Making Sense of Judges pt 2
This week we will continue our look at the Book of Judges that we started last week. We’re going to look at a couple stories that perfectly illustrate the main theme of the book. It’s a warning that we really need to take to heart and get into our thick heads.
Reality has sharp edges. The world is a dangerous place. God has rescued us, made us His people, and told us the kind of people we need to be if we’re going to be able to navigate through all the obstacles, distractions, and threats that are ahead of us.
The Bible says this over and over, in so many different ways.
“There is a way that seems right to a man but in the end, it leads to death.” Proverbs 16:25
Jesus said,
“Enter through the narrow gate. For wide is the gate and broad is the road that leads to destruction, and many enter through it.” Matthew 7:13-14
He also said,
“I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.” John 14:6
He is the way. Believe in Him. And that also includes doing what He says because just a few verses later He added:
“If you love me, keep my commandments.” John 14:15
He is our king.
In the Book of Judges, it says it like this,
“In those days Israel had no king and everyone did what was right in their own eyes.” Judges 17:6/21:25
There is only one way to safely walk through this world, and that’s to walk by faith, not by sight, trusting in Jesus as your only Lord and Savior. Flirt with the lies and distractions of this world, and you will end up dead in a ditch.
The Book of Judges is all about how God’s people were supposed to drive the wickedness out of Canaan but instead, they kept becoming more and more like the Canaanites. Instead of worshiping Yahweh the LORD alone, they kept adding a little pagan worship to the mix. They would say that they were people of Yahweh, but they also followed the false gods of Canaan by going to the demonic orgies and doing everything God had told them not to do.
Not unlike all of us.
The cycle in the Book of Judges is that the people sin, God sends an enemy to oppress them and discipline them for their disobedience, the people would eventually cry out to the LORD, and He would raise up a savior to rescue them.
Not unlike a day in the life of any of us.
The first one we’re going to look at today is from Judges chapter 11, a guy named Jephthah.
You’ve probably never heard of him because his story is so strange. He was from the family of Gilead, the ruling family in the Tribe of Manasseh. It says he was a great warrior but his mother was a prostitute—his dad got one of the girls at the pagan temple pregnant.
Well, once dad died, all his half-brothers kicked him out of the house so he wouldn’t get any of the inheritance.
So Jephthah moves out and puts together a gang of worthless scoundrels. Makes his own little private army. The original Sons of Anarchy.
When Gilead is attacked by the Ammonites, the leaders of Gilead, Jephthah’s brothers, who were apparently a bunch of spoiled pansies, said, “Whoever will go attack the Ammonites can be our leader.” No of them wanted to do it.
So they paid a visit to good old Jephthah and his dirty rotten scoundrels. He laughed at them, “Let me get this straight—you kick me out of my father’s house, and then when you get in trouble, you want me to bail you out? And if I do, you’re going to let me rule over you? Oh, this is rich.”
So Jephthah went out to fight the Ammonites. While he was in the middle of the battle he made a vow to the LORD. It was a really stupid vow.
He said,
“Lord, if you give me victory over the Ammonites, I will sacrifice as a burnt offering to You whoever comes out of my house to meet me when I return in triumph.” That’s Judges 11:30.
It’s one of those verses in the Bible people don’t know what to do with. Most of the translations try to clean it up by replacing “whoever” comes out of my house” with “whatever” comes out of my house.” But that’s not what it says in Hebrew. It definitely says “whoever.”
Jephtha was expecting a human being to greet him when he came home in victory. Not a puppy or a pet goat.
His theology was so jacked that he thought God would be impressed with a human sacrifice. That’s how pagan his concept of Yahweh was.
So, Jephthah crushes the Ammonites. Cleans them out of the surrounding twenty cities and goes back home. Victorious.
You don’t want to know what happens next.
His daughter comes out to meet him. She’s so happy to see him. She’s dancing and playing a tambourine. Just filled with joy. Yeah, the Bible actually gives us all those details. We’re supposed to feel this. Tells us she’s his only child.
He falls to the ground. Tears his clothes. Cries out in anguish. He was destroyed.
“What’s wrong, daddy?”
He tells her and her response is the most Christ-like thing about this whole story. She says,
“Father, if you have made a vow to the LORD, you must do to me what you have vowed, for the LORD has given you a great victory over your enemies, the Ammonites. But first let me do this one thing: Let me go up and roam in the hills and weep with my friends for two months, because I will die a virgin.” Judges 11:36–37
She basically said, “Father, not my will but thine be done.” And that’s what happens.
Some people try to clean this story up by saying he didn’t actually sacrifice his daughter—it just means she went to the Tabernacle and basically became a nun. But that’s not what it says. And his reaction is way too strong for that. I suppose it’s a defensible interpretation but the plain reading is more likely. He killed his daughter.
And yet, in Hebrews 11, Jephthah is listed in the all-star heroes of the faith along with David and Samuel. But so is Gideon, who led the people back into idolatry and Sampson, who we’re going to talk about next.
It’s also interesting that Jephthah is the only Judge that it doesn’t say “The LORD raised up a Judge,” instead we’re told the people picked him.
And don’t think for a minute God was pleased with him sacrificing his daughter as an act of worship. That’s pure pagan nonsense.
It also doesn’t say anything about there being peace in the land. A few verses later the cycle continues—the people did evil in the sight of the LORD and He gave them over to the hands of the Philistines, who oppressed them for the next forty years.
The next story is Sampson. Probably the most famous person in the Book of Judges. He’s a little bit Connan the Barbarian, a little bit Hercules, and a whole lot Bad Jesus. Like, really Bad Jesus.
His story has a lot of parallels to the Christ story. Samson’s mother wasn’t a virgin but she was barren and couldn’t have any children so the Angel of the LORD shows up and tells her she was going to give birth to a very special baby. He’s to keep the Nazarite vow from conception. Never to cut his hair, or drink wine. He was to remain ceremonially clean his whole life, dedicated to the LORD from birth.
Like Jesus, we get the birth narrative and then we jump to adulthood. Unlike Jesus, Sampson is a turkey.
One day he sees a pretty young Philistine woman and tells his mom and dad he wants to marry her. They’re not pleased. Remember, God’s people were absolutely not supposed to intermarry with the Canaanites. “Why can’t you marry a nice Jewish girl?”
Sampson’s answer? “No. I want her. She is right in my eyes.”
Your translation probably says it differently but that’s what it says in Hebrew. “She is right in my eyes.”
In those days … everyone did what was right in their own eyes.” Sampson was going to do a lot of that.
A little while later, Sampson’s walking to the Philistine town to see his sweetheart and he’s attacked by a lion. It says he rips the lion’s jaws apart like it was a baby goat. I’m not sure how anyone knows how easy or hard it is to rip apart the jaws of a baby goat—that doesn’t sound that easy to me—but that’s what it says.
After he visits his sweetie, on the way back home, he notices that a swarm of bees has made some honey in the dead lion’s carcass. Sampson is a weird dude. He reaches in and scoops out a handful and eats it. Part of that lifelong vow was that he wasn’t supposed to touch the carcass of a dead animal, much less eat from it. Sampson does what he wants.
Before the wedding, he throws a big party, and he challenges everyone with a riddle. He says if anyone can solve his riddle he’ll give them 30 fancy pieces of clothing. I think everyone had been drinking too much, it’s the only way the story makes sense—which means Sampson had broken his drinking vow, too. The Philistines agreed to the deal.
This is the riddle—it’s not really a riddle, but this is what he said:
“Out of the one who eats came something to eat;
out of the strong came something sweet.” Judges 14:14
Obviously, they couldn’t solve it. It doesn’t make any sense unless you know about the lion and the honey. The people go to his bride-to-be and threaten her, “find out the answer to Sampson’s riddle or we’ll burn down your father’s house with you inside.” Philistines.
Clearly, she doesn’t want to be burned alive so she goes to Sampson with a full-court press of tears and passive aggression. “You don’t love me, you hate me, why have you given my people a riddle and not trusted me with the answer?” She kept nagging him until he finally told her.
So on the last day of the feast, the men came to Sampson and said, “What is sweeter than honey? What is stronger than a lion?”
Sampson glared at his fiance’ while answering the Philistines, “If you hadn’t plowed with my heifer, you wouldn’t have solved my riddle.”
It doesn’t sound any nicer in Hebrew. He called her a cow.
So he did what anyone would do—went to a nearby town, killed thirty men, stripped them and gave the blood-stained clothes to the men who had answered the riddle. But he was still mad, so he left his fiance’ standing in the aisle and went back home to his mom and dad’s house to pout.
The father of the bride gave his daughter to Sampson’s best man.
When Sampson finally cooled down, sometime later, he took his finance’ a gift to kiss and make up. This is when he found out that she had married someone else.
He lost it.
Have I mentioned that he was a weird dude? He must have been as fast as he was strong because he went out and caught 300 foxes, tied their tails together in pairs, and attached burning torches to them. They ran around crazy, burning all the crops and vineyards and groves. The Philistines took their revenge out on the father of the bride and his ex-fiance’—burned them to death. Which made Sampson even angrier, so he killed the men who did it.
Then he went and lived by himself in a cave.
The Philistines, to get back at Sampson, attacked the Israelites of Judah—who were like, “why are you attacking us? What’d we do?” The Philistines said they wanted Sampson for what he did to them.
So 3,000 men from Judah go to visit Sampson at his cave. 3,000. You think they were a little intimidated?
This is what they said to him, and it’s the main point of this whole story:
The men of Judah said,
“Don’t you realize the Philistines rule over us? What are you trying to do to us?” Judges 15:11
They didn’t want to rock the boat. They were fine with their Philistine overlords. They had completely given up on the idea of driving the evil out of Canaan. They just wanted to coexist. Don’t you know you have to be tolerant of other religions? This is a time for dialogue, understanding, and peace. Who’s to say what’s right and what’s wrong? Why can’t we all just get along? Not unlike how we ignore our Great Commission and seem to be okay with people dying in their sin.
The men of Judah said, “We’ve come to tie you up and hand you over to the Philistines.”
Sampson’s like, “Okay, you can tie me up, and I’ll go with you, just promise that you won’t try to kill me yourselves.” They probably thought he was intimidated by the 3,000 men—but he just didn’t want to hurt his own people.
Once he was handed over to the enemy, Sampson broke the ropes, picked up the jawbone of a dead donkey, and killed 1,000 Philistines with it. Remember, Jesus rode into Jerusalem on a donkey, a donkey was a symbol of peace—this is like us saying “he killed 1,000 men with an olive branch.”
Sampson judged Israel for twenty years. We’re only given a couple more stories about him but I’m sure there were all kinds of crazy adventures in his life.
Like this one: One night Sampson went to the town of Gaza to have sex with a prostitute. When his enemies heard he was there, they waited at the city gate to ambush him and kill him in the morning. But Sampson left at Midnight, on his way out of the city, he ripped the gate from the wall and carried it, posts and all—left it on a hill forty miles away.
When Jesus said He will build His church and the gates of Hell will not stand against it—this is a pretty good picture of what He’s talking about. Also, one of the metaphors the Bible gives us to understand the church is “the church as whore.” So if you’re offended that Bad Jesus was with a prostitute, you need to keep in mind that you and me are the whore in the story.
Which brings us to the most well-known part of Sampson’s story. Sampson fell in love again. This time it was with one of the most notorious women who has ever lived. Delilah.
It’s a lot like his previous romantic adventure. The Philistines go to Delilah and offer her 1,100 pieces of silver to betray him and tell them something that could bring him down.
You should definitely notice that he is betrayed by someone close to him for silver, with kisses.
This is the original 50 Shades of Grey. Sampson and Delilah have some kinky role-playing bondage fantasies going on here. She keeps saying, “tell me how I can tie you up so you can’t get loose.”
He’s totally into it. One night he tells her if she ties him up with a fresh bowstring he wouldn’t be able to break free. Another night he says “new ropes.” One night he even has her weave his hair into a fabric loom. Sampson was a weird dude.
Each time, once he fell asleep and was tied up in whatever way he told her, she would cry out, “Sampson! The Philistines are here to get you!” And he’d break free. Good times.
It went on like this night after night. That was their little game. She kept saying, “stop making fun of me, tell me the truth! How can I make you weak and tie you up? Babe.”
At this point, Sampson had broken every one of his Nazarite vows except one.
You know the story. He finally tells her that if his hair was cut off that he’d be as weak as any other man. He didn’t really believe it. He was the mighty Sampson. He was sure his strength was his own doing.
Not unlike us when things are going well.
That night he fell asleep as usual. No one sleeps as sound as the most powerful man in the world. Jesus slept in a boat while a storm terrified the disciples. Sampson slept with his head in Delilah’s lap while Philistine men shaved off his seven braids.
But this time when she cried out “The Philistines have come to capture you!” —they were already in the room. He thought, “I’ll shake myself free of these puny pagans.” But he didn’t realize the LORD had left him. He was helpless.
They didn’t want to kill him. They wanted to humiliate him. They gouged his eyes out.
My daughter, Von, pointed out something I hadn’t noticed: The book with the refrain “everyone did what was right in their own eyes” ends up with removing the eyes of the final judge. Remember when Jesus said
“if your eye causes you to sin, gouge it out and throw it away—that It’s better to enter eternal life with only one eye than to have two eyes and be thrown into the fire of hell.” Matthew 18:9
They take Sampson to Gaza, the city where he had destroyed the gate. They make him grind grain in prison. It says his hair started to grow back.
Sometime later they throw a big festival, a drunken orgy worship service for their god Dagon. They were celebrating their victory over Sampson.
Someone had the brilliant idea to get him from prison so they could laugh at him. They brought him in, Sampson asked the young guard who was leading him to let him rest against the pillars that hold up the temple. What could that hurt? Poor old blind Sampson.
With his arms outstretched, Bad Jesus, the savior of Israel, prayed to Yahweh,
“Sovereign LORD, remember me again. O God, please strengthen me just one more time. With one blow let me pay back the Philistines for the loss of my two eyes.” Judges 16:28
It seems Sampson finally realized where his strength had actually come from.
He broke the pillars. The roof collapsed, and Sampson killed more people in his death than he had during his entire lifetime.
Jesus also did more in His death than He had done in His human lifetime, but unlike Sampson, He saved more people—Not kill them. In His death and resurrection, He gives life to everyone who believes in Him.
He gives us the promise of eternal life if we are connected to Him by faith.
There’s a couple more strange and depressing stories in the Book of Judges. They’re snapshots of a day in the life of the people of Israel, showing how deep the pagan idolatry and wickedness had gotten into the people. I’m not going to say much about them but you should read them for yourself this week:
A Levitical priest leads the entire tribe of Dan to worship a false god in the name of Yahweh.
And the very disturbing story of another Levite who cuts his girlfriend into 12 pieces, starts a civil war, and nearly exterminates one of the Twelve Tribes. It includes a reenactment of Sodom and Gomorrah, and the kidnapping of a bunch of young girls. It’s pure madness. Pure evil pagan wickedness.
The kind of things that happen when we ignore what God has told us—and do, literally, whatever the hell we want to do.
This is the last line of the book, you won’t be surprised:
“In those days Israel had no king; all the people did whatever seemed right in their own eyes.” Judges 21:25
The world has sharp edges. Reality is a dangerous place. God has rescued us, made us His people, and told us the kind of people we need to be if we’re going to make it through all the obstacles, temptations, and delusions ahead of us in THIS land.
“There is a way that seems right to a man but in the end, it leads to death.” Proverbs 16:25
Jesus said,
“Enter through the narrow gate. For wide is the gate and broad is the road that leads to destruction, and many enter through it.” Matthew 7:13-14
He also said,
“I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.” John 14:6
There is only one way to safely walk through this world, 2 Corinthians 5:7 says
“For we walk by faith, not by sight.”
You have to trust in Jesus as your only Lord and Savior. Believe in Him, trust in Him, and you will be saved.
But don’t get discouraged when you can’t do it on your own. Don’t be like Sampson who trusted in his own strength. To walk by faith is to trust in the LORD. You need to be faithful, but faithfulness flows from faith. Not the other way around. We walk by faith, we don’t “faith” by “walking” and trying harder.
In THESE days we do have a king, His name is Jesus. Because of Jesus, you are forgiven, your shame has been removed from you, and there is no condemnation for your sin and failures. You have been rescued. Redeemed. Delivered. Saved.
Now live in peace. AMEN