’s people and in Judges you see the compromising of God’s people. In Judges that first course of judgment upon Israel is instituted and we’ll see in the beginning part of the book how they violate the covenant and how the anger of the Lord is waxed against them so that He pours out that first course of disciplinary judgment and chastening to try and cause them to be restored back.

“It’s probable that the Book of Judges was written by Samuel. Judges 18 kind of dates when the book was written. It was written during the reign of King Saul. 18:31. The tabernacle was in Shiloh at the time. Chapter 20:27.

“You’ll see the book is written after the ark had been in Shiloh so there’s a time element there. If you look at the very last verse in the book, it says, ‘In those days there was no king in Israel: every man did that which was right in his own eyes.’

“That passage is found four times in the Book of Judges (Judges 19:1, 18:1, and 17:6). The idea there is if the writer of the Book of Judges is telling you ‘the thing about Judges is there wasn’t any king,’ well, if Israel didn’t already have a king when the book was written, there wouldn’t have been any reason to write that. So evidently the book was written after the beginning of the reign of King Saul but it’s also written before the reign of King David.

“Samuel was the last of the judges but he’s also the man who anoints the first two kings of Israel. He’s the connection between the judges and the kings. Biblically, the name ‘judge’ literally means a correcting ruler. The Hebrew word means ‘to put something right and then to rule it,’ and the judges were rulers.

"They were individuals whom the Lord was with who He raised up at different points of time to put things right in Israel. They never ruled over the whole nation. They were local rulers. They never ruled over Israel like a king did but they were men who brought about deliverance for the nation against their oppressors and enemies.

“Twelve of these judges God raised up and sent and then one of them, the 13th, is a usurper. Now that would fit. Twelve is the right number and thirteen is the number of rebellion (Gen. 14) and Abimelech in Judges 9-10 is a type of the Antichrist.

“The key verse in the book is the last verse. 17:6 repeated. When you come to the end of the book what the writer does is say, ‘This book demonstrates that the spiritual condition in Israel at this time is that there was no ruler and every man does that which is right in his own eyes.’

“That’s a reference to chapter 2:19. In other words, God would raise up a deliverer, deliver them and they would rest, but as soon as they had rest from the oppression, they went out and did their own thing again and wound up being worse, more corrupt, then their fathers before them.

“So each generation, if you wanted to graph a picture on a chart of what the Book of Judges would look like spiritually, it’s like a yo-yo in the history of Israel. They’re up and they’re down. But the yo-yo goes like this:

“They start up here and they go down and they’re in oppression. The enemy comes in and takes them. The judgment hits. Then they recover themselves and the judge delivers them. Then they go down again. Then the judgment comes and God sends a judge and delivers them and they come up and have rest but they corrupt themselves and go down again. He sends another one and He delivers them and then they go down again.

“But every time they come back, they never get any higher than they were before. In other words, they don’t come back up to the same height every time. They don’t get any better. And then the next time they come up they only come up to where they were at the last time.

“So what you’ve got is a constant stepping down and degeneration of the spiritual life of the nation Israel so that each recovery that they enjoy, it only brings them up to the low point of the time before and that’s a sure way to die.

“I remember when my dad was sick before he died of emphysema the last three years of his life they operated on him four times. I noticed after the second operation, he would get over it but he never was back to where he was to start with. And the next time he was a just a little lower. Finally, they said, ‘We can’t do it anymore because if he doesn’t get back up past here, he can’t survive.’

“Well that’s what Israel’s spiritual condition was; it will match what happens to you physically. The judge recovers them and then they drop back down again so the standard keeps going down.

“The book is in three parts. Chapters 1 and 2, then 3-16 and then 17-21. The first section deals with the background on the failure of the nation’s new generation (following Joshua) and why they failed. They don’t keep the covenant.

“In chapter one you see the political failure; they failed to conquer the land. In chapter two you see the religious, spiritual failure; they fail to keep the covenant. And then in 3-16 you have the cycles of the judges and really what you have is the first course of punishment laid on the nation. In the last few chapters you’re given a description of the conditions during the time of the judges and what was the spiritual, moral and governmental condition of the nations.

“After you get past 16 you don’t see any more of the judges. They’re over with. In chapters 17 and 18 you’ll see the idolatry and how Baal worship was introduced into the nation. In chapter 19 you’ll see the tremendous immorality and laxity in the nation.

“In chapter 20 and 21 you’ll see them warring amongst themselves and that’s something to notice. Compare Judges 20:18 with Judges 1:1. The book begins with Israel fighting their enemy, but by the time you get over to the end look at who they’re fighting: The children of Benjamin!

"They’ve quit fighting the enemy and gone to squabbling inside. There’s a complete failure of the nation Israel from the beginning of the book to the end. And there’s a complete refusal of the nation to be restored.”