Summary of the Book of Judges - Judah's and Simeon's Campaign -Spiritual and national Decay of Israel -

"From Gilgal to Bochin."

(JUDGES 1-3:4)

IF evidence were required that each period of Old Testament history points for its completion to one still

future, it would be found in the Book of Judges. The history of the three and a half centuries which it

records brings not anything new to light, either in the life or history of Israel; it only continues what is

already found in the Book of Joshua, carrying it forward to the Books of Samuel, and thence through Kings,

till it points in the dim distance to the King, of Israel, the Lord Jesus Christ, Who gives perfect rest in the

perfect kingdom. In the Book of Joshua we see two grand outstanding facts, one explaining the outer, the

other the inner history of Israel. As for the latter, we learn that ever since the sin of Peor, if not before,

idolatry had its hold upon the people. Not that the service of the Lord was discarded, but that it was

combined with the heathen rites of the nations around. But as true religion was really the principle of Israel's

national life and unity, "unfaithfulness" towards Jehovah was also closely connected with tribal

disintegration, which, as we have seen, threatened even in the time of Joshua. Then, as for the outer history

of Israel, we learn that the completion of their possession of Canaan was made dependent on their

faithfulness to Jehovah. Just as the Christian can only continue to stand by the same faith in which, in his

conversion to God, he first had access to Him (Romans 5:2), so Israel could only retain the land and

complete its conquest by the same faith in which they had at first entered it. For faith is never a thing of the

past. And for this reason God allowed a remnant of those nations to continue in the land "to prove Israel by

them" 171 (Judges 3:1), so that, as Joshua had forewarned them (Joshua 23:10-16, comp. Judges 2:3),

"faithfulness" on their part would lead to sure and easy victory, while the opposite would end in terrible

national disaster.

Side by side with these two facts, there is yet a third, and that the most important: the unchanging

faithfulness of the Lord, His unfailing pity and lovingkindness, according to which, when Israel was brought

low and again turned to Him, He "raised them up judges,... and delivered them out of the hand of their

enemies all the days of the judge" (Judges 2:18).

The exhibition of these three facts forms the subject-matter of Israel's history under the Judges, as clearly

indicated in Judges 2:21, 3:4. Accordingly, we must not expect in the Book o f Judges a complete or

successive history of Israel during these three and half centuries, but rather the exhibition and development

of those three grand facts. For Holy Scripture furnishes not - like ordinary biography or history - a chronicle

of the lives of individuals, or even of the successive history of a period, save in so far as these are

connected with the progress of the kingdom of God. Sacred history is primarily that of the kingdom of God,

and only secondarily that of individuals or periods. More particularly is this the reason why we have no

record at all of five of the Judges  172 - not even that Jehovah had raised them up.

For this cause also some events are specially selected in the sacred narrative, which, to the superficial

reader, may seem trivial; sometimes even difficult or objectionable. But a more careful study will show that

the real object of these narratives is, to bring into full view one or other of the great principles of the Old

Testament dispensation. For the same reason also we must not look for strict chronological arrangement in

the narratives. In point of fact, the Judges ruled only over one or several of the tribes, to whom they brought

special deliverance. Accordingly, the history of some of the Judges overlaps each other, their reign having

been contemporaneous in different parts of the land. Thus while in the far east across Jordan the sway of

the children of Ammon lasted for eighteen years, till Jephthah brought deliverance (Judges 10:6-12:7), the

Philistines at the same t ime oppressed Israel in the far southwest. This circumstance renders the chronology

of the Book of Judges more complicated.