Judges 2:6–3:6

Original Meaning

Summary Conclusion to the Whole Introduction (3:5–6)

THE LAST SECTION of Introduction 2 (3:5–6) is the final summary conclusion to the whole introduction. It stresses three things. (1) The Israelites “live among” the peoples of the land, they “intermarry” with the peoples there, and they “serve” their gods. Judges 3:5 is a stereotyped list of the peoples left in the land among whom the Israelites live (based on Deut. 7:1):

Deut. 7:1	Judg. 3:5
——	Canaanites
Hittites	Hittites
Girgashites	——
Amorites	Amorites
Canaanites	——
Perizzites	Perizzites
Hivites	Hivites
Jebusites	Jebusites

In spite of the slight difference in order, the lists are almost verbatim the same.24 Only the Girgashites are missing from the Judges 3:5 list.

(2) Next is the Israelites’ intermarriage with the peoples of the land (3:6). This concluding statement about these intermarriages serves two ironic functions in the book: (1) most immediate, it stands in contrast to Othniel, the initial and ideal judge (3:7–11), who is given the godly Acsah by Caleb (cf. 1:13); (2) it heightens the contrast with Conclusion 2, in which the Israelites take an oath not to give their daughters in marriage to the Benjamites (ch. 21; see discussion in the introduction).

(3) The Israelites “serve” the gods of all the peoples of the land. This, too, has ironic implications, since the same verb (ʿbd) will be used to describe the oppression of Cushan-Rishathaim in the very next passage (3:7–11). This phrase climatically concludes the double introduction of Judges: The Israelites “served their gods!”

Bridging Contexts

FEW BOOKS PORTRAY so complete a picture of human depravity as does Judges. This section has a clear message concerning the apostasy of Israel from Yahweh and the subsequent cyclical process through which Yahweh disciplines Israel. Apostasy is the abandoning of allegiance to Yahweh in favor of allegiance to other gods, a clear violation of Yahweh’s covenant with Israel. Ironically, Israel will continue a claim of association with Yahweh, yet their real commitments are elsewhere, to the gods of the Canaanites.

This message easily bridges between ancient and modern contexts.25 True worship of the Lord requires an exclusive allegiance. An allegiance to any other thing is a transgression of his covenant, old or new. Unfortunately, there are many Christians today who want to be associated with Christ while their allegiance in everyday life is to another god. And, to say the least, there are many gods available in which people today do place their trust (see Contemporary Significance section). In this particular context, the worship of Baal is especially relevant. Baal was primarily a storm god, but this led secondarily to his worship as fertility deity. Fertility cults had obvious concerns with securing prosperity for the worshiper in terms of family, flocks, herds, and crops. In some ways this was the ancient equivalent to the modern health-and-wealth gospel, so popular in the North American context.

Sadly, in a number of instances where the Israelites continued to name Yahweh as their God, they syncretized his worship with aberrant forms based on their Canaanite neighbors’ practices. The later story of Micah and his idolatry (ch. 17) illustrates this in graphic form. In the modern context, biblical faith is joined with any number of syncretistic forms, creating spiritual deviations of all kinds (cf. esp. the discussion of religious pluralism below). Another example is the propensity to fight the Lord’s battles with the world’s resources, strategies, and methods. Some local churches resemble corporate America more than the church of Jesus Christ as described in the New Testament. Integrity and accountability are not found in the everyday actions of the church.

There is little wonder that God becomes angry with the Israelites. We must remember that his anger is not unrighteous as ours often is. Rather, it is always consistent with his character, with all his attributes. It is his just response to flagrant spiritual adultery and involves his desire to bring Israel to repentance, not to punish (as our anger does). In the same way, there is little wonder that God is displeased and angry with many Christians today for their apostasy from his Word.

The passage begins with a contrast between generations. As a nation, Israel solemnly swore before Joshua to obey God (Josh. 24), yet only one generation later, they quickly turn to the gods of heathen nations and intermarry with the Canaanites. The statements that they “knew neither the LORD nor what he had done for Israel” (Judg. 2:10) are perhaps some of the more condemning in the Hebrew Bible. The contrast between the faithful generation and the unfaithful generation naturally raises the question of the passing on of the faith. With the intense interest in the raising of children among Christians, this passage has certain relevance.

Although Israel fails to drive out the Canaanites, God works through this to reveal his sovereignty: He trains the younger generation in warfare (3:1–2). And he can and does work in amazing ways in each generation. The sinfulness of one generation cannot stifle his work. Nevertheless, how we live does affect the next generation. The Israelites who turn to other gods do not consider the impact their actions will have on others.26

Contemporary Significance

MODERN IDOLATRY. The message of apostasy from God has great contemporary significance. As mentioned in the introduction (see pp. 45–47), the myth of secularism is that there are no idols because there is no God. But if idolatry is worshiping the creation, or some part of it, instead of the Creator (cf. Rom. 1:18–23), then the process of sacralization (the process by which created things become central to life, invoking religious-like awe and submission) provides numerous examples of idolatry in modern contexts.

One object of sacralization is money and material possessions. This is the idol of Mammon (Matt. 6:24), which leads on to sins such as covetousness (named specifically as a form of idolatry in Eph. 5:5; Col. 3:5). Underlying this idol is the fundamental belief that utopia exists and that its essence is material well-being. Set in opposition to this approach to life are numerous biblical texts: for example, “one’s life does not consist in the abundance of possessions” (Luke 12:15 NRSV); and “keep your lives free from the love of money and be content with what you have” (Heb. 13:5). “The Christian view of the world does not make economics coterminous with life, nor does it confuse wealth with moral worth, nor promote greed as a virtue.”27

The biblical view sees creation as the possession of the Creator, not humanity’s possession that can be endlessly manipulated and exploited. All creation belongs to God and is graciously provided to us as stewards. As Schlossberg has noted, this biblical view of wealth “seems odd only because we have adopted as normal a way of life that is hopelessly unable to produce what it promises and has demonstrated that inability to almost everyone.”28 Instead, it is the worship of this idol that is “odd,” indeed truly insane, when one recognizes that it cannot bring well-being to its worshiper, but rather only mars human life in its often oppressive demands on our time and energy as workers and in its production within us of unrest and discontent. A quick survey of virtually any adult Sunday school class will reveal significant levels of unrest and discontent among Christians. It is ironic that the ultimate end of the worship of this type of idol is destruction, for “insatiable greed placing infinite claims on finite resources can have no other end.”29

Materialism with its pursuit of possessions and financial independence and security are probably the biggest obstacles to spiritual advancement. Everything in our culture, from commercials to our education, pushes us in the direction of advancing our standard of living for more comfort, pleasure, and self-confidence without any thought of the Creator. Thus we become our own deity, controlling our lives and manipulating things for our gratification. Ultimately, it is our greed that is the idol, with things being the means of its appeasement.

We must resist the rhetoric of advertisers and the devotees of this idol and their message that one is what one owns and consumes. We must not be conformed to the pattern of this world but be transformed by the renewal of our minds by the Holy Spirit (Rom. 12:2). This requires an intense involvement with God’s Word and with other believers who are dedicated to growing in their faith and who resist succumbing to the pressures to worship this idol.

Religious pluralism. Another idol that dominates in the secular Western world is the pervasive relativism that permeates the whole of our culture. If in fact all things are relative, including truth, then no religion has any right or authority to claim any kind of absolute validity or truth. Consequently, no religion is in any shape to tell us what we must or must not believe and therefore what we can or cannot do. While it is not as recognized as the previously discussed idol of money and material possessions, this idol of religious pluralism nevertheless wields increasing power in our culture. P.J. Achtemeier puts it this way:

As it functions in the religious sphere, pluralism dilutes the force of any one mode of thought, or, in our case, any one form of religious devotion. To say that pluralism has invaded the Christian faith is to state a truism. Seminary professors publicly express their unhappiness with the Gospel of John for having included such a blatantly exclusivistic word as that of Jesus: “No one comes to the Father but by me” (John 14:6). Preachers feel unduly constricted by having to preach only from the canonical texts, and study groups in churches turn to modern novels to find something worth pondering. To claim any kind of exclusive truth for the revelation of God in Jesus Christ is to incur the accusation of arrogance and lack of consideration for the truth that also resides in insights of other religious systems.30

Achtemeier goes on to note that this is one of the advantages of idolatry. To worship the creature rather than the Creator leaves one a large array of entities in which one can invest religious significance.31 When there are a number, not to say a multitude, of idols, one may choose those one finds most appealing or those that best meet one’s “felt needs” or “one’s inmost longings.” When there is more than one god, no one god can lay absolute claim on our lives and thoughts.

Importantly, this means that when an individual is able to determine for himself or herself what is good and what is evil, that person is freed to act as one pleases in terms of one’s own definitions.32 It is against this appeal of advantage for idolatry that Paul tells the Corinthians that in the end, service rendered to idols is service rendered to demons (1 Cor. 10:20–21). If anyone doubts that the demonic is rampant in our culture, one need only contemplate the recent event at Columbine High School. As Paul makes clear, to indulge in idolatry is to be set loose by God and to be put at the mercy of the idols to whom we turn.33

The idol of the self. Finally, in this connection, it is worth mentioning the idol of the self. The self is set at the center of existence as a god; ultimate significance is found in godlike individual autonomy, in self-set goals and boundaries. The sacred is defined in the first instance in relation to the self. Self-expression and self-actualization are important themes in this religion, which is evident in our society from the advice columns of newspapers and magazines through to schools, where sometimes the point seems no longer to learn things but to “find oneself” and to be the best person that one can be. The narcissistic society constantly promotes the self over all others. It encourages at every turn the pursuit of personal happiness and gratification. It urges ignoring, and if necessary dispensing with, whatever and whoever stands in our way in this quest for personal satisfaction—whether it be husbands and wives, children, life in the womb, the aged, the poor, the mentally challenged, and so on. The idol of the self promotes sex as the autonomous individual’s quest for self-fulfillment.

But, as Provan argues, “the narcissistic society, the society that worships the self, is not the ‘good’ or the ‘great’ society, but a deeply dysfunctional and wicked one.”34 Idols cannot liberate; they can only bring oppression. The oppressive, destructive fallout of the narcissistic society can be seen everywhere in modern Western culture. Interestingly, Christianity begins with a larger story than the individual story, with a much larger moral universe that has “the only true God at its center, whose worship is perfect freedom—including the freedom from the need to believe that we are gods and that we possess the power to attain salvation by our own exertions.”35 Provan sums it up well:

The old gods are still with us. They have simply changed their clothes so that they merge more easily into the modern crowd. They still claim to provide meaning to life, to explain the universe, and to provide the basis for personal security. They still demand wholehearted commitment from their worshippers. Christians ought to be free of them; for a truly Christian view of the world provides the basis for such freedom.36

Finally, it is important to note that the gods behind the idols of this world are no less demonic than those that stand behind the worship of idols in other contexts (ancient or modern). Ultimately it is the god of this world, Satan himself, who stands behind these gods and demands allegiance with all of the oppressive overtones contained in that commitment.

The gravity of the human tragedy is that we are quite incapable even of enlightened self-interest. Our fallenness prevents us from seeing that false gods—none of whom can create, or bless, or love, or redeem—can do us no real good. Nor can we see that God, in jealously and fiercely opposing such idols and, indeed, any attempt to make the created into the divine, is actively pursuing our good.37

True knowledge. Moving now to a different issue in the application of this passage, it is noteworthy that the two statements that they “knew neither the LORD nor what he had done for Israel” (2:10) are challenging. How do these statements apply to our generation? Certainly, the general ignorance of the Bible’s basic content is observable with the Christian community. This speaks to the latter statement. But what about the former? Do we really know the Lord? In what way(s) do we know him? Simply as Savior? How intimate is our relationship with him?

Just as God had expectations for the Israelites, so he has expectations for Christians today. Essentially, we must “know Christ” and “the power of his resurrection” (Phil. 3:10)—that is, “what mighty acts he has done for us.” We need to experience his transforming power.

It is also clear from this text that the parents of the second-generation Israelites were not held responsible for their children’s sins. It is the generation that “knew neither the LORD nor what he had done” that is held responsible, not their parents. Such an observation does not excuse irresponsible parenting by Christians. But the biblical text holds each individual ultimately responsible for his or her sin, failure to be in relationship to God, and failure to walk with God.

Unfortunately, there are those in evangelical circles that teach that Proverbs 22:6 offers a guarantee of salvation for the next generation—that is, that a child can be programmed so thoroughly as to determine his or her course. While certainly appealing—who doesn’t want to ensure positive outcomes?—Judges 2:10ff. makes it clear that this is a simply wrong interpretation. It often produces unmerited guilt (i.e., if the child continues in rebellion and sin, it must be the parents’ fault). In fact, each individual is saved not by one’s parents’ job in child rearing but by grace alone. Moreover, no matter how good a parent may be in child rearing, there will always be prodigals.38

Ultimately, all fail as parents, and only the grace of God can make the difference. We should do the best we can as parents, nurturing our children in the admonition of the Lord. But it is wrong for us to trust in our parenting skills. We must trust in the Spirit’s work in the lives of our children.

Original Meaning

Preface: From Joshua to “Another Generation” (2:6–10)

IN THESE VERSES, which are apparently dependent on Joshua 24:28–31,5 there is a specific contrast between two different generations: the faithfulness of Joshua’s day and the infidelity of the subsequent generation. The narrative is composed of four units:

A dispersal of the people to their “inheritance” (2:6)

B the “obedience” of the people (2:7)

A′ the death of Joshua and his burial in his “inheritance” (2:8–9)

B′ the “disobedience” of the next generation (2:10)

Both B and B′ units end with references to “the great things the LORD had done for Israel.” This pattern heightens the contrast between Joshua, the faithful servant of Yahweh, together with the people of his generation who “served” Yahweh, and the unfaithful generation who did not “know” Yahweh. “Serve” is richly contrasted with “did not know.”

Joshua sent the people away to their inheritances in order to possess the land (what should have transpired instead of what is narrated in Judges 1:1–2:5). The people serve Yahweh in the generation of Joshua and the elders (who saw the great deeds that Yahweh had done). Joshua died and was buried in his inheritance in Timnath Heres6 in the hill country of Ephraim. When that generation died, another generation arose.

The description of this second generation is stark (2:10). In contrast to the previous generation, they “knew neither the LORD nor what he had done for Israel.” They did not have a relationship with him, nor did they even know about the mighty acts he had done on their behalf. The result is anticipated: They “did evil in the eyes of the LORD and served the Baals.” This was an active choice on their part, as Joshua 24 reinforces.

The archaeological record tends to bear out this verdict. Any distinct ethnicity of the Israelites is almost impossible to determine from archaeological materials of the Iron I period (ca. 1200–1000 B.C.), since the Israelites themselves were not apt to make a difference, even though in at least religious things they were expected by God to do so. Unfortunately, the biblical text evinces an attitude of assimilation on the part of the Israelites, who were determined to make themselves indistinguishable from the other inhabitants of the hill country. The Israelites “lived” among the Canaanites (cf. Judg. 1 above), “intermarried” with them, and “served” their gods (3:5–6). Thus in religious matters, which lay at the heart of Israelite culture (as in most ancient cultures), most Israelites could not be distinguished from their neighbors.