This Book: Judges (Judges 5:10-12, Luke 10:25-29)

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After the death of Joshua, the Israelites asked the LORD what to do.  Judges 1:1 

Everyone did what was right in their own eyes. Judges 21:25 

From being a people serving God, to being a people serving themselves.  

I would love to sit down with Jesus and ask him, ‘What must I do to come to terms with the book of Judges?’ What do I do with this? How do I read this?  

But he would probably just ask me the same question he asked the Scribe that day.  

One day an expert in religious law stood up to test Jesus by asking him this question: “Teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?” Jesus replied, “What does the law of Moses say? How do you read it?”  Luke 10:25-26  

“What does it say? How do you read it?” I expect he would ask me the same, because Jesus knows us. He understands us.  

He understands that I would be tempted to read the stories I encounter in Judges like I read Aesop's fables, because that would help make it make sense: 

• If the moral of Deborah's story were 'If you begin by serving humbly, then God will raise you up to greater things.’ 
• If the moral of Gideon's story were ‘If you think God wants you to do something, test him to make sure. Then you will succeed.’ 
• If the moral of Jephthah's story were ‘If you realize you were wrong, admit it before someone else gets hurt.’  
• If the moral of Samson's story were ‘Even if you are unfaithful, God will still be faithful.’ 

Or I might read the book of Judges as history: an objectively interesting glimpse into life in an ancient and barbaric time. Recorded events, and details. Comparing it with archaeology and ancient writings. Finding matches and contradictions. 

Or I might read it like I would Game of Thrones, or Lord of the Rings: great stories of heroes and villains and victims.  

• Deborah as a wartime epic.  
• Gideon as a comedy adventure.  
• Jephthah and his daughter as tragedy. 
• Ehud as international intrigue with some really gross special effects.  
• The concubine and the Levite as horror, leading to more horror.  
• Samson as coming-of-age drama.  

On top of that, do I read it with certainty, or with compassion? With the certainty that God will do what God will do and I have no business asking questions. Or with a compassionate desire for justice? Identifying with the victims and grieving for their innocence and crying out to God, “You should have done something to stop this. Why didn't you?”  

How I read the text is shaped by who I am. Who I am is shaped by how I read the text.  

So let's come back to Jesus' question to the Scribe.  

The man answered, “You must love the LORD your God with all your heart, all your soul, all your strength, and all your mind.’ And, ‘Love your neighbour as yourself.’” “Right!” Jesus told him. “Do this and you will live!”  But the man wanted to justify himself, so he asked Jesus, “And who is my neighbour?”  Luke 10:27-29

The Scribe was looking for an answer. As I've said before, the Bible is not always a source of easy answers, but it is always a source of wisdom. And wisdom is something we have to work out. The Scribe asked for an answer, but Jesus handed him a bat, threw a pitch, and told him to swing: he told the story of the good Samaritan. 

Jesus knew full well how the Scribe would receive that parable. He knew full well that the story of the good Samaritan is just as offensive to that Scribe as a lot of the things I read in the book of Judges are offensive to me, because Jesus knows us. He knows me.  

He knows what scrapes my nerves. He knows what burns my eyes. He knows what cuts on the way down when I swallow.  

He knows what hurts. And he tells the story anyway.  

Jesus did not let the Scribe off the hook. Jesus does not let me off the hook. 

When Jesus told the Scribe that tale, he was not just looking to get a reaction—he was holding up a mirror for the man to see himself. When I read the book of Judges, the Holy Spirit does the same for me.

______  

That mirror can show me the big picture, and the small human stories.  

Let's start with something easy: the big picture. Our world. Let's hold up the mirror of the book of Judges to our world today. 

Rachel Held Evans writes about her struggles with the book of Judges: 

We are not as different from the ancient Israelites as we would like to believe. “It was a violent and tribal culture,” people like to say of ancient Israel to explain away its actions in Canaan.... But in the time it took me to write this chapter, nearly 1,000 civilians were killed in airstrikes in Iraq and Syria, many of them women and children. The atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki took hundreds of thousands of lives in World War II. Far more civilians died in the Korean war and the Vietnam war than American soldiers. And it ought to challenge us to engage the Bible's war stories with a bit more humility and introspection. - Rachel Held Evans, Inspired 

I have the luxury, and she recognized that she had the luxury, of being insulated, protected, bubble-wrapped from so much of the violence being done in the world. It is happening. In my world. I have never held a weapon in my hand. But what would I do if I had one, and an enemy came against me? What do I see in the mirror?  

That’s the big picture challenge. But the Holy Spirit never stops with the big picture. He gets personal.  

When I read this text, He shows me my reflection in: 

• Gideon who set up hoops for God to jump through.  
• Jephthah who tried to blackmail God into doing what he wanted.  
• The Levite who threw someone under the bus just to save his own skin, because he was a Levite and she wasn’t.  
• Abimelech who grabbed for power that had never been offered to him. 
• Samson who obeyed God when it suited him, and the rest of the time worshipped the idols of his appetites and desires.  

Have I never been those people? Have I never done those things?  

• Have I never chosen a path to go and then asked God to bless it?  
• Have I never bargained with God to get what I want?  
• Have I never rolled my eyes at other people's fears, and dismissed them as less important than I am?  
• Have I never held onto things that I have been told to share?  
• Have I never behaved one way in private and another way in public?  
• Have I never set up for myself other gods?  

______ 

How do I read this text?  

Judges is not a fable. Not a legend. Not just a historical document.  

However difficult it is, however hard to read, the book of Judges is—in the hands of the Holy Spirit—a mirror. If I dare to look, I will see bad news, and I will see good news.  

The bad news is that I am just as human as all of those failing people. My culture is just as corrupt and violent as theirs was. They are me and I am them, with a different vocabulary and with a different sword in my hand. They and I are deeply and spectacularly loved by God, yes, but in spite of ourselves... not because we deserve it. 

That's the bad news.  

What’s the good news? The good news is that when I look in that mirror, I don't just see myself. I see Jesus standing behind me, leaning close to speak in my ear, hand on my shoulder, love in his eyes. 

The story of the good Samaritan would have been offensive to that ancient Jewish lawyer to the same degree that much of the book of Judges is offensive to this post-modern western reader. One is fiction and one is history. But both are a mirror that the Holy Spirit holds up to our faces, challenging us to look. 

The message of the mirror is that those people lived those lives. They were just as human as I. People suffered. People died horrible deaths because people did things that they should not have done, often in the name of God. People were foolish and arrogant and cowardly and callous and selfish. People abandoned their God. They turned to other sources for answers. They turned to other sources for security. They turned to other gods.  

They walked away from the LORD, but he did not walk away from them.