Exegetical and Hermeneutical Commentary of Judges 2:1
And an angel of the LORD came up from Gilgal to Bochim, and said, I made you to go up out of Egypt, and have brought you unto the land which I swore unto your fathers; and I said, I will never break my covenant with you.
1. the angel of the Lord ] Not a prophet, as the Targ. and Rabbis interpret, and the LXX and Peshitto seem to imply when they insert the prophetic formula ‘thus saith the Lord,’ but the Angel who had led Israel to the Promised Land, Exo 23:20-23; Exo 32:34; Exo 33:2. This Angel was the self-manifestation of Jehovah, sometimes identified with Jehovah as here and Gen 31:13; Genesis cf.11, Exo 3:6; Exodus cf.2, and alluded to as God or Jehovah Jdg 6:14 cf. Jdg 6:12; Jdg 13:21 cf. Jdg 13:22; at other times distinguished from Jehovah Gen 16:11; Gen 19:13, Num 22:31; though “the only distinction implied is between Jehovah and Jehovah in manifestation” (A. B. Davidson in HDB. i. 94).
from Gilgal ] where the mysterious appearance of ‘the captain of the host of the Lord’ had taken place, Jos 5:13 ff. Gilgal, on the plains of Jericho, was the first halting-place (Jos 4:19) of the tribes on the W. of Jordan, and for some time their camp, Jos 9:6; Jos 10:6 ff., Jos 9:15; Jos 14:6. The name denotes not rolling the explanation given in Jos 5:9 is merely a word-play but a sacred circle of stones such as existed in other parts of the country; it has survived in the mod. Birket Jiljuliyeh, near Jericho. The presence of the Angel shews that Gilgal was a sanctuary; as at Sinai, the Deity manifests Himself where He has His dwelling-place. In the 8th cent. Gilgal was still much frequented, Hos 4:15; Hos 9:15; Hos 12:11; Amo 4:4; Amo 5:5.
to Bochim ] lit. ‘to the Weepers’; but here the name anticipates the account of its origin given in Jdg 2:4 f.; we should expect the older, well known, name to come first. There is little doubt that we should substitute to Beth-el, following the LXX [i.e. Bochim] : ‘to Bochim and’ has been inserted to harmonize with the Hebr. text; ‘to Beth-el’ is original; ‘and to the house of Israel’ is suspiciously like a corrupt repetition of ‘to Beth-el,’ though in the form ‘and to the house of Joseph’ some critics would restore it to the Hebr. text. The sequel of this half of the verse Isaiah 5 b ‘and they sacrificed there unto the Lord.’
I made you to go up ] The Hebr. has ‘I make you to go up,’ an historic present; but the tense, followed by ‘and I have brought you,’ cannot be right. The versions insert ‘Thus saith the Lord,’ without removing the difficulty. It has been proposed to read ‘ I surely visited you and made you to go up,’ after Exo 3:16 f.; this at any rate is good grammar. For the expression cf. Jdg 6:8; Lev 11:45 P; Deu 20:1; Jos 24:17 E.
the land which I sware unto your fathers ] The oath sworn to the forefathers (Gen 22:16 f., cf. Gen 26:3 f. JE) is frequently referred to in JE, Gen 50:24; Exo 13:5; Exo 13:11; Exo 32:13; Exo 33:1; Num 11:12; Num 14:16; Num 14:23; Num 32:11; Deu 31:20 f., Deu 34:4; and particularly in D, e.g. Deu 1:8; Deu 1:35; Deu 6:10; Deu 6:18; Deu 6:23 etc., Jos 1:6; Jos 5:6 etc. in Deut.-Josh. thirty-three times altogether. The promise is given in Gen 12:7; Gen 13:14 f., Gen 15:18 ff. (Abraham), Gen 26:3 f. (Isaac), Gen 28:13 f. (Jacob).
I will never break my covenant ] The allusion is not to the ‘oath sworn to the forefathers,’ but, as the phrases in the next verse shew, to the covenant at Sinai, Exo 34:10 ff. For the expression cf. Deu 31:16; Deu 31:20 JE; Lev 26:44, Gen 17:14 P; it is used rather frequently in the later prophetic style, e.g. Isa 24:5, Jer 11:10, Eze 44:7 etc.
Fuente: The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges
Ch. Jdg 2:1-5. The angel of Jehovah moves from Gilgal; he rebukes Israel’s unfaithfulness. Origin of Bochim
This section connects with ch. 1. The going up of the Angel of Jehovah from Gilgal to Beth-el marks the close of the period of invasion (Jdg 2:1 a); the settlement of the tribes in Canaan involves a transference of the sanctuary (Jdg 2:5 b); the intervening verses (1b 5a) connect the preceding narrative with the History of the Judges (Jdg 2:6 to Jdg 16:31). The latter verses were probably composed by the post-exilic editor who introduced ch. 1 into its present place, not by the author of the Introduction Jdg 2:6 to Jdg 3:6; contrast, for example, Jdg 2:3 with Jdg 2:22 f., and again with Jdg 3:1-3. The appeal to past history, and the tone of remonstrance upbraiding Israel’s neglect to exterminate the Canaanites, betray the later historian. Most of the phrases in Jdg 2:1b 5 a are borrowed from earlier writings.
Fuente: The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges
The angel of the Lord (not an angel). – The phrase is used nearly 60 times to designate the Angel of Gods presence. See Gen 12:7 note. In all cases where the angel of the Lord delivers a message, he does it as if God Himself were speaking, without the intervening words Thus saith the Lord, which are used in the case of prophets. (Compare Jdg 6:8; Jos 24:2.)
When the host of Israel came up from Gilgal in the plain of Jericho, near the Jordan Jos 4:19 to Shiloh and Shechem, in the hill country of Ephraim, the Angel who had been with them at Gilgal Exo 23:20-23; Exo 33:1-4; Jos 5:10-15 accompanied them. The mention of Gilgal thus fixes the transaction to the period soon after the removal of the camp from Gilgal, and the events recorded in Judg. 1:1-36 (of which those related in Judg. 1:1-29 took place before, and those in Jdg 1:30-36, just after that removal). It also shows that it was the conduct of the Israelites, recorded in Judg. 1 as in Jos 16:1-10; 17, which provoked this rebuke.
Fuente: Albert Barnes’ Notes on the Bible
Jdg 2:1-5
An angel of the Lord came up from Gilgal to Bochim.
The Israelites at Bochim
I. The Assembly convened: All the children of Israel.
II. The messenger employed. This angel of the Lord is said to come up from Gilgal to Bochim. Gilgal was the scene of interesting transactions between the Lord and the Israelites. The Lord, therefore, in the riches of His mercy, again visits this people; and at Boehim revives the impressions which had been felt and the resolutions which had been formed at Gilgal.
III. The address delivered.
1. A statement of what the Lord had done for this people: I made you to go up out of Egypt, that land of slavery, that scene of degradation and toil, and have brought you unto the land which I aware unto your fathers. This was the completion of His work. It was a proof of the exceeding greatness of His power, and also of His faithfulness; for Canaan was the inheritance which He had engaged to give.
2. Next they are told what the Lord had promised to them: I said, I will never break My covenant with you. Here was additional favour, and a solemn engagement of fidelity. It had been well if their fidelity had resembled His; then would their peace have been as a river and their prosperity permanent as a rock!
3. They are also reminded of what the Lord required of them: Ye shall make no league with the inhabitants of this land. Nothing could be more reasonable. One would naturally have expected their prompt and persevering compliance.
4. But it is affecting to learn what the Lord received from them–the manner in which He was requited for all His favours: Ye have not obeyed My voice. The charge is express and pointed. They had leagued with the Canaanites, spared their altars, connived at their idolatry; and all this in direct opposition to the command of Jehovah: Why have ye done this? Their sin may be accounted for, but it can never be justified. Indolence may partly account for it: to oppose evil required vigilance and exertion. Covetousness, perhaps, had its influence; they might join with the Canaanites in hope of sordid gain. Love of idolatry, a secret inclination to the practices of heathen nations, might induce them to spare their altars and to palliate their sin. But unbelief was the grand cause, and lay at the root of all their disobedience.
5. Lastly is recorded what the Lord threatened against them: Wherefore I also said, I will not drive them out, etc. Here was righteous retribution; they were punished by weapons of their own making; nor can we wonder at this mark of the Divine displeasure.
IV. The effect produced (Jdg 2:4-5). From this remarkable fact let us apply a question to ourselves: what influence has the Word preached among us? In other words, where are your tears, and where are your prayers? Thank God, neither the one nor the other are altogether restrained. But why are they not more frequent? It is owing to the hardness of the human heart, and is an affecting proof of the deep degeneracy of man. Terrors do not move; mercies do not melt; the most attractive truths are often heard without emotion or concern; and when some appearance of penitence does exist, how transient its continuance, and how unfruitful its influence! (T. Kidd.)
Thy weepers
The voice of that weeping echoes through the ages, and Bochim becomes classic ground in the moral history of the world.
I. There is a terrible physical and moral confusion palpable on the very surface of mans life, which appears darker and deadlier the more you penetrate the depths; while the profound instinct of his being, made in the image of the one God, demands order and unity. All the heathen hecatombs, all the theodicies of philosophy, are attempts to explain the mystery. They are at least mans protests against, his struggle to be free from, the desperate confusions of his physical and moral life.
II. There is in man a native tendency to mistake the kind of help which he is to expect from God. From the Old and from the New Testament we hear alike the cry of mans natural heart, The rest is near. There is the undying hope in the heart of humanity that God will give rest. Lamech thought that Noah would give it, Abraham that Isaac would give it, the Jews saw it in Canaan, David in Solomon, Ezra in the restoration, the early Christians in the Church. Suffering is to be destroyed, so runs the human dream, by the destruction of sin. The devil is to be slain, and all things that now tempt man to transgression shall woo him sweetly to virtue and joy.
III. Gods rest, the true Canaan for which we all are pining, must spring from within, and be dependent on the vigour of the inward life.
IV. In this scene of discipline, where man exists of necessity as an imperfect moral being, he must have throngs of tempters around him. He gives them strength by his want of firmness, by his system of foolish and timid compromise. But you have Gods covenant as a rock to stand on, Gods promise as a star to cheer, Gods strength to nerve the spirit and to harden it to endurance, and Gods sword, sharp and gleaming, to cut out before you the path to victory.
V. The bitter truth, discovered at Bochim, is the deep, sad undertone of the music of history. Perhaps those who are most alive to its higher interests and aims find it saddest. But for them this sadness becomes holy; it is part of the sorrow of Christ, which is the germ of everlasting joy. It is not in anger, in its deepest purpose, but in love, that this weeping is ordained to us. Life is richer, nobler, if sadder, under such conditions, as we shall understand at last when we stand white-robed before the throne. (J. B. Brown, B. A.)
Thorough-going Christianity
The picture here presented to us is that of the people of God stopping short in their career of triumph, not following up and following out the great salvation which the Lord has wrought. They thus incur His stern rebuke and questioning: Why have ye done this? Many reasons, more or less plausible, might be given. They were weary of the wilderness and of war; they had had enough of wandering and fighting; they longed for quiet rest and peace. Motives also of seeming pity and prudence might sway them: how hard to cut off with so fell a swoop, and in one wholesale sacrifice, so many hosts and households, of whom some at least might yet be reclaimed to Jehovahs service, or made useful in some way to His people. Then, as these relentings of tenderness or considerations of expediency occasioned hesitation and delay, their enemies recovered courage and became formidable again. No wonder if, under some such influences as these, proposals of truce and compromise began to be welcome to Israel; and the wisdom of God gave way before the policy of man. It was a policy, however, alike unwarrantable and disastrous; unwarrantable, considering all that God had done for them and the assurance they had that He would not break His covenant with them (Jdg 2:1); and disastrous in the issue, for the error was irretrievable.
I. The sin. Let me speak to the young Christian, the recent convert. What now have you more urgent on hand than to make good your position and reap the full fruit of the deliverance wrought out for you? What better opportunity for carrying out fully the sternest injunctions of your Lord regarding them? How does He bid you treat these enemies? Mortify your members that are on the earth. They that are Christs have crucified the flesh with the affections and lusts. Or take another instance. Such a season as I am speaking of is the very season for remodelling your whole plan of life–its pursuits, its habits, its companionship. You come out, O believer, from the secret place of your God, where He has been speaking peace to you–you come out into the world a new man; and now, when all is fresh, and before you have committed yourself, now is the very time for arranging methodically your general course of conduct and all its details. How are you to meet with your former associates? On what terms and with what degree of intimacy? When and how are you to join yourselves to the company commonly called godly, cast in your lot with them, and avow your self partakers of their toils, their trials, and their joys? What, moreover, are to be your rules for the exercise of private devotion and the cultivation of personal piety? What the system of your studious preparation for heaven? You may take your ground, unfurl your standard, and announce your watchword so unequivocally that few ever after will think of trying to shake or to disconcert you. But alas! too generally, as to all these matters, you have no definite plan of life at all. Hence vacillation, fitfulness, inconsistency, excess, and deficiency by turns. The opportunity of setting up a high standard and a high aim is lost; and soon, amid the snares of worldly conformity and the awkwardness of the false shame that will not let you retrace your steps, you deeply sigh for the day of your visitation, when you might have started from a higher platform and run a higher race than you can now hope ever to realise.
II. The inexcusableness of the sin. Hear the remonstrance which God addresses to Israel (Jdg 2:1), and consider His threefold appeal. Look back to the past, and call to mind from what a state the Lord has rescued you, at what a price, by what a work of power. Look around on your present circumstances; see how the Lord has performed all that He sware to your fathers; the land is yours; and it is a goodly land. And if, in looking forward to the future, you have any misgivings, has He not said, I will never break My covenant with you? What can you ask more? Are these considerations not sufficient to bind you to the whole work and warfare of the high calling of God, and to make cowardice and compromise exceeding sinful?
III. The dangerous and disastrous consequences of the sin. Hear the awful sentence of God (Jdg 2:3), and then see how the children of Israel ilft up their voice and weep (Jdg 2:4). Well is the place named Bochim: it is indeed a melting scene. The golden opportunity is lost: their error is not to be retrieved; its bitter fruits are to be reaped from henceforth many days. A sad sight truly; but sadder, if possible, is the spectacle of a Christian professor suffering, in after-years, from the insufficiency of his works and the first foundation of his Christianity; from his having allowed some evil thing in his bosom, some Achan in his camp; from his having stopped short when he should have gone on unto perfection. (R. S. Candlish, D. D.)
From Gilgal to Bochim
Gilgal was the first camp of Israel after Jordan was actually crossed; it was at once a goal and a starting-point. To Christians it represents that position of vantage, that excellence of endowment whence they go forth in obedience and faith to subdue their spiritual foes. Had Israel been wise, they would have abode in Gilgal until their work of conquest was complete and the land all their own. Doubtless the angel first appeared in that deserted camp, doubtless he followed the people thence, in order to remind them that he ought to have found them there. But they had not been wise; they had not extirpated the nations, but had mingled with them and learnt their works; they had abandoned Gilgal, from whence, under the strong restraints of religious and military discipline, they might have carried through the work of conquest, and had settled themselves in some place of their own choosing: therefore, the angel of the Lord followed and found and reproached them; then they wept, and named the place Bochim–the weepers. From Gilgal to Bochim? In nature it is an ascent, but in grace it is a tremendous fall; the one named from what God did, the other from what they felt. And surely it is very expressive of a great deal amongst ourselves; surely many of us are settled in a place of feelings without acts, emotions without results, reproofs which only produce tears. From Gilgal to Bochim. How often is the story repeated in our spiritual life! Canaan is our kingdom–that kingdom of life and immortality, of light and holiness, which is already ours; not, indeed, for quiet and absolute possession, but for steady and victorious occupation. The seven nations of the Canaanites, alien intruders on the sacred soil, are the seven deadly sins which, with all their evil kith and kin, withstand our entry and dispute our enjoyment of that holy land whereof God hath made us kings and priests in Christ. It is our duty and our charge, as well as our interest, to extirpate these sins–to make a clean sweep of them, great and small. But we do not; we gain some splendid victories, we lay some threatening strongholds low, we deliver some large territories from the dominion of the foe, we do enough to show that we could do all; and then we cease. Because we would not be at the trouble, relying on the grace of God, to cast out all the sins which He detests; because we held our hand and allowed some of them to remain in their old places in our life and character; therefore hath God also restrained the working of His grace, and hath allowed those very faults to become our constant plagues, thorns in our sides, unfailing causes of irritation, self-reproach, and weakness. What we want is to be up and doing, to make a vigorous move, to get back to Gilgal, and from thence to go forth patient and resolved to complete the conquest of our own spiritual realm. Let us occupy once more that place of vantage to which God hath brought us by election and by grace; let us realise the invincible strength which is assured unto those Christians who wait upon their God in prayer and sacraments; let us rely upon that strength not to be the substitute for our own efforts, but to inspire them with supernatural ardour,to crown them with supernatural success. (R. Winterbotham, M. A.)
Bochim; or, the weepers
I. How hopeful. One could not desire anything better apparently than this.
1. They were all attentive hearers. There was not one that looked about him, or that forgot the pointed words that were spoken. It is a great thing to win peoples attention.
2. They were very feeling people.
3. They were all sorrowful hearers. Alas! that such drops did not precede a shower of grace, but passed away as the morning cloud.
4. Aye, and they all became professing hearers; for as soon as ever that service was over they held another, and they sacrificed unto Jehovah. Now let me turn to the other side and show you that there was nothing permanently good in Bochims sudden water-floods.
II. Their weeping was very disappointing.
1. I half suspect that their tears and lamentations were produced as much by the preachers person as by anything else. It was the Angel of the Lord, and who would not be moved at His presence? It may be a great blessing to you to hear a very useful preacher, but if you depend upon him in the least it will be mischievous to you. Seek that your repentance may be repentance which is wrought by the Spirit of God in your heart and conscience. Sham religion is an injury rather than a benefit.
2. Again, I am afraid that the repentance of these people had a great deal to do with their natural softness. They were tender and excitable because there was little grit in their nature; their manliness was of a degenerate type. They feared to go to battle for God; they dreaded the noise and the slaughter. They were, moreover, easily moved by their fellow-men, and took shape from those who lived near them. One grain of faith is better than a gallon of tears. A drop of genuine repentance is more precious than a torrent of weeping.
3. There is another thing about the weeping of these people, and that is, that it was caused a great deal by threatenings of punishment. Every murderer repents at the gallows, they say; that is, he repents of being hanged, but he does not repent of having killed others. We ought clearly to discern between the natural terrors that come of vivid descriptions of the wrath to come and that real spiritual touch of God the Holy Ghost which breaks and melts the heart and then casts it into another mould. These people were deceived as to the depth and sincerity of their own feelings. Doubtless they reckoned themselves choice penitents when they were only cowardly tremblers, labouring under impressions which were as useless as they were transient. Their feeling was but as a meteors blaze, shedding strong but momentary day.
4. Next, these people had not repented, for they did not bring their children up rightly. The next generation, it is said, knew not the Lord, neither the mighty works of the Lord. If parents make known the things of God to their children it cannot be said that the children do not know the works of God. If parents teach with affectionate earnestness, their children learn at least the letter of the truth. Woe unto you, with all your tears, if you have no regard for your household, and no care to bring up your children in the fear of God.
5. I know that these people did not repent aright, because they went from bad to worse. They went from weeping before God to worshipping Baal. The more tender you are, if afterwards you harden yourselves, so much the greater will be your guilt; and if you humble yourselves before God in mere appearance, so much the more terrible will be your doom if that humbleness departs and you go back to the sin from which you professed to turn.
6. I know that these people were not penitents, because God did not take away the chastisement. The punishment which He threatened He brought upon them: He gave them over to the spoilers and sold them to their enemies. But where there is a hearty repentance of sin, God will never lay punishment on a man. He will forgive him and receive him to His bosom and restore him. (C. H. Spurgeon.)
The failure of obedience
The accusation against them at Bochim was negative rather than positive. They were not charged with any specific act of avowed rebellion, but with having failed to obey the voice of God. But when the Church has begun to habitually neglect any one of her Lords known commands–still more when she begins to break one of these least commandments, and teach men so–the day is not far distant when, unless arrested in her career by the mercy or the judgments of God, she will be found openly consorting with the mammon-worshippers by whom she is surrounded. Even so it was in the history before us.
1. The Canaanites in this history represent the enemies of the Church of God, and also the inward besetting sins of individual members of that Church. Need we name pride, and lust, and covetousness, and self-conceit, and envy, and worldliness, and impatience, and fretfulness, and revengefulness–a band of brothers, tall sons of Anak, diverse in feature, yet all showing the ancestry and lineaments of the serpent? Need we mention others of the same kindred–jealousy, and sloth, and worldliness, and levity, and procrastination, and presumption, and unbelief?
2. It follows, then, that the believers warfare is not completed when he has been made a partaker of peace through believing in Christ; for we are made partakers of Christ only if we hold the beginning of our confidence steadfast unto the end. Put off, says the Scripture, the old man, which is corrupt according to the deceitful lusts. Mighty task!–for this old man is not easily ousted from his ancient habitation. He fights hard for possession; and we must give diligence, even after we have obtained our calling and election, to make it sure.
3. We are reminded that many of the spiritual Israel stop short of a full salvation, for it is to be remembered that these men had partially obeyed. They had begun well.
4. The history illustrates the causes of the weakness of the Church and people of God.
(1) One of these causes was indolence. They neglected to destroy the nations, not because of want of inclination, but because they were deficient in strength in consequence of their guilt; not from feelings of compassion, but from want of holy zeal and from slothfulness, The athlete cannot retain his strength without daily exercise; the vocalist cannot retain his power and command of voice without incessant practise; and the child of God cannot go on to perfection without a daily spiritual gymnastic, exercising himself with a view to godliness, as an athlete with a view to the games. Faith and love, correcting the indolence of our nature, will make this holy toil delightful.
(2) Another cause of spiritual weakness is a secret love of sin. In our own day there are degraded Englishmen who have settled among the savages of New Hebrides or Fiji on purpose to be free from all moral restraint, and who outdo the worst of the heathen in every kind of abomination. In religious families there are sons and daughters who, although outwardly restrained by the circumstances of their position, cherish a bitter hatred of religion and a secret love for a dissipated life. And even in the hearts of the faithful what strange occasional lingerings towards evil! What treacherous trifling with things fordidden!
(3) Another cause of spiritual weakness is unbelief, if indeed this one cause does not sum up and exhaust the whole subject. Unbelief is vitally connected with that alienation of heart and affections from God in which the deepest ruin of man consists. And is it for this cause, O ye Israel of God, that ye are so slow to believe even in the possibility of being sanctified wholly, and of being preserved blameless unto the coming of the Lord? Is this the reason why ye so stoutly contend that although the inbred foe, the spiritual Canaanite, may be humbled and put to tribute, it is impossible he should be utterly destroyed on this side the grave? When the heart pants after the living God, is it pleasant to think that, in this life at least, He will never take full and complete possession, but that some damnable lust will always be there to dispute with Him for the supremacy? (L. H. Wiseman, M. A.)
The evil of disobedience to God
Mark and note right well that it is an evil thing under any pretext whatever to depart in any degree from the commandment of the Most High God. Whatsoever may be the law which God gives, either to the whole race or to His chosen, they will find their safety in keeping close to it. But Israel forgot this. Soldiering was hard work–storming cities and warring with men who attacked them with chariots of iron was heroic service. All this required strong faith and untiring perseverance, and in these virtues the Israelites were greatly deficient; and so, in certain places, they said to the Canaanites, Let us be neighbours: let us dwell together. At any rate, it could do no harm to study their archaeology, and go to their temples, and see the gods they worshipped, and get a general acquaintance with the advanced thought of the period; for the Canaanites were a greatly advanced people–they were the advanced thinkers of the period. Tolerance led to imitation, and Israel became as vile as the heathen whom the Lord had condemned, and the Israelites became a mixed race, in whose veins there flowed a measure of Canaanite blood. Yes, if you depart from Gods Word by a heirs breadth you know not where you will end. I would to God that in these degenerate times we had back again somewhat of the stern spirit of the Cameronians and the Covenanters; for now men play fast and loose with God, and think that anything they please to do will satisfy the Most High. The offal and the refuse will suffice for sacrifice for Him; but as to strict obedience to His Word, they can by no means abide it. Mischief will surely come of this lax state of things to the Churches of this day as surely as affliction came abundantly to Israel of old. Note, next, that whenever one sin is allowed we may say of it, Gad, a troop cometh. It seemed a pardonable sort of sin to be gentle to these people and not to obey Gods severer word; but then, what came next? Why, soon they, the children of Jehovah, were found worshipping before the horrible Baal. Soon they had gone farther, and the unclean goddess Ashtaroth became their delight; and anon they forgot Jehovah altogether amid their deities and demons. With these errors in religion there had come in all sorts of errors in morals, for every fashion of immorality and lewdness defiled the worshippers of Baal-Peor, Baal-Berith, and Baal-Zebub; and the chosen people of God could scarcely be distinguished from the heathen nations among which they dwelt, or if distinguished at all, it was by their greater sin, inasmuch as they were transgressing against superior light, and holding down their consciences which God had rendered by His teaching much more tender than the consciences of those about them. Backslide a little, and you are on the way to utter apostasy. The mother of mischief is small as a midges egg; hatch it, and you shall see an evil bird larger than an ostrich. The least wrong has in it an all but infinity of evil. So Israel went aside farther and farther from God because they regarded not their way, and did not in all things obey the Lord. But then comes in a truth which, though it may seem black in the telling, is bright in the essence of it. God did not leave His people without chastisement. The Lord laid His blows upon them thick and heavy. But, before He did this, He sent a messenger to rebuke them. It is ever the Lords way to give space for repentance ere He executes vengeance. The axes which were carried before the Roman magistrates by the lictors were bound up in bundles of rods. It is said that when a prisoner was before the magistrate the lictor began to untie the rods, and with these the culprit was beaten; meanwhile the judge looked in the prisoners face and heard his defence, and if he saw reason for averting the capital sentence, because of the repentance which the offender expressed, then he only smote him with the rod, but the axe remained unused. But if, when every rod was taken off, the culprit was still hardened, and the crime was a capital one and clearly proven, then the axe was used, and used all the more sternly because space had been given for penitence, and the rods had been used in vain. When the rod is despised the axe is ready. It is certainly so with God: He waiteth to be gracious, but when patience cannot hope for penitence then justice takes her turn, and her stroke is terrible. (C. H. Spurgeon.)
The rushing of tears
If this hour we could realise Gods goodness toward us, and our conduct toward Him, a great grief would seize upon us, and repentance would meet remorse, and remorse would meet ingratitude, and memories of the past would jostle the fears of the future, and silence would be broken by sobs and shrieks.
1. I have first to remark that many Christian people have reason for a good deal of mourning. What have you been doing these ten, twenty, thirty, forty years? Did not God lead you out of Egypt? Did He not part for you the Red Sea of trouble, and has He not rained manna all around about your camp? Did He not divide the Jordan of death for your loved ones, until they went through dry-shod, not wetting even the soles of their feet? Has He not put clusters of blessings upon your table, and fed you with the finest of the wheat? And yet, we must confess, we have, like the Israelites, made a league with the world. Three-fourths of our Christian life has been wasted. Oh, weep for our derelictions! weep for our wanderings! weep for our lost opportunities that will never return! There is great reason for sadness on the part of some parents when they look over their families. You know that there must be a mighty change in your household before you can all live together in eternity. Can you placidly contemplate an eternal separation from any of your loved ones? Things are looking that way. Their opportunities of salvation less and less; your opportunities of plying them with religious motives less and less. The prospect that Gods invitation will continue to them, less and less. The day of their mercy almost gone, yet they have not put up one earnest prayer, or repented of one sin, and not given one hopeful sign, and death coming to snap the conjugal bond, and break up the fraternal and the filial tie. An aged woman came to me. I said, Are you seeking the salvation of your soul? She said, No, I have sought and found. I came in to ask your prayers for my sons. They are on the wrong road. O Lord Jesus, are we to be parted from any we have loved? Will some of us be saved and some of us be lost? Which one will it be missing, missing, missing, for eternity? I say farther: there are impenitent souls who ought to be sad from the fact that there are sins they have committed that cannot be corrected either in this world or the world to come. Suppose a man at fifty years of age becomes a Christian, but he has been all his life on the other side. He is a father. He comes to Christ now; but can he arrest the fact that for twenty or thirty years over his children he was wielding a wrong influence, and they have started in the wrong direction? And if you come to God in the latter part of your life, when you have given your children an impulse in the wrong direction, those ten, or fifteen, or twenty years of example in the wrong direction will be mightier than the few words you can utter now in the right direction. So it is with the influence you have had anywhere in community. If you have all these years given countenance to those who are neglecting religion, can you correct that? Your common sense says No. Here is an engineer on a locomotive. He is taking a long train of cars loaded with passengers. He comes on and sees a red flag. He says, What do I care for the red flag? He pushes on the train, and comes to another red flag. He says, I dont care for the red flag. After a while he sees that the bridge is down; but he is by a marsh, and he leaps and is not damaged. Does that stop the train? No! It goes on crash! crash! crash! That is the history of some men who have been converted. I congratulate them, but I cannot hide the fact that they started a train of influences in the wrong direction; and though, in the afternoon of their life, they may leap off the train, the train goes on, So, also, there is occasion for sadness in the peril that surrounds every unforgiven soul. And so you may go on placidly, smoothly, gaily for a while in your sin, but the hurricane will swoop upon your souls. Without God, without hope! Oh, what an orphanage, what an exile, what a desolation! Moan! moan! for thy lost estate. Have you not had a chance for heaven? Ah, you say, that is the worst of it. That is what makes me weep. Was your father bad? Was your mother wicked? No, you say. Say nothing against my mother. If there was ever a good woman, she was one; and I remember how, in her old days, and when bent with years, and in her plain frock she knelt down and prayed for my soul, and with her apron wiped away the tears. Oh, I have trampled on her broken heart. I am a wretch undone. Who will pray for me? I am so sick of sin. I am so weary of the world! No wonder you weep, for the greatest condemnation of the last day will be for those who had pious parents and who resisted their admonition. But what is a sadder thought is, that some of these people not only stay out of the kingdom of God themselves, but they will not let their children come in. You never invited me to Christ. You stood in my way. You gave a wrong example. Father, mother, you ruined my soul!
2. But I remember that there are tears of joy as well as tears of sorrow, and how the foundations of the deep would break up if one hundred or one thousand souls would march up and take the kingdom of heaven! But there are some who have not come. They will not come. They will not repent. (T. De Witt Talmage.)
Sorrow not repentance
Bochim might be widely inscribed in the land of Palestine, if thereby to mark the place where universal lamentations have been heard. Crying was a frequent sight and sound there. It was sometimes uncontrollable. It was often mechanical and artificial. Trouble usually provokes it, and fears and tears are closely related. But sobbings and penitence are not so nearly allied as we might expect. The vain Xerxes, as he sat on his silver throne, overlooking his vast fleet and outstretched army, and weeping to think how in a hundred years every life before him would have perished, yet who arrayed his thousands for needless and speedy slaughter, might have better spared his grief, while curbing his pride. Sentiment is not sanctity. Sorrow is not sobriety. In the abodes of shame there are burning tears and pitiful groans without a wish for a better life. The trappings of woe are common; the resolve to remove its cause is not as common. Reformatories are full of victims of their own evil choices, and many a sigh they heave over a wicked past, but it is only because of the ills it has brought upon them. They like the sin as well as ever. Could it be separated from its penalty they would be only too willing to commit it. There are three classes of weepers: the repentant, mourning both over the wrong done and the result it has necessitated, and determined never to offend again; the regretful, intending to keep from the like in future, but only slightly moved because of its evil character; the suffering, thinking only of the disaster, but ready to repeat the deed so soon as it is safe. To the second class, for the most part, the Bochimites belong. They wish for prosperity and ease, and are more sorry for the thorning and snaring in store than for having disobeyed the word of Jehovah. (De Witt S. Clark.)
Bochim
I. Observe, first, that the reprover of the people is termed an angel. An angel of the Lord came up from Gilgal. But the first utterance carries us to the thought of One higher than angel or archangel. The speaker describes Himself as the deliverer of Israel out of Egypt, and He finishes with the denunciation, Ye have not obeyed My voice. The burden of His prophecy is worthy of the Divine speaker, for it is the simple enunciation of the fundamental truth of all religion–man in covenant with God, and bound to comply with the terms of that covenant.
II. Consider the result of the prophesying. The general result was but transitory. The people wept and sacrificed unto the Lord. But no amendment ensued. The whole effect was a momentary outburst of feeling and a hasty sacrifice. Most true picture of the reception of the Word of God in after-time. It is sensational or emotional religion against which Bochim is our warning. There are two principal elements of this fruitless sorrow.
1. The first is want of depth of soul.
2. The second is the after revolt of the human mind against the supernatural. Godly sorrow issues in a repentance not to be repented of, in that thorough turning of the life to Gods service from which, in the hottest fire of temptation, there is never a turning back to the way of evil again. (Bp. Woodford.)
Wasted emotion
In California, where so much of the land requires irrigation, there is a serious effort being made to devise some scheme by which the water that goes to waste in times of flood can be stored up and used in times of drought. It has long been known that enough flood water flows back to the sea in the rainy season to more than multiply the states resource for irrigation. Therefore it is felt that if some system is workable whereby flood waters can be impounded and saved from waste, hundreds of thousands of acres of now useless lands would be made fruitful. What a wonderful thing it would be if some such scheme could be devised in the higher realm of human emotion! There is enough real heart-benevolence stirred up to fill the land with kindness and bring about human brotherhood everywhere. But it often goes to waste without producing any practical result. Many people are moved to tears by a novel or the story of some suffering fellow-being, and for a time there is a flood of charitable feeling that surges through the soul; but it runs to waste, and when opportunity for real helpfulness comes the emotion has passed away. (L. A. Banks.)
Fuente: Biblical Illustrator Edited by Joseph S. Exell
CHAPTER II
An angel comes to the Israelites at Bochim, and gives them
various reproofs, at which they are greatly affected, 1-5.
They served the Lord during the days of Joshua, and the elders
who succeeded him, 6, 7.
Joshua having died, and all that generation, the people revolted
from the true God and served idols, 8-13.
The Lord, being angry, delivered them into the hands of
spoilers, and they were greatly distressed, 14, 15.
A general account of the method which God used to reclaim them,
by sending them judges whom they frequently disobeyed, 16-19.
Therefore God left the various nations of the land to plague and
punish them, 20-23.
NOTES ON CHAP. II
Verse 1. An angel of the Lord] In the preceding chapter we have a summary of several things which took place shortly after the death of Joshua; especially during the time in which the elders lived (that is, the men who were contemporary with Joshua, but survived him,) and while the people continued faithful to the Lord. In this chapter, and some parts of the following, we have an account of the same people abandoned by their God and reduced to the heaviest calamities, because they had broken their covenant with their Maker. This chapter, and the first eight verses of the next, may be considered as an epitome of the whole book, in which we see, on one hand, the crimes of the Israelites; and on the other, the punishments inflicted on them by the Lord; their repentance, and return to their allegiance; and the long-suffering and mercy of God, shown in pardoning their backslidings, and delivering them out of the hands of their enemies.
The angel of the Lord, mentioned here, is variously interpreted; some think it was Phinehas, the high priest, which is possible; others, that it was a prophet, sent to the place where they were now assembled, with an extraordinary commission from God, to reprove them for their sins, and to show them the reason why God had not rooted out their enemies from the land; this is the opinion of the Chaldee paraphrast, consequently of the ancient Jews; others think that an angel, properly such, is intended; and several are of opinion that it was the Angel of the Covenant, the Captain of the Lord’s host, which had appeared unto Joshua, Jdg 5:14, and no less than the Lord Jesus Christ himself. I think it more probable that some extraordinary human messenger is meant, as such messengers, and indeed prophets, apostles, c., are frequently termed angels, that is, messengers of the Lord. The person here mentioned appears to have been a resident at Gilgal, and to have come to Bochim on this express errand.
I will never break my covenant] Nor did God ever break it. A covenant is never broken but by him who violates the conditions of it: when any of the contracting parties violates any of the conditions, the covenant is then broken, and by that party alone and the conditions on the other side are null and void.
Fuente: Adam Clarke’s Commentary and Critical Notes on the Bible
An angel of the Lord: either, first, A created angel. Or, secondly, A prophet or man of God, for such are sometimes called angels, which signifies only messengers of God; and then the following words are spoken by him in the name of God, as may easily be understood. Or, thirdly, Christ, the Angel of the covenant, who is oft called the Angel of the Lord, as we have formerly seen, to whom the conduct of Israel out of Egypt, and through the wilderness, and into Canaan, here spoken of, is frequently ascribed, as Exo 14:19; 23:20; 33:14; Jos 5:13,14; Jdg 6:12; 13:3; who alone of all the angels could speak the following words in his own name and person; whereas created angels and prophets do universally usher in their Divine messages with, Thus saith the Lord, or some equivalent expression. And this angel having assumed the outward shape of a man, it is not strange that he imitates the local motion of a man, and comes as it were from Gilgal to the place where now they were; by which motion he signified that he was the person that brought them to Gilgal, the first place where they rested in Canaan, and there renewed covenant with them, and protected them there so long, and from thence went out with them to battle, and gave them success.
Bochim; a place so called here by anticipation, for the reason expressed here, Jdg 2:5. And it seems to be no other than Shiloh, where it seems probable that the people were met together upon some solemn festival. And this was the proper and usual place of sacrificing, Jdg 2:5. And I said, i.e. I promised, upon condition of your keeping covenant with me.
Fuente: English Annotations on the Holy Bible by Matthew Poole
1-3. an angel . . . came from Gilgalto BochimWe are inclined to think, from the authoritative toneof his language, that he was the Angel of the Covenant (Exo 23:20;Jos 5:14); the same who appearedin human form and announced himself captain of the Lord’s host. Hiscoming from Gilgal had a peculiar significance, for there theIsraelites made a solemn dedication of themselves to God on theirentrance into the promised land [Jos4:1-9]; and the memory of that religious engagement, which theangel’s arrival from Gilgal awakened, gave emphatic force to hisrebuke of their apostasy.
Bochim“theweepers,” was a name bestowed evidently in allusion to thisincident or the place, which was at or near Shiloh.
I said, I will never break mycovenant with you . . . but ye have not obeyed my voiceTheburden of the angel’s remonstrance was that God would inviolably keepHis promise; but they, by their flagrant and repeated breaches oftheir covenant with Him, had forfeited all claim to the stipulatedbenefits. Having disobeyed the will of God by voluntarily courtingthe society of idolaters and placing themselves in the way oftemptation, He left them to suffer the punishment of their misdeeds.
Fuente: Jamieson, Fausset and Brown’s Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible
And an angel of the Lord came up from Gilgal to Bochim,…. The Targum calls him a prophet y; and the Jewish commentators in general interpret it of Phinehas z; and that a man is meant is given into by others, because he is said to come from a certain place in Canaan, and not from heaven, and spoke in a public congregation, and is not said to disappear; but neither a man nor a created angel is meant, or otherwise he would have spoken in the name of the Lord, and have said, “thus saith the Lord”, and not in his own name; ascribing to himself the bringing of the children of Israel out of Egypt, and swearing to them, and making a covenant with them, and threatening what he would do to them because of their sin; wherefore the uncreated Angel, the Angel of the covenant, is meant, who brought Israel out of Egypt, was with them in the wilderness, and introduced them into the land of Canaan, and appeared to Joshua as the Captain of the Lord’s host at or near Gilgal, Jos 5:13; and because he had not appeared since, therefore he is said to come from thence to a place afterwards called Bochim, from what happened at this time:
and said, I made you to go out of Egypt; that is, obliged Pharaoh king of Egypt to let them go, by inflicting plagues upon him and his people, which made them urgent upon them to depart:
and I have brought you unto the land which I sware unto your fathers; into the land of Canaan, now for the most part conquered, and divided among them, and in which they were settled:
and I said, I will never break my covenant with you; if the covenant between them was broken, it should not begin with him, it would be their own fault; all which is mentioned, as so many instances of divine goodness to them, and as so many aggravations of their sins against God.
y So Maimonides, Moreh Nevochim, par. 1. c. 15. & par. 2. c. 6. z The Rabbins in Maimon. Moreh Nevochim, par. 2. c. 42.
Fuente: John Gill’s Exposition of the Entire Bible
The Angel of the Lord at Bochim. – To the cursory survey of the attitude which the tribes of Israel assumed towards the Canaanites who still remained in their inheritances, there is appended an account of the appearance of the angel of the Lord, who announced to the people the punishment of God for their breach of the covenant, of which they had been guilty through their failure to exterminate the Canaanites. This theophany is most intimately connected with the facts grouped together in Judg 1, since the design and significance of the historical survey given there are only to be learned from the reproof of the angel; and since both of them have the same aphoristic character, being restricted to the essential facts without entering minutely into any of the attendant details, very much is left in obscurity. This applies more particularly to the statement in Jdg 2:1, “ Then the angel of Jehovah came up from Gilgal to Bochim. ” The “angel of Jehovah” is not a prophet, or some other earthly messenger of Jehovah, either Phinehas or Joshua, as the Targums, the Rabbins, Bertheau, and others assume, but the angel of the Lord who is of one essence with God. In the simple historical narrative a prophet is never called Maleach Jehovah. The prophets are always called either or , as in Jdg 6:8, or else “man of God,” as in 1Ki 12:22; 1Ki 13:1, etc.; and Hag 1:13 and Mal 3:1 cannot be adduced as proofs to the contrary, because in both these passages the purely appellative meaning of the word Maleach is established beyond all question by the context itself. Moreover, no prophet ever identifies himself so entirely with God as the angel of Jehovah does here. The prophets always distinguish between themselves and Jehovah, by introducing their words with the declaration “thus saith Jehovah,” as the prophet mentioned in Jdg 6:8 is said to have done. On the other hand, it is affirmed that no angel mentioned in the historical books is ever said to have addressed the whole nation, or to have passed from one place to another. But even if it had been a prophet who was speaking, we could not possibly understand his speaking to the whole nation, or “to all the children of Israel,” as signifying that he spoke directly to the 600,000 men of Israel, but simply as an address delivered to the whole nation in the persons of its heads or representatives. Thus Joshua spoke to “all the people” (Jos 24:2), though only the elders of Israel and its heads were assembled round him (Jos 24:1). And so an angel, or “the angel of the Lord,” might also speak to the heads of the nation, when his message had reference to all the people. And there was nothing in the fact of his coming up from Gilgal to Bochim that was at all at variance with the nature of the angel. When the angel of the Lord appeared to Gideon, it is stated in Jdg 6:11 that he came and sat under the terebinth at Ophra; and in the same way the appearance of the angel of the Lord at Bochim might just as naturally be described as coming up to Bochim. The only thing that strikes us as peculiar is his coming up “from Gilgal.” This statement must be intimately connected with the mission of the angel, and therefore must contain something more than a simply literal notice concerning his travelling from one place to another. We are not to conclude, however, that the angel of the Lord came from Gilgal, because this town was the gathering-place of the congregation in Joshua’s time. Apart altogether from the question discussed in Jos 8:34 as to the situation of Gilgal in the different passages of the book of Joshua, such a view as this is overthrown by the circumstance that after the erection of the tabernacle at Shiloh, and during the division of the land, it was not Gilgal but Shiloh which formed the gathering-place of the congregation when the casting of the lots was finished (Jos 18:1, Jos 18:10).
We cannot agree with H. Witsius, therefore, who says in his Miscell. ss. (i. p. 170, ed. 1736) that “he came from that place, where he had remained for a long time to guard the camp, and where he was thought to be tarrying still;” but must rather assume that his coming up from Gilgal is closely connected with the appearance of the angel-prince, as described in Jos 5:13, to announce to Joshua the fall of Jericho after the circumcision of the people at Gilgal. Just as on that occasion, when Israel had just entered into the true covenant relation to the Lord by circumcision, and was preparing for the conquest of Canaan, the angel of the Lord appeared to Joshua as the prince of the army of Jehovah, to ensure him of the taking of Jericho; so here after the entrance of the tribes of Israel into their inheritances, when they were beginning to make peace with the remaining Canaanites, and instead of rooting them out were content to make them tributary, the angel of the Lord appeared to the people, to make known to all the children of Israel that by such intercourse with the Canaanites they had broken the covenant of the Lord, and to foretell the punishment which would follow this transgression of the covenant. By the fact, therefore, that he came up from Gilgal, it is distinctly shown that the same angel who gave the whole of Canaan into the hands of the Israelites when Jericho fell, had appeared to them again at Bochim, to make known to them the purposes of God in consequence of their disobedience to the commands of the Lord. How very far it was from being the author’s intention to give simply a geographical notice, is also evident from the fact that he merely describes the place where this appearance occurred by the name which was given to it in consequence of the event, viz., Bochim, i.e., weepers. The situation of this place is altogether unknown. The rendering of the lxx, , gives no clue whatever; for merely arises from a confusion of with in 2Sa 5:23, which the lxx have also rendered , and … is an arbitrary interpolation of the translators themselves, who supposed Bochim to be in the neighbourhood of Bethel, “in all probability merely because they though of Allon-bachuth, the oak of weeping, at Bethel, which is mentioned in Gen 35:8” ( Bertheau). With regard to the piska in the middle of the verse, see the remarks on Jos 4:1. In his address the angel of the Lord identifies himself with Jehovah (as in Jos 5:14 compared with Jos 6:2), by describing himself as having made them to go up out of Egypt and brought them into the land which He sware unto their fathers. There is something very striking in the use of the imperfect in the place of the perfect (cf. Jdg 6:8), as the substance of the address and the continuation of it in the historical tense and require the preterite. The imperfect is only to be explained on the supposition that it is occasioned by the imperf. consec. which follows immediately afterwards and reacts through its proximity. “ I will not break my covenant for ever,” i.e., will keep what I promised when making the covenant, viz., that I would endow Israel with blessings and salvation, if they for their part would observe the covenant duties into which they had entered (see Exo 19:5.), and obey the commandments of the Lord. Among these was the commandment to enter into no alliance with the inhabitants of that land, viz., the Canaanites (see Exo 23:32-33; Exo 34:12-13, Exo 34:15-16; Deu 7:2.; Jos 23:12). “ Destroy their altars: ” taken verbatim from Exo 34:13; Deu 7:5. The words “ and ye have not hearkened to my voice ” recall to mind Exo 19:5. “ What have ye done ” ( , literally “what is this that ye have done”) sc., in sparing the Canaanites and tolerating their altars?
Fuente: Keil & Delitzsch Commentary on the Old Testament
| An Angel Rebukes the Israelites. | B. C. 1425. |
1 And an angel of the LORD came up from Gilgal to Bochim, and said, I made you to go up out of Egypt, and have brought you unto the land which I sware unto your fathers; and I said, I will never break my covenant with you. 2 And ye shall make no league with the inhabitants of this land; ye shall throw down their altars: but ye have not obeyed my voice: why have ye done this? 3 Wherefore I also said, I will not drive them out from before you; but they shall be as thorns in your sides, and their gods shall be a snare unto you. 4 And it came to pass, when the angel of the LORD spake these words unto all the children of Israel, that the people lifted up their voice, and wept. 5 And they called the name of that place Bochim: and they sacrificed there unto the LORD.
It was the privilege of Israel that they had not only a law in general sent them from heaven, once for all, to direct them into and keep them in the way of happiness, but that they had particular messages sent them from heaven, as there was occasion, for reproof, for correction, and for instruction in righteousness, when at any time they turned aside out of that way. Besides the written word which they had before them to read, they often heard a word behind them, saying, This is the way, Isa. xxx. 21. Here begins that way of God’s dealing with them. When they would not hear Moses, let it be tried whether they will hear the prophets. In these verses we have a very awakening sermon that was preached to them when they began to cool in their religion.
I. The preacher was an angel of the Lord (v. 1), not a prophet, not Phinehas, as the Jews conceit; gospel ministers are indeed called angels of the churches, but the Old-Testament prophets are never called angels of the Lord; no doubt this was a messenger we from heaven. Such extraordinary messengers we sometimes find in this book employed in the raising up of the judges that delivered Israel, as Gideon and Samson; and now, to show how various are the good offices they do for God’s Israel, here is one sent to preach to them, to prevent their falling into sin and trouble. This extraordinary messenger was sent to command, if possible, the greater regard to the message, and to affect the minds of a people whom nothing seemed to affect but what was sensible. The learned bishop Patrick is clearly of opinion that this was not a created angel, but the Angel of the covenant, the same that appeared to Joshua as captain of the hosts of the Lord, who was God himself. Christ himself, says Dr. Lightfoot; who but God and Christ could say, I made you to go up out of Egypt? Joshua had lately admonished them to take heed of entangling themselves with the Canaanites, but they regarded not the words of a dying man; the same warning therefore is here brought them by the living God himself, the Son of God appearing as an angel. If they slight his servants, surely they will reverence his Son. This angel of the Lord is said to come up from Gilgal, perhaps not walking on the earth, but flying swiftly, as the angel Gabriel did to Daniel, in the open firmament of heaven; but, whether walking or flying, he seemed to come from Gilgal for a particular reason. Gilgal was long their headquarters after they came into Canaan, many signal favours they had there received from God, and there the covenant of circumcision was renewed (Mic. vi. 5), of all which it was designed they should be reminded by his coming from Gilgal. The remembrance of what we have received and heard will prepare us for a warning to hold fast, Rev 3:2; Rev 3:3.
II. The persons to whom this sermon was preached were all the children of Israel, v. 4. A great congregation for a great preacher! They were assembled either for war, each tribe sending in its forces for some great expedition, or rather for worship, and then the place of their meeting must be Shiloh, where the tabernacle was, at which they were all to come together three times a year. When we attend upon God in instituted ordinances we may expect to hear from him, and to receive his gifts at \ his own gates. The place is called Bochim (v. 1), because it gained that name upon this occasion. All Israel needed the reproof and warning here given, and therefore it is spoken to them all.
III. The sermon itself is short, but very close. God here tells them plainly, 1. What he had done for them, v. 1. He had brought them out of Egypt, a land of slavery and toil, into Canaan, a land of rest, liberty, and plenty. The miseries of the one served as a foil to the felicities of the other. God had herein been kind to them, true to the oath sworn to their fathers, had given such proofs of his power as left them inexcusable if they distrusted it, and such engagements to his service as left them inexcusable if they deserted it. 2. What he had promised them: I said, I will never break my covenant with you. When he took them to be his peculiar people, it was not with any design to cast them off again, or to change them for another people at his pleasure; let them but be faithful to him, and they should find him unchangeably constant to them. He told them plainly that the covenant he entered into with them should never break, unless it broke on their side. 3. What were his just and reasonable expectations from them (v. 2): that being taken into covenant with God they should make no league with the Canaanites, who were both his enemies and theirs,–that having set up his altar they should throw down their altars, lest they should be a temptation to them to serve their gods. Could any thing be demanded more easy? 4. How they had in this very thing, which he had most insisted on, disobeyed him: “But you have not in so small a matter obeyed my voice.” In contempt of their covenant with God, and their confederacy with each other in that covenant, they made leagues of friendship with the idolatrous devoted Canaanites, and connived at their altars, though they stood in competition with God’s. “Why have you done this? What account can you give of this perverseness of yours at the bar of right reason? What apology can you make for yourselves, or what excuse can you offer?” Those that throw off their communion with God, and have fellowship with the unfruitful works of darkness, know not what they do now, and will have nothing to say for themselves in the day of account shortly. 5. How they must expect to smart by and by for this their folly, v. 3. Their tolerating the Canaanites among them would, (1.) Put a period to their victories: “You will not drive them out,” says God, “and therefore I will not;” thus their sin was made their punishment. Thus those who indulge their lusts and corruptions, which they should mortify, forfeit the grace of God, and it is justly withdrawn from them. If we will not resist the devil, we cannot expect that God should tread him under our feet. (2.) It would involve them in continual troubles. “They shall be thorns in your sides to gore you, which way soever you turn, always doing you one mischief or other.” Those deceive themselves who expect advantage by friendship with those that are enemies to God. (3.) It would (which was worst of all) expose them to constant temptation and draw them to sin. “Their gods” (their abominations, so the Chaldee) “will be a snare to you; you will find yourselves wretchedly entangled in an affection to them, and it will be your ruin,” so some read it. Those that approach sin are justly left to themselves to fall into sin and to perish in it. God often makes men’s sin their punishment; and thorns and snares are in the way of the froward, who will walk contrary to God.
IV. The good success of this sermon is very remarkable: The people lifted up their voice and wept, v. 4. 1. The angel had told them of their sins, for which they thus expressed their sorrow: the lifted up their voice in confession of sin, crying out against their own folly and ingratitude, and wept, as those that were both ashamed of themselves and angry at themselves, as having acted so directly contrary both to their reason and to their interest. 2. The angel had threatened them with the judgments of God, of which they thus expressed their dread: they lifted up their voice in prayer to God to turn away his wrath from them, and wept for fear of that wrath. They relented upon this alarm, and their hearts melted within them, and trembled at the word, and not without cause. This was good, and a sign that the word they heard made an impression upon them: it is a wonder sinners can ever read their Bible with dry eyes. But this was not enough; they wept, but we do not find that they reformed, that they went home and destroyed all the remains of idolatry and idolaters among them. Many are melted under the word that harden again before they are cast into a new mould. However, this general weeping, (1.) Gave a new name to the place (v. 5): they called it Bochim, Weepers, a good name for our religious assemblies to answer. Had they kept close to God and their duty, no voice but that of singing would have been heard in their congregation; but by their sin and folly the had made other work for themselves, and now nothing is to be heard but the voice of weeping. (2.) It gave occasion for a solemn sacrifice: They sacrificed there unto the Lord, having (as is supposed) met at Shiloh, where God’s altar was. They offered sacrifice to turn away God’s wrath, and to obtain his favour, and in token of their dedication of themselves to him, and to him only, making a covenant by this sacrifice. The disease being thus taken in time, and the physic administered working so well, one would have hoped a cure might be effected. But by the sequel of the story it appears to have been too deeply rooted to be wept out.
Fuente: Matthew Henry’s Whole Bible Commentary
Judges – Chapter 2
Angel Visit, vs. 1-5
Verses 1-3 express a cause, while verses 4-5 describe an effect. The angel’s visit was provoked by the many failures of the tribes with regard to extermination of the pagan inhabitants of the land of Canaan. Gilgal was in the Jordan valley, where Israel had first encamped upon coming into the land (Jos 4:19). Bochim was not far from Gilgal, but its exact location is now unknown. Some suggest that it was between Bethel and Shiloh. Perhaps the coming of the angel by way of Gilgal was a reminder to Israel how the Lord had brought them into the land.
First, the angel enumerates the Lord’s care for Israel. He had brought them out of Egypt; gave them the land He swore to give their fathers; promised never to break His covenant with them. Second are stated the Lord’s requirements of Israel. They were to make no league with the inhabitants of the land; they were to destroy the pagan altars; but they had disobeyed the Lord’s voice. Third, the Lord will let their own breach of the covenant bring their judgment on them. He will no longer drive out their enemies; the pagans will be frustrating thorns in their sides; their false gods will be a snare to their downfall.
Israel had entered into league with the Canaanites by not driving them out. As long as the Canaanites remained in the land they would erect their altars, and many of the Israelites would join their worship. So shortly after their solemn promise to Joshua and the Lord (Joshua, chapter 24) they have gone into apostasy. This was dreadful news, and the place where the angel delivered the message got its name from the event. Bochim means the place of weeping. It is good that some of them could still weep over conditions, for that indicated hope still for them. There the weepers sacrificed to the Lord and tried to get back into His favor.
Fuente: Garner-Howes Baptist Commentary
THE BOOK OF JUDGES
Judges 1-21.
THE Book of Judges continues the Book of Joshua. There are some Books of the Bible, the proper location of which require careful study, but Judges follows Joshua in chronological order. The Book opens almost identically with the Book of Joshua. In the latter the reading is, Now after the death of Moses the servant of the Lord it came to pass that the Lord spake unto Joshua. In the Book of Judges, Now after the death of Joshua it came to pass, that the Children of Israel asked thd Lord, saying Who shall go up for us against the Canaanites first, to fight against them? And the Lord said, Judah shall go up. God always has His man chosen and His ministry mapped out. We may worry about our successors and wonder whether we shall be worthily followed, but as a matter of fact that is a question beyond us and does not belong to us. It is not given to man to choose prophets, apostles, evangelists, pastors and teachers. That prerogative belongs to the ascended Lord, and He is not derelict in His duty nor indifferent to the interests of Israel. Before one falls, He chooses another. The breach in time that bothers men is not a breach to Him at all. It is only an hour given to the people for the expression of bereavement. It is only a day in which to calm the public mind and call out public sympathy and centralize and cement public interest.
Men may choose their co-laborers as Judah chose Simeon; leaders may pick out their captains as Moses did, and as did Joshua; but God makes the first choice, and when men leave that choice to Him, He never makes a mistake.
Whenever a captain of the hosts of the Lord is unworthily succeeded, misguided men have forgotten God and made the choice on the basis of their own judgment.
People sometimes complain of some indifferent or false preacher, We cant see why God sent us such a pastor. He didnt! You called him yourself. You didnt sufficiently consult God. You didnt keep your ears open to the still, small voice. You didnt wait on bended knees until He said, Behold your leader; follow him!
When God appoints Judah, he also delivers the Canaanites and the Perizzites into his hands. Adoni-bezek, the brutal, will be humbled by him; the capital city will fall before him; the southland will succumb, also the north and the east and the west, and the mountains will capitulate before the Lord of Hosts.
But the Book of Judges doesnt present a series of victories. There is no Book in the Bible that so clearly typifies the successes and reverses, the ups and downs, the victories and defeats of the church, as the history of Israel here illustrates. It naturally divides itself under The Seven Apostasies, The Successive Judges, and The Civil War.
THE SEVEN APOSTASIES
The first chapter is not finished before failure finds expression. Of Judah it was said he could not drive out the inhabitants of the valley because they had chariots of iron (Jdg 1:19). Of the children of Benjamin it was said, They did not drive out the Jebusites that inhabited Jerusalem (Jdg 1:21). Of Manasseh it was said, They did not drive out the inhabitants of Beth-Shean and her towns, nor Taanach and her towns, nor the inhabitants of Dor and her towns, nor the inhabitants of Ibleam and her towns, nor the inhabitants of Megiddo and her towns: but the Canaanites would dwell in that land (Jdg 1:27). Neither did Ephraim drive out the Canaanites that dwelt in Gezer, (Jdg 1:29); neither did Zebulun drive out the inhabitants of Kitron (Jdg 1:30), nor the inhabitants of Mahalol. Neither did Asher (Jdg 1:31) drive out the inhabitants of Acho nor of Zidon; neither did Naphthali drive out the inhabitants of Beth-Shemesh (Jdg 1:33), and this failure to clear the field results in an aggressive attack before the first chapter finishes, and the Amorites force the children of Dan into the mountain (Jdg 1:34).
If one study these seven apostasies that follow one another in rapid succession, he will be impressed by two or three truths. They resulted from the failure to execute the command of the Lord. The command of the Lord to Joshua was that he should expel the people from before him and drive them from out of his sight, and possess their land (Jos 23:5). He was not to leave any among them nor to make mention of any of their gods (Jos 23:7). He was promised that one of his men should chase a thousand. He was even told that if any were left and marriage was made with them that they should know for a certainty that the Lord God would no more drive out any of these nations from before them; that they should be snares and traps and scourges and thorns, until Israel perished from off the good land that God had given them (Jos 23:13). How strangely the conduct of Israel, once in the land, comports with this counsel given them before they entered it; and there is a typology in all of this.
The Christian life has its enemiessocial enemies, domestic enemies, national enemies! Ones companionship will determine ones conduct; ones marriage relation will eventuate religiously or irreligiously. The character of ones nation is more or less influential upon life.
The ordinance of baptism, the initial rite into the church, looks to an absolute separation from the world, and is expressed by the Apostle Paul as a death unto sin, the clear intent being that no evil customs are to be kept, nor companions retained, nor entangling alliances maintained. The word now is as the word then, Come out from among them, and be ye separate (2Co 6:17).
They imperiled their souls by this forbidden social intercourse. It is very difficult to live with a people and not become like them. It is very difficult to dwell side by side with nations and not intermarry. Intermarriage between believers and unbelievers is almost certain to drag down the life of the former to the level of the latter. False worship, like other forms of sin, has its subtle appeal; and human nature being what it is, false gods rise easily to exalted place in corrupted affections.
If there is one thing God tried to do for ancient Israel, and one thing God tries to do for the new Israel, the Church, it was, and is, to get His people to disfellowship the world.
There are men who think God is a Moloch because He so severely punished Israels compromises. They cant forget that when Joshua went over Jordan and Israel lay encamped on the skirts of the mountains of Moab, her people visited a high place near the camp whereon a festival of Midian, idolatrous, licentious in the extreme, was in process, and they went after this putrid paganism and polluted their own souls with the idolatrous orgy. Then it was that Moses, speaking for the Lord, said, Take all the heads of the people, and hang them up before the Lord against the sun, and while that hideous row of dead ones was still before their eyes, the plague fell on the camp and 24,000 of the transgressors perished! But severe as it was, Israel soon forgot, showing that it was not too severe, and raising the question as to whether it was severe enough to impress the truth concerning idolatry and all its infamous effects.
Solomon is commonly reputed to have been the wisest of men, and yet it was his love alliances with the strange women of Moab, Ammon, Zidon and the Hittites, these very people, that brought the Lords anger against him and compelled God to charge him with having turned from the Lord God of Israel and in consequence of which God said, I will surely rend the kingdom from thee, and will give it to thy servant (1Ki 11:11).
Again and again the kingdom has been lost after the same manner. The present peril of the church is at this point, and by its alliance with the world, the kingdom of our Lord is delayed, and Satan, the prince of this world, remains in power, and instead of 24,000 people perishing in judgment, tens of thousands and millions of people perish through this compromise, and swallowed up in sin, rush into hell.
But to follow the text further is to find their restoration to Gods favor rested with genuine repentance. There are recorded in Judges seven apostasies; they largely result from one sin. There are seven judgments, increasing in severity, revealing Gods determined purpose to correct and save; and there are seven recoveries, each of them in turn the result of repentance. God never looks upon a penitent man, a penitent people, a penitent church, a penitent nation, without compassion and without turning from His purposes of judgment. When the publican went up into the temple to pray, his was a leprous soul, but when he smote upon his breast and cried, God be merciful to me a sinner, his was the instant experience of mercy. When at Pentecost, 2500 sincere souls fell at the feet of Peter and the other Apostles, and cried, Men and brethren, what shall we do, the response was, Repent and be baptized every one of you in the Name of Jesus Christ for the remission of sins; and the promise was, Ye shall receive the gift of the Holy Ghost.
When David, who was a child of God, guilty of murder and adultery combined, poured out his soul as expressed in the Fifty-first Psalm, God heard that prayer, pardoned those iniquities, restored him to the Divine favor, and showered him with proofs of the Divine love.
When Nineveh went down in humility, a city of 600,000 souls, every one of whom from Sardana-palus, the king on the throne, to the humblest peasant within the walls, proving his repentance by sitting in sackcloth and ashes, God turned at once from the evil He had thought to do unto them and He did it not, and Nineveh was saved.
The simple truth is, God has no pleasure in the death of the wicked. He never punishes from preference, but only for our profit; and, even then, like a father, He suffers more deeply than the children upon whom His strokes of judgment fall.
What a contrast to that statement of Scripture, I have no pleasure in the death of the wicked, is that other sentence, Precious in the sight of the Lord is the death of His saints. The reason is not far to seek. In the first case it is death indeed; death fearful, death eternal. In the second case, death is a birth, a release from the flesh that held to a larger, richer, fuller life. In that God takes pleasure.
There is then for the sinner no royal road to the recovery of Gods favor. It is the thorny path of repentance instead. It is through Bochim, the Vale of Tears; but it were just as well that the prodigal, returning home, should not travel by a flowery path. He will be the less tempted to go away again if his back-coming is with agony, and home itself will seem the more sweet when reached if there his weary feet find rest for the first time, and from their bleeding soles the thorns are picked; if there his nakedness is clothed, his hunger is fed and his sense of guilt is kissed away. Oh, the grace of God to wicked men the moment repentance makes possible their forgiveness!
The court in Minneapolis yesterday illustrated this very point. When a young man, who had been wayward indeed, who had turned highway-robber, saw his error, sobbed his way to Christ and voluntarily appeared in court and asked to have sentence passed, newspapers expressed surprise that the heart of the judge should have been so strangely moved, and that the sentence the law absolutely required to be passed upon him, should have been, by the judge, suspended, and the young man returned to his home and wife and babe. But our Judge, even God, is so compassionate that such conduct on His part excites no surprise. It is His custom! Were it not so, every soul of us would stand under sentence of death. The law which is just and holy and good has passed that sentence already, and it is by the grace of God we have our reprieve. Seven apostasies? Yes! Seven judgments? Yes! But seven salvations! Set that down to the honor and glory of our God! It is by grace we are saved!
THE SUCCESSIVE JUDGES
Evidently God has no special regard for some of our modern superstitions, for in this period of conquest He deliberately chooses thirteen judges and sets them over Israel in turn, beginning with Othniel, the son of Kenaz, and nephew of Caleb, and concluding with Samson, the son of Manoah.
They represented varied stations of Israelitish society. A careful review of their personal history brings a fresh illustration of the fact that God is no respector of persons; and it also illustrates the New Testament statement that Not many wise men after the flesh, not many mighty, not many noble, are called. With few exceptions these judges had not been heard of until their appointment rendered necessary some slight personal history. That is the Divine method until this hour. How seldom the children of the great are themselves great. How often, when God needs a ruler in society, He seeks a log cabin and chooses an angular ladAbe Lincoln. The difference between the inspired Scriptures and yesterdays newspaper is in the circumstance that the Scriptures tell the truth about men and leave God to do the gilding and impart the glory, instead of trying to establish the same through some noble family tree. There is a story to the effect that a young artist, working under his master in the production of a memorial window that represented the greatest and best that art ever knew, picked up, at the close of the day, the fragments of glass flung aside, and finally wrought from them a window more glorious still. Whether this is historically correct or not, we know what God has done with the refuse of society again and again. Truly
God hath chosen the foolish things of the world to confound the wise; and God hath chosen the weak things of the world to confound the things which are mighty;
And base things of the world, and things which are despised, hath God chosen, yea, and things which are not, to bring to nought things that are:
That no flesh should glory in His presence * * * * He that glorieth, let him glory in the Lord (1Co 1:27-29; 1Co 1:31).
Out of these un-named ones some were made to be immortalGideon, Jephthae, Samson, Deborah.
Gideon, the son of Joash, became such because he dared to trust God. The average Captain of hosts wants men increased that the probabilities of victory may grow proportionately. At the word of the Lord Gideon has his hundreds of thousands and tens of thousands reduced to a handful. What are three hundred men against the multitude that compassed him about? And what are pitchers, with lights in them, against swords and spears and stones; and yet his faith failed not! He believed that, God with him, no man could be against him. When Paul comes to write his Epistle to the Hebrews and devotes a long chapter of forty verses to a list of names made forever notable through faith, Gideon and Barak and Samson and Jephthaethese all appear, and they are put there properly, reason confirming revelation. Barak had faced the hundreds of iron chariots of the enemy, and yet at the word of the Lord, had dared to brave and battle them. Samson, with no better equipment than the jaw-bone of an ass, had slain his heaps. Jephthae, when he had made a vow to the Lord, though it cost him that which was dearer than life, would keep it. Such characters are safe in history. Whatever changes may come over the face of the world, however notable may eventually be names; whatever changes may occur in the conceptions of men as to what makes for immortality, those who believe in God will abide, and childrens children will call their names blessed. Gideon will forever stand for a combination of faith and courage. Barak will forever represent the man who, at the word of the Lord, will go against great odds. Jephthae will forever be an encouragement to men who, having sincerely made vows, will solemnly keep the same; and Samson will forever represent, not his prowess, but the strength of the Lord, which, though it may express itself in the person of a man, knows no limitations so long as that man remains loyal to his vows, and the spirit of the Lord rests upon him.
Before passing from this study, however, permit me to call your attention to the fact that there was made a political exception in the matter of sex. We supposed that the putting of woman into mans place is altogether a modern invention. Not so; it is not only a fact in English language but in human history, that all rules have their exceptions. Gods rule for prophets is men, and yet the daughters of Philip were prophetesses. Gods rule for kings is men, and yet one of the greatest of rulers was Queen Victoria. Gods rule for judges is men, and yet Deborah was long since made an exception. Let it be understood that the exception to the rule is not intended to supplant the rule. The domestic circle is Gods choice for womankind, and her wisdom, tact and energy are not only needed there, but find there their finest employment. And yet there are times when through the indifference of men, or through their deadness to the exigencies of the day, God can do nothing else than raise up a Deborah, speak to a Joan of Arc, put on the throne a Victoria.
I noticed in a paper recently a discussion as to whether women prominent in politics proved good mothers, and one minister at least insisted that they did. We doubt it! The text speaks of Deborah as a mother in Israel, but we find no mention of her children. Our judgment is that had there been born to her a dozen of her own Israel might never have known her leadership. The unmarried woman, or the barren wife, may have time and opportunity for social and political concern; but the mother of children commonly finds her home sphere sufficient for all talents, and an opportunity to reach society, cleanse politics, aid the church, help the world, as large an office as ever came to man. However, let it be understood that all our fixed customs, all our standard opinions, give place when God speaks. If it is His will that a woman judge, then she is best fitted for that office; if He exalts her to lead armies, then victory will perch upon her banners; if He calls her to the place of power on the throne, then ruling wisdom is with her.
In the language of the Apostle Paul, And what shall I say more, for the time would fail me to tell of Gideon and of Samson and of Barak and of Jepkthae. They are all great characters and worthy extended discussion. It would equally fail me to rehearse the confusion, civil and religious, that follows from the seventeenth chapter of this Book to the end, but in chapters nineteen to twenty-one there is recorded an incident that cannot in justice to an outline study, be overlooked, for it results in
THE CIVIL WAR
Tracing that war to its source, we find it was the fruit of the adoption of false religions. We have already seen some of the evil effects of this intermingling with heathen faiths, but we need not expect an end of such effects so long as the compromise obtains. There is no peace in compromise; no peace with your enemies. A compromise is never satisfactory to either side. Heathen men do not want half of their polytheism combined with half of your monotheism. They are not content to give up a portion of their idolatry and take in its place praises to the one and only God. The folly of this thing was shown when a few years since the leaders of the International Sunday School Association attempted to temporarily affiliate Christianity with Buddhism. The native Christians in Japan, in proportion to their sincere belief in the Bible arid in Christ, rejected the suggestion as an insult to their new faith, and the followers of Buddha and the devotees of Shintoism would not be content with Christian conduct unless the Emperor was made an object of worship and Christian knees bowed before him. It must be said, to the shame of certain Sunday School leaders, that they advocated that policy and prostrated themselves in the presence of His Majesty to the utter disgust of their more uncompromising fellows. The consequence was, no Convention of the International Association has been so unsatisfactory and produced such poor spiritual results as Tokios.
Confusion is always the consequence of compromise, and discontent is the fruit of it, and fights and battles and wars are the common issue.
Idolatry is deadly; graven images cannot be harmonized with the true God. The first and second commandments cannot be ignored and the remainder of the Decalog kept. It is God or nothing! It is the Bible or nothing! It is the faith once delivered or infidelity!
The perfidy of Benjamin brought on the battle. We have already seen that men grow like those with whom they intimately associate. This behavior on the part of the Benjamites is just what you would have expected. The best of men still have to battle with the bad streak that belongs to the flesh incident to the fall; and, when by evil associations that streak is strengthened, no man can tell what may eventually occur. Had this conduct been recorded against the heathen, it would not have amazed us at all. We speedily forget that as between men there is no essential difference. Circumstances and Divine aidthese make a difference that is apparent indeed; but it is not so much because one is better than the other, but rather because one has been better situated, less tempted, more often strengthened; or else because he has found God and stands not in himself but in a Saviour.
Pick up your paper tomorrow morning and there will be a record of deeds as dark as could be recorded against the natives of Africa, or those of East India or China, Siberia or the South Sea Islands. The conduct of these men toward the concubine was little worse than that of one of our own citizens in a land of civilization and Christianity, who lately snatched a twelve-year-old girl and kept her for days as his captive, and when at last she eluded him, it was only to wander back to her home, despoiled and demented. Do you wonder that God is no respecter of persons? Do you wonder that the Bible teaches there is no difference? Do you doubt it is all of grace?
The issues of that war proved the presence and power of God. There are men who doubt if God is ever in battle; but history reveals the fact that few battles take place without His presence. The field of conflict is commonly the place of judgment, and justice is seldom or never omitted. We may be amazed to see Israel defeated twice, and over 40,000 of her people fall, when as a matter of fact she went up animated by the purpose of executing vengeance against an awful sin. Some would imagine that God would go with them and not a man would fall, and so He might have done had Israel, including Judah and all loyal tribes, been themselves guiltless. But such was not the truth! They had sins that demanded judgment as surely as Benjamins sin, and God would not show Himself partial to either side, but mete out judgment according to their deserts. That is why 40,000 of the Israelites had to fall. They were facing then their own faithlessness. They were paying the price of their own perfidy. They were getting unto themselves proofs that their fellowship with the heathen and their adoption of heathen customs was not acceptable with God.
Many people could not understand why England and France and Belgium and Canada and Australia and America should have lost so heavily in the late war, 19141918, believing as we did believe that their cause was absolutely just. Why should God have permitted them to so suffer in its defense? Millions upon millions of them dying, enormous wealth destroyed, women widowed, children orphaned, lands sacked, cities burned, cathedrals ruined, sanctuaries desecrated. The world around, there went up a universal cry, Why? And yet the answer is not far to seek. England was not guiltless; France was not guiltless; Belgium was not guiltless.
Poor Belgium! All the world has turned to her with pity and we are still planning aid for the Belgians and to preach to them and their children the Gospel of grace, and this we should do; but God had not forgotten that just a few years ago Belgium was blackening her soul by her conduct in the Belgian Congo. Natives by the score and hundreds were beaten brutally, their hands cut off because they did not carry to the Belgian king as much rubber and ivory as Belgian avarice demanded. American slavery, in its darkest hour, never knew anything akin to the oppression and persecution to which Belgium subjected the blacks in the Congo. Significant, indeed, is the circumstance that when the Germans came into Belgium, many Belgian hands were cut off; hapless and helpless children were found in this mangled state. Frightful as it was, it must have reminded Belgian authorities of their sins in Africa and of the certainty and exactitude of final judgment.
We have an illustration of this truth in the Book of Judges. When Judah went up against the Canaanites and the Lord delivered them into his hands, they slew in Bezek 10,000 men. They found Adoni-Bezek, the king, and fought against him, and caught him and cut off his thumbs and great toes. We cry Horror! and wonder that Gods own people could so behave; but, complete the sentence, and you begin to see justice, And Adoni-bezek said, Threescore and ten kings, having their thumbs and their great toes cut off, gathered their meat under my table. As I have done, so God hath requited me (Jdg 1:7).
Think of England in her infamous opium traffic, forcing it upon natives at the mouths of guns, enriching her own exchecquer at the cost of thousands and tens of thousands of hapless natives of East India and China!
Think of France, with her infidelity, having denied God, desecrated His sabbath, rejected His Son and given themselves over to absinthe and sensuality!
Think of the United States with her infamous liquor traffic, shipping barrels upon barrels to black men and yellow men, and cursing the whole world to fill her own coffers.
Tell me whether judgment was due the nations, and whether they had to see their sin in the lurid light of Belgian and French battlefields; but do not overlook the fact that when the war finally ends, Benjamin, the worst offender, the greater sinner, goes down in the greatest judgment, and one day Benjamins soldiers are almost wiped from the earth! Out of 26,700, 25,000 and more perish. Tell us now whether judgment falls where judgment belongs!
Take the late war. Again and again Germany was triumphant, but when the Allies had suffered sufficiently and had learned to lean not to themselves but upon the Lord; when, like Israel, they turned from hope in self and trusted in God, then God bared His arm in their behalf and Germany went down in defeat, a defeat that made their come-back impossible; a defeat that fastened upon them the tribute of years; a defeat that proved to them that, great as might have been the sins of the allied nations, greater still, in the sight of God, was their own sin; for final judgment is just judgment.
God is not only in history; God has to do with the making of history. If men without a king behave every one as is right in his own eyes, the King of all kings, the Lord of all lords, will do that which will eventually seem right in the eyes of all angels and of all good men. That is GOD!
Fuente: The Bible of the Expositor and the Evangelist by Riley
THE BEGINNING OF THE LORDS REBUKE
CRITICAL NOTES.
Jdg. 2:1. An angel of the Lord.] Not merely a messenger, but the angel of Jehovah. The phrase is used nearly sixty times to designate the angel of Gods presence. [Speakers Commentary.] Not a prophet, or some other earthly messenger of Jehovah, either Phinehas or Joshua, as the Targums, the Rabbins, Berthean, and others assume, but the angel of the Lord, who is of one essence with God. In the simple historical narrative a prophet is never called Malach Jehovah. The prophets are always called either or , as in Jdg. 6:8, or else man of God, as in 1Ki. 12:22; 1Ki. 13:1, &c.; and Hag. 1:13, and Mal. 3:1, cannot be adduced as proofs to the contrary, because in both these passages the purely appellative meaning of the word Malach is established beyond all question by the context itself. Moreover, no prophet ever identifies himself so entirely with God as the angel of Jehovah does here. The prophets always distinguish between themselves and Jehovah by introducing their words with the declaration Thus saith Jehovah, as the prophet mentioned in Jdg. 6:8 is said to have done. [Keil.] The language itself proclaims the presence of the Angel of the Covenant; it cannot be thought of as the utterance of a merely human messenger. Came up from Gilgal.] The situation of Bochim is unknown. As the people were assembled in congregation (Jdg. 2:4), probably the gathering was in the usual locality, i.e., at or near to Shiloh (cf. Jos. 18:1; Jos. 18:10; Jos. 19:51; Jos. 21:2; Jos. 22:9; Jos. 22:12). Then the angel coming up from Gilgal would probably come from the Gilgal near to Shiloh, where the Israelites had so long encamped during the war under Joshua (cf. Preachers Commentary, pp. 170, 172, 199). It would be sufficiently appropriate that the angel should be seen to come with Jehovahs rebuke from the very place from which the Angel of His Presence had gone up with them to mighty and repeated victories (Isa. 63:9; Jos. 10:6-9; Jos. 10:43; Jos. 11:7). The moral significance of the angel being seen to come from Gilgalthus associated with past helpwould be very great. What could be more full of tender historic reproof than that the angel who had, as it were, waited at the warriors camp to help the faithful, should come from such ground to rebuke the unbelieving and slothful? To Bochim.] That this is seen to be on higher ground than Gilgal, is no proof that the Gilgal was that near Jericho. All the time the site of Bochim is unknown, there is nothing to suggest that this was other than the Gilgal of Deu. 11:30, and 2Ki. 2:1, from which Elijah and Elisha went down to Bethel ( ). The LXX. place Bochim near to Bethel, saying that the angel went up from Galgal to the (place of) weeping, and to Bthel, and to the house of Israel. Even if this were accepted, Bochim may have been on the mountain east of Bethel from whence Abraham obtained so wide an outlook in all directions (Gen. 13:14-15); in which case it might be quite correct, at least of the latter part of the distance, to speak of the angel as going up to Bochim. Keil, however, points out that this reading of the LXX. gives no clue whatever.
Jdg. 2:2. Why have ye done this?] Lit., What is this which ye have done? Not so much an inquiry as a remonstrance and a chiding.
Jdg. 2:3. But they shall be as thorns in your sides.] = But they shall be to you for adversaries. , a side, pl. , is from the root , to turn oneself, to oppose oneself, to any one. Hence Chald. , on the side of, the part of. (Dan. 6:5); and , against the side of (Dan. 7:25). Therefore here should be rendered adversaries; otherwise, the expression would stand, they shall be to you for sides. This makes the various conjectures on this expression unnecessary. Cf. Gesen. and Buxtorf, jun., who both refer to this verse, and both render , as found here, an adversary.
Jdg. 2:5. They sacrificed there unto the Lord.] This indicates the close proximity of Bochim to Shechem, where the tabernacle was at this time (Jos. 24:25-26). [Speakers Commentary.] Keil, however, thinks that it does not follow from this sacrifice that the tabernacle or the ark of the covenant was to be found at Bochim. In any place where the Lord appeared to the people, sacrifices might be offered to Him (Jdg. 6:20; Jdg. 6:26; Jdg. 6:28; Jdg. 13:16 sqq.; 2Sa. 24:25). On the other hand, it is added, it does follow from the sacrifice at Bochim, where there was no sanctuary of Jehovah, that the person who appeared to the people was not a prophet, nor even an ordinary angel, but the angel of the Lord, who is essentially one with Jehovah.
MAIN HOMILETICS OF THE PARAGRAPH.Jdg. 2:1-5
THE INEVITABLE CONSEQUENCES OF SIN.Jdg. 2:1-4
The latter half of the previous chapter is a necessary introduction to the opening verses of this. Gods messenger of chastisement never appears till our sins have preceded him. The pleasures of sin are the evening twilight which ever comes before the night of Divine punishment. The lurid light of the evening sunset may have its fascinations; for all that, it does but precede the darkness.
This messenger of punishment is none other than The Messenger of the Covenant (Mal. 3:1). This angel is none other than He of whom it has presently to be written, The Angel of His presence saved them (Isa. 63:9 : cf. also, Exo. 13:21; Exo. 14:19; Exo. 23:20; Exo. 23:23; Exo. 32:34; Exo. 33:14; Num. 20:16). How passing sad that the messenger who heralds the dark night of human suffering should be He who ever loves to come to us as the Sun of Righteousness! In these five verses we see
I. The Lord determinately following His people. He who in after years said through Hosea, How shall I give thee up, Ephraim? how shall I deliver thee, Israel? here shews us that the feeling, expressed seven centuries later, was cherished long before it was expressed. Even though the tribes had all turned to sin, He would hedge up their way with thorns (Hos. 2:6), and for this very purpose the Lord Himself, speaking in His own person, now appeared to them (Jdg. 2:3).
1. His purpose at the first was too firmly taken to suffer Him to forsake them now. The promises to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob had in them no hesitation. The language to Moses, when the work of redemption was beginning, left no place for failure (Exo. 6:2-8). The Divine miracles against Pharaoh had in them no appearance of faltering. Thus, God is seen following His people, even when they turn almost universally to sin.
2. He had done too much for them to give them up lightly. The price of their deliverance from Egypt had been too great to suffer it to be lost. From Goshen right up to Joshuas tomb at Timnath-serah, the way had been lined with miracles and paved with mercy. The price of our redemption has been still more precious. We may look on the unspeakable gift, and find in that the Divine Amen to the Divine promise, I will never leave thee, nor forsake thee.
3. The glory of His name was involved in their failure. Moses had contemplated the overthrow in the wilderness, and, overcome with horror, he had turned as mediator in strong cryings to his God, saying, What wilt Thou do unto Thy great name? So, keeping His name as the name which is above every name, Jesus Christ is here seen as the angel of reproof at Bochim. Every one of the western tribes, except Issachar, whom Gideon found no better than the rest, is actually named as having departed from the Lord; yet the Lord says here, My kindness shall not depart from thee.
4. The love of His heart, had there been nothing else, was sufficient to constrain Him to follow them. The Divine purpose, the miracles, and the committing of His glorious name in some measure to men, had all proceeded from the Divine love. These things were but the streams; the love of Jehovah was the fountain from which all of them had flowed forth unto men. The purpose of God to save, and His unfailing covenant; miracles like those of the manna, the flowing water, the divided sea and river, the falling walls of Jericho, and the victory at Beth-horon: all these, and many similar mercies, are fit themes for glad and holy song. Yet he thinks most wisely, and is likely to sing most continuously and sweetly, who finds in all spoken promises and visible favours so many evidences of the changeless love of the living God. His mercies are precious, but His priceless love which can repeat them all again, and multiply them to meet our utmost need, is more precious still. It was in the living love of Jehovah that the cause was to be found of this gracious visit to Bochim.
II. Rebuke emphatically attending on sin. The words of the Angel are all words of rebuke (Jdg. 2:1-3). Yet how calm is the rebuke. It has in it no haste, and no passion. Every word is terrible with truth and gentleness. We have here:
1. Rebuke set in the overpowering light of past mercies. (a) The Angel reminded them of deliverance from bondage. I made you go up out of Egypt. The hole of the pit whence they were digged was brought before them. The rugged quarry whence they were hewn was recalled to thought. (b) The Angel reminded them of mercies on the way. And have brought you unto the land. These mercies are not enumerated in this record. They may have been alluded to in detail, but even this general reference to them contributed to tears. He thinks but poorly of sin who does not contemplate it in view of what God has done to deliver him from its power and sorrow. (c) The Angel reminded them of the unalterable covenant. The land which I sware unto your fathers. Their fathers had been encouraged by the unfailing promises of God, which had been solemnly given to three successive generations through Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. The covenant with the fathers had been renewed unto the children: I said I will never break my covenant with you. This covenant, however, from the first, included the condition of Israels obedience (Gen. 17:7-14). God never did break that covenant, even when Israel was carried away to Babylon, or when the Romans overthrew Jerusalem. (d) The Angel came up from Gilgal. He laid emphasis upon all the mercy of the past by coming visibly from the place of the old encampment, from which He had so often gone forth with Joshua and the host to mighty victories. Probably Bochim was near to Shiloh, or Bethel (Jdg. 21:19), and the site of the camp at Gilgal lay between them, so that the Angel might have been actually seen by the festive host coming from the very place from which they had so often been led out to ever successful war. What rebuke could possibly be more keen? Here were men both pleading their inability to cope with iron chariots, and yet putting their enemies under tribute. The tribute itself was answer enough to the plea about the chariots. But, as if it were not enough, the Angel of Jehovah comes up from the place from which Israel had never obediently gone forth to a single lost battle. The present wicked unbelief was exposed in a light which might well make the place a place of shame and tears. God was saying with dramatic and irresistible force, I have been thy helper, but under the shadow of My wings thou will not rejoice. The reproofs of the Lord are ever overwhelming. When He undertakes to rebuke, the name of the place where He so appears to us must needs henceforth be Bochim. Will He plead against me with His great power?
2. Rebuke sustained by the proof of direct disobedience. Why have ye done this? or, What is this which ye have done? Evidences of the league were visible all through the land. The enemies of God and truth were living in peace among the people of God. It may have been that some of them were even now present with the multitude. The altars of the idolaters were not thrown down. There they still stood, visibly, in the midst of the people of every tribe. Why have ye done this? When Christ, the Mediator, pleads against us, who shall answer?
3. Rebuke pointing to coming sorrow. They shall be adversaries to you (cf. Crit. Notes), and their gods shall be a snare unto you. The Lords rebuke is not vain and empty. It ever brings forth bitter fruit. What is this that thou hast done? when spoken to Eve, is followed by, I will greatly multiply thy sorrow. What hast thou done? when asked of Cain, does but precede the terrible words, And now thou art cursed from the earth. To Moses and Aaron the Lord said, Ye believed me not, to sanctify me in the eyes of the children of Israel; and the Lord also added, Therefore ye shall not bring this congregation into the land which I have given them. David heard Nathan say, Thou art the man, and forthwith the sentence followed, The sword shall never depart from thine house The child also that is born unto thee shall surely die. Similarly, sentence follows rebuke all through the Scriptures. Yet are we encouraged to say, There is forgiveness with Thee, that Thou mayest be feared.
III. Tears, from the first, accompanying rebuke. All the people lifted up their voice and wept.
1. Weeping, for the most part, has to do with sin. The sources of the Nile may have to be sought many a year; the place where the river of tears takes its rise may generally be found at once, and without mistakes. The well-head of human sorrow is seldom far removed from the mountain-foot of human guilt. By one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin. When the tribes of humanity gather at some Bochim, there is ever something wrong as to their respective inheritances.
2. It is a mercy when the sinful can weep. Our truest tears are the venting of our guilt. Without tears for sin, sin would petrify in our nature; it would assimilate every holier emotion to itself, and then turn all to stone. It was of men who had experienced this that Paul wrote as being past feeling. Many about us now would be thus hardened, but for the tender power of Divine grace. The Angel of the Covenant appears, and forthwith the place of sin and formal religious festivity becomes a Bochim. God is able of these stones to raise up children unto Abraham. Thanks be unto God who is able, that He is also willing! Rowland Hill used to say, Repentance is so sweet a companion, that my only regret in going to heaven is, that I shall leave her behind and know her no more. This is hardly a wise lament. As long as sin is with us, tears are a sweet because a necessary relief; but no more sin must be far better than sin and tears. We may be devoutly thankful that it is written of the saints in heaven, God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes; we ought to be no less thankful that no hand ever altogether wipes away the tears from the sinful eyes of earth. There, tears would be an unmeaning pain; here, they are a necessity. An old poet, more than two centuries ago, wrote tenderly and beautifully on the tears of Mary Magdalene at the tomb:
Not in the Evenings eyes,
When they red with weeping are
For the Sun that dies;
Sits Sorrow with a face so fair.
Nowhere but here did ever meet
Sweetness so sad, sadness so sweet.
Sadness, all the while
She sits on such a throne as this,
Can do nought but smile,
Nor believes she Sadness is:
Gladness itself would be more glad,
(Thus) to be made so sweetly sad.
[Richard Crashaw, 1646.]
Sadness which mourns the loss of Christs presence, or of His Spirit, must needs be among the keenest sorrows of earth; but the sadness which has suffered this loss, and has not mourned it, must presently be the bitterest sorrow of all.
3. Weeping is of small use to the sinful, if they only weep. Bochim is of no avail unless it leads to the breaking of all leagues with idolaters, and to the throwing down of all forbidden altars. Tears must be followed by a reformation; otherwise, they are a useless pain.
IV. Punishment inevitably succeeding the tears in which there is no amendment of life. This whole book of the Judges is Gods comment on the folly of weeping without truly repenting. Emerson has written: Crime and punishment grow out of one stem. Punishment is a fruit that, unsuspected, ripens within the flower of the pleasure which concealed it. Cause and effect, means and ends, seed and fruit, cannot be severed; for the effect already blooms in the cause, the end pre-exists in the means, the fruit in the seed. There is no separating between sin and its natural punishment; unless there be true repentance, there is no separating between sin and its Divine punishment. Nineveh is spared; the thief enters Paradise; Saul obtains mercy; but the weepers of Bochim have their history, for centuries, written in bitter chastisements. As that Cornish proverb, so sentient of a rock-bound shore, puts the matter: He who will not be ruled by the rudder must be ruled by the rock. So he who will not be led to serve Jehovah by the Angel of the Lord, must be driven to seek God indeed by the chastening hand of Canaanites and Philistines.
OUTLINES AND COMMENTS ON THE VERSES
GODS REPROOF OF SIN.Jdg. 2:1-5
I. Sin confronted by the Lord in person. The Angel of the Lord was none other than the Lord Himself (cf. above).
1. God confronts the guilty in mercy. If He did not come to trouble the sinful, they might well despair. God came through His messengers to guilty Saul, to David, to Nebuchadnezzar. When the Lord answered Saul no more, the end was nigh. When the Saviour said to Judas, What thou doest do quickly, the bitterness of death was not distant. Gods silence should be interpreted by the guilty as the noise of coming judgment. I kept silence, is immediately followed by I will reprove thee (Psa. 50:21).
2. When God so confronts the guilty, none can answer. Throughout this brief narrative the only voice that is heard is the voice of the Lord. The sinful, like guilty children, can only answer by their tears. Job cried, Oh that I knew where I might find Him. I would order my cause before Him, and fill my mouth with arguments; yet even Job in that awful Presence could only say, Now mine eye seeth Thee: wherefore I abhor myself, and repent in dust and ashes.
II. Sin manifested by the greatness of Divine mercy.
1. Mercies of deliverance from bondage. I made you to go up out of Egypt.
2. Mercies of promised help. The land which I sware unto your fathers. I said I will never break My covenant with you.
3. Mercies of actual inheritance. I have brought you unto the land.
III. Sin exposed, and the proofs visible on every hand. The league had been made with the inhabitants. The altars still stood throughout the land. Ye have not obeyed My voice. The law was even then engraven on the stones at Ebal; the book of the law was already written (Jos. 8:31-32). There was no disputing either what the Lords voice had been, or that it had been disobeyed. Who can answer when God contends with him on account of sin? If God be against us, who can be for us?
IV. Sin the shadow of coming sorrow. They shall be adversaries to you, &c. Our departures from the way of the Lord ever originate in the heart. The actual commission of sin is the point of contact in the beginning of the eclipse which hides from us the Sun of Righteousness, and the hiding of His face is ever the beginning of darkness. Thou hidest Thy face, they are troubled.
V. Sin lamented, but not forsaken. The people lifted up their voice, and wept. They also offered sacrifice unto the Lord, but they did not put away the transgression. God cannot be reconciled to men who do not forsake iniquity. Blessed is he whose sin is covered; but no tears and no amount of sacrifice can cover the sin which is still persisted in. The Hebrew word to cover, to expiate sin, is also used in the Old Testament for a village. A village was so called because it afforded shelter, or a cover, for the inhabitants. Sacrifice can afford no dwelling-place and no covering to the man who continues in his sin. Even Calvary leaves the soul in all its wickedness, Naked and open to the eyes of Him with whom we have to do, so long as sin is not forsaken. He who comes to the sacrifice of Christ with such tears as lead him to turn from iniquity, will find that his sin is covered, and that Christ is as a City of Refuge.
DIVINE VISITATIONS.Jdg. 2:1-5
I. The time of the Lords visitation. When disobedience was at its height.
II. The method of the Lords visitation. He was seen to come from Gilgal, the place of much past help.
III. The spirit of the Lords visitation. He came in tender and loving reproof.
IV. The influence of the Lords visitation. The Israelites shed tears, called the name of that place The Weepers, and offered sacrifice; yet, with all this, they knew not the day of their visitation as they should have done.
THE TIME OF GODS MANIFESTED HELP.Jdg. 2:1
I. God comes to men in the sorrow of that bondage wherein they were born. I made you go up out of Egypt.
II. God manifests Himself freely to His delivered children so long as they are faithful. The Pillar of Cloud; the Red Sea, &c.
III. God is nigh at hand in all hours of weakness and need. The passage of the Jordan; Jericho, Beth-horon; the waters of Merom.
IV. God is full of long-suffering, even when His people sin. The alternating plagues and miracles in the wilderness. The gracious manifestation at Bochim.
THE ANGEL OF THE COVENANT.Jdg. 2:1
I. The Angel of the Divine Presence (Exo. 13:21; Exo. 14:19).
II. The Angel of gracious promise (Exo. 23:20-25; Exo. 32:34; Exo. 33:2).
III. The Angel of previous help (Exo. 14:24-30; Num. 20:16; Jos. 5:14).
IV. The Angel of severe rebuke (Exo. 23:21; and Jdg. 2:1-3).
V. The Angel of deliverances yet to come (Jdg. 6:11-23; Jdg. 13:9-20).
VI. The Angel of perpetuated song (Psa. 34:7; Isa. 63:9).
DIVINE REMEMBRANCES.Jdg. 2:1
I. Gods remembrance of what we were. He knew Israel as having come up out of Egypt. He found him in a desert land, and the land had not been forgotten. God always remembers where He found us, and what we were.
II. Gods remembrance of the deliverances which He has wrought for us. I made you to go up out of Egypt. The Lord has daily in view all the help He has ever given to us. He knows where He helped us unsought. He sees, no less, where we have reached forth a secret hand to touch the hem of His garment; and knows all the virtue which has come forth to us. How great must our sin appear in the eyes of Him who sees all His mercy and our guilt at one glance!
III. Gods remembrance of His promises after they are fulfilled. He who had sworn to the fathers, and fulfilled His words to the children, forgat neither the one nor the other. God knows every promise that has ever been fulfilled to us each. He knows some promises as having been fulfilled to us many times. He who makes His promises all Yea and Amen in Christ Jesus, knows also how many times we have found them thus abiding and helpful.
IV. Gods remembrance of the relation between our past and our present. God who remembered the bondage of Egypt, and saw His people now in possession of Canaan, had every step from the one to the other perfectly under His gaze. He had made them to go up out of Egypt; He also had brought them into the land which they now had for an inheritance.
V. Gods remembrance of His covenant. I said, I will never break my covenant with you. Many a broken promise of our fellows puts the best of them to shame: God can always look upon His word in holy satisfaction that not one jot or tittle of it has ever passed away. It is not a little imposing to find our attention challenged as to Gods faithfulness at the very place where God was about to depart from the people who had already departed from Him. We cry, Stablish Thy word unto Thy servant, upon which Thou hast caused him to hope; but Gods unestablished words are ever because we have got where they can no longer be fulfilled. We break the covenant, and then wonder at the fragments; but the fragments are of our making, not of our Heavenly Fathers.
FROM GILGAL TO BOCHIM.
If Bochim was at Shiloh, or near Bethel, as is probable, it would be utterly inappropriate to anything which the assembled Israelites could observe, to speak of the Angel as coming from Gilgal, in the Arabah, near Jericho, to Bochim, near Shiloh. The historian evidently means to convey the impression that the Angel came from Gilgal, or from the direction of Gilgal, in the sight of all Israel. If the Gilgal near Jericho were meant, it would be altogether irrelevant thus to speak of a place more than twenty miles distant.
In a volume very recently published, Dr. Edersheim makes the following remarks on this question:From this solemn transaction (at Mount Ebal), the Israelites moved, as we gather from Jos. 9:6, to Gilgal, where they seem to have formed a permanent camp. The mention of this place in Deu. 11:30, where it is described as beside the oaks of Moreh, that is, near the spot of Abrahams first altar (Gen. 12:7), implies a locality well known at the time, and, as we might almost conjecture from its after-history, a sort of traditional sanctuary. This alone would suffice to distinguish this Gilgal from the first encampment of Israel as east of Jericho, which only obtained its name from the event which there occurred. Besides, it is impossible to suppose that Joshua marched to the banks of the Jordan (Jos. 9:6; Jos. 10:6-7; Jos. 10:9; Jos. 10:15; Jos. 10:43); and, again, that he did so a second time, after the battles in Galilee, to make appointment of the land among the people by the banks of the Jordan (Jos. 14:6). Further, the localisation of Gilgal near the banks of the Jordan would be entirely incompatible with what we know of the after-history of that place. Gilgal was one of the three cities where Samuel judged the people (1Sa. 7:16; here, also, he offered sacrifices when the Ark was no longer in the tabernacle at Shiloh (1Sa. 10:8; 1Sa. 13:7-9; 1Sa. 15:21), and there, as in a central sanctuary, did all Israel gather to renew their allegiance to Saul (1Sa. 11:14). Later on, Gilgal was the great scene of Elishas ministry (2Ki. 2:1), and still later it became a centre of idolatrous worship (Hos. 4:15; Hos. 9:15; Hos. 12:11; Amo. 4:4; Amo. 5:5). All these considerations lead to the conclusion that the Gilgal which formed the site of Joshuas encampment is the modern Jiljilieh, a few miles from Shiloh, and about the same distance from Bethelnearly equidistant from Shechem and from Jerusalem. [Israel in Canaan, pp. 75, 76.]
This entirely agrees with the view advocated in our treatment of the respective passages in Joshua. The great importance of the point in question, not only geographically, but as it affects far more serious considerations, will probably be deemed sufficient to justify this insertion of Dr. Edersheims valuable corroborative notice.
LIMITATIONS OF LIBERTY BEFORE GOD AND MEN.Jdg. 2:2-3
If, as some have contended, this and the preceding chapter belonged to the early part of Joshuas government, then these two verses would be utterly at variance with all that we are told of Joshuas faithfulness, and would stand in direct contradiction to Jos. 24:31, and to Jdg. 2:7. The verses confront us with the fact that no man has liberty to disobey God, or to practise or tolerate in others such wickedness as is in violation of the rights of others, even though this wickedness be taught in the name of religion.
I. Fellowship with the wicked is enmity with God. Ye shall make no league with the inhabitants of this land. God claims the right to say with whom His children shall associate. We claim such authority over our children. We are not our own. We have been redeemed from bondage by God. The very conditions of our redemption required that we should form no league with the enemies of Him who gave us freedom. To ally ourselves with Gods enemies is to become enemies ourselves.
II. The tolerance of some forms of so-called religion is an infringement of human liberty. Ye shall throw down their altars. A great many altars in this world have been thrown down by a persecuting despotism. There are some altars which even the God of all liberty demands that we utterly abolish. The Canaanites were religious teachers of fornication and murder (cf. Deu. 12:31; 1Ki. 11:7; 1Ki. 11:33; 2Ki. 3:27; 2Ki. 16:3; Psa. 106:37-38; Isa. 57:5, &c). Their religion was an overt and shameful attack on the most sacred and inherent rights of the whole human race. In such a case, toleration is out of the question. Reckless advocates of liberty might far more consistently plead for the toleration of a poisonous factory which gave off fatal vapours in the midst of a populous community. America has long hesitated as to tolerating in her midst systematic adultery under the sheltering name of Mormonism. Probably the public conscience in the United States will ere long demand that the evil be swept away. But suppose Mormonism should add to adultery the wholesale offering of human sacrifices. In that case, every true man must feel that the evil creed of sin and blood must at once be wiped out in blood. The personal faith of every man should be tolerated so long as his faith does no gross wrong to the faith and liberty of others; but when vice and murder are labelled religion, no real lover of liberty will submit to be duped by a mere name. The rights and liberties of sufferers must also be respected. There was nothing to be done but that God should command the overthrow of altars which were set apart to vice like this. For men who had begun to enter into the liberty wherewith God makes free, the only possible course was that they should be instructed to kill off from the face of the earth organised religious teachers and doers of wholesale murder and incessant fornication. Free and independent thought, in which partial men of a certain bias love to indulge, has seldom perpetrated any anti-climax more ridiculous than the hundreds which, in modern days, it has pronounced against this painful but necessary destruction of the Canaanites. He who contends for a liberty which has to be nurtured daily in the blood and purity of multitudes of helpless children, is either a terrible despot towards the children, or beyond the reach of all ordinary argument. Of what matter is it that the worshippers of Molech should call the screams of his burning child acceptable to his god, or the corpse of his murdered son or daughter a religious sacrifice. Should any congregation of such worshippers be found in England to-morrow, every citizen worthy of the name would demand that they be exterminated, or made to abjure their horrible faith.
III. To disregard the voice of God is to incur the reproof and correction both of God and men.
1. God calls the disobedient to account. Ye have not obeyed my voice. Why have ye done this?
2. Victory ceases with fidelity. I will not drive them out from before you. The triumphs at Jericho, and Gibeon, and over the host of Jabin, were all won when the Israelites were little used to war. Sihon and Og were conquered when the army had little discipline and almost no military experience. In the day of Canaans might and Israels weakness, the latter was everywhere triumphant. When the people were weak then were they strong. In the day of Israels strength and Canaans feebleness, Israel could win no more battles. He who fails to obey God, must not wonder if he fails everywhere.
3. Gods enmity takes form in the enmity of men. They shall be to you for adversaries. God has many instruments of correction, and He not seldom uses our fellow-creatures for this purpose. Many instances of this are found in the Old Testament. May not this form of Divine correction be common now? Said a popular teacher of the past generation, when vexed with disturbances in the church over which he presided, My sins are reappearing to me in the form of men.
IV. Disobedience to God is a seed of temptation to yet more disobedience. Their gods shall be a snare unto you. It may be said of all sin as it was said of vegetable life on the morning of creationWhose seed is in itself. The man who transgresses sows sin in his own heart, and, alas! the seed is naturally fruitful, and the ground naturally fertile. He who has lived long in sin need not wonder that the way of holiness is difficult. By grace we are saved. The gods whom she formerly served would ensnare the Church to her ruin now, were it not that the God of gods still graciously says, Behold, I will allure her! He who has been lifted up from the earth, was lifted up to draw us from the sin which many previous sins had made too fascinating for us to forsake alone. No man can come to Me, except the Father which has sent Me draw him. Whatever occult doctrinal meanings may or may not be concealed in these emphatic words of the Son of God, the natural enslaving power of sin needs the full weight of that awful utterance to rightly depict the weakness in which sin leaves us all. Every sinful man re-writes in his own history the ancient word of JehovahThou hast destroyed thyself; in Me is thine help. The gods of our old idolatries have surrounded us by too many snares for us ever to be able to escape them alone.
BROKEN COMMANDMENTS.Jdg. 2:2
Gods commandments are written so plainly upon the tables of Scripture, and mans violation of them appears so clearly upon the tables of life, that when the Lord begins to expose sin, conviction must certainly and immediately follow.
The dangers of adversity may be great, but so also are the dangers of prosperity. When the Israelites were without any experience of either war or victory, they overthrew Sihon and Og, and went on to victories yet greater: when they had won the land, then they began to lose it, through love of ease and fear of iron chariots.
Mighty works of God may fail to make His servants believe, and successive years of mercy may find them increasingly ungrateful; but when the goodness of the Lord is no longer sufficient, then rebuke and chastisement at once become necessary.
Many victories often lead Gods people to think lightly of winning more. The vast importance of the divine commandments becomes obscured by the illusive light of unbroken triumphs, and a rich earthly inheritance.
The light which comes to us through adversity is often the clearest and purest that we get. So it was with the Israelites. The proof of this is again and again set before us in their history under the judges. To use the magnificent image of Edmund Burke, on a political occasion,The light broke in upon them, not through well-contrived and well-disposed windows, but through flaws and breaches; through the yawning chasms of their national ruin.
THE INEXCUSABLENESS OF SIN.Jdg. 2:2, last clause
I. The sin which is done in duties which are left undone. Why have ye done this? Only one of these three charges has to do with sins of commission; the other two speak of sins of omission. The league with the idolaters was a transgression actual and positive; for the rest of the accusation, the altars had not been thrown down, and the Divine voice had not been obeyed. Yet the Angel says of all these things alike, Why have ye done this? The duties which we do not are sins which we do. Our very sins of omission are full of commission. Every altar which the Israelites suffered to stand would be a wrong actually done to the land generally, and to every child in each family. We should remember that our very neglect to obey God becomes an actual and positive wrong to men.
II. The silence of the sinner in the presence of his Divine Judge. Why have ye done this? No answer is given. Not a word of excuse seems to have been uttered. How awful and significant is this silence! What emphasis it lays on the righteousness of the Judges accusation! How clearly it manifests the guilt of the accused! Here is a nation of transgressors, and not one man can make reply. It will be so with many at the last judgment. Friend, how camest thou in hither, not having a wedding garment? And he was speechless. There is nothing to be said for sin. It is put to silence by Divine majesty; for who shall answer God. It is put to silence by Divine mercies; common gratitude ought to have led to obedience. It is put to silence by Divine willingness to help; all the idolatrous altars which men are too weak to throw down alone, may be thrown down by the ever-willing arm of God.
III. The poor answer which the sinner must make if he were to answer truthfully. Why have ye done this?
1. For ease, and been disappointed. Their unwrest was even now beginning in these tears.
2. For fear, and had to fear more. The undestroyed iron chariots were the commencement of an iron yoke.
3. For gain, and have to suffer loss. The men who were spared under tribute to cultivate the fat lands which the tribes were too idle to tend themselves, would soon take the produce of the lands, and in their turn exact tribute from the Israelites.
4. For peace, and have found ourselves at war with man, with God, and even with our own consciences. All these things were beginning, and would soon be fully felt. The way of transgressors is hard. He who seeks to spare himself or please himself by disobeying God, inherits all he would avoid, and loses all he would obtain.
SINS OF OMISSION.Jdg. 2:2
I. Their great magnitude. We are apt to think that great sins are only those which we actually commit. This is a mistake. We see here the following serious forms of transgression:
1. Disobedience to Gods will.
2. Disbelief in Gods Word.
3. Mans judgment preferred before Gods unerring wisdom.
II. Their fearful consequences.
1. A troubled conscience.
2. An encumbered inheritance.
3. An open door made for temptation.
4. A fruitful source of conflict. From henceforth thou shalt have wars (2Ch. 16:9).
5. Ultimate overthrow and captivity. This is seen in the repeated subjection of Israel under the judges, and in the great captivity at Babylon. All began here, nor did it end there.
6. The removal of the privileges of worship. Shiloh was associated with Ichabod (Jdg. 18:30-31; 1Sa. 4:21-22); the ark was taken to Philistia; the temple, later on, was utterly destroyed.
III. Their tremendous warnings. All this Old Testament narrative is not given merely for information. God seeks something higher than the satisfaction of our curiosity. Nor is the record only or principally for interest. The Holy Spirit meant to give us something more than an exciting history. All these things happened unto them for ensamples; and they are written for our admonition, upon whom the ends of the world are come.
The accusation against them at Bochim was negative rather than positive. There are degrees of guilt in the rebellions of the Church against her Head; and as yet the Israelites were not charged, like Ahab afterwards, with doing very abominably in following idols: still less had they reached the villainy of Manasseh at a yet later period, who even overpassed the deeds of the heathen, for he did wickedly above all the Amorites did, which were before him, and shed innocent blood till he had filled Jerusalem from one end to another. It is true that their downward course, after they had once placed themselves on the smooth deceitful gradient, soon became rapid and headlong; but as yet they are expostulated with chiefly for sins of omission.
When the Church has begun to habitually neglect any one of her Lords known commandsstill more when she begins to break one of these least commandments, and teach men sothe day is not far distant when, unless arrested in her career by the mercy or judgments of God, she will be found openly consorting with the mammon-worshippers by whom she is surrounded. From sparing the lives of the enemies of the Church, it was an easy step to make comfortable agreements with them.
The evening twilight soon fades into total darkness; so their negative evil soon degenerated into positive revolt: they did evil in the sight of the Lord, and served Baalim. [Luke H. Wiseman, M.A.]
Sins of commission are usual punishments for sins of omission. He that leaves a duty may fear to be left to commit a crime. [Gurnall.]
We may lose heaven by neutrality as well as by hostility, by wanting oil as well as by drinking poison. An unprofitable servant shall as much be punished as a prodigal son. Undone duty will undo souls. The last words of the industrious Archbishop Usher were, Lord, in special, forgive me my sins of omission.
Love puts not off the pursuit of duty till it attains the possession of glory. There is no rocking this babe to sleep but in the cradle of the grave. [Wm. Secker.]
NO LEAGUE TO BE MADE WITH GODS ENEMIES.Jdg. 2:2
It is perilous work when men begin to decide who are believers and who are not, if they decide by party badges. Nevertheless, there is an irreligion which he who runs may read. For the atheist is not merely he who professes unbelief, but, strictly speaking, every one who lives without God in the world. And the heretic is not merely he who has mistaken some Christian doctrine, but rather he who causes divisions among the brethren. And the idolater is not merely he who worships images, but he who gives his heart to something which is less than God; for a mans god is that which has his whole soul and worship, that which he obeys and reverences as his highest. Now there are innumerable doubtful cases where charity is bound to hope the best; but there is also an abundance of plain cases: for where a mans god is money, or position in society, or rank, there the rule holds, Come ye apart. [F. W. Robertson, M.A., Lectures on Corinthians, p. 358.]
In every age the Church of God has to drive out her spiritual AmoritesUnbelief, Ungodliness, Heresy, Idolatry, the setting up of mans inventions and forms in place of the pure truth of God; and unless she is diligent and bold these enemies will beleaguer her and infest her, and will at length drive her out of her inheritance. These are the enemies who will dispute with the heirs of promise every foot of their expected heritage. With these it is no childs play at arms, but a veritable struggle for life; for as the spies reported of the sons of Anak, which come of the giants, We were in our own sight as grasshoppers, and so we were in their sightso these bold gigantic foes are not afraid of the utmost efforts the believer can put forth by the mere force of his own will. [L. H. Wiseman, M.A.]
THE PUNISHMENT OF SIN A PUNISHMENT IN KIND.Jdg. 2:3
I. Men neglecting God, and having to hear that God will neglect them. The Ye have not of the people, is met by the I will not of God. Men omit duties, and the Lord omits help. God does not threaten the Israelites with His enmity; He simply declares that He will leave those who have so sinfully left Him. Forsaking is punished by forsaking.
II. Men making a league with the wicked, and finding that their chosen confederates are to become their direst foes. They shall be to you for adversaries (cf. Critical Notes). The point of departure becomes the place of chastisement. Those for whom God had been cast off, should be Gods instruments to turn that unhallowed choice into the chief cause of mourning. It is ever thus: Delilah is generally chosen to shear Samson; Gehazi lies to the healed leper, and buys the cast-off leprosy; Judas covenants with the priests, and has to hear them say in his anguish, See thou to that; Saul of Tarsus allies himself with the Jews to persecute Christians, and forthwith his future history is one of continued perils by his own countrymen, and perils among false brethren.
III. Men preserving idolatrous altars, and ensnared by idol gods. Their gods shall be a snare unto you. The altars which they spared, contrary to the command of God, became the future place of their own sacrifice. No man can afford to keep what God would have him to destroy. All our forbidden possessions, so far from being assets in the account of our individual happiness, had better at once be entered as debts which will certainly have to be paid. To strike them off the account as items which cannot be realised, is only half the loss; they must be put on the other side. The gods that we spare are not only helpless and useless; they are a snare. The altars that we leave standing not only bring us none of the joy of worship; they require us as a sacrifice.
CAUSES OF SPIRITUAL WEAKNESS
The history illustrates the causes of the weakness of the Church and people of God.
I. One of these causes was indolence. Patient labour there must be, if we would win the prize of our high calling. The athlete cannot retain his strength without daily exercise; the vocalist cannot retain his power and command of voice without incessant practice; and the child of God cannot go on to perfection without a daily spiritual gymnastic exercising himself with a view to godliness (1Ti. 4:7 Gr.), as an athlete with a view to the games. Faith and love, correcting the indolence of our nature, will make this holy toil delightful. In the second century it passed into a proverb, when men would express the impossibility of a thing, to say, You may as well take off a Christian from Christ; and our blessed Master, whose example is the most perfect rebuke of slothfulness, declared that it was His meat and drink, not merely to begin, not merely to carry on, but to finish His Fathers work.
II. Another cause of spiritual weakness is a secret love of sin. The Israelites found in the habits of the men of Canaan much that was congenial to their own corrupt inclinations. In religious families there are sons and daughters who, although outwardly restrained by the circumstances of their position, cherish a bitter hatred of religion, and a secret love for a dissipated life. And even in the hearts of the faithful, what strange occasional lingerings there are towards evil! What treacherous trifling with things forbidden! What hovering about the devils ground! What secret inclinations to taste the poisoned cup! What strange revival, at times, of the power of old habits which we had imagined subdued for ever! What infatuated dancing on the brink of hell, like the moth fluttering round the candle to its destruction! Who can explain the depth of that hidden treason? Who can disclose the inner sources of that secret alienation from the adorable God, that lusting of the flesh against the spirit, which so many of the faithful mourn? Never, says Calvin, does the love of piety sufficiently flourish in our hearts unless it begets in us a hatred of sin.
III. Another cause of spiritual weakness is unbelief, if indeed this one cause does not sum up and exhaust the whole subject. Unbelief is vitally connected with that alienation of heart and affections from God, in which the deepest ruin of man consists. Here is the great secret of unbeliefit is the evil heart departing from the living God. [Luke H. Wiseman, M.A.]
THE POWER OF THE LORDS WORD.Jdg. 2:4-5
From the fact that all the children of Israel are here spoken of, Bishop Patrick says, By this it appears they were all met at some solemn festival, as they were bound to do three times every year, for otherwise it cannot be conceived what should occasion such an assembly of the whole congregation, and consequently the place where these words were spoken to them was Shiloh. Probably this was so (cf. Exo. 23:14-17; Deu. 12:10-14). If so, we see in the very circumstances of this gathering these three things:
1. The formal services of religion carefully observed notwithstanding gross sin. With heathen altars all around them, with a league recently made with idolaters, and with the broken words of God coming between the Most High and their service, the Israelites met to worship Him whose will they had so utterly ignored. What a picture it presents of many a subsequent religious service!
2. God refusing to accept service spoiled by disobedience, and wanting the worship of the heart. That the service was not accepted, follows from the words of the Angel. And yet, while God rejects the worship He does not at once forsake the worshipper. Just as at the beginning Divine mercy gently reasons with Cain as to his rejected offering, so does that mercy here tenderly remonstrate with the formal worshippers at Bochim. Here, also, we see a Father who knoweth our frame, and remembereth that we are dust.
3. A festive gathering of the Lords people turned into an assembly of weepers. God loves to make His people joyful in His house of prayer, but there is much that is more important than our gladness. As has been said of the children of Dan, even in Aijalon, the place where Joshua had commanded the sun to stand still; so far from being animated by the memory of their leaders faith, they were actually driven back by the heathen and forced to take shelter in the mountains (Jdg. 1:34-35), thus turning the noblest battle-field of the Church of God into a scene of defeat and shame. Similar evidences of unfaithfulness were apparent all through the land. The worship of the congregation might well be turned into weeping. When the heavens are brass, and our prayer will not pass through, it is meet that we make search for idol altars, and break away from sinful leagues.
This assembly at Bochim dissolved into tears by the message of the Angel, may suggest to us the following considerations:
I. The power of the word of the Lord to work conviction. The people lifted up their voice and wept. As was written to the Hebrews of a later generation, The Word of God is quick and powerful, and sharper than any two-edged sword, Heb. 4:12). As heard on this occasion, this word
1. Reveals the love of God. It tells of His loving acts in the past. It declares, no less, His tender concern in the present, and His care for His peoples future.
2. It makes manifest the sins of men. It spares no one. The leaders of the people are exposed even more than the mass. It is the glory of the Bible that it has no respect to persons. The sins of Noah, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Moses, Aaron, David, and Peter, are as fully revealed as are the sins of Amnon, Absalom, Gehazi, or Ananias and Sapphira. King or peasant, child of God or openly wicked, the word of the Lord declares and judges sin wherever it is found.
3. It displays the sinners base ingratitude. It throws the strong light of Gods past love and goodness on the dark evidences of mans idolatrous sympathies. It discerneth the thoughts and intents of the heart, which after being made glad by God, wickedly turns against God. How many has it thus judged and condemned! What multitudes it is so condemning even to this day!
4. It proclaims coming punishment. Men argue against its penalties as being unlike the God whom it declares, but the Bible still goes on speaking in its awful calmness about the worm that dieth not, and the fire that is not quenched. Blessed be God for the faithful word! It shows that God has not given up as hopeless the sinful men to whom, through it, He still comes with words of rebuke and exhortation. Let the hands that so often hang down be lifted up to preach it, well assured that it is the power of God unto salvation. People still weep when they hear the words of the law of the Lord (cf. Neh. 8:9).
II. Conviction expressing itself through tears. The people lifted up their voice and wept. The weeping seems to have been very general. Unless very many had been in tears, we should not have been told that the people wept, nor would the place have been named The Weepers.
1. Tears must ever follow sin. They may come as tears of genuine grief for sin. They may be delayed till sin brings punishment. In one way or the other they must certainly succeed the transgression of Gods righteous laws. Every sinner is a debtor to grief, and sooner or later the bill must be met. The longer payment is deferred, the worse for the debtor, for the interest charged on overdue tears for sin is always both high and compound. Emerson says: The ingenuity of man has always been dedicated to the solution of one problem,how to detach the sensual sweet, the sensual strong, the sensual bright, &c., from the moral sweet, the moral deep, the moral fair; that is, again, to contrive to cut clean off this upper surface so thin as to leave it bottomless; to get a one end without an other end. This dividing and detaching is steadily counteracted. Up to this day, it must be owned, no projector has had the smallest success. The parted water reunites behind our hand. We can no more halve things and get the sensual good by itself, than we can get an inside that shall have no outside, or a light without a shadow. Drive out Nature with a fork, she comes running back. Natural law alone exacts, unfailingly, the due penalties of sin; and behind Nature, and working through Nature, stands God, Who will by no means clear the guilty. He who chooses the pleasures of sin for a season will also in due season have to take its pains. It is well that this is so. If sin could be committed without tears, to use a paradox, it would be more full of tears than ever. The sorrow that multiplies upon itself and cannot weep, has need to weep indeed.
2. Tears are necessary till sin is put away. Sir Walter Scott wrote of the comparatively innocent tears of children,
The tear down childhoods cheek that flows,
Is like the dewdrop on the rose:
When next the summer breeze comes by,
And waves the bush, the flower is dry.
God has mercifully ordered it that the tears that flow for iniquity shall not be dried so quickly. In heaven, where there is no more sin, God wipes away all tears with His own hand. He will love us there no more than He loves us here. He leaves us in tears here, simply because we have too much sin to do without them.
3. Tears for sin, nevertheless, are often only temporary. Men dry their own eyes, and harden their own hearts, when God would see them still weeping. Bochim is not mentioned again throughout the Scriptures. The tears of these transgressors were of short duration. The tears, and the name of the place where they shed them, were alike soon forgotten. The forgiven man rejoices that tears are put away, and exclaims,Sing psalms to Jehovah, ye His saints, and give thanks at the remembrance of His holiness. Because His anger is for a moment, His favour for a life-time; weeping may tarry in the evening, but at morning there is joy (cf. Heb. Psa. 30:5-6).The unforgiven man has need to weep again that his tears are dried all too soon.
4. Tears are most hopeful when most hidden. They called the name of that place Bochim. They named it after their weeping. They made a display of their penitence. Their tears were so poor that they must needs advertise them. It can hardly be a matter for wonder that neither name nor tears lasted long. He fasts best who appears not unto men to fast. He weeps best whose tears for sin have in them enough of shame to make him seek to hide them. Our Heavenly Father would no more have us cry at the corners of the streets than He would have us pray there.
III. Tears promptly followed by sacrifice. And they sacrificed there unto the Lord. Probably they offered special sin-offerings, on account of the message of the Angel, in addition to the festive offerings in connection with this particular gathering of the congregation.
1. Tears for sin are nothing without sacrifice. Personal offences between man and man are to be forgiven freely, even unto seventy times seven. Every man is commanded, without any reparation whatever, to forgive his fellows, as he hopes to be forgiven. But no ruler of a community can forgive offences thus freely. In this case, forgiveness of the one would be a wrong to all others. At the public bar the requirements of justice are simply absolute. Whatever other reasons may or may not exist with God, this alone is imperative. The law must be magnified, and made honourable. Tears can never suffice without sacrifice.
2. Tears should lead us to the sacrifice of Christ. In Him righteousness and peace have kissed each other.
3. Gratitude for tears wiped away should lead us to personal sacrifice. He can know little of the sacrifice of the Cross who does not believe with some self-sacrifice of his own.
IV. Conviction, tears, and sacrifice, all fruitless for want of true repentance. The curse causeless shall not come (Pro. 26:2), but the curse foretold by the Angel did come, and come speedily. There can be only one conclusion; the repentance was too unreal for the conviction to be worth anything, for the tears to be grateful to God, or for the sacrifice to be acceptable in His sight. The final punishment of those who never repent must be dreadful; but the final punishment of those who all their life long are convicted without conversion, who weep without penitence, and who come to Christ without really giving themselves to Christ, must be terrible indeed. To all the woe of the impenitent lost, their woe must have added the awful vexation of a disappointment which must seem as though hell were added to hell. It is an apostolic conclusion, that those who in this life only have hope, are of all men most miserable. Unreal religion in this life is a factor by which, in the life to come, the Divine punishment of sin will be self-multiplied by the sinner to his own aggravation of the ordinary woe of the lost.
THE WAY TO AND FROM TRANSGRESSION.Jdg. 2:4-5
I. The easy way to disobedience against God. Weeds need no cultivating, but a good harvest comes of much labour. Transgression seems indigenous even to the best of human hearts. Ill weeds grow apace; we cannot see why they grow so readily, but the process through which they come can be traced with tolerable distinctness. The disobedience of these Israelites may be traced through the following stages:
1. Decreasing prayer. A while back they asked, Who shall go up for us against the Canaanites (Jdg. 1:1)? When Judah failed in faith, we hear of no fresh inquiry. When the rest of the tribes were discouraged, we are told of no further supplication to God. Had the prayer of Psalms 80 been upon the hearts and lips of the tribes now, we had heard of no such rebuke as this at Bochim. Had Israel cried, Before Ephraim and Benjamin and Manasseh stir up Thy strength, and come and save us, there could have been no such record as that in the last part of Judges 1. The failure of prayer is the beginning of failure all along the line.
2. Love of ease. Incessant conflict was probably getting more and more disagreeable. He who prefers rest in his own way to obedient rest in the word and will of God is fast nearing the place of tears.
3. Increased desires for gain. The tribes could not drive out their enemies, yet they put them to tribute, and thus betrayed the would not which underlay their could not. Tribute and no conflict, seemed easier than conflict and no tribute. That, too, led to Bochim. They were seeking to make a profit out of Gods enemies. Like Achan, they too were taking of Gods devoted things, and they also were seeking to conceal them: Achan hid his spoil in his tent, and they attempted to hide theirs under the idea of lawful tribute.
4. Growing self-assurance. When the tribes were weak, then were they so strong that they never lost a battle; when they grew strong enough to put their enemies to tribute, then they never won another victory, till out of their distress and renewed weakness they cried again unto the Lord (Jdg. 3:9-10).
II. The difficulty of escaping from sin when once it has been committed. The way of escape is
(1) through tears;
(2) through sacrifice;
(3) through obedience, without which both tears and sacrifice are in vain. The real difficulty of escaping from a life of sin is thus seen to lie in the difficulty of true repentance. God is ever ready to forgive when we are ready to be forgiven. Esau might have found mercy as readily as Jacob, could he have found a heart to seek and wrestle with God; the difficulty was here,Esau found no place of repentance, though he too came to Bochim, and sought it carefully with tears. Pardon is ever offered to the penitent; but if they who have known Gods goodness turn from it, the difficulty is to renew them again unto repentance (Heb. 6:4-6). The dying penitent is ever on the borders of paradise, but the dying are often very far from penitence (Luk. 23:39-43).
III. The great grace of God through Jesus Christ the Saviour.
1. God sent many warnings. Repeated warnings of these very sins were given through Moses. Many more were given through Joshua. Victory was always afforded to them when faithful. Yet they sinned.
2. God came with personal remonstrance. The Angel of the Covenant Himself enters into controversy with the disobedient at Bochim. Last of all He sent unto them His Son. Neither did this avail. The league was still maintained. The altars were still spared.
3. God manifested gracious patience. The evil foretold in Jdg. 2:3 did not come to pass at once. The Lord waited, that He might be gracious. It is not till we read that Israel served Baalim that we are told the anger of the Lord was hot against Israel (Jdg. 2:11-14). The Lord tried them, and proved them.
4. God showed great readiness to hear their cries of distress. At the very first signs of penitence He raised them up judges to deliver them (Jdg. 2:11; Jdg. 3:9). For all that, yet did they not truly seek Him (Jdg. 2:17-19). Thus, though Divine grace is so exalted, the way of transgressors is hard; it is hard while they pursue it, and hard for them to turn back from it into the paths of righteousness and peace.
THE TEARS OF EARTH AND THE TEARLESS HEAVEN.Jdg. 2:5 (a)
It is said that there shall be neither sorrow nor crying among the redeemed in heaven, but that God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes. The place where there is no more sin is to be a place where there shall be no more tears.
I. God, who will presently wipe all tears away, here causes them to flow abundantly. It is the angel of His presence who here constrains the people to weep.
II. God, who wipes tears away only where there is no more sin, here makes them to flow for sin. Did sin bring no tears, the sinful would know little enough of penitence. This Book of Judges is the Lords own commentary on the necessity for our tears. Nowhere more than here is it seen that through much tribulation we must enter into the kingdom.
III. God, who waits to wipe all tears from off all faces, has no pleasure in causing them. Weeping is not an arbitrary arrangement, but is born in us of Divine pity and love. Whom the Lord loveth, He chasteneth.
IV. God, who while we are here moves us to tears Himself, will when we are there Himself wipe them away. As at Bochim, so often; He comes to us on earth to make us weep. In heaven, it shall be as it was at the crossing of the Jordan into the land of Canaan, about which the bards of Israel presently sang: The waters saw Thee, O God, the waters saw Thee; they were afraid: What ailed thee, O Thou sea, that thou fleddest? thou Jordan, that thou wast driven back? So at our entrance to the Promised Land on high, the river of tears shall be driven back at the very sight of the God of love. We shall see His face; and from the everlasting joy of His countenance shall be born the tearless and immortal gladness of our own.
BOCHIM
Our tears are of small account when, moved by penitence and love, we voluntarily come into our Lords presence and shed them at His feet. Tears have even much sweetness in their pain then. When Peter went out from Christ to cry, he went out and wept bitterly; when the sinful woman came into Christs presence and washed His feet with her tears, who does not feel that her tears were tears of gladness? The tears, too, of Mary Magdalene, shed at the empty tomb, presently got all the pain taken out of them when she was able to exclaim, Rabboni. He who sheds his tears at the feet of Jesus will always find that he is the happier for them. When our tears for sin fall on His feet, they turn to diamonds of the first water, and as we recall how He said, Thy sins which be many are all forgiven thee, memory does but pick them up as jewels for our souls future enrichment.
Pain is Gods great teacher. No one can learn well without it. Take two boys of equal gifts and equal industry. Let one grow up with almost no crosses and suffering, and the other with trials many and deep, yet borne with patient fortitude. How shallow will the one life be when compared with the richness and depth of tone in the other!
Pain must always be interpreted relatively. You cannot look on a wounded child, on a strongman crippled suddenly for life, or on a young mother taken from several young children, and read the meaning there. These are but parts of His ways. You can make nothing of the Cross on Calvary if you look at that alone. You may, in spirit, join those of whom it is said that sitting down they watched Him there, but, like them, you also will fail to understand it thus. You will have to keep them company in yet that further experience, when they smote their breasts, and returned. But look out on Pentecost; look at the records of the apostles labours, as given in the Acts and in the Epistles; look at the eighteen centuries during which the Crucified One has been drawing all men to Himself: read the Cross in the light of all that, and it will be beautifully different from the same Cross when you look at it merely through the terrible gloom of the three hours darkness, or try to make out its rich and far-reaching meanings through the agonised utterances of the suffering Son of God. Even so our smaller crosses can seldom be made out amid the gloom of their own darkness. Blessed are all they that wait patiently for Him, to make the vision of suffering and tears plain upon the tables of life.
They wept, but we do not find that they reformed,that they went home and destroyed all the remains of idolatry and idolaters among them. Many are melted under the Word that harden again before they are cast into a new mould. [Matt. Henry.]
From Gilgal to Bochim is a path much shorter and much easier than that from Bochim to Mount Zion. The history of the one is in a few brief pages, which record no conflict; that of the other is a history of many struggles, extending to the time of David (2Sa. 5:6-10).
If transgressors cannot endure the rebukes of Gods Word and the convictions of their own consciences, how will they be able to stand before the tribunal of the holy heart-searching Judge? [Scott.]
The Israelites called the place Bochim; they named it from their own tears. They laid the principal stress on their own feelings, and on their own demonstrations of sorrow. But they did not speak of Gods mercies, and they were not careful to bring forth fruits of repentance; they were a barren fig-tree, having only leaves. Theirs was a religion, such as is too common, of sentiment and emotions, not of faith and obedience.
Reproofs which produce only tearsreligious feelings without religious actsemotions without effects, leave the heart worse than before. If Gods rebukes are trifled with, His grace is withdrawn. [Wordsworth.]
Repentance and temptation are the two purgatories that a Christian in his way to heaven must pass through. The first is of water, the other of fire. We can no sooner come out of the one, but we must look to enter into the other. No sooner have we bathed and washed our souls in the waters of repentance, but we must presently expect the fiery darts of Satans temptations to be driving at us. [Dyke.]
Like Janus Bifrons, the Roman god looking two ways, a true repentance not only bemoans the past but takes heed to the future. Repentance, like the lights of a ship at her bow and her stern, not only looks to the track she has made, but to the path before her. A godly sorrow moves the Christian to weep over the failure of the past, but his eyes are not so blurred with tears but that he can look watchfully into the future, and, profiting by the experience of former failures, make straight paths for his feet. [J. G. Pilkington.]
When men are in the wilderness of sin, even the heart of rock must be made to give forth water, lest the thirsty spirit perish outright. There are times when tears are a relief. There are places where oppressed manhood cries, Oh, that my head were waters, and mine eyes a fountain of tears, that I might weep. Whether God Himself speak to the rocky heart, or whether the rod of God be used, tears, in this desert, may well be an occasion of joy and thankfulness.
Fuente: The Preacher’s Complete Homiletical Commentary Edited by Joseph S. Exell
Angel of the Lord Rebukes Israel Jdg. 2:1-5
And an angel of the Lord came up from Gilgal to Bochim, and said, I made you to go up out of Egypt, and have brought you unto the land which I sware unto your fathers; and I said, I will never break my covenant with you.
2 And ye shall make no league with the inhabitants of this land; ye shall throw down their altars: but ye have not obeyed my voice: why have ye done this?
3 Wherefore I also said, I will not drive them out from before you; but they shall be as thorns in your sides, and their gods shall be a snare unto you,
4 And it came to pass, when the angel of the Lord spake these words unto all the children of Israel, that the people lifted up their voice, and wept,
5 And they called the name of that place Bochim: and they sacrificed there unto the Lord.
1.
Who is the angel of Jehovah? Jdg. 2:1
The angel of Jehovah is not a prophet, a messenger, or some other earthly servant of the Lord, either Phinehas or Joshua, as the Targums, Rabbins, and others assume. Rather, the angel of the Lord is a visible manifestation of God Himself, not in the fullness of His being, but in one aspect of His person. No angel mentioned in the historical books is ever said to have addressed the whole nation or to have passed from one place to another. The prophets always distinguish between themselves and Jehovah, by introducing their words with the declaration thus saith Jehovah. In his address the angel of the Lord identifies himself with Jehovah (cf. Jos. 5:14; Jos. 6:2).
2.
Where was Bochim? Jdg. 2:1; Jdg. 2:5
Bochim was evidently near Bethel, in the hill country of Ephraim. The situation of this place is altogether unknown today. The rendering of the LXX, epi ton Klau-thmona kai epi Baithel kai epi ton oikon Israel, gives no clue whatsoever. Ton Klauthmona merely arises from a confusion of bochim with bebaim in 2Sa. 5:23, which the LXX also rendered Klauthmon. Epi ton Baithel . . . is an arbitrary interpolation of the translators themselves, who supposed bochim to be in the neighborhood of Bethel. This was merely because they thought of Allon bachuth, the oak of weeping, at Bethel which is mentioned in Gen. 35:8.
3.
In what way had Israel failed to obey? Jdg. 2:2
God had ordered the people to make no league with the inhabitants of the land into which they came. In the days of Moses, He had said, thou shalt smite them, and utterly destroy them; thou shalt make no covenant with them, nor show mercy unto them (Deu. 7:2). Israel had been tricked into making a league with the Gibeonites (Joshua 9), and whenever a tribe of Israel was unable to drive out the inhabitants living in the land which was assigned to them, they made them to be tributariesthey made some kind of arrangement for these people to live among them and pay tribute to them. They also were commanded to throw down the altars of these people. Through Moses, God had especially commanded the Israelites to overthrow their altars, and break their pillars, and burn their groves with fire; and ye shall hew down the graven images of their gods, and destroy the names of them out of that place (Deu. 12:3). This Israel had failed to do. In fact, she, herself, had turned to worship the Baalim and Ashtaroth.
4.
What was Israels punishment? Jdg. 2:3
God said that because Israel failed to obey Him completely, He would not drive out the nations before them. He left the nations to be as thorns in their sides. He further stated that since they had not overthrown their altars these pagan gods would be a snare to Israel. Ultimately, these people in their false worship brought the downfall of Israel.
5.
What was the reaction of the people? Jdg. 2:4-5
The people realized God had spoken the truth about them. As a result, they lifted up their voice and wept. Their weeping was of such nature that it gave the name Bochim to the place. The word, Bochim, means weepers. At that time, they also sacrificed there to the Lord. They accepted the Lords punishment and turned to Him for help.
Fuente: College Press Bible Study Textbook Series
(1) An angel of the Lord.The words Maleak Jehovah are used of Haggai, in Hag. 1:13; of prophets in Isa. 42:19; Mal. 3:6; of priests in Mal. 2:7. Hence from very ancient times these words have been interpreted as, a messenger of the Lord (as in the margin of our Bible). The Targum paraphrases it by a prophet with a message from Jehovah. R. Tanchum, from Jdg. 2:6, infers that it was Joshua himself. Kimchi and others have supposed that it was Phinehas. No indications are given of anything specially miraculous. On the other hand, there is much room to suppose that the writer intended the Angel of the Presence, because ( 1 ) he constantly uses the phrase in this sense (Jdg. 6:11-12; Jdg. 6:21-22; Jdg. 13:3; Jdg. 13:13; Jdg. 13:15, &c.); (2) the same phrase occurs in this sense elsewhere, as in Gen. 16:7; Gen. 22:11; Exo. 2:2; Exo. 2:6; Exo. 2:14; Num. 22:22, &c; (3) the angel speaks in the first person, and does not introduce his words by Thus saith Jehovah, as the prophets always do (but see below). It seems probable, therefore, that by the angel of the Lord the writer meant the captain of the Lords host, who appeared to Joshua at Jericho (Jos. 5:13-15). Against this conclusion may be urged the fact that in no other instance does an angel appear to, or preach to, multitudes. Angels are sent to individuals, but prophets to nations.
Came up from Gilgal to Bochim.This notice is by no means decisive against the conclusion that an angel is intended. The writer may mean to intimate that the Angel Prince of the host (Exo. 23:20-23), the Angel of the Covenant, left his station in the camp of Gilgal and came up to the new camp or assembly of the people in Central Palestine (Jos. 4:19; Jos. 5:9-10; Jos. 10:7; Jos. 10:15; Jos. 10:33; Jos. 14:6). Ha-Bochim means the weepers. The locality is not known, but the LXX. render it to the weeping-place, and add and to Bethel, and to the House of Israel. Hence it has been inferred that Bochim was near Bethel. Possibly however, the LXX. may have been led to this interpretation by the vicinity to Bethel of Allon-Bachuth, the oak of weeping (Gen. 35:8).
And said, I made you to go up out of Egypt.The LXX. have the Lord, the Lord brought you out of Egypt (Cod. Alex.). Houbigant, from the repetition of the word, precariously conjectures the loss of some words, Thus saith the Lord, I the Lord, &c., as in the Peshito; and, indeed, in some MSS. a blank (Piska) is left, implying at least a suspicion that this formula has accidentally fallen out of the text.
I will never break my covenant with you.See Gen. 17:7; Gen. 29:12; Psa. 89:28; Psa. 89:34; Luk. 1:54-55, &c; Exo. 3:6-8.
Fuente: Ellicott’s Commentary for English Readers (Old and New Testaments)
THE NATION REBUKED, Jdg 2:1-5.
1. Angel of the Lord This was not an inspired human messenger, because, (1) The name of such was usually prophet, or man of God; (2) The expression, angel of Jehovah, is never, in ordinary historical narrative, descriptive of a mere human being; (3) He speaks with a superhuman authority, and lays claim to the acts of Jehovah himself. He assumes to be the same Angel who led the Israelites from Egypt and went before them in the desert journey. Compare Exo 23:20-25. We have here, therefore, an undoubted theophany. The occasion, the critical condition of the chosen nation, was worthy of such a manifestation of God. Godlike are his words.
Gilgal The first place of encampment in the Jordan valley, where this same angel appeared to Joshua and announced himself as captain of Jehovah’s host. Jos 5:14, note. There the angel announced the capture of Jericho, and prepared Joshua for the work of conquest. Now he comes again comes to rebuke the nation for their disobedience, and warn them of the certain punishment that shall follow their lack of faith. The words, came up from Gilgal, indicate that, in the mind of the sacred writer, this Angel was conceived of as having long lingered at the sacred spot of the old camp where he last revealed himself, and now comes from that spot to speak again to Israel. So in Jdg 5:4, Jehovah is conceived of as marching out of Mount Seir and the fields of Edom, in the fearful thunder-storm that ruined the army of Sisera. See notes there. So in Jdg 6:11, the Angel of the Lord “came and sat under an oak.” So, too, in Gen 18:16; Gen 18:22; Gen 18:33, the three angels, one of whom was called Jehovah, passed from Mamre to Sodom.
Bochim The weepers; so called from the great weeping that occurred here when the people had heard the reproving words of the angel. Compare Jdg 2:4-5. It is impossible to identify this place, though it seems to have been in the vicinity of Shiloh, where the tabernacle then was, since all Israel were wont to assemble there. Fuerst suggests that it is identical with Allon-bacuth, the oak of weeping, beneath which Deborah was buried. Gen 35:8.
I made you to go up out of Egypt No human being, not even Moses, could have used this language; nor could any angel, save the Angel of the Covenant, Jehovah of the Old Testament, (Isa 63:9,) and Jesus of the New. Mal 3:1.
Which I sware Promised in connexion with the solemn covenant with Abraham, (Gen 12:7; Gen 17:7-8,) and in substance repeated to Jacob and Moses.
I will never break Jehovah will assuredly meet his part of the covenant, so that if there is any failure in its perfect fulfilment it must be the fault of Israel, not of God.
Fuente: Whedon’s Commentary on the Old and New Testaments
The Angel of Yahweh Questions Why They Have Been Disobedient And The People Make a Show of Repentance ( Jdg 2:1-5 ).
Jdg 2:1-2 ‘
The Angel of Yahweh is previously spoken of in Gen 16:7-14 and Gen 22:11-18, both cases of crisis important in preserving children of Abraham. He then appeared in Exo 3:2 as a flame of fire in a burning bush, with a view to delivery of Israel from Egypt and to Balaam the seer in Num 22:22-35, again with a view to the delivery of Israel, this time from Moab. Thus His appearance always had deliverance in mind. In all cases it is clear that He spoke with the voice of God.
The reference to Gilgal may well specifically have in mind the appearance to Joshua there of the captain of Yahweh’s host (Jos 5:10-15). There too the coming deliverance was in mind and He spoke as Yahweh. Thus ‘came up from Gilgal to Bochim’ indicates simply the last place on earth that He was seen. Where He was in between no one knew. We are not told what appearance He took on here. Again it was possibly as captain of Yahweh’s host.
Alternately ‘from Gilgal to Bochim’ may refer to the movement of the Tabernacle with the Ark of the Covenant, the throne of God (see Jdg 2:5 where it is mentioned that they sacrificed there to Yahweh).
Gilgal (‘rolling’) was the place where the reproach of Egypt was removed from their shoulders (Jos 5:9). The coming to ‘Bochim’ (‘weepers’), so named because of what was to happen, was intended to do the same for the reproach of Canaan.
The visit in Joshua 5 was at the time of the Passover feast which they there celebrated for the first time in the land. This visit also must have been at one of the great feasts for all Israel is seen as gathered together.
So now in God’s mercy the angel of Yahweh appeared again when deliverance was needed, again speaking as Yahweh. Thus this situation is connected with the covenants first made with Abraham through both his sons, and with the deliverance from Egypt and from the seer at Moab. It was all part of the furtherance of His plan.
“And he said, “I made you to go up out of Egypt, and I have brought you to the land which I swore to your fathers, and I said, I will never break my covenant with you. And you shall make no covenant with the inhabitants of the land. You will break down their altars”.”
Note again the connection with the covenant and the deliverance from Egypt. The angel of Yahweh was intimately connected with both. He is God and yet distinguished from God, as the Son from the Father. (Note how in Zec 1:12, the angel of Yahweh communicates with God demonstrating intercommunion within the Godhead). And He was their Deliverer and will continue to be their Deliverer in accordance with the covenant.
He reminded them that it was He Who made them go up from Egypt, defeating Pharaoh and the gods of Egypt and humiliating the Egypt forces before them. And it was He Who had brought them safely to the land in the face of such enemies as the seer at Moab (Balaam), indeed in the face of all powers or gods whether in heaven or on earth.
He confirmed that He would never break the covenant that had been made with Israel, that sacred covenant that He swore by ‘Himself’ because there was no greater to swear by (Gen 22:16).
But then He reminded them that their part in that covenant was not to make any covenants or treaties with the inhabitants of Canaan, and to break down the altars of Baal and Asherah (Asheroth – the plural ending ‘-oth’ representing the many images of Asherah, or Ashtaroth representing images of Astarte), and of all gods in Canaan. And they had failed in their part.
Jdg 2:2 b
“But you have not obeyed my voice. Why have you done this?”
They had made their covenants and their treaties, with the Canaanites, and the Amorites, and the Jebusites. They had received tribute from them, made them slave labourers, allowed them to continue in their religion, flirted with it themselves, and even worse, in some cases participated in it. Now God reminded them that they had deliberately disobeyed Him and asked them, ‘why have you done this?’ Compare Gen 3:13.
Jdg 2:3
“ For this reason I also have said I will not drive them out from before you, but they will be as thorns in your sides, and their gods will be a snare to you.”
Because they had not fulfilled their part in the covenant, He would not in the short term fulfil His. While He would not totally desert them He would withhold His assistance and not drive out those whom His people had been unwilling to drive out. If we do not obey God we cannot expect Him to do for us what we fail to do.
And indeed the Canaanites did become thorns in their sides, always ready to retaliate when they grew strong, and always ready to side with others against them. ‘And their gods will be a snare to you’. They were dragged down morally and spiritually to the depths by their connections with Canaanite religion.
Jdg 2:4
‘ And it happened that, when the Angel of Yahweh spoke these words to all the children of Israel, the people lifted up their voice and wept.’
Perhaps at this feast they had been enquiring of Yahweh why they were suffering failure against the enemy, and why things were going so hard for them. So here was God’s reply through His Angel, it was because they had sinned. It was because they had broken their covenant with Yahweh.
“The people lifted up their voice, and wept.” Why did they weep? Was it because they were brokenhearted over their own sinfulness, or was it because they felt that God might not be as much with them as before? There was probably a mixture of both, but with the emphasis on the latter. At such times as this, that was what they feared most, that the great God of deliverance would no longer deliver, that He Who had smitten the great Pharaoh of Egypt would no longer act against the people of the land and their gods. At least it awakened them to the importance of the covenant and their need to ensure their faithfulness to it. It was occasions like this that renewed their commitment to the central sanctuary, where they could hear the law of God, and make atonement before Him for their sin, and that for a time began to make them reconsider their duty to Him rather than to the gods of the land.
Jdg 2:5
‘ And they called the name of that place Bochim, and they sacrificed there to Yahweh.’
“Bochim” means ‘weepers’. It was the place of weeping for sin. So there was a great renewal of the covenant at this feast of Yahweh, and the appropriate sacrifices were offered, and further sacrifices to denote their sense of guilt and gratitude.
It is probable that this was at Shiloh were the Tabernacle was, with Bochim being applied to the particular spot of their gathering. As it is never again mentioned it was probably a temporary name, as temporary as their repentance. But it may be that it is connected with Allon Bacuth (‘the oak of weeping’) in Gen 35:8, which was at Bethel, where the Ark was in Jdg 20:27, and where there was also great weeping then (2:26), see also Jdg 21:2.
The importance of this incident lies in the fact that when in the future Israel looked back and asked themselves, ‘why has our God allowed this to happen?’ they would remember His words at Bochim and know that it was through their own fault that it was so, but that His revealed presence there demonstrated that He had not totally forsaken them.
Fuente: Commentary Series on the Bible by Peter Pett
Jdg 2:1 And an angel of the LORD came up from Gilgal to Bochim, and said, I made you to go up out of Egypt, and have brought you unto the land which I sware unto your fathers; and I said, I will never break my covenant with you.
Jdg 2:1
Exo 23:20, “Behold, I send an Angel before thee, to keep thee in the way, and to bring thee into the place which I have prepared.”
Exo 23:23, “For mine Angel shall go before thee, and bring thee in unto the Amorites, and the Hittites, and the Perizzites, and the Canaanites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites: and I will cut them off.”
Jdg 2:1 “came up from Gilgal” Comments – Gilgal is the place where Joshua first pitched camp in the land of Canaan (Jos 4:19; Jos 5:9-10; Jos 9:6; Jos 14:6).
Jos 4:19, “And the people came up out of Jordan on the tenth day of the first month, and encamped in Gilgal, in the east border of Jericho.”
Jos 5:9-10, “And the LORD said unto Joshua, This day have I rolled away the reproach of Egypt from off you. Wherefore the name of the place is called Gilgal unto this day. And the children of Israel encamped in Gilgal, and kept the passover on the fourteenth day of the month at even in the plains of Jericho.”
Jos 9:6, “And they went to Joshua unto the camp at Gilgal, and said unto him, and to the men of Israel, We be come from a far country: now therefore make ye a league with us.”
Jos 14:6, “Then the children of Judah came unto Joshua in Gilgal: and Caleb the son of Jephunneh the Kenezite said unto him, Thou knowest the thing that the LORD said unto Moses the man of God concerning me and thee in Kadeshbarnea.”
However, Joshua set up the Tabernacle at Shiloh (Jos 18:1).
Jos 18:1, “And the whole congregation of the children of Israel
assembled together at Shiloh , and set up the tabernacle of the congregation there. And the land was subdued before them.”
Jdg 2:1 “to Bochim” – Word Study on “Bochim” Strong says the Hebrew word “Bochim” ( ) (H1066) means, “weepers.” This word is only mentioned twice in the entire Old Testament (Jdg 2:1; Jdg 2:5).
Jdg 2:4-5, “And it came to pass, when the angel of the LORD spake these words unto all the children of Israel, that the people lifted up their voice, and wept. And they called the name of that place Bochim : and they sacrificed there unto the LORD.”
Jdg 2:5 And they called the name of that place Bochim: and they sacrificed there unto the LORD.
Jdg 2:5
Jdg 2:11 And the children of Israel did evil in the sight of the LORD, and served Baalim:
Jdg 2:11
Fuente: Everett’s Study Notes on the Holy Scriptures
The Reproof of the Angel of the Lord
v. 1. And an Angel of the Lord, v. 2. And ye shall make no league with the inhabitants of this land, v. 3. Wherefore I also said, v. 4. And it came to pass, when the Angel of the Lord spake these words unto all the children of Israel, that the people lifted up their voice and wept, v. 5. And they called the name of that place,
Fuente: The Popular Commentary on the Bible by Kretzmann
EXPOSITION
It is often extremely difficult to make out the sequence of a Hebrew narrative, the narrator going back and travelling over the same ground in respect of time which he had already traversed, in order to introduce some circumstances which had been omitted (see Jdg 7:25, note, and Jdg 7:4, note). This appears to be the ease With this section. The mention of Gilgal in Jdg 2:1 seems to point distinctly to the early time of the entrance into Canaan under Joshua, because it was quite in the beginning of the Israelite occupation that the camp was at Gilgal, and it was there that the angel of the Lord spake to Joshua (Jos 5:9, Jos 5:10, Jos 5:13-15). We find the camp still at Gilgal in Jos 10:9, Jos 10:43, and it was from the camp at Gilgal that Caleb went forth to his conquest (Jos 14:6), and also that Ephraim and Manasseh went forth to take their inheritance (chs. 16; 17.); but in Jos 18:1, Jos 18:9, Jos 18:10 we find Shiloh, in the hill country of Ephraim, the place of the national gathering of “the host,” and the tabernacle pitched there; and the same in Jos 19:51; Jos 21:2; Jos 22:9, Jos 22:12. Josephus tells us that Joshua moved his camp from Gilgal to Shiloh in the hill country at the close of the fifth year (‘J.A.’ 5. 1.19). This ascent of the angel from Gilgal in the plains of Jericho to Bochim in the hill country would seem, therefore, to have been about the beginning of the sixth year of the occupation of Canaan, and the rebuke in it to apply chiefly to Ephraim and Manasseh, though in part to Judah also. The place of this section chronologically would be between verse 29 and verse 30 of ch. 1. It should be noticed also that this section is very closely connected with Jos 24:1-33.; for, first, Jdg 2:6 is identical With Jos 24:28, and the verses that follow Jdg 2:6 are also identical With those that follow Jos 24:28. It is likely, therefore, that what immediately precedes Jdg 2:6 should be very closely connected With what immediately precedes Jos 24:28, and should relate to the same time. Now the discourse of Joshua (Jos 24:1-15) is only an expansion of the brief address of the angel in Jdg 2:1-3. The expostulation about the strange gods in Jos 24:14, Jos 24:23, is in exact accordance with the complaint of the angel in Jdg 2:2; and the warm protestation of the people, “We will serve the Lord,” in Jos 24:18, Jos 24:21, Jos 24:24, is in full accordance with what is said Jdg 2:4 : “The people lifted up their voice, and wept.” Again, the mention in Jos 24:1 of the people presenting themselves “before God,” and of “the sanctuary of the Lord” (Jos 24:26), agrees with what is said Jdg 2:5 : “They sacrificed there unto the Lord.” And lastly, the somewhat mysterious words in Jos 24:27, “This stone hath heard all the words of the Lord which he hath spoken to us,” would have an easy solution if the message of the angel (Jdg 2:1-8) had been spoken before it. The inference is that Joshua’s address in Jos 24:1-33. was delivered immediately after the transaction recorded in this section.
Jdg 2:1
An angel of the Lord. Rather, the angel of the Lord, i.e. the angel of his presence, whose message consequently is delivered as if the Lord himself were speaking (see Gen 16:7, Gen 16:9, Gen 16:11, etc.). A good example of the difference between a message delivered by a prophet and one delivered by the angel of the Lord may be seen by comparing Jdg 6:8 with Jdg 6:11-16. Bochim, i.e. weepers (Jdg 6:4, Jdg 6:5). The site is unknown, but it was probably near Shiloh. The phrase “came up” denotes that it was in the hill country.
Jdg 2:3
I said, i.e. I now declare to you my resolve. It was this that made the people weep. Thorns in your sides. This is not a translation of the Hebrew text, which only has “for sides,” but a partial adaptation of Jos 23:13, where the phrase is “scourges in your sides and thorns in your eyes.” Either the words for “scourges in” have fallen out of the text, or the word here rendered “sides” should be rendered, as some think, “enemies.” A snare. See Jdg 8:27, note.
Jdg 2:5
They sacrificed. A clear intimation that they were near Shiloh, where the tabernacle was.
Jdg 2:6
And when Joshua, etc. The same words as Jos 22:6, marking the identity of time.
HOMILETICS
Jdg 2:1-6
The expostulation.
We have here an extraordinary messenger, the angel of the Lord, but the message is one which in its spirit might be addressed to men at any time, and at any place. For it speaks of God’s flowing mercy arrested by man’s stubbornness. “I made you to go up out of EgyptI have brought you into the promised land. I have faithfully kept my covenant, but you have altogether failed to do your part. Ye have not obeyed my voice.” The one requirement of God that, when they took possession of the land, they should make no league with its inhabitants, but should throw down their abominable altars, they had neglected to fulfil. They had thought of their own interest and convenience, and not of the honour of God. They had taken God’s earthly gifts, but had rejected his word. They bad shown themselves to be self-seekers, greedy, carnal, and forgetful of him from whom they had all. It was the old story of self slipping into the place of Godself as the supposed giver, and self as the person for whose glory the gift was to be used. “My power and the might of mine hand bath gotten me this wealth,” and therefore I will use it to my own ends. “Is not this great Babylon that I have built for the house of the kingdom, by the might of my power, and for the honour of my majesty?” This is the spirit that is constantly slipping in, in a greater or less degree, even in the Church of God. and frustrating the purposes of his unbounded grace. For it is just as in the case of Israel. When they used the gift of Canaan not for God’s purposes but for their own, which were quite contrary to God’sfor God’s purpose was the extirpation of idolatry; their purpose was the enjoyment of vineyards which they had not planted, and wells which they. had not diggedthey at once closed up the fountain of God’s grace. “I will not drive them out from before you; they shall be as thorns in your side, and their gods shall be a snare unto you.” And their future history was the history of the fulfilment of this threat. So it was in the history of the Church. The grace of God bestowed in such rich abundance upon the early Church at Pentecost and afterwards, that those who named the name of Christ might be patterns to an evil world of love and purity and unselfish service, was soon stayed and checked by strife and discord, by worldly ambitions, by compromises with sin, and by fellowship with the corruptions of heathenism. So too it is with individual Christians. We check God’s grace by not using it to the full; we hinder his mercy by not appropriating it, and not valuing it; we stop the flow of his good-will to us by setting up the objects of our own carnal desires and pursuing them, while we neglect the things which make for the glory of God. And just as the entire conquest of the Canaanites was not stopped by any deficiency of power in Almighty God, nor by any failure in love or faithfulness on his part, but simply by the sin of Israel, so now we may be quite,; sure that there is an infinite fulness of grace in Christ Jesus for all the Church’s needs, and all the spiritual wants of each individual disciple, if only the hindrances of man’s selfish disobedience are taken away, and an open channel is kept for God’s free mercy to flow unimpeded in its gracious course. But, be it ever remembered, the disobedience to God’s word, whatever it be, must be taken away. It is not enough to lift up the voice and weep over the consequences of sin past; it is not enough to sacrifice unto the Lord in hopes of averting his threatened punishments; there must be an entire return to the path of obedience, to walk with a whole heart in the way of God’s commandments, and to obey his voice. For that is the end for which God bestows his grace “Elect unto obedience and sprinkling of the blood of Jesus Christ.” Let the Church, let the individual disciple, throw themselves unreservedly into this path of obedience, and God will fulfil in them all the good pleasure of his goodness, and their peace shall flow like a river.
HOMILIES BY A.F. MUIR
Jdg 2:1-5
Bochim.
Who this “angel of the Lord” was we do not, probably were not meant to, know. He might have been Phinehas, the same who, according to Rabbinical interpreters, was the mouth-piece of Jehovah after the death of Joshua (verse 1). But the probabilities are decidedly against such a supposition. It is “an angel,” or messenger. At any rate the personality of the messenger (surely no celestial visitant, else why the journey and apparently public discourse?) is kept in the background. He is nothing, a mere “voice,” but a voice giving utterance to Israel’s consciousness of offending, and addressing and rousing it. The mere circumstance that he came from Gilgal, the first spot touched by Israel in Canaan, gave significance to his message. Bochim was probably at Shiloh, the appointed meeting-place of the tribes.
I. A PLACE OF SOLEMN RECOLLECTION AND RE–STATEMENT. Shiloh, the place of Israel’s worship and sacrifice, is also the place of Israel’s repentance. A name, Bochim, is given to it. “They named the place from their tears.” So the house of God becomes the monument and memorial of our deepest religious experiences. No new revelation is here made. The simple facts of the Divine deliverance of the people, their perfidy and faithlessness, are recited; in contrast with which God’s steadfastness is mentioned. The foundation article of the covenant is rehearsed, and the question asked, “Why have ye done this?” And then the connection of their punishment with their sin is set forth.
II. A PLACE OF INQUIRY, REMONSTRANCE, AND SORROWFUL APPEAL. The tone of this address is sympathetic and yet severe. The question, “Why have ye done this?” suggests to the people how foolish and profitless their conduct has been. How fitting would such a question be to many sinners of to-day. We too have broken plain precepts and sinned against the light of truth. What reason has there been in the conduct of God, in the nature of the duties neglected, or in the advantages we supposed we should secure? An appeal to conscience like this is of infinitely more value than a speculative disquisition. He is a true angel who bears such a message.
III. A PLACE OF REPENTANCE. Israel is invited to change its mind. God is solicitous for its repentance. He has sent “an angel” to produce this result. The tears that flow so freely are precious in his sight, and may avail, if followed up, to recover his favour and to reinstate them in their lost possessions. How great a privilege was this; not that it was a place of tears only, but that it might become a place of repentance, a turning-point in Israel’s history. This Esau found not, though he sought it carefully with tears. Let it therefore be seized as a blissful augury that God wills not the death of a sinner, hut that all men may turn to him and live. Such experiences are not to be artificially produced. A faithful recalling of God’s real dealings with us in the past ought to make tears flow from the most hardened of sinners. But let the next step be taken, and beyond the tears, even beyond the ostentatious sacrifice, let reformation commence at once with his help and blessing. Then shall we have reason to recall our tears with gratitude when we discover that our repentance is not to he repented of.M.
HOMILIES BY W.F. ADENEY
Jdg 2:1-5
The preaching of repentance.
I. THE MISSION.
1. A special messenger is sent to preach repentance. There are men whose peculiar gifts and position mark them out as called to this difficult work, e.g. Elijah, John the Baptist, Savonarola, John Knox.
2. This man was sent by God. It needs a Divine call and inspiration to speak rightly to men of their sins as well as to preach the gospel of peace. He who is thus called must not shrink from fear or false kindness to men.
3. The preacher is simply commissioned to convey a message from God. The voice is a man’s, but the words are God’s. The true preacher must always regard himself as the messenger of God, not at liberty to indulge in his own speculations, or to claim authority for his own judgment, but simply to declare, and interpret, and apply, the truth which God has entrusted to him (1Ti 1:11).
4. The preacher carries the message to the people. He does not wait for an audience to assemble about him; he does not wait for a spontaneous repentance. He journeys from Gilgal to Bochim. They who most need the preacher are least likely to come to hear him. Therefore he must go after them. The visitor, the city missionary, etc; have here a special work to reach those who will never enter the church, but all preachers of repentance must learn to seek their hearers.
II. THE MESSAGE.
1. This commences with a review of God‘s goodness and faithfulness. If we have been sinful he has still been merciful to us. He has kept his side of the great covenant, so that if we miss the good fruits of it this must be because we fail on our side. It is well to call attention to these facts before pointing out the sin of men,
(1) that this may be felt more deeply in contrast with the goodness of God,
(2) that the purpose of God in calling to repentance may be recognised as gracious, not vindictive (Rom 2:4).
2. The message contains a definite charge of sin. This must be definite to be effective. All admit they are imperfect. The difficult and delicate task of rebuking consists in making men see their special guilt in regard to particular sins.
(1) In the present case the sin consists in guilty tolerance of evil. Religion should be aggressive. The Church is called to separate herself from the world (1Co 5:11).
(2) The root of the sin is disobedience. All sin is disobedience to the written law, or the law in our hearts; it is the setting up of our will against God’s will.
3. The message closes with a warning of punishment. This punishment was to be a direct consequence of their tolerance of evil. Punishment is a natural fruit of sin.
III. THE RESULTS. We see the preaching of repentance producing the most varied results. Some turn a deaf ear; some hear and resent it; some hear and approve, but apply the message to others; some hear and admit the truth of the rebuke, but have no feeling of the sting of it; some feel sorrow under the rebuke, but do not rise to the active repentance of will. In the present instance the people heard meekly, humbly, and penitently, and the word bore fruit in genuine repentance and reformation.
1. They wept. Sorrow for past sin is natural and helpful towards future amendment, though if left to itself it will be a barren sentiment.
2. They sacrificed. Thus they acknowledged guilt, sought forgiveness in the mercy of God, and reconsecrated themselves to his service. It is not repentance, but faith in Christ, the sacrifice for sin, following this, that secures to us God’s forgiving mercy.
3. They served the Lord. This is the final outcome, and certain proof of genuine repentance. The depth of our repentance must be measured not by the number of tears we shed, but by the thoroughness of our amendment of life, and the faithfulness of our subsequent service of God (Luk 3:11).A.
Fuente: The Complete Pulpit Commentary
CHAP. II.
Joshua being dead, the Israelites revolt to strange gods: are oppressed by the Canaanites, and weep, being rebuked by an angel: God afterwards sendeth them judges, who subdue the Canaanites; but after their death the Israelites return to their wickedness, and are punished.
Before Christ 1432.
Jdg 2:1. And an angel of the Lord This should be rendered, and the angel of the Lord; for it is plain beyond all controversy, from the context, that this angel was the great messenger of the covenant, the same who led the children of Israel out of Egypt, and concerning whom we have spoken so often in the foregoing notes. He came up from Gilgal to Bochim. Probably he had made his first appearance at Gilgal, and had there communicated to some persons of distinction his commission. Bochim, doubtless, means the same as Shiloh. The reason of the former name is given in Jdg 2:5.
REFLECTIONS.Such a glaring violation of the divine command as they had committed in their treatment of the Canaanites could not fail of a divine rebuke. Accordingly, when they were assembled, probably at one of the solemn feasts at Shiloh, God sends them a solemn message.
1. The person who brought it is called an angel of the Lord, the glorious angel of the covenant, the eternal Redeemer, Jesus the Son of God, who speaks in his own name. He came from Gilgal, in some glorious manner probably, which attracted their notice, and was the same person who had before appeared there to Joshua as the captain of the Lord’s hosts.
His expostulation with them is sharp and pointed. He reminds them of his mercies in bringing them from Egypt; of his gracious covenant, which on his part had been, and would have been for ever, if they had been faithful, punctually fulfilled. He mentions the reasonable expectations he had, that they should comply with his orders in erasing every monument of idolatry, and utterly destroying the people. In direct opposition to which, they had spared the Canaanites, and connived at their worship; for all which they were without excuse. Therefore, as the just punishment of such neglect and disobedience, God will stay the current of their victories; will make those very sinners whom they have spared their scourge, and leave them to follow those gods whose altars they refused to destroy. Note; (1.) Sinners are without excuse. (2.) They who expect advantage from friendship with the enemies of God will be utterly deceived. (3.) Those corruptions to which we allow the lowest measure of indulgence will soon gain strength, and quickly prove our conquerors. (4.) They, who offend God by one sin, provoke him to give them up to a greater.
3. Struck with the alarming message, and confounded by the presence of their Lord, the tears of penitential sorrow burst from their eyes. They cried aloud for mercy, that they might avert the judgments which were threatened; offered sacrifices, that, by the blood of atonement they might obtain pardon of their sin; and called the name of the place Bochim, weepers, to perpetuate the memory of their humiliations. Note; (1.) They, who have felt the bitterness of sin, are no strangers to the tears of penitence. (2.) When God’s word makes the heart tremble, there is hope; for to that man will God look. (3.) The sins that we lament we must reform, else our repentance will be hypocrisy. Many melt under the terrors of God’s word, who quickly return to their iniquities, as the dog to his vomit. (4.) Not all our tears are available to wash away our sins; the blood of the Lamb which was slain is alone able to make us pure from our iniquity.
Fuente: Commentary on the Holy Bible by Thomas Coke
SECOND SECTION
The Religious Degeneracy Of Israel Which Resulted From Its Disobedient Conduct With Respect To The Canaanites, And The Severe Discipline Which It Rendered Necessary, As Explaining The Alternations Of Apostasy And Servitude, Repentance And Deliverance, Characteristic Of The Period Of The Judges
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A Messenger of Jehovah charges Israel with disobedience, and announces punishment. The people repent and offer sacrifice
Jdg 2:1-5
1And an angel [messenger] of the Lord [Jehovah] came up from Gilgal to Bochim, and said, I made you to go up1 out of Egypt, and have brought you unto the land which I sware unto your fathers; and I said, I will never break my covenant with 2you. And [But] ye shall make no league [covenant] with the inhabitants of this land; ye shall throw down2 their altars: but ye have not obeyed [hearkened to] my 3voice: why have ye done this?3 Wherefore [And] I also said, [In that casei.e. in the event of disobedience]4 I will not drive them out from before you; but they shall be as thorns in your sides,5 and their gods shall be [for] a snare unto you. 4And it came to pass, when the angel [messenger] of the Lord [Jehovah] spake [had spoken]6 these words unto all the children [sons] of Israel, that the people lifted up their voice, and wept. 5And they called the name of that place Bochim [Weepers]: and they sacrificed there unto the Lord [Jehovah].
TEXTUAL AND GRAMMATICAL
[Jdg 2:1.: Keil: The use of the imperfect instead of the perfect (cf. Jdg 6:8) is very singular, seeing that the contents of the address, and its continuation in the historical tense ( and ), require the preterite. The imperfect can only be explained by supposing it to be under the retrospective influence of the immediately following imperfect consecutive. De Wette translates, I said, I will lead you up out of Egypt, and brought you into the land, etc. This supposes that , or some such expression, has dropped out of the text, or is to be supplied. This mode of explaining the imperfect is favored (1), by the fact that we seem to have here a quotation from Exo 3:17; but especially (2), by the before the last clause of this verse, and the of Jdg 2:3, which suggest that the same verb is to be understood in Jdg 2:1 a.Tr.]
[Jdg 2:2., from , to tear down, demolish. On the form, cf. Ges. Gram. 47, Rem. 4.Tr.]
[Jdg 2:2.More literally: What is this that ye have done! i. e. How great is this sin you have committed! cf. Jdg 8:1.Tr.]
[Jdg 2:3.Dr. Bachmann interprets the words that follow as a definite judgment on Israel, announcing that henceforth Jehovah will not drive out any of the still remaining nations, but will leave them to punish Israel. It is undoubtedly true that may be translated, therefore, now, I also say; but it is also true that it is more natural here (with Bertheau, Keil, Cass.) to render, and I also said. To the citations of earlier divine utterances in Jdg 2:1-2 (see the Comment.), the messenger of Jehovah now adds another, from Num 33:55, Jos 23:13. It is, moreover, a strong point against Bachmanns view that God does not execute judgment speedily, least of all on Israel. We can hardly conceive him to shut the door of hope on the nation so soon after the departure of the latest surviving contemporaries of Joshua as this scene at Bochim seems to have occurred, cf. the comparatively mild charges brought by the messenger, as implied in Jdg 2:2, with the heavier ones in Jdg 2:11 ff. and Jdg 3:6-7. Besides, if we understand a definite and final sentence to be pronounced here, we must understand Jdg 2:20 f. as only reproducing the same (as Bachmann does), although Israels apostasy had become far more pronounced when the first Judge arose than it is now. It seems clear, therefore, that we must here understand a warning, while the sentence itself issues subsequently (cf. foot-note 3, on p. 62).Tr.]
[5 Jdg 2:3.Dr. Cassel translates: they shall be to you for thorns. Cf. the Commentary. The E. V. supplies thorns from Num 33:55; but it has to change into or .Tr.]
[6 Jdg 2:4.Better perhaps, with De Wette: And it came to pass, as the messenger of Jehovah spake, etc., that the people, etc. On with the infin. cf. Ges. Lex. s. , B. 5, b.Tr.]
EXEGETICAL AND DOCTRINAL
Jdg 2:1. And there came a messenger of Jehovah. Israel had experienced the faithfulness of the Divine Spirit who, through Moses, led them forth from Egypt, and made them a people. In him, they conquered Canaan, and took possession of a noble country. In addition to this, they had the guaranty of the divine word (cf. Lev 26:44), that God would never forsake themthat the truth on which He had thus far built up their life and nationality, would endure. Reason enough had been given them to fulfill everything prescribed by Moses, whether great or small, difficult or pleasant, whether it gave or took away. They had every reason for being wholly with their God, whether they waged war or enjoyed the fruits of victory. Were they thus with Him? Could they be thus with Him after such proceedings in relation to the inhabitants of Canaan as Judges 1 sets forth? Israels strength consists in the enthusiasm which springs from faith in the invisible God who made heaven and earth, and in obedience to his commands. If enthusiasm fail and obedience be impaired, Israel becomes weak. The law which it follows is not only its rule of duty, but also its bill of rights. Israel is free, only by the law; without it, a servant. A life springing from the law, exhibited clearly and uninterruptedly, is the condition on which it enjoys whatever is to its advantage. To preserve and promote such a life, was the object of the command, given by Moses, not to enter into any kind of fellowship with the nations against whom they were called to contend. The toleration which Israel might be inclined to exercise, could only be the offspring of weakness in faith (Deu 7:17) and of blind selfishness. For the sake of its own life, it was commanded not to tolerate idolatry within its borders, even though practiced only by those of alien nations. For the people are weak, and the superstitious tendency to that which strikes the senses, seduces the inconstant heart. It cannot be otherwise than injurious when Israel ceases to be entirely obedient to that word in whose organic wisdom its history is grounded, and its future secured. Ruin must result when, as has been related, the people fails in numerous instances to drive out the heathen nations, and instead thereof enters into compacts with them. Special emphasis was laid, in the preceding narrative, upon the fact that for the sake of tribute, Israel had tolerated the worship of the lewd Asherah and of the sun, in Apheca, in the Phnician cities, in Banias, and in Beth-shemesh. When the occupation of Canaan was completeda date is not giventhe impression produced by a survey of the whole land was not such as promised enduring peace and obedience to the Word of God. The organs of this word were not yet silenced, however. When the heads of Israel asked who should begin the conflict, the Word of God had answered through the priest; and ancient exegesis rightly considered the messenger of God who now, at the end of the war, speaks to Israel, to be the same priest. At the beginning, he answered from the Spirit of God; at the end, he admonishes by an impulse of his own. There he encourages; here he calls to account. There they inquire of God; here also he speaks only as the messenger of God. He is designedly called messenger of God. Every word he speaks, God has spoken. His words are only reminiscences out of the Word of God. His sermon is, as it were, a lesson read out of this word. He speaks only like a messenger who verbally repeats his commission. No additions of his own; objective truth alone, is what he presents. That is the idea of the , the messenger, , according to every explanation that has been given of him. The emphasis falls here, not on who spake, but on what was spoken. Gods word comes to the people unasked for, like the voice of conscience. From the antithesis to the opening verse of the Book, where the people asked, it is evident that no angel of a celestial kind is here thought of. Earlier expositors ought to have perceived this, if only because it is said that the messenger
Came up from Gilgal to Bochim. Heavenly angels appear, and do not come from Gilgal particularly.7 The connection of this statement with the whole preceding narrative is profound and instructive. The history of Israel in Canaan begins in Gilgal. There (Jos 4:20 ff.) stood the memorial which showed how they had come through the Jordan into this land ( ). The name Gilgal itself speaks of the noblest benefit bestowed on themtheir liberation from the reproach of Egypt. There the first Passover in Canaan had been celebrated. Thence also begin the great deeds that are done after the death of Joshua. As now the messenger of God comes from Gilgal, so at first Judah set out from thence to enter into his possessions. A messenger who came from Gilgal, did by that circumstance alone remind the people of Joshuas last words and commands The memorial which was there erected rendered the place permanently suggestive to Israel of past events. From the time that Joshuas camp was there, it never ceased to be a celebrated spot (comp. 1Sa 7:16); but that on this occasion the messenger comes from Gilgal, has its ground in the nature of his message, the history of which commences at Gilgal.
Jdg 2:2-3. Why have ye done this? This sorrowful exclamation is uttered by the priestaccording to Jewish exegesis, Phinehas, the same who spoke Jdg 1:2after he has exhibited in brief quotations from the old divine instructions, first, what God has done for Israel, and then what Israel has done in disregard of God. The eternal God has enjoined it upon you, not under any circumstances to enter into peaceful compacts with the idolatrous tribes and their altars among you, thereby authorizing them openly before your eyes to manifest their depravity and practice their abominationswhat have ye done! The exclamation is full of sharp grief; for the consequences are inevitable. For God said (Jos 23:13): I will not drive out these nations from before you. Israel had its tasks to perform. If it failed it must bear the consequences. God has indeed said (Exo 23:29-30), and Moses reiterates it (Deu 7:22), By little and little I will drive out the Canaanite, lest the land becomes desolate. And this word received its fulfillment in the days of Joshua and subsequently. But when Israel disobeys, God will not prosper its disobedience. It must then experience that which the messenger now with grief and pain announces: Since Canaanites remain among you, who ought not to remain, and whom ye could have expelled, had ye been wholly with your God (Deu 7:17 ff.), they will hurt you, though they are conquered. It is not an innocent thing to suffer the presence of sin, and give it equal rights.
They shall be thorns, and their gods shall be a snare unto you. The Hebrew text has : literally, they shall be sides unto you. everywhere means the side; and the explanations which make adversaries, hostes (Vulgate), nets (Luther), tormentors (Sachs), out of it, are without any foundation. Arias Montanus, who gives in lateribus, follows therein the older Jewish expositors; but neither does the idea of hurtful neighbors lie in the word. From the fact that the Chaldee para phrast has , oppressors, it would indeed seem that he read ; for in Num 33:55 he also renders by . The Septuagint rendering (the Syriac version of it has the singular, cf. Rrdam, p. 69), might seem to indicate a similar reading, although occurs perhaps only twice for (1Sa 23:8; 2Sa 20:3). None the less does it appear to me to be against the language and spirit of Scripture, to read here. For not only does occur but once in Scripture (Lam 1:7), but it is expressive of that hostility which arises in consequence of the state of things here described. Only after one has fallen into the snare begins that miserable condition in which one is oppressed by the enemy, while all power of resistance is lost. The following considerations may assist us to arrive at the true sense: Every sentence, from Jdg 2:1 to Jdg 2:4, is in all its parts and words a reproduction of utterances by Moses and Joshua. Verse 1 is composed of expressions found as follows: , etc., Exo 3:17; , etc., Jos 24:8; , etc., Deu 1:35; , etc., Lev 26:44. Verse 2 likewise: , etc., Exo 23:32, Deu 7:2; , , Exo 34:13, Deu 7:5; , Num 14:22. The case is similar with Jdg 2:3, and it is to be assumed that the parallel passages may be used to throw light on the text. Now, as the first parallel to the expression, and they shall be to you for tsiddim (), we have the words in Num 33:55 : and they shall be to you for pricks in your eyes and thorns in your sides ( ). Not for sides, therefore, but for thorns in the sides; and we can as little believe that the same meaning would result if the expression were only sides, as we can imagine the idea to remain unaltered if instead of pricks in the eyes, one were to say, they shall be to you for eyes. The second parallel passage is Jos 23:13 : they shall be to you for scourges in your sides and thorns in your eyes. The enemies are compared, not with sides and eyes, but with scourges and thorns by which sides and eyes are afflicted. Now as our passage as a whole corresponds entirely with those of Numbers and Joshua, save only that it abridges and epitomizes them, the threat which they contain appears here also, and in a similarly condensed form. It was sufficient to say, they shall be to you for thorns; accordingly, instead of we are to read (tsinnim for tsiddim), a change as natural as it is easily accounted for, since both words occurred not only in each of the other passages, but in one of them were joined together in the same clause. Emendation in this instance is more conservative than retention, for it rests on the internal organic coherence of Scripture.8Tsinnah, tsinnim, tseninim, are thorns, spin, pointed and stinging. The figure is taken from rural life. Israel, in the conquest, has acted like a slothful gardener. It has not thoroughly destroyed the thorns and thistles of its fields. The consequence will be, that sowing and planting and other field labors, will soon be rendered painful by the presence of spiteful thorns. What will turn the Canaanites into stinging weeds and snares for Israel? The influence of habitual intercourse. Familiarity blunts aversion, smooths away contrarieties, removes differences, impairs obedience. It induces forgetfulness of what one was, what one promised, and to what conditions one is subject. Familiar intercourse with idolaters will weaken Israels faith in the invisible God who has said, Thou shalt not serve strange gods.
Jdg 2:4. When the messenger had spoken these words, etc. It is most likely that the few sentences here given, are but the outlines of the messengers address. But every word rests on the basis of instructions delivered by Moses and Joshua. The people are sensible of the surpassing reality of the blessings which they have received, and for that reason are the more affected by the thought of the consequences which their errors have brought upon them. For the fulfillment of the law of truth as to its promises, guarantees the same as to its threatenings. Their alarm on account of sin is the livelier, the less decidedly active their disregard of the Word of God has hitherto been. They have not yet served the gods whose temples they have failed to destroyhave not yet joined in sin with the nations whom they suffered to remain. It was a weak faith, but not yet full-grown sin, by which they were led astray. Gods messenger addresses all the sons of Israel, for no tribe had formed an exception. In greater or less degree, they all had committed the same disobedience. The whole nation lifted up its voice and wept.
Jdg 2:5. And they called the name of the place Bochim (Weepers). The messenger of the divine word, when he wished to address Israel, must have gone up to the place where he would find them assembled. Israel had been commanded, as soon as the Jordan should have been crossed, and rest obtained, to assemble for feasts and sacrifices at a sacred place (Deu 12:10). This order applied not to Jerusalem merely, but to the place which the Lord your God shall choose in one of the tribes. Thither they are to go up, trusting in God and dismissing care. It was only at such festal assemblies that Israel could be met. There was the opportunity for preaching and admonition. The chosen place at that time was Shiloh. There the tabernacle had been set up (Jos 18:1); and there the people assembled (cf. Jos 21:2). Thither they went up from far and near, to attend festivals (Jdg 21:19), and to offer sacrifices (1Sa 1:3). The whole progress of Joshua was a going from Gilgal to Shiloh. Accordingly, the messenger of God can have found Israel at no other place. His discourse produced a general outburst of weeping (cf. 1Sa 11:4). And only because it was a weeping of penitence and shame before God, did the place where it occurred receive and retain the name Bochim. It was not a place otherwise nameless. How could the place where such an assembly was held be without a name! And how could it occur to the people to assemble at such a place! In Shiloh itself, some spotperhaps that where the priest was accustomed to address the peoplereceived the name Bochim. This name served thenceforth to recall the tears which were there shed. So do they show to-day in Jerusalem the Jews wailing-place (El Ebra, Ritter, xvi. 350 [Gages Transl. iv. 50]), where every Friday the Jews pray and lament. And they offered sacrifices there. After repentance and reconciliation comes sacrifice.
HOMILETICAL AND PRACTICAL
Faith and repentance come from preaching. Gods messenger preaches, and Israel hears. The people acknowledge their sins, and weep. At that time only a divine admonition was needed to make them sacrifice again to their God. To fall is possible even for one who has received so much grace as Israel had experienced in the lifetime of Joshua and after his death; but he rises up as soon as the messenger of God touches his heart with the preaching of repentance. A generation which experienced divine miracles, and recognized them as divine, can be brought to repentance by that miracle which in the proclamation of the word of God addresses the souls of men.
Therefore, let not the preaching of repentance fail to address all the people. But the preacher must be (1), a messenger of God; and (2), must not shun the way from Gilgal to Bochim,must not wait till the people come to him in the place for preaching, but must go to them, until he find a Bochim, a place of tearful eyes. But as Gods messenger he must give heed that the weeping be not merely the result of affecting words, but of a penitent disposition; that it be called forth, not by the flow of rhetoric, but by memories of the grace of God hitherto experienced by the congregation.
Starke: How great concern God takes in the salvation of men, and especially in the welfare of His church, appears clearly from the fact that He himself has often reasoned with them, taught them, admonished and rebuked them.
The same: The Word of God has the power of moving and converting men.
The same: To attest our repentance by tears as well as reformation, is not improper; nay, repentance is seldom of the right sort, if it does not, at least in secret, weep for sin.
Gerlach: He reminds them of earlier commands, promises and threats, and shows them how their own transgressions are now about to turn into self-inflicted judgments. The people, however, do not proceed beyond an unfruitful sorrow in view of this announcement.
[Henry: Many are melted under the word, that harden again before they are cast into a new mould.
Scott: If transgressors cannot endure the rebukes of Gods word and the convictions of their own consciences, how will they be able to stand before the tribunal of the holy, heart-searching Judge.
The same: The worship of God is in its own nature joy, praise, and thanksgiving, and our crimes alone render weeping needful; yet, considering what we are and what we have done, it is much to be wished that our religious assemblies were more frequently called Bochim, the place of the weepers. Blessed are they that mourn, for they shall be comforted.
Wordsworth: The Israelites called the place Bochim; they named it from their own tears. They laid the principal stress on their own feelings, and on their own outward demonstrations of sorrow. But they did not speak of Gods mercies; and they were not careful to bring forth fruits of repentance; they were a barren fig-tree, having only leaves. Theirs was a religion (such as is too common) of sentiment and emotions, not of faith and obedience.
The same: Reproofs which produce only tearsreligious feelings without religious actsemotions without effectsleave the heart worse than before. If Gods rebukes are trifled with, His grace is withdrawn.Tr.]
Footnotes:
[1][Jdg 2:1.: Keil: The use of the imperfect instead of the perfect (cf. Jdg 6:8) is very singular, seeing that the contents of the address, and its continuation in the historical tense ( and ), require the preterite. The imperfect can only be explained by supposing it to be under the retrospective influence of the immediately following imperfect consecutive. De Wette translates, I said, I will lead you up out of Egypt, and brought you into the land, etc. This supposes that , or some such expression, has dropped out of the text, or is to be supplied. This mode of explaining the imperfect is favored (1), by the fact that we seem to have here a quotation from Exo 3:17; but especially (2), by the before the last clause of this verse, and the of Jdg 2:3, which suggest that the same verb is to be understood in Jdg 2:1 a.Tr.]
[2][Jdg 2:2., from , to tear down, demolish. On the form, cf. Ges. Gram. 47, Rem. 4.Tr.]
[3][Jdg 2:2.More literally: What is this that ye have done! i. e. How great is this sin you have committed! cf. Jdg 8:1.Tr.]
[4][Jdg 2:3.Dr. Bachmann interprets the words that follow as a definite judgment on Israel, announcing that henceforth Jehovah will not drive out any of the still remaining nations, but will leave them to punish Israel. It is undoubtedly true that may be translated, therefore, now, I also say; but it is also true that it is more natural here (with Bertheau, Keil, Cass.) to render, and I also said. To the citations of earlier divine utterances in Jdg 2:1-2 (see the Comment.), the messenger of Jehovah now adds another, from Num 33:55, Jos 23:13. It is, moreover, a strong point against Bachmanns view that God does not execute judgment speedily, least of all on Israel. We can hardly conceive him to shut the door of hope on the nation so soon after the departure of the latest surviving contemporaries of Joshua as this scene at Bochim seems to have occurred, cf. the comparatively mild charges brought by the messenger, as implied in Jdg 2:2, with the heavier ones in Jdg 2:11 ff. and Jdg 3:6-7. Besides, if we understand a definite and final sentence to be pronounced here, we must understand Jdg 2:20 f. as only reproducing the same (as Bachmann does), although Israels apostasy had become far more pronounced when the first Judge arose than it is now. It seems clear, therefore, that we must here understand a warning, while the sentence itself issues subsequently (cf. foot-note 3, on p. 62).Tr.]
[5][Jdg 2:3.Dr. Cassel translates: they shall be to you for thorns. Cf. the Commentary. The E. V. supplies thorns from Num 33:55; but it has to change into or .Tr.]
[6][Jdg 2:4.Better perhaps, with De Wette: And it came to pass, as the messenger of Jehovah spake, etc., that the people, etc. On with the infin. cf. Ges. Lex. s. , B. 5, b.Tr.]
[7]Nevertheless, Keil also, in loct, has followed the older expositors. [We subjoin the main points on which Keil rests his interpretation: is not a prophet or any other earthly ambassador of Jehovah, as Phinehas or Joshua (Targ., Rabb., Stud., Berth., and others), but the Angel of Jehovah, consubstantial with God. In simple historical narrative no prophet is ever called ; such are designated or , as in Jdg 6:8, or , 1Ki 12:22; 1Ki 13:1, etc. The passages, Hag 1:13 and Mal 3:1, cannot be adduced against this, since there, in the prophetic style, the purely appellative significance of is placed beyond all doubt by the context. Moreover, no prophet ever identifies himself so entirely with God, as is here done by the Angel of Jehovah, In his address Jdg 2:1-3. The prophets always distinguish themselves from Jehovah by this, that they introduce their utterances as the word of God by the formula thus saith Jehovah, as is also done by the prophet in Jdg 6:8. Nor does it conflict with the nature of the Angel of Jehovah that he comes up from Gilgal to Bochim. His appearance at Bochim is described as a coming up to Bochim, with as much propriety as in Jdg 6:11 it is said concerning the Angel of Jehovah, that he came and sat down under the terebinth at Ophra. The only feature peculiar to the present instance is the coming up from Gilgal. This statement must stand in intimate connection with the mission of the angelmust contain more than a mere notice of his journeying from one place to another. Keil then recalls the appearance to Joshua, at Gilgal, of the angel who announced himself as the Captain of the host of Jehovah, and promised a successful issue to the siege of Jericho. The coming up from Gilgal indicates, therefore, that the same angel who at Gilgal, with the fall of Jericho delivered all Canaan into the hands of the Israelites, appeared to them again at Bochim, in order to announce the divine decree resulting from their disobedience to the commands of the Lord. With this view Bachmann and Wordsworth also agree. It must be admitted, however, that the appearance of the Angel of Jehovah, or indeed of any angel, in the character of a preacher before the assembled congregation of Israel is without a parallel in sacred history. Keils supposition that he addressed the people only through their heads or representatives, is against the clear import of Jdg 2:4-5, and not to be justified by a reference to Jos 24:1-2. Besides, an assembly of the heads and representatives, presents the same difficulty as an assembly of all the people. Angels appear only to individuals; to Israel as a nation God speaks through prophets.Tr.]
[8][Bachmann is not inclined to admire the conservative character of this emendation. He holds to the reading of the text, and finds in it a free reference to Num 33:55 and Jos 23:13, by virtue of which the nations themselvesfor, in his view, the (Jdg 2:3) refers rather to the nations of the unconquered border districts (cf. Jdg 2:23; Jdg 3:1), than to the scattered remnants of Canaanites within the conquered territoriesare described as (sides for Israel, i. e. as cramping, burdensome, tormenting neighbors. But is it quite conservative to attach the idea of something cramping, etc., to the simple word side. which on no other occasion appears with such horrible suggestions of compression and suffocation as Dr. B. would give it here?Tr.]
Fuente: A Commentary on the Holy Scriptures, Critical, Doctrinal, and Homiletical by Lange
DISCOURSE: 262
THE DANGER OF INDECISION
Jdg 2:1-5. And an Angel of the Lord came up from Gilgal to Bochim, and said, I made you to go up out of Egypt, and have brought you unto the land winch I sware unto your fathers; and I said, I will never break my covenant with you. And ye shall make no league with the inhabitants of this land; ye shall throw down their altars: but ye have not obeyed my voice: why have ye done this? Wherefore I also said, I will not drive them out from before you; but they shall be as thorns in your sides, and their gods shall be a snare unto you. And it came to pass, when the Angel of the Lord spake these words unto all the children of Israel, that the people lifted up their voice, and wept. And they called the name of that place Bochim: and they sacrificed there unto the Lord.
WE admire the condescension of Jehovah towards his chosen people, in that he raised up prophets to instruct them, and not unfrequently sent angels also to minister unto them. But the person who is here called an Angel of the Lord, seems to have been no other than the Angel of the Covenant, the Lord himself. It is certain that Jehovah did sometimes assume the appearance of an angel; as when he visited Abraham, and informed him of the judgments that were about to be inflicted on Sodom and Gomorrha. And it is clear that the person spoken of in our text was no created angel; for if he had, how could he with any propriety use such language? It was not a creature that brought the Israelites out of Egypt; but Jehovah. It was not a creature that made a covenant with them; but Jehovah. It was not a creature to whom they were accountable for their disobedience, or whose threatened dereliction they had such reason to deplore, but Jehovah: and the circumstance of his being said to come up from Gilgal, which is supposed to militate against this interpretation, rather confirms it: for it was in Gilgal, near to Jericho, that this same divine person had appeared to Joshua, as an armed warrior. That he was Jehovah, cannot be doubted; because he suffered Joshua to worship him; and even commanded him to put off his shoe from his foot, because the very ground whereon he stood was, by reason of his presence, rendered holy. In his conversation with Joshua he had called himself the Captain of the Lords host; and therefore there was a particular propriety in his appearing now to the people, to inquire, Why they had not carried his orders into effect? and to threaten that he would fight for them no longer. Besides, at Gilgal the people had revived the ordinance of circumcision, and had kept a passover unto the Lord; in both which ordinances they had consecrated themselves to God afresh, and engaged to serve him, as his redeemed people. In coming therefore as from Gilgal, the Angel reminded them of their solemn engagements, and humbled them the more for their violation of them.
The particular address of the Lord to them, together with the effect it produced upon them, leads us to consider,
I.
The danger of indecision
The command which God had given to the Israelites was plain and express: they were utterly to destroy the Canaanites, and to make no covenant with them [Note: Deu 7:2.]: and on their performance of this condition was suspended the continuance of Gods interposition in their favour. But they were not careful to execute the divine command: and therefore God threatened, that the Canaanites, whom they had presumed to spare, should become a lasting source of pain to them; that they would gradually draw them into sin, and ultimately become instruments of inflicting on them the vengeance they had merited.
Such is the sin which Gods professing people still commit
[The command to every one of us is to make no league with any one of our spiritual enemies; not with the world: on the contrary, we are to overcome it; to come out from the people of it, and be separate; to be dead to all its cares and pleasures, being crucified to it, and esteeming it as crucified unto us: we are not to be of it, any more than Jesus Christ himself was of it. With respect to the flesh also and our corrupt nature, no truce must be made with it, even for a moment: we must mortify our members upon earth, and crucify the flesh with the affections and lusts: we must not spare one evil desire, though it should be dear as a right eye, or useful as a right hand; we must pluck it out with abhorrence, or cut it off, and cast it from us. It is not sufficient to make them pay tribute: we must slay them; we must shew them no mercy [Note: Deu 7:2.]; our hatred of them must be irreconcilable and incessant.
But what is our state? Do we find in ourselves this zeal? Instead of proceeding to the utter extirpation of our spiritual enemies, are we not satisfied if they do not reign? Are we not contented to let them exist, provided they keep themselves concealed from public view? What then is the declaration of God unto us? Does he not warn us, that the evils which we spare shall become as thorns in our sides, and prove a snare unto our souls? And do we not find that it is even so in our daily experience? Let the person who still associates with the men of this world, say, whether he does not find that they are a clog to him in his spiritual course? whether his endeavours to please them do not lead him sometimes into sinful compliances, and his fear of displeasing them do not keep him from testifying against their evil ways? Will any say that he has found it practicable for light to have communion with darkness, or Christ with Belial; or that the soul can flourish whilst it is engaged in such a foolish attempt as that of reconciling the services of God and Mammon? Let the person who is still too deeply immersed in the cares or pleasures of the world, say, whether he has not often been led to strain his conscience in order to prosecute his ends, and to adopt some practices which in his heart he disapproved? Let the person who harbours some besetting sin, ask, whether it has not often risen up with a force that was almost irresistible, and nearly, if not altogether, involved him in some flagrant transgression? Let the person in whom pride, or lewdness, or covetousness, or passion is suffered to dwell, answer this question He knows but little of his own heart, who does not know, that sin is a flame, which, if not extinguished, may speedily set on fire his whole nature [Note: Jam 3:6 with Deu 32:22.], and burn to the lowest hell. Lastly, Let the person who listens to the temptations of Satan, say, whether there be any way of making him flee, but by perpetual resistance [Note: Jam 4:7.]? ]
If such then be the danger of indecision, let us consider,
II.
The duty of those who are convicted of it
Two things were produced by the declarations of the Angel in the breasts of all the congregation of Israel; which also our own experience calls for; namely,
1.
An humiliation of soul before God
[The people lifted up their voice and wept. And who amongst us has not abundant reason to follow their example? Whether we consider our sin or our punishment, we have but too much reason to weep. Indecision is not so light a sin as some imagine [Note: Job 31:25; Job 31:28.]: it shews an insincerity of heart, which is most odious in itself, and most offensive to God. See in what a light the Israelites beheld it, when once a conviction of it was brought home to their minds! and is not the sparing of inveterate lusts as wicked as sparing the devoted Canaanites? Does it not betray an equal want of reverence for God, of love to his name, and of zeal for his honour? Behold then what is the duty of every one amongst us: Be afflicted, and mourn, and weep; let your laughter be turned into mourning, and your joy into heaviness; humble yourselves under the mighty hand of God, and he shall lift you up [Note: Jam 4:9-10.]. Nor does the threatened punishment afford us less occasion to weep: for a subjection to sin is the greatest evil that can befall us. If God should once say, He is joined to idols; let him alone; it would be a heavier judgment to us than immediate death and immediate damnation; because we should live only to treasure up wrath against the day of wrath, and should perish at last under an accumulated weight of misery to all eternity. O that the dread of such a punishment might humble us all in dust and ashes!]
2.
An application to God through the medium of sacrifice
[They sacrificed there unto the Lord; and had recourse to the blood of sprinkling for the remission of their sin. Though their weeping was very general, and very bitter, insomuch that the name of the place, which was Shiloh, was called Bochim, or Weepers, from that circumstance, yet did they not hope to pacify their offended God with tears: they knew that an atonement was necessary; and they sought him. therefore in his appointed way. O that we might learn from them! Humiliation is necessary; but it is not sufficient: tears, even if we could shed rivers of them, could never wash away sin: the blood of atonement is necessary; without shedding of blood there is no remission. We must apply to the Lord Jesus Christ, and go to God through him. We must acknowledge our obligation to his sacrifice for all the mercy and forbearance we have already experienced; and must look to it as the only means of our reconciliation with God: it is his blood, and his blood alone, that can ever cleanse us from our sin And here I would particularly remind you that the sin laid to the charge of Israel, was not of commission, but of omission; not some flagrant enormity, but a lukewarmness and neglect of duty: yet did they see the need of a sacrifice to atone for that. In like manner, though we should have no guilt imputed to us but that of omission and defect, yet must we apply to the blood of sprinkling, and seek for pardon through that one Sacrifice which was once offered for us on the cross.]
Learn then from hence,
1.
The value of a faithful monitor
[We do not like faithful admonitions, even from those whose special duty it is to reprove sin. We are ready to account them harsh and severe. But what is the office which a friendly monitor performs? Is it not that which the Angel of the Covenant himself executed, yea, and came from heaven on purpose to perform? But it may be said, that we alarm men, and make them melancholy: true; we shew them their guilt and danger, and try to bring them to a state of humiliation on account of it, and to an affiance in the Lord Jesus Christ for the pardon of it. But is this an evil? If the whole congregation were affected precisely as the whole congregation of Israel were, every one weeping for his sins, and seeking the remission of them through the great Sacrifice, would it be a matter for regret? No: we would to God that this very place might this day deserve the name of Bochim; and that the remembrance of it might never be obliterated from your minds! Sure we are that the congregation of Israel felt themselves deeply indebted to Him who thus sought their welfare; and we have no doubt but that, however an ungodly world may hate our reproofs, there is not a contrite sinner in the universe who will not regard his monitor as a father, and receive him as an Angel of God, even as Christ Jesus [Note: Gal 4:14.]. They will not hesitate to thank him, who, by bringing them to weep here, has kept them from weeping and wailing and gnashing their teeth in hell for ever.]
2.
The danger of forgetting the admonitions that have been given us
[During the days of Joshua and the elders that outlived Joshua, the Israelites maintained some measure of steadfastness in their duty to God: but afterwards they fearfully declined, and brought upon themselves the most afflictive judgments. The whole remainder of the chapter from whence our text is taken, elucidates this truth. The impressions which were now made upon them gradually wore away; and the people relapsed into their former state of supineness. Of the unreasonableness of their conduct they were fully convinced: for, when the Angel asked them, Why have ye done this? they could not offer one word in extenuation of their guilt: but when they ceased to listen to the voice of conscience, they proceeded from one wickedness to another, till there was no remedy [Note: 2Ch 36:15-17.]. And how often is this seen amongst ourselves! Many are deeply affected on some particular occasion: they will weep, and pray, and think of the Saviour; but in process of time they lose all their good impressions, and go back with the dog to his vomit, and the sow that was washed to the wallowing in the mire. The Lord grant that it may not prove thus with us! May our goodness not be as the dew, or as the morning cloud that passeth away; but rather as the sun, which shines brighter and brighter unto the perfect day.]
Fuente: Charles Simeon’s Horae Homileticae (Old and New Testaments)
CONTENTS
This Chapter contains an interesting account of the appearance of an angel, with a message from God to Israel. The sacred historian also takes a retrospective view of Israel’s conduct under Joshua, by way of pointing out their sad departure after his death. The people ‘ s behavior on the subject of God’s message.
Fuente: Hawker’s Poor Man’s Commentary (Old and New Testaments)
I beg the Reader to remark with me the leading feature in the character of this angel, and then let him determine for himself whether it was not the Angel of the Covenant, even the Lord Jesus Christ. Who but God could make use of this language, I made you to go up out of Egypt? And who was it that sware unto their fathers, but Jehovah? Oh! how very precious is it to trace the footsteps of him whose goings forth have been of old, from everlasting? Didst thou, dearest Jesus, long for the season of thine incarnation? And didst thou adopt this method of showing thy love to our nature, by such tokens? See Exo 33:1 ; Mic 5:2 . Gilgal, from whence the angel is said to have come, could not but remind the people of the renewal of the covenant by circumcision, and which, as it was taking away their reproach, was called Gilgal See Jos 5:9Jos 5:9 . The purport of the angel’s message was reproof, in which the Lord explains wherefore their enemies were not wholly subdued. In their continuance as thorns in their sides, the word of God was fulfilled. See Exo 23:33 ; Num 33:35 ; Deu 7:16 .
Fuente: Hawker’s Poor Man’s Commentary (Old and New Testaments)
Jdg 2:4
There are few of us that are not rather ashamed of our sins and follies as we look out on the blessed morning sunlight, which comes to us like a bright-winged angel beckoning us to quit the old path of vanity that stretches its dreary length behind us.
George Eliot, Mr. Gilfil’s Love-Story.
Reference. II. 4, 5. Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xxviii. No. 1680.
Jdg 2:10
‘Our case,’ said Luther once, ‘will go on, so long as its living advocates, Melanchthon and friars and learned men, who apply themselves zealously to the work, shall be alive; but, after their death, ’twill be a sad falling off. We have an example before us, in Jdg 2:10 : “And also all that generation were gathered to their fathers; and there arose another generation after them, which knew not the Lord, nor yet the works which he had done for Israel”.’
God with the Judges
Jdg 2:18
There is a great principle here, which runs far. That great principle is, God will not forsake the work of His own hands. Only be assured with adequate proof that this or that matter is Divine, and leave the rest. ‘When the Lord raised up judges, the Lord was with the judge,’ because they were the work of His own hand. God never dies. But if any man makes himself a judge the Lord will not be responsible for that man. That is the whole scheme of life. We cannot build out God; though we pile our judges high and lay them in great breadths like walls meant to be impregnable, it is all of no use; whatever it is, it is a poor thing, and not worthy of our notice, and as for our trust, woe to the man who thinks that straw, loose dry straw, can stand against the lava-flood.
I. This puts God in His right place; this asserts and illustrates the sovereignty of God. That is one of the terms that I should not like to become obsolete. Once it was quite a great instrument in the hand of the Church; the Church was strong in the possession of that conviction, the conviction, namely, that there is one God, one throne, one Providence, and that any who would set himself or themselves against God’s eternal providence and sovereignty would simply be carried away as with a flood, and the sea would reject them, and they would be without a place. Why do we not rest upon these great rock truths? why are we always in panic and in fear? how is it that men will build upon bog and sand, and not upon the rock? What is the rock? The sovereignty of God; the nearness of the Sovereign, the beneficence of His rule, the love that runs through and accounts for His great ministry of redemption.
II. Secondly, the judge recognized the fact that God was with him. He did not live a life of vanity and ambition; he set a proper value upon his seat. If all our great men and leaders would know that they are where God has put them, many great and beneficent results would come out of that conviction. The judge recognized that he was sent.
Being sent, the judge or the representative of God is qualified. The qualification is in his being sent. God chooses no unsuitable instruments; God is not responsible for the tools and the working of those whom He never called to the judgeship, or sent into the pulpit, or conducted into parliament, or set in high places in the cities of commerce. If we realized that we were sent we should have no fear; the Lord does not send us without going with us; there will be no cowardliness, saying, There is a lion in the way. We shall not see the lion because of the glory of the Lord in whose shining all beasts and reptiles are lost as if they never existed. We need some such tonic as this.
III. In the third place, all true public appointments and true social economies and policies, prove their divinity by their real prosperity. That is a dangerous doctrine if treated roughly, if not qualified and commended by some severe reservations. We must first of all know what prosperity is.
IV. The reverse of the text is true. When the Lord did not raise up the preacher, teacher, legislator, statesman, merchant, leader, the Lord never went a step on the road with the man. If the Lord did not make the preacher, the Lord will never appear in a single sermon; if the Lord did raise up the preacher, all the opponents that righteousness ever had cannot put him down.
Joseph Parker, City Temple Pulpit, vol. IV. p. 232.
Reference. II. 23. A. Maclaren, Expositions of Holy Scripture Judges, p. 196.
Fuente: Expositor’s Dictionary of Text by Robertson
Divine and Human Influence
Jdg 2
DO not trouble yourselves about the personality or name of this angel that “came up from Gilgal to Bochim.” He is always “coming up.” Why do we miss great meanings by fastening upon little pedantic points? The angel charged the people with having broken God’s conditions, upon which he promised to be with them and keep his covenant with their houses. That angel still lives. Now we call him Memory, or Conscience. What is there in the change of name? He is an angel still. He is the wonderful Presence in life which takes note of all our goings, thoughts, and doings, an invisible, un-slumbering Spirit that, so to say, keeps the covenant in one hand, and our life in the other, and looks to see how the harmony is sustained. If now and then the Spirit should turn from the covenant and say to the life, Think I you are wrong; you are out of course; you have lost step and touch with Heaven surely we should say the voice is the voice of an angel; it is no common rough tone of accusation, but an appeal spoken sweetly to the innermost heart and thought of the man, and should be answered according to its own quality. Thus we get great meanings in the ancient records. But if we stand here and ask questions about angels, their history, their figure, the law of their movements inquiries to which there can be no possible answers we shall feel ourselves no longer in a flowering garden, golden with the richness of summer, but in a burning and waste wilderness. Give the angel good hearing. Never arrest unduly or impatiently the voice of reproach and accusation, but answer it rationally, fearlessly: if there is nothing in the accusation, the answer will be short and easy; but, contrariwise, if the accusation is really sound and true, consider it, be not afraid of it, and with reverent familiarity interrogate it, apply it, and escape from its honest charges by better behaviour.
The people having heard the accusation, “lifted up their voice and wept. And they called the name of that place Bochim” a place of weeping, a place of many tears. So they were not lost. This is the value of emotion: its presence indicates that the heart is not utterly dead to all solemn appeal and heavenly judgment. However fickle the life and the best life is fickle let us thank God if we can feel the tone of accusation, the language of reproach, and answer it even with the feeble answer of tears. Oftentimes tears are the best words. Were we to answer the accusation of the angel with words, we should get into controversy, and controversy lies at an infinite distance from repentance. When we lose speech we may gain power. It is better to bow down the head in silent, tearful sorrow, when the accusation is poured down upon us, than to attempt to answer it by petty excuses, or by inventing replies which are as feeble as they are dishonest.
So the people cry, and begin again. They were human. In this respect we ourselves are of the same race. Our days represent but a series of evil actions and late repentances. A singular mixture is life: prayer, and blasphemy; high-handed rebellion, and meek humiliation; great vows, majestic in their moral nobleness, and lies of which lost spirits might be ashamed.
In the seventh verse we come to a more human aspect of the exciting history:
“And the people served the Lord all the days of Joshua, and all the days of the elders that outlived Joshua, who had seen all the great works of the Lord, that he did for Israel.” ( Jdg 2:7 )
What a noble influence may be exerted by one consecrated life! “The people served the Lord all the days of Joshua.” We have had similar experience. We say: Since the leader died the followers have gone sadly astray. Or we say: Had the leader lived, it would not have been thus; he would have kept us together; his gracious domination would have ruled us aright; our reverence for him amounted to a species of religion. Or we say: Since the just critic died things have become demoralised; he was a just judge; he was generous withal; he saw the best side of every man, and took the kindliest view of every subject: but he was so strong, so true, so honest; his voice was a judgment, his look was an approbation or a disfavour; everything about him was of a noble, healthy, beautiful kind; since he died there is no judge in the land. So we may come by an examination of our own experience to understand many of these old biblical incidents.
What a compliment is this to Joshua! How little, perhaps, did Joshua know what he was doing! If you ask for a eulogium upon Joshua, where will you find it? Is it set forth in any special form? Can we turn to a given page and say, Behold the eulogy spoken by the most eloquent lips of the time; see how paragraph follows paragraph, how climax heightens above climax, till the noble panegyric makes one feel how good a thing it was to live in the days of old? There is no such page, there is no such eulogy; but read this seventh verse and say whether it is not praise enough for any son of man: “And the people served the Lord all the days of Joshua.” That is the only eulogium worth having: a great social influence, a sublime, beneficent action, operating all the time and upon everybody, and yet the man himself saying little and seldom seen. There are many eulogies: some in noble words that can only be credited by the imagination; some in out-of-the-way actions and silent deeds and subtle influences which can only be fully comprehended by a kindred spirit yea, even by God himself. Let us thank God for our leader. The father is a Joshua in the family. So long as he lives there will be no controversy amongst the children: they all love him, so that one word of his will be final; were there tumult in the house he could by one sentence settle it, not by arbitrary authority, but because of something in his quality not to be defined or measured, something that begets a magnificent moral reverence and trust. So it is in business, so in the State, so in the Church, so everywhere. The one true life may be keeping a thousand other lives in the right direction. A beautiful picture is given in the eighth verse:
“And Joshua the son of Nun, the servant of the Lord, died, being an hundred and ten years old.” ( Jdg 2:8 )
Joshua gone. All that generation gathered to their fathers: “There arose another generation after them, which knew not the Lord, nor yet the works which he had done for Israel” a blind generation, utterly poor, historically penniless; men without anything that was more than one day old. These are the weights which time has to carry; these are the burdens of the ages; these are the men who let history die. What men should we be if we realised our history! Could we see the past as it ought to be seen, it would be like a cloud of spirits, a great army of angels, a sky shaded rather than darkened by heroic spirits, master souls that ruled their time. The other generation is always coming the poor, penniless generation, the non-related generation; the generation that thinks every man a separate atom, or individual without any relation to the sum-total of things, this is the generation that loses religion. Why? Because religion is historical. Religion binds man fast to the past. Religion does not incline itself towards the future in some selfishly expectant attitude; it lies back upon the past, and by the past seizes the future. We should be ashamed of some people the people that talk mincingly, vain-gloriously, with affectation, with superficiality, win look upon life as a thing begun yesterday, and to be enjoyed today, and left tomorrow; they make us sore of heart; we feel poor in their presence; they have not seen “the great works of the Lord;” they have not bowed down to some worthy leadership and accepted its discipline and chastisement; they have influence only for a moment because they speak of things that endure but for a moment. Let us pray for the preservation of heroic memories. Let us remember that we never could have had a Bible to read if some men had not printed it as with their blood and bound it with their martyrdom. Let us think that we could not meet in many a Protestant church if there had not been men who counted not their lives dear unto them that they might stand up for liberty and defy the whole brood of hell. Now we ask little questions about things that our fathers died for! We now use the liberty they bought to praise the very tyranny which killed them.
So the generations come and go:
“And the children of Israel did evil in the sight of the Lord, and served Baalim: And they forsook the Lord God of their fathers, which brought them out of the land of Egypt, and followed other gods, of the gods of the people that were round about them, and bowed themselves unto them, and provoked the Lord to anger. And they forsook the Lord, and served Baal and Ashtaroth” ( Jdg 2:11-13 ).
How did the Lord answer them? He could not answer them in words. There are times when words are useless. The answer is in the fourteenth verse:
“And the anger of the Lord was hot against Israel, and he delivered (hem into the hands of spoilers that spoiled them, and he sold them into the hands of their enemies round about, so that they could not any longer stand before their enemies.” ( Jdg 2:14 )
Selected Note
“And they called the name of that place Bochim” ( Jdg 2:5 ). Bochim ( the weepings ) was the name given to a place (probably near Shiloh, where the tabernacle then was) where an “angel of the Lord” reproved the assembled Israelites for their disobedience in making leagues with the inhabitants of the land, and for their remissness in taking possession of their heritage. This caused the bitter weeping among the people for which the place took its name.
Prayer
Almighty God, thou hast heard the prayers of thy saints, and answered them with great love. We ourselves know this, and our hope in God is as a strong trust. We know when we have prayed unto thee, because the answer is in our hearts whilst we are yet speaking. We know the heavenly Presence; we can tell when we have reached thy throne: behold, thou dost come to us and turn our prayers into sweet replies in the very act of offering our supplications at thy throne. We are thankful as we look back upon the years that are gone. We will think of thy mercy, and not of our sin; we will dwell upon the lovingkindness of God, and not upon the rebellion of our own hearts. The years have been full of thy mercies; thy compassions glitter in them like jewels: thou truly hast been good unto Israel, even to them that are of a clean heart; and thou hast also been kind unto the unthankful and to the evil: whilst thy rain and thy sunshine have fallen upon the good, they have not been withheld from the unjust. We look onward with hope. Thou wilt not forsake us in the seventh trouble; thou wilt redeem thy covenant to its utmost letter, yea, thou wilt add to it and exceedingly multiply thy grace towards us. Keep us in the holy way; show us the sanctuary that is on high, and may our hearts desire to be in it night and day; may we measure all things by its weights and balances and standards: then shall we know when we are right and when God is pleased. Give us to see more and more of the grace that is in Christ Jesus, Son of man, Son of God. He was the express image of his Father, the very brightness of his glory. May we study his words profitably, lovingly, seeking out their meaning with earnest hearts and receiving the same in all its fulness. We commend one another to thy tender care. Thou knowest what we need most in ourselves, in our houses, in our businesses. Thou knowest the serpent that is pleading with us, telling us the lies we like to hear. Thou knowest the weak point in the character, where the assault tells most immediately and most disastrously. Thou knowest every trap set for our feet, and gin and snare, cunningly laid, that we may be taken and overthrown. We know nothing about it ourselves. We look on, and see nothing but a great cloud. We will therefore trust in the living God, putting our hand into his and asking to be led and directed and sustained by the eternal Spirit. Whether our days be many or few, may they be bright with thy presence, and wealthy with honest and good service. Where there is a difference between man and man, oh heal the controversy and restore the love; where there is difficulty at home, dissolve the perplexity; where there is sorrow because of the family wandering, unfilial, broken speak some new parable that shall bring the wanderers all back again, or the old parable, but with the sweetness of a new tone. Be with those who are in trouble on the sea that great, weary, unfriendly, threatening sea. Be with those who are in deeper trouble the trouble of mind and heart, who are suffering from the sting of accusation and remorse, and the bitterness of just reproach; yea, according to our varied necessity do thou come to us, and love us, and heal us, and do us good.
We pray every prayer at the Cross, and we feel it not to be a prayer until we have spoken the crowning name of Jesus Jesus Christ Immanuel God with us. Amen.
Fuente: The People’s Bible by Joseph Parker
XXVI
EVENTS PRECEDING THE JUDGES AND SOME SPECIAL DELIVERER
Jdg 1:1-3:31
We have had the introduction to the book of Judges and the analysis, and with that analysis before you, we shall now take up the book itself, covering the first three chapters. That takes in a brief account of three of the judges and brings us to the great discussion of Deborah and Barak, to which we must give an entire section, as we shall give a section to Gideon and one to Jephthah, one to Samson, and one to the migration of Dan and the tribe of Benjamin. So there will be five sections after this one on the book of Judges. According to the chronological analysis submitted, we take up in order the matters antecedent to Jehovah’s call of special deliverers called judges.
1. The first period is a brief period of fidelity to Jehovah after the death of Joshua, (Jdg 2:6-10 ). As in Exodus, a change towards Israel came when there arose a king that knew not Joseph, so here toward Jehovah Israel changed when a new generation arose who had not personally known the great exploits of Joshua, nor participated in the solemn covenant renewals.
The historical lesson is of great signification, that neither the experience nor the piety of the fathers can be educationally transmitted to their children. There cannot be a more decisive proof of the inherent depravity of the race, of the necessity of the spirit’s work in every generation. The wise man sadly said, “There is no remembrance of former things,” and the prophet with equal sadness enquired, “Our fathers! Where are they? And the prophets, do they live forever?” There is no such thing as hereditary grace. The whole fight for salvation must be fought over from start to finish with each incoming soul and with each generation. Even the glories of the millennium are followed by an outbreak of Satan, the most formidable of all, with a new and unconverted generation.
2. The second period is the exploits of Judah alone before Joshua’s death, Jdg 1:8-15 . You are to understand that all the particulars of this section preceded the death of Joshua, Jdg 1:8-15 ; Jdg 1:20 . Tribal responsibility commenced when the land was allotted and the general or national army was dismissed, Jos 21:43-22:6 . The book of Judges in describing tribal responsibility goes back to this period and includes with matters transpiring after Joshua’s death tribal events preceding. Therefore, in time order the second paragraph precedes the first. The capture of Jerusalem, Jdg 1:8 , preceded the campaign against Adoni-bezek and was not a sequel to it as your Revised Version would indicate.
The King James Version is better here and at Gen 12:1 : “God had said to Abraham,” rightly using the “had fought” and “had said” instead of the past tense “said” and “fought” which accords with the facts and doesn’t violate the grammar of the language. In Hebrew there is no pluperfect tense and the context must always determine whether to put the past tense or the pluperfect tense, a fact which your Revised Version ignores more than once. Now, if you will put the word “had” there at the beginning of Jdg 1:8 and then include the paragraph in quotation marks, you will not get confused. It is an outright quotation from Joshua, and the use of the pluperfect “had” would save a great many perplexities of mind. More than once in the book of Judges this remark will apply. In other words you need quotation marks because the matter is quoted from Joshua and you need the word “had” instead of the imperfect. This explains the puzzle to most commentators, of the first sentence in the book, “And it came to pass after the death of Joshua,” and then seems to relate things that had happened in Joshua’s time.
A prominent lawyer said he would have to quit teaching Sunday school if he could not account for the apparent discrepancies (and they are only apparent) between Joshua and Judges and between this and another part of Judges. He sent me a letter, a remarkably well-written one, showing thoughtful study. He is evidently troubled with difficulties that he doesn’t know how to solve, and it illustrates the necessity of a theological seminary. It shows that the unaided, untrained mind of the average preacher with few books cannot grapple with some of the apparently most serious difficulties in the book. Now, it used to bother me no little and I determined to get at the end of it one way or another, but it is now plain sailing in my mind.
When I read the first chapter of Judges I read the first seven verses and at the next verse, which tells about the Jerusalem campaign, I stick up quotation marks and use the word “had” and carry that on to the end of Jdg 1:16 . Now, with that passage in parenthesis your first seven verses will harmonize with Jdg 1:17-19 . So that in considering the history of the tribal responsibility of Judah we commence with Jdg 1:8 , which describes matters in Joshua’s lifetime. In that you will notice, if you look carefully, that Judah alone fought the Jerusalem and Hebron campaign down to the end of Jdg 1:15 . In the preceding verses, (Jdg 1:1-7 ) and the following, (Jdg 1:17-19 ) it is Judah and Simeon who fought the campaign. Very distinct as to the object, very distinct as to the parties conducting it and very distinct in the time. The beautiful story of Caleb, Othniel, and Achsah, the daughter of the one and the wife of the other, belongs, therefore, to the earlier date. We have already considered this in the book of Joshua. Just now I wish to put only one library question. In what romance written by Sir Walter Scott is a maiden’s hand in marriage, as here in this story, offered for a prize, open to all contestants, to the hero who would perform a certain exploit? That is what Caleb does, offers his daughter’s hand to whoever would capture a certain town. There is an analogous story to that one in one of the Waverley novels. Answer that question and briefly outline the story. Note how the thrifty girl secures her dowry. I don’t blame her. She is disposed of in marriage very acceptably to herself, but she thinks that her father, out of his big possessions, should wish, himself, to help her. I have always admired this girl for making that request of her father.
The reference here and elsewhere to the capture of Jerusalem with the later reference to it as being yet in the hands of the Jebusites after it had been captured twice, gives trouble to some minds and calls for some explanation. It will be recalled that Joshua himself, with a united army, captured the country in a general way by defeating all organized armies and dissipating all open opposition. But the people did not occupy and settle the conquered provinces until years afterward. So the remnants of the defeated people would return and occupy their old territory. So with the tribal victories. That part of Jerusalem lying in Judah’s territory was captured, but as the fortified citadel in the upper town lay in Benjamin’s territory, it is expressly said they were not dispossessed by Benjamin and so would measurably control the whole city. Indeed they were not finally expelled from the upper town (Jerusalem) until David’s day. The line between Judah and Benjamin passed through the city.
In the same way Joshua disrupted the northern confederacy, centering at Hazor, and slew Jabin (Jabin being the name of a dynasty as Pharaoh, Caesar, or Abimelech), and inasmuch as the tribes to which this conquered territory belonged did not actually settle it till years afterwards, another Jabin is reoccupying the old territory and city. This applies to territory east of the Jordan. It is twice repeated that it was not the purpose of God to expel them utterly at once, but little by little to prevent the unoccupied land going to waste, and to prove the fidelity of the tribes when responsibility passed to them in their several capacities. All that God promised to accomplish through Joshua was literally fulfilled, and whether the tribes followed up his victories, dispossessing the remnants and actually settling the lands, depended upon themselves and was expressly so stated.
3. We now come to the history, after the death of Joshua, of the seven and a half tribes west of the Jordan, and in a very orderly way the book of Judges tells how each of these tribes succeeded or failed. And all of that is told in the following parts of the first chapter, Jdg 1:1-7 , then it skips to Jdg 1:17 and goes on to the end of the chapter. Now, we have not come to the judges yet, but we have come to the tribal responsibility after Joshua’s death. Now, this period opens with proof that the assembled tribes rightly appealed to Jehovah to designate which tribe should commence the campaign. This appeal was doubtless made at Shiloh, the central place of worship, and answered by the high priest through Urim and Thummirn, according to the Mosaic law and precedent. The answer assigned the initiative to Judah, who associated himself with Simeon since the territories were not only contiguous but co-mingled. We cannot but be impressed with the fidelity of the assembled tribes to Jehovah though now without any leader but Phinehas, the high priest. Without their great lawgiver, Moses, and the great general, Joshua, both extraordinary officers for special emergencies which passed, the nation is on trial through its regular officers. The high priest and Shiloh represent the national unity. The princes and elders represent the regular tribal authority. The high priest transmits Jehovah’s voice to them, tribe by tribe, in order. And the remnants of the first chapter tell the story of the experiment, tribe by tribe.
Judah and Simeon, leading off, conduct the campaign described in Jdg 1:1-7 ; Jdg 1:17-19 . That leaves the intervening paragraph that was quoted from Joshua of what Judah alone had previously done. The sum of this campaign is that they first capture Bezek, which is not very far from Jerusalem and Hebron, the three places forming the angles of a triangle. And they inflicted on Adonibezek the mutilation he had inflicted on seventy petty kings conquered by him. The tragedy in a few words is told by himself. The lex talionis found him. What is the lex talionis ? Moses gives it: “An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth.” In this case the lex talionis comes, “A thumb for a thumb, and a toe for a toe.” This man tells the tragedy of the story himself. It comes from God through man. It seems to me that his head ought to have been cut off, as he had been so cruel and made the chieftains take the place of dogs. His heels ought to have been cut off right back of his neck. The record says that they brought him to the Judah part of Jerusalem, gained in a campaign in Joshua’s time. The Judah and Simeon story is continued in Jdg 1:17-19 . They captured Zephath, Hormah and three of the five Philistine cities and captured the hill country throughout their territory. But they failed in these particulars:
(1) They did not conquer two of the five Philistine cities.
(2) They had not faith in Jehovah to face the war chariots in the plains and the chariots of the north.
(3) They did not settle up as they conquered. Now, the record disposes of Benjamin’s case in Jdg 1:21 , but there is a big appendix that we have to study and I cannot incorporate it here because it will have to be in a section by itself. Benjamin’s failing is the key to the whole territory west of the Jordan. The record says that he not only did not dispossess them but he made a treaty with them contrary to the law.
We pass on, then, to the word “Joseph.” When the word “Joseph” is used, it means both Ephraim and Manasseh. While they are together, they capture one city; somewhat questionable strategy, but they got it. Having discussed their success, he will discuss their failure. Jdg 1:27-29 will tell you wherein they failed and what places they did not take. He left them there and the verses following will tell you where each failed. You know when the land was divided that Joshua required Ephraim to go and take the woods. Well, Ephraim didn’t go up and take the woods in the mountains.
There is no need for me to take them up tribe by tribe. In a few words it is clearly shown. I will make a remark on the failure Dan made. He made the biggest failure of all. The enemies that he was to conquer almost ran him out of the country and that led to the migration of Dan to Laish, way up in the northern part of the territory, and we will find when we come to discuss the migration of Dan, only hinted at in the book of Joshua, the extent of Dan’s failure. It was a fearful failure; they captured the town of Laish and set up that image with Gershon, the grandson of Moses, as officiating priest. That is the failure of Dan. Tribe by tribe they failed. There is nothing said about the tribes east of the Jordan, but they failed also.
4. We now come to an exceedingly important event in the beginning of Jdg 2:1 “The angel of Jehovah came up from Gilgal to Bochim.” They all had broken the covenant and the angel announces to them that these enemies that they had spared should not be driven out before them; that they should remain as thorns in their sides. It looks like a very promising revival when the angel got through with his remonstrance. You see they all assembled there and they wept and offered sacrifices to Jehovah, and it looked as if a reformation had begun.
Now we take Jdg 6:1 : “The children of Israel did that which was evil in the sight of Jehovah.” Now we are going to find out what evil. That beats any evil yet. Heretofore they had made treaties with them but now, “they did evil in the sight of Jehovah and served the Baalim and bowed down before them” Please notice the names of these deities. Baalim, that is the plural, as cherubim is the plural of cherub. “Baal, Baalim,” that means that Baal, the sun-god, in different places went by different names. I confess that if you have to worship anything like that, that the sun is a big, bright thing to worship, a most life-giving thing. If I were going to adopt idolatrous worship, I had rather take the sun than anything else. The ancient Peruvians and the ancient Persians worshiped the sun. Many nations have worshiped the sun. The other name, Ashtareth, is the female deity corresponding to the male deity, Baal. Literally it means the moon, called among the Greeks the Goddess Astarte, who drove the moon chariot, as they believed. There the female deity corresponds to the sun deity, but as there were many Baalim, so there was not only Ashtareth but Ashtoroth.
When we come to Jdg 3:7 , we find a new name to look at. The Revised Version reads this way: “The children of Israel did that which was evil in the sight of Jehovah . . . served Baalim and Asheroth.” That is not “Asheroth” in the King James Version. There it reads “groves,” as where it says, “and Gideon cut down a grove.” That puzzled me at one time, but if you will follow that word, you will see that it does not mean trees; it is wooden images. Asheroth is a wooden image. Now, Baal is an image made out of stone, but when” ever you come to Asheroth images they were made out of wood and stood up in groups, and often they were cut down and burned. This was their culminating sin. The record then tells us when they got to that climax and withdrew from God, that they were not able to stand before their enemies. If they farmed, an enemy would come and eat up the crop. If they went to battle in one way they would flee in seven ways. With God against them they could do nothing.
5. Now, that brings us to what is called the period of the judges, and from Jdg 2:16-3:6 , gives a prospective review of Judges, the whole period. The author is not going into the details of the book of Judges, but the object of that paragraph is to give a prospective review; how, when they left Jehovah and he sent an oppressor, they would cry unto him for mercy. Then he would hear them and send them a deliverer. Then when that special deliverer left them they would be faithful for a time. So that paragraph is simply what you would call the heading of all the book of Judges. If it were put into one chapter, that would be the contents. It gives a review of the book without mentioning special names.
6. That brings us to the Judges proper, and the first judge is Othniel. It had probably been many years since he got that girl. He was a plucky fellow, of the tribe of Judah and the first judge. We are also informed who was the first oppressor. The first oppressor was Cushan-richathaim king of Mesopotamia. He was a son of Ham and occupied the territory between the Tigris and the Euphrates Rivers, that great mother of nations. In all the subsequent history of those nations whenever a stream pours out from between the Tigris and Euphrates you are going to see trouble. That is where Abraham came from, but lower down. It is unnecessary to go into any details of this campaign. The record simply states that this king of Mesopotamia came from between the rivers and, of course, he conquered first the two and a half tribes east of the Jordan and then crossed the Jordan and struck the territory of the tribes of Judah. And he oppressed the land for years, then the Lord put into the heart of Othniel to lead Israel. The record states that he did it handsomely. He defeated this king and brought a long rest to the people.
Now, the next judge was Ehud, the left-handed fellow. And a blow from a left-handed fellow is the hardest to dodge. Jehovah uses various methods to accomplish his purpose; sometimes he uses the devil. Now here is Moab. You go back to Genesis and read that Abraham’s nephew, Lot, was called out of Sodom and Gomorrah and his daughters, thinking the world had come to an end and that they and their father were all that was left, made their father drunk and so became mothers of Moab and Ammon. Moab comes over and oppresses the people, following right in the track of Cushan. You notice the oppression so far is coming from the east, showing that the two and a half tribes were the first decadent tribes. The deliverer was Ehud, and I need not tell you he killed Eglon, the fat old king of Moab. The other thing is concerning Shamgar. There is only one verse about him and he fought only one fight. He fought that with an oxgoad, that is, a long, heavy pole sharp at one end and heavy at the other. It makes a formidable weapon. This finishes Jdg 3 .
QUESTIONS
1. What parallel between Exodus and Joshua?
2. What the historic lesson?
3. What the time of the events of this section?
4. What difficulty of translation here? Explain fully.
5. In what romance by Sir Walter Scott is a maiden’s hand in marriage as here in this story, offered as a prize to the man who would perform a certain exploit? Give brief outline of the story.
6. Explain the reference to Jerusalem’s being in the hands of the Jebusites. In like manner the reference to Jabin.
7. How did they determine which tribe should commence the campaign of subduing the remnants?
8. Which was to take the initiative?
9. What is the lex tationis and what example here?
10. In what did Judah and Simeon fail?
11. What advance did Benjamin make in violating the law?
12. What Joseph’s success and failure?
13. Give briefly Dan’s failure.
14. What the purpose and effect of his coming?
15. What advance did they make now in violating the law? Name their gods.
16. What the result of this culminating sin?
17. Explain in general terms this prospective review.
18. Who the first judge? The first oppressor?
19. Who the second judge? The second oppressor?
20. Who the third judge? The third oppressor (Jdg 3:31 )?
21. Whence came the first two oppressors and what does this show? Whence the third oppressor?
Jdg 2:1 And an angel of the LORD came up from Gilgal to Bochim, and said, I made you to go up out of Egypt, and have brought you unto the land which I sware unto your fathers; and I said, I will never break my covenant with you.
Ver. 1. And an angel of the Lord. ] Or, A messenger, as Hag 1:13 Ecc 5:6 Rev 2:1 1Co 11:10 . This was Phinehas, say the Rabbis some prophet, say others; or a created angel Diodate will have it to be meant of the Son of God himself, who had before appeared to Joshua, as Captain of the Lord’s hosts, at Gilgal, Jos 5:13 from whence also he is here said to have come up: ascenderat, Junius rendereth it, he had come up – viz., in the days of Joshua and the elders that survived him. Compare Jos 2:6 ; Jos 2:11-12 .
I will never break my covenant with you, Judges
A SUMMARY OF ISRAEL’S FAITHLESSNESS AND GOD’S PATIENCE
Jdg 2:1 – Jdg 2:10 The Book of Judges begins a new era, the development of the nation in its land. Jdg 1:1 contain two summaries: first, of the progress of the conquest; and second, of the history about to be unfolded in the book. The first part of this passage Jdg 2:1 – Jdg 2:5 belongs to the former, and closes it; the second Jdg 2:6 – Jdg 2:10 introduces the latter, and contrasts it with the state of things prevailing as long as the soldiers of Joshua lived.
I. ‘ The Angel of the Lord’ had appeared to Joshua in Gilgal at the beginning of the war, and issued his orders as ‘Captain of the Lord’s host.’ Now He reappears to ask why his orders had not been carried out, and to announce that victory was no longer to attend Israel’s arms. Nothing can be plainer than that the Angel speaks as one in whom the divine name dwells. His reiterated ‘I’s’ are incomprehensible on any other hypothesis than that He is that mysterious person, distinct from and yet one with Jehovah, whom we know as the ‘Word made flesh.’ His words here are stern. He enumerates the favours which He had showed to Israel, and which should have inspired them to glad obedience. He recalls the conditions on which they had received the land; namely, that they were to enter into no entangling alliances with the remnant of the inhabitants, and especially to have no tolerance for their idolatry. Here we may observe that, according to Joshua’s last charge, the extermination of the native peoples was not contemplated, but that there should be no such alliances as would peril Israel’s observance of the covenant Jos 23:7 , Jos 23:12. He charges them with disobedience, and asks the same question as had been asked of Eve, ‘What is this ye have done?’ And He declares the punishment about to follow, in the paralysing of Israel’s conquering arm by the withdrawal of His conquering might, and in the seductions from the native inhabitants to which they would fall victims.
Note, then, how God’s benefits aggravate our disobedience, and how He bases His right to command on them. Further, note how His promises are contingent on our fulfilment of their conditions, and how a covenant which He has sworn that He will never break He does count as non-existent when men break it. Again, observe the sharp arraignment of the faithless, and the forcing of them to bethink themselves of the true character of their deeds, or, if we adopt the Revised Version’s rendering, of the unreasonableness of departing from God. No man dare answer when God asks, ‘What hast thou done?’ No man can answer reasonably when He asks, ‘Why hast thou done it?’ Once more, note that His servants sin when they allow themselves to be so mixed up with the world that they are in peril of learning its ways and getting a snare to their souls. We have all unconquered ‘Canaanites’ in our hearts, and amity with them is supreme folly and crying wickedness. ‘Thorough’ must be our motto. Many times have the conquered overcome their conquerors, as in Rome’s conquest of Greece, the Goths’ conquest of Rome, the Normans’ conquest of England. Israel was in some respects conquered by Canaanites and other conquered tribes. Let us take care that we are not overcome by our inward foes, whom we fancy we have subdued and can afford to treat leniently.
Again, God punishes our making truce with our spiritual foes by letting the effects of the truce work themselves out. He said to Israel, in effect: ‘If you make alliances with the people of the land, you shall no longer have power to cast them out. The swift rush of the stream of victory shall be stayed. You have chosen to make them your friends, and their friendship shall produce its natural effects, of tempting you to imitation.’ The increased power of our unsubdued evils is the punishment, as it is the result, of tolerance of them. We wanted to keep them, and dreamed that we could control them. Keep them we shall, control them we cannot. They will master us if we do not expel them. No wonder that the place was named Bochim ‘Weepers’, when such stern words were thundered forth. Tears flow easily; and many a sin is wept for once, and afterwards repeated often. So it was with Israel, as the narrative goes on to tell. Let us take the warning, and give heed to make repentance deep and lasting.
II. Jdg 2:6 – Jdg 2:10 go back to an earlier period than the appearance of the Angel. We do not know how long the survivors of the conquering army lived in sufficient numbers to leaven opinion and practice. We may, however, roughly calculate that the youngest of these would be about twenty when the war began, and that about fifty years would see the end of the host that had crossed Jordan and stormed Jericho. If Joshua was of about the same age as Caleb, he would be about eighty at the beginning of the conquest, and lived thirty years afterwards, so that about twenty years after his death would be the limit of ‘the elders that outlived Joshua.’
Jdg 2:6 – Jdg 2:9 substantially repeat Jos 24:28 – Jos 24:31 , and are here inserted to mark not only the connection with the former book, but to indicate the beginning of a new epoch. The facts narrated in this paragraph are but too sadly in accord with the uniform tendencies of our poor weak nature. As long as some strong personality leads a nation or a church, it keeps true to its early fervour. The first generation which has lived through some great epoch, when God’s arm has been made bare, retains the impression of His power. But when the leader falls, it is like withdrawing a magnet, and the heap of iron filings tumbles back to the ground inert. Think of the post-Apostolic age of the Church, of Germany in the generation after Luther, not to come nearer home, and we must see that Israel’s experience was an all but universal one. It is hard to keep a community even of professing Christians on the high level. No great cause is ever launched which does not lose ‘way’ as it continues. ‘Having begun in the Spirit,’ all such are too apt to continue ‘in the flesh.’ The original impulses wane, friction begins to tell. Custom clogs the wheels. The fiery lava-stream cools and slackens. So it always has been. Therefore God has to change His instruments, and churches need to be shaken up, and sometimes broken up, ‘lest one good,’ when it has degenerated into ‘custom,’ should ‘corrupt the world.’
But we shall miss the lesson here taught if we do not apply it to tendencies in ourselves, and humbly recognise that we are in danger of being ‘hindered,’ however ‘well’ we may have begun to ‘run,’ and that our only remedy is to renew continually our first-hand vision of ‘the great works of the Lord,’ and our consecration to His service. It is a poor affair if, like Israel, our devotion to God depends on Joshua’s life, or, like King Joash, we do that which is ‘right in the eyes of the Lord all the days of Jehoiada the priest.’
an Angel = the Angel or Captain of Jehovah’s host, Who had appeared to Joshua in Gilgal. Jos 5:13-15
the LORD. Hebrew. Jehovah. App-4.
Bochim = weepers.
I said. Compare Gen 17:7.
Chapter 2
So in chapter two we read,
AND the angel of the LORD came from Gilgal to Bochim, and said, I made you to go up out of Egypt, and brought you into the land which I sware to your fathers; and I said, I will never break my covenant with you. And ye shall make no league with the inhabitants of the land; ye shall throw down their altars: but you have not obeyed my voice: why have you done this? Wherefore I also said, I will not drive them out from before you; but they shall be as thorns in your sides, and their gods shall be a snare unto you. And it shall come to pass, when the angel of the LORD spake these words to all the children of Israel, the people lifted up their voices, and wept. And they called the name of the place Bochim: [which means weepers] and they sacrificed unto the LORD ( Jdg 2:1-5 ).
So, the angel of the Lord came and said, “You failed. God said He would never break His covenant with you.” But they broke the covenant. God is always faithful to His side of the covenant. It is man who breaks the covenant with God, not God who breaks the covenant with man. No man can ever say “God broke His covenant with me.” Not so. Man is guilty of breaking his covenant with God, his part of the covenant with God, but God doesn’t break His covenant with man.
And so the angel said, “You’ve broken the covenant. You made the league, you’ve made the treaties, you’ve left their places of worship; their altars, their idols. And now they’re gonna be like traps, snares to you.” And the people wept, they sacrificed unto God, but they didn’t change. Now that, that is so typical of so many people today. God lays a heavy trip on them. “Oh, oh I’m so sorry God. I’m so sorry.” And they weep but they don’t change. So there’s very little value to the repentance.
There seems to be a vast difference between sorrow and true repentance. Many people, out of sorrow weep, truly weep because of sorrow. But it doesn’t really indicate always that there is repentance just because you’re weeping. I don’t suppose there’s a single man in the county jail that isn’t sorry for the crime that got him there, but not necessarily sorry that he did it, but sorry for the mistake that got him caught. So you weep over your apprehension. You weep over the fact that I’ve been apprehended but you don’t really have a true repentance for the things that you were doing. They’re released. They go back out and do the things again, so often. Means there’s no repentance.
The children of Israel, they wept. Looking at it you say, “Oh my, isn’t that wonderful? They’re weeping. God got to them.” No, He didn’t. It’s just a surface emotional experience. They’re gonna wail and weep for a while and go right back out and do the same thing over again. They’re still not gonna drive out the enemy. They’re still not going to obey the voice of God. They’re gonna continue in their same path. So there is a form of religion, a form of godliness but no true repentance. And that same condition continues to exist to the present day.
Now, these people that they left in the land did become a snare that God said did not destroy became as thorns. And soon we find them worshipping these gods that they left in the land. And it was a constant problem through their history is their worship of the gods of the land and the leaving of the true and the living God and worshipping these other gods.
So that Jeremiah cried out unto the people, “Have you ever seen anything like this in the history of mankind where a people will turn from their God, even which are not gods, to worship another God?” And yet God cried, “My people have forsaken Me, the fountain of living water, and have hewn out for themselves cisterns, cisterns that can hold no water.” The lament of God over Israel and it was their failure in the beginning. Had these forefathers been obedient to God, they could have spared the nation countless misery, countless wolves but their disobedience only opened the door for a future of calamity.
And so the people served the LORD all the days of Joshua, and all they days of the elders who outlived Joshua, who had seen all of the great works of the LORD, which he did in Israel. But Joshua the son of Nun, the servant of the LORD, died, a hundred and ten years of age. And they buried him there in the mount of Ephraim, on the north side of the hill of Gaash… And there arose another generation after them: [That is after Joshua’s generation] which knew not the LORD, nor yet the works which he had done for Israel. And the children of Israel did evil in the sight of the LORD, and served Baalim: And they forsook the LORD God of their fathers, which brought them out of the land of Egypt, and they followed other gods, of the gods of the people that were round about them, and they bowed themselves unto them, and provoked the LORD to anger. And they forsook the LORD, and served Baal and Ashtaroth. [the goddess of heaven or Astarte of the Greeks or Ices, the female deity of ancient history] ( Jdg 2:7-13 ).
Now, it is tragic that somehow the parents failed to communicate unto their children the power and the work of God. The generation died off, there arose another generation it declares, “After them which did not know Jehovah nor yet the works that He has done for their fathers in Egypt.”
Now the purpose of the Passover was to yearly open the door of opportunity for them to relate to the children of Israel God’s great deliverance out of the hand of the Egyptians. In fact, there were questions designed in the Passover service that the children would ask that would give the parents the opportunity to rehearse God’s great power. What makes this night different from all other nights in the year? And they were able to rehearse to their children. But evidently they had ceased even observing the Passover, they had ceased during, you know, keeping the various feasts of the Lord. And where the Lord said, “Tell your children that they may tell their children that they may tell their children,” it broke down and the parents were not faithful in imparting the truths of God to their children.
It is so tragic, that rarely does a powerful work of God continue into a second generation. So it is aptly said, “God has no grandchildren.” You can’t have that kind of a distant relationship with God. Each one must have his own personal relationship with God. And the relationship that my parents had is not sufficient for me and the relationship that I have isn’t sufficient for my children. It is important that I relate to my children the power of God and the works of God, in order that they might develop their own relationship with God so that after I am gone they will understand and know God and continue in their relationship with God, and they to their children.
Growing up in the depression years was not easy. We were deprived a lot of things. And it is interesting how that we don’t want our children to have to learn the same deprivations that we had. But the tragic thing is our children growing in this affluent society never know the joy and the blessing of having to trust God for the evening meal, having to pray for a pair of shoes, having to believe God for the rent because we don’t want them to have to experience those same hardships that we experienced. And yet there was tremendous value in those experiences because it was there that we learned the faithfulness of God. We learned that God would provide.
As parents we are responsible to lay a foundation with our children so that they have a thorough understanding of God, the works of God, the power of God. For there are powerful forces that are vying for their attention, for their love, for their worship. And if we do not lay a solid foundation within their hearts, they are apt as the children of Israel did, to turn away from God and begin to worship Baalim, Ashtaroth and some of the other gods of the world. They forsook the Lord and served Baal and Ashtaroth. What a tragedy.
And the anger of the LORD was hot against Israel, he delivered them into the hands of the spoilers that spoiled them, he sold them to the hand of their enemies around about them, so that they could not any longer stand before their enemies. And wherever they went out, the hand of the LORD was against them for evil, as the LORD had said, and as the LORD had sworn unto them: and they were greatly distressed ( Jdg 2:14-15 ).
God said, “Even as my hand will be upon you for good, if you turn against Me and worship other gods, so will my hand be upon you for evil.” God kept His word. Now, I’m glad that God keeps His word sometimes. Other times it isn’t so good for me that God keeps His word but is always good for me that He does because it brings me back to Him. But the faithfulness of God to keep His word is something that we want to remember because even as God has promised blessings, He has also promised curses; blessings upon those that will obey, curses upon them who will forsake Him.
And so verse sixteen establishes this era of judges.
Nevertheless the LORD raised up judges, which delivered them out of the hand of those that spoiled them. And yet they would not always hearken to the judges, but they went a whoring after other gods, and bowed themselves to them: and turned quickly out of the way of which their fathers walked in, obeying the commandments of the LORD; but they did not so. So when the LORD raised them up judges, the LORD was with the judge, and he delivered them out of the hand of their enemies all the days of the judge: for it repented the LORD because of their groanings by reason of the oppressors that vexed them. And it came to pass, when the judge was dead, they returned, and corrupted themselves more than their forefathers, in following other gods to serve them, and bowed down to them: they ceased not from their own doings, nor from their stubborn ways ( Jdg 2:16-19 ).
Now this is just a brief summary of the book of Judges. God raised up judges. During the period of the judges they would be delivered from the oppression of the enemy, but then they would turn away from God and go right back to their evil ways, the worshipping of the false gods and all. And they would go into oppression again and God would raise up another judge and the story is repeated over and over and over through the book of Judges. When will people learn? You know, you look at this sad situation and you wonder what’s wrong with you people? Why can’t you see it? Yet it is a tragic pattern that they followed over and over again.
So the anger of the LORD was hot against Israel; he said, Because the people had transgressed my covenant which I commanded their fathers, they have not hearkened to my voice; I will not henceforth drive out any from before them of the nations which Joshua left when he died: That through them I may prove Israel, whether they will keep the way for the LORD or not. Therefore the LORD left those nations, without driving them out ( Jdg 2:20-23 ). “
The fact of Israel’s failure is still further revealed in this chapter. In the first five verses we have the account of the coming of a messenger from Gilgal. This messenger, referred to as “the angel of the Lord,” may have been a prophet, for the word rendered “angel” may with equal accuracy be rendered messenger. On the other hand it may have been a special divine and angelic personality.
There was an assembly of the people at Bochim. For what purpose we are not told, but the message brought to them called them back to loyalty to God.
Immediately following this, the historian gives a brief retrospect of the condition of affairs under Joshua, emphasizing that during his life and the life of the elders associated with him the people served the Lord; but that after the passing of these a generation sprang up which did not know the Lord. This of course means not that they were ignorant of the fact of the divine government, but that they were careless about it and disobedient.
This statement is followed by a synopsis of the history which is yet to be set out in greater detail. Here the facts are set forth in the light of the relation the people bore to God. Three movements, the details of which will be found in subsequent sections, are indicated. The first had to do with the sin of the people (verses Jdg 2:11-13), the second with the punishment which followed (verses Jdg 2:14-15), the third with deliverances (verse Jdg 2:16). Continuing, we find a record of sin repeated (verses Jdg 2:20-23).
This connection of sin, punishment, and deliverance really forms the keynote to the historical movement recorded in the whole of the Book.
Flagging in Their Great Task
Jdg 1:16-36; Jdg 2:1-5
The conquest of Canaan was very partial. Israel dwelled among the ancient inhabitants of the land, much as the Normans did among the Anglo-Saxons, whom they found in England; and the mixture of the two peoples was the beginning of moral degeneracy and decline in the chosen race. Wherever there was the old-time faith in God, as in the case of Caleb, the land was cleared of the Canaanite; but where God was out, the Canaanite was in.
So it is in the life of the soul. It is intended that the whole should be yielded to Christ, that no evil passion should reign, that no besetting sin should enthrall. But how often Christian people give up the fight! They say that the old Adam is too strong for them, and settle down to a joint-occupation. Let us not yield to reasoning like this! The Lion of Judah can break every chain. By faith in Him we can be more than conquerors! The Holy Spirit strives with the flesh, so that we may not do as otherwise we would. Only give Him the right of way! Sin shall not reign in your mortal body!
2. The Angel at Bochim and the History of the Entire Book
CHAPTERS 2:1-3:4
1. The angel at Bochim (Jdg 2:1-5)
2. Israels obedience remembered (Jdg 2:6-10)
3. Israels strange gods (Jdg 2:11-15)
4. Israels history under the judges outlined (Jdg 2:16-18)
5. The nations left to prove Israel (Jdg 2:19-23; Jdg 3:1-4)
The opening event of this chapter is significant. The Angel of the Lord came up from Gilgal to Bochim. This Angel is Jehovah Himself. His own words reveal this fact. In Joshuas time after the land had been possessed the Angel of the Lord, Jehovah in visible form, was with them and as leader of the Lords host led them on in the conquest (Jos 5:13-15). Israel had left Gilgal, the place where the reproach had been rolled away, the place of the sharp knives, typical of self-judgment. It was for Israel the place of strength and power for victory, as it gave the flesh nothing to glory in. They had left Gilgal. How often we, who are crucified with Christ, leave our Gilgal and instead of glorying in the Lord and having no confidence in the flesh, we too act in self-confidence. The place to which the Angel went was Bochim. It means weepers. It was the best place for Israel to be after all their failures to do what the Lord had commanded them. It is the place today for us in the midst of the worldliness in which so many of the Lords people have drifted, as well as the divisions which exist among those, who are members of the one body, and other evils besides. But Bochim, the place for weeping, must be the place of self-judgment and confession. It was not so for Israel. They wept when the plain words of Jehovah told them their disobedience and when they heard what should follow. I will not drive them out before you; but they shall be as thorns in your sides, and their gods shall be a snare unto you. But we do not read anything of a true repentance and return unto Jehovah.
From chapter 2:6-3:4 we have the history of the whole period of Judges outlined. There is first mention made of their obedience and service, how they began in the Spirit. The second generation, as it is always the case, leads to failure. For the first time we read the words which, as already stated, appear in six other places in this book. And the children of Israel did evil in the sight of the Lord. They forsook Him, the loving, gracious Jehovah, whose kindness and tender mercies are so fully revealed in their past history and instead of serving such a God, they served Baal and Ashtaroth. Connected with this Canaanite religion were the vilest immoralities by which they were dragged down to the level of these doomed nations. All moral corruption, social and political confusion is the result of turning away from God. Rom 1:19-32 reveals the awful steps down. Christendom in apostasy, turning away from God and from the light, leads to moral corruption as well. Turning away from the truth means being turned into fables.
The Lord then acted in behalf of His backslidden people and raised up judges (verses 16-18). The result was recovery, and once more the people under these revivals rejoiced in victory over their enemies and the promised covenant blessings. Self-judgment, which is true repentance, had to precede each revival. They cried unto the Lord; they sought His face, and then deliverance came. Even so it is in the individual experience of the children of God.
Yet in spite of these revivals in Israel the tendency is downward. When the judge died they returned and corrupted themselves beyond their fathers … they ceased not from their own doings, nor from their stubborn way. So it has been in the professing Church. Revivals have come and gone, but it has not remedied the wayward conditions, and the departure from God and His Word becomes more and more pronounced till the final great apostasy is reached. The only complete deliverance can be the coming of the Lord which we do not find fully revealed in the types of the book of Judges.
angel
See note. (See Scofield “Heb 1:4”).
And an angel: or messenger, Jdg 6:12, Jdg 13:3, Gen 16:7-10, Gen 16:13, Gen 22:11, Gen 22:12, Gen 48:16, Exo 3:2-6, Exo 14:19, Exo 23:20, Exo 33:14, Jos 5:13, Jos 5:14, Isa 63:9, Hos 12:3-5, Zec 3:1, Zec 3:2, Mal 3:1, Act 7:30-33
Bochim: Jdg 2:5
I made: Exo 3:7, Exo 3:8, Exo 14:14, Exo 20:2, Deu 4:34, Psa 78:51-53, Psa 105:36-38
have brought: Gen 12:7, Gen 22:16, Gen 22:17, Gen 26:3, Gen 26:4, Jos 3:10, Psa 105:44, Psa 105:45
I will never: Gen 17:7, Gen 17:8, Lev 26:42, Num 14:34, Psa 89:34, Jer 14:21, Jer 33:20, Jer 33:21, Zec 11:10
Reciprocal: Gen 16:10 – the angel Gen 24:7 – which spake Gen 31:46 – an heap Gen 35:8 – Allonbachuth Exo 4:13 – send Lev 26:3 – General Deu 6:19 – General Jos 13:13 – expelled Jdg 5:23 – the angel Jdg 6:8 – a prophet Jdg 6:11 – an angel Jdg 10:11 – Did not I 1Sa 10:18 – Thus saith 1Ki 22:53 – he served Baal Job 33:23 – a messenger Hag 1:13 – the Lord’s
The angel of the Lord came to the people and told them he would no longer fight for them because they had failed to follow his directions. They had made covenants with the people in direct violation of his will. This despite the fact that he had brought them out of Egypt as promised. Now, the people remaining in the land would become a snare to God’s people. The place where they heard this was named Bochim, which means “Weeping” ( Jdg 2:1-5 ).
Jdg 2:7-23
The death of Joshua and his generation brought a great change in Israel. They knew the Lord and his powerful working in behalf of his people in leading them out of Egyptian bondage, through the wilderness and in conquest of the promised land. However, it appears they failed to tell the next generation of the Lord’s wonderful love (compare Deu 6:1-9 ), because the text plainly says they did not know the Lord or the powerful works he did for his chosen people ( Jdg 2:7-10 ).
Baal was the primary male deity of the Canaanites, worshiped as the god of the sun and source of all physical life. His name is often attached to some other name to designate the particular area worshipping him. Baalim is the plural of Baal as Ashtaroth is the plural of the goddess Ashtoreth. She was the moon goddess who roughly corresponded with the Greek goddess Aphrodite.
Ironically, one could serve Baal and the true God at the same time as far as the Canaanites were concerned because they believed in numerous deities. To serve the true God, however, required forsaking all other gods ( Exo 20:3 ; Deu 6:10-25 ; Deu 13:6-18 ). Israel failed to realize the danger in following other gods and is described as lying down to prostitute herself with them ( Jdg 2:11-13 ). God is often pictured as the husband of Israel in the Old Testament and the church is Christ’s bride in the New Testament. To worship other gods is to commit spiritual fornication ( Hos 2:2-13 ; 2Co 11:2 ; Jas 4:4 ).
If God failed to punish those who rebelled against his will, he would cease to be righteous and, therefore, cease to be God ( Psa 89:14 ). This is why God had to deliver Israel into the hands of the spoilers ( Jdg 2:14-15 ). The chosen people could no longer stand before their enemies but ran from them because God was not on their side ( Lev 26:17 ; Lev 26:36-39 ; Deu 28:25-26 ). This is in sad contrast to the great promise God had made to them in reference to their ability to conquer their enemies if they remained faithful ( Lev 26:3-8 ). However, it should be noted the promise had an “if” clause all along and was contingent on their keeping God’s commandments.
Just because God punished Israel, it cannot be said he ceased to love them. In fact, he heard their groanings under the hands of those who oppressed them and sent judges to deliver them out of their hands ( Jdg 2:16 ; Hos 11:8-9 ). It is unfortunate that Israel did not learn from their punishment. When the judge died they went back into idolatry with a greater zeal than their fathers had pursued it prior to the time God let an enemy put them in subjection ( Jdg 2:17-19 ; Isa 63:7-10 ; 2Pe 2:20-22 ).
The repeated rebellion of his chosen people led God to say he would cease driving the nations out of the promised land. Instead, they would remain to test whether God’s people would be faithful to him or continue to worship false gods ( Jdg 2:20-23 ). Clarke writes, “These words are spoken after the manner of men; and the metaphor is taken from the case of a master or father, who distrusts the fidelity or obedience of his servant or son, and places him in such circumstances that, by his good or evil conduct, he may justify his suspicions, or give him proofs of his fidelity.”
Jdg 2:1. An angel of the Lord came up from Gilgal This, no doubt, was the Angel of the covenant, the same divine being that appeared to Joshua near Jericho, Jos 5:13-14; to whom the conduct of Israel out of Egypt into Canaan, and their conquests and success there, are frequently ascribed. He alone could speak the following words in his own name and person; whereas created angels and prophets universally usher in their message with, Thus saith the Lord, or some equivalent expression. And, having assumed the shape of a man, he imitates the motion of a man, and appears to come from Gilgal to the place where they now were, probably in order to remind the Israelites of his appearing to Joshua near that place, of the assurance he then gave them of his intended presence with them in the conquest of the country, and of the solemn covenant they made with him by the renewal of circumcision. This was a reproof to them for their base ingratitude to God, and their pusillanimous sloth in not endeavouring to expel the Canaanites. To Bochim A word signifying weepers. This was not the name of the place before, but was given it on this occasion, on account of the lamentations of the children of Israel for what the angel said to them, Jdg 2:5. It seems to have been no other than Shiloh, where, it is probable, the people were met together upon some solemn festival occasion. And I said, I will never break my covenant with you That is, upon condition of your keeping covenant with me.
Jdg 2:1. An Angel of the Lord. Jewish writers in succession speak of this as a created angel: but no mere angel would dare to speak as Jehovah. It was therefore the Angel of the covenant, the same that had appeared to Moses and to Joshua. Exo 3:2; Exo 3:6. Jos 5:13; Jos 5:15. So the fathers with one consent expound his appearance at the bush, and on other occasions. This Angel was an ever-living Angel, clothed with omnipotence, and saying, I will no more drive out these inhabitants from before you. Theodoret however thinks, as some Jews have done, that this was Michael the archangel, and prince of the synagogues.
Jdg 2:5. Bochim; that is, in the plural, weepings, wailings, &c. Bochim was the camp near Shiloh.
Jdg 2:6. When Joshua had let the people go. The sacred writer here refers to the assembling of the people at Shechem, when Joshua delivered his dying charge.
Jdg 2:10. Another generation, which knew not the Lord. That was the fault chiefly of the priests, the levites, and the elders, who seem to have led the people into error. The poor durst not have set up an idol. Eight times in this book they publicly rebelled against the Lord, and eight times the bloody and galling yoke of contemptible heathen powers was thrown upon their necks.
Jdg 2:13. Baal and Ashtaroth. See on Jos 23:7.
Jdg 2:16. The Lord raised up judges, having some resemblance to the , archontes among the Athenians; martial dukes who retained their civil and military powers for life, and were the special gifts of heaven to save and preserve their country.
REFLECTIONS.
We are truly astonished that the Israelites should immediately on the death of their elders, revolt to idolatry, and make covenants with the accursed nations. What a proof of the contamination of original sin; and what an argument for us to train up the new generation in the nurture and admonition of the Lord; for they are all born with propensities to seek their happiness in exterior objects, and to forget their fathers God. The charms of idolatry, it is true, were extremely beguiling to the less tutored among the Hebrews. The wine, the feasts, the music, the lascivious dances, and intercourse of the sexes, attendant on the worship of devils, induced the backsliding Israelites first to look on, and next to join in an oblation so pleasing to the flesh. And it should be well remembered that our theatres, our balls, our music-rooms &c. are to us those very altars of the demon, equally fatal to the soul.
What were the consequences of this apostasy, and all these covenants with the heathen?JEHOVAH the angel came to Bochim and said, I made you to go out of Egypt, &c. Seeing they had thus changed masters, he sentenced them to be scourged by those heathens, as he had sentenced their fathers at Kadesh. God will not suffer back-slidings and apostasy to pass with impunity: when he passes sentence on a people for their sins, repentance is unavailing; he despises tears at a certain crisis of obduracy. He will not alter the thing that is gone out of his mouth. The man who makes a covenant with his sins, will find them in the issue productive of destruction.
The case was similar in the primitive church. Even before the age of Constantine, the glory of the christian church was very much impaired. St. Cyprian, while in exile, was shocked to hear that the high road to Carthage was thronged with christians going to offer incense to the gods. And what shall we do to preserve our children from following the spirit and fashions of the world? By nature they are carnal and corrupt; therefore they must become regenerate, and be born of the Spirit. Let us endeavour to preserve the ministry pure; for an accommodating clergy, and a people having itching ears, will soon cause the most holy audience to degenerate into religious formality. Above all, let us preserve apostolic discipline by building up the church with real converts, and by the expulsion of all wicked and ungodly men. But oh, after all that men can do, shall our children become proud and vain? Shall they, despising our simplicity, conform to the world, become wanton in watering places, crowd the theatres, and bow to the desolating idol of profane pleasure? Shall they, dissipated in life and licentious in principle, ever make problems of the great truths which converted their fathers; or like the apostate descendants of the puritans, ridicule the Godhead and glory of Christ? Then surely the angel of the covenant, who in part abandoned Israel, will change the blessings of the covenant into anathemas, and chastise us with greater strokes than Israels. From the latter part of this chapter, which sketches the history of the Hebrews to the days of Samuel, we see on a broad scale, that they never forsook the Lord and bowed to idols, but he gave them into the hands of their enemies; and it is the same with backsliders; the Lord gives up one to his drunkenness, and another to his covetousness, so that he eats the fruit of his own doings.
Lastly, from the paternal character of the judges whom the Lord raised up, and from the calamities which befel the country, when no such protectors watched over the public weal, we see what invaluable blessings a nation derives from a vigilant and paternal government. How highly then ought we to value and revere a gracious king, an active magistrate, and a faithful minister; and mourn their removal, not knowing the character of those who may succeed.
Jdg 1:1 to Jdg 2:5. The Conquests and Settlements of the Israelites in Western Palestine.From this introduction, which is one of the most valuable parts of early Hebrew history, we learn that the various tribes invaded the land either singly or in small groups; that they had failures as well as successes; that in many instances they did not destroy the older population, but settled peacefully among them; and that, in particular, the larger cities of Canaan, as well as the fertile valleys and the Maritime Plain, remained in the possession of the Canaanites. The conquests of Judah were separated from those of Joseph by a belt of walled cities with Jerusalem in its centre. Another line of strongholds, extending from Bethshan near the Jordan to Dor on the sea coast, shut up Ephraim and Manasseh in the central highlands, and separated them from the tribes of Asher, Zebulun, and Naphtali, which settled in Galilee. The fortunes of Israel in the time of the Judges were largely determined by these facts.
Jdg 2:1-5. The Consecration of Bethel.The Israelites having now entered the land of Canaan, the religious centre was changed from Gilgal, in the plain of Jericho, to Bethel, in the central highlands, where sacrifice was offered to Yahweh. The angel of Yahweh (Gen 16:7*) is not a prophet, as the Rabbis taught, but Yahweh Himself manifesting His presence, here in some undefined way, often in human form (e.g. Jdg 6:11, Jdg 13:3). His moving from Gilgal, where He appeared as the captain of the host of the Lord, to Bethel suffices to create a new sanctuary. The LXX reads Bethel instead of Bochim, the latter finding its fitting place only in Jdg 2:5. The speech (of the nature of a Midrash) contained in Jdg 2:1 b Jdg 2:3, reproving the Israelites for associating with the Canaanites and not breaking down their altars, is post-exilic in spirit and diction.
Jdg 2:3. The words as thorns are taken over from Num 33:55 to make sense, the Hebrew textthey shall be sides to youbeing evidently at fault. The LXX suggests they shall be enemies to you. The name Bochim (weepers) is found only here: cf. the Oak of Weeping (Gen 35:8), and the Valley of Weeping (Psa 84:6). Perhaps Bochim may be another form of Bekaim (balsam trees, 2Sa 5:23 f.). Probably Jdg 2:5 b originally followed Jdg 2:1.
THE REPROOF OF THE ANGEL OF THE LORD
(vv. 1-6)
Israel’s failure called for strong reproof. The angel of the Lord, who is the Lord Himself, not a messenger from God, but the messenger, came from Gilgal to Bochim (v. 1).Gilgal speaks of the self-judgment of sin in the flesh, but Israel had neglected this after settling in the land. If we too neglect the self-judgment that is necessary for a walk with God, the result will be Bochim, meaning “weeping.”
He tells Israel, “I led you up from Egypt and brought you to the land of which I swore to your fathers, and I said, I will never break My covenant with you.” Certainly God was true to His Word, but Israel had covenanted to obey God’s law, which included the command that they should make no covenant with the inhabitants of Canaan. But they had not obeyed. He asked them why? But they had no answer (v. 2).
Therefore they must suffer the results of this disobedience (v. 4). Since they would not cooperate with God, He would not drive out the inhabitants of the land, but would leave them to cause constant distress and trouble, exposed to the snare of being deceived by the idolatrous worshipers of Canaan.
The power of these words did at least have some effect on Israel, causing the people to weep, the meaning of the name Bochim, and they sacrificed there to the Lord. We might wish that this had more lasting effect, but it seemed only transitory.
JOSHUA’S DEATH AGAIN EMPHASIZED
(vv. 7-10)
While Joshua and the elders who had observed the great works of the Lord continued to live, Israel continued to serve the Lord in some evident measure. But Joshua died (at age 110–v.8), together with the older generation of Israel, and another generation followed who did not follow the faith of their fathers, not knowing the Lord or the work He had done for Israel (v. 10).This may have been greatly due to Israel’s negligence in obeying God’s Word to diligently teach their children (Deu 31:10-13). But just as Israel so soon began their process of disintegration, so the Church very soon after its inception, departed from the truth on which it was established, and most sad disastrous results have followed (Act 20:29-30, 2Ti 2:16-21).
ISRAEL’S FAILURE AND GOD’S GRACE
(vv. 11-13)
This section is a summary of what follows in the book of Judges, showing how often Israel departed from God and how God dealt in grace, giving them various deliverers who arrested the general trend for a time, yet after each deliverance Israel sinking lower and lower.
They began their descent by serving the Baals (v. 11). This word means “lords,” just as today there are many who will talk about “the Lord” while not at all meaning the Lord Jesus, for “there are so-called gods, whether in heaven or on earth (as there are many gods and many lords”(1Co 8:5).People commonly prefer a substitute that will not try their consciences.
Thus, Israel “forsook the Lord God of their fathers, who had brought them out of the land of Egypt” (v. 12),being seduced by the idols of the nations among whom they lived. Added to the worship of Baal, however, was that of the Ashtoreths (v. 13), female goddesses, the name meaning “thoughtsearching.” This may sound good, but in leaving Christ out of it, it is merely self-occupation that gives the impression of spiritual exercise, something like transcendental meditation does. Every believer should recognize and abhor all such imitations.
Such departure must incur the anger of God, who delivered Israel into the cruel hands of the very nations whose gods they were adopting, and their enemies gained ascendancy over them (v.14). They must learn the governmental results of their own folly, and must learn that God meant what He said when warning them of such calamity on account of their disobedience (v. 15).
Yet God graciously intervened on such occasions to raise up judges whom He used to liberate Israel (v. 16).However, while appreciating their deliverance, they were not prepared to give the judges the honor of their submitting to the Word of God which the judges gave them (v. 17), but turned quickly from the way in which their fathers walked.
After every time of deliverance, when the judge died, Israel reverted to their low state or even lower than before, serving and bowing down to idols (v. 19). Can we wonder that God’s anger was hot against Israel? Because of Israel’s transgressing God’s covenant, He declared He would no longer drive out before them any of the nations that had been left when Joshua died (vv. 20-21). Instead, He would use those nations to test Israel (v. 22). The very fact of these nations’ demon worship ought to have stirred Israel’s revulsion against such evil rather than to seduce them to follow the same practices. Thus it was a test, but one that proved Israel rebellious.
2:1 And an {a} angel of the LORD came up from Gilgal to Bochim, and said, I made you to go up out of Egypt, and have brought you unto the land which I sware unto your fathers; and I said, I will never break my covenant with you.
(a) That is, messenger, or prophet, as some think, Phinehas.
2. The announcement of God’s discipline 2:1-5
The events of this pericope tie in directly with those of the previous one. Israel’s failure recorded there led to the discipline announced here.
"The narrator moves from chap. 1 to chap. 2 like a modern preacher moves from text to exposition. The differences here are that the text of the author’s sermon derives from events of history, not a printed page, and the interpretation comes from God himself or from his messengers, be they the envoy of Yahweh or the author of the book." [Note: Block, Judges . . ., p. 78]
The writer seems to have included the statement that the Angel of the Lord "came up from Gilgal" (Jdg 2:1) to connect the Angel’s appearance here with His last recorded appearance at Gilgal (Jos 5:13-15). On that occasion the Angel appeared after the people had consecrated themselves to God. He promised to lead them in victory against their enemies. On this occasion the Angel promised that He would not drive out the remaining Canaanites because Israel had been disobedient to God, specifically to the Mosaic Covenant (cf. Exo 24:3; Exo 24:7; Jos 24:18; Jos 24:21; Jos 24:24). Of the 59 references to "the Angel of the Lord" in the Old Testament, 18 (30.5 percent) appear in Judges. He appeared on four separate occasions: in Jdg 2:1-5; Jdg 5:23; Jdg 6:11-24; and Jdg 13:1-25. Additionally, the title "the Angel of God" appears nine times in the Old Testament and at least three times in Judges: in Jdg 6:20 and Jdg 13:6; Jdg 13:9. [Note: See the discussion of this person in Howard, pp. 113-16.]
The issue at the beginning of the Book of Judges and throughout the book is whether Israel will be faithful to the covenant. The issue for the readers is similar: whether he or she will worship and serve God alone. God had stated clearly and repeatedly that His people were to destroy or drive out all the former inhabitants of the land (Exo 23:31-33; Exo 34:11-16; Num 33:51-56; Deu 7:1-5).
"The deplorable spiritual condition of the Israelites, not their lack of chariots, lay behind their failure to dispossess the Canaanites. To expose Israel’s sinfulness, the ’angel of the Lord’ appeared to them (Jdg 2:1)." [Note: Wolf, p. 392.]
The Angel’s announcement caused great sorrow in Israel that led to weeping and the offering of sacrifices to Yahweh (Jdg 2:4-5; cf. Exo 23:28-31; Exo 34:11). The people could not change God’s sentence even by repenting (cf. Jos 24:19). Her disobedience resulted in God’s discipline (cf. God’s judgment at Kadesh-Barnea, Num 14:1-10). Nevertheless this warning constituted a manifestation of God’s grace to Israel, and evidences of God’s grace are numerous in Judges. [Note: See Constable, pp. 108-9.]
"The Canaanite system represents forces that yield death, so its presence in the land is as intolerable as Pharaoh’s death-dealing policies were in the land of Egypt. To oppose the Canaanite system is, in essence, to choose life as God intends it. But it is precisely this choice that the people have not made in chapter 1, and will not make throughout the book of Judges. Quite appropriately, therefore, the events in Jdg 2:1-5 unfold at a place called Bochim, ’Weeping (Ones)’ (Jdg 2:5).
"As it turns out, the name ’Weeping’ is another way in which Jdg 1:1 to Jdg 2:5 anticipates the rest of the book. Just as Jdg 1:1 is echoed in chapter 20, so are Jdg 2:1 and Jdg 2:5. That is to say, the people are still weeping at the end of the book of Judges." [Note: McCann, p. 31. Cf. Marvin E. Tate, From Promise to Exile: The Former Prophets, p. 34.]
AT BOCHIM: THE FIRST PROPHET VOICE
Jdg 2:1-5
FROM the time of Abraham on to the settlement in Canaan the Israelites had kept the faith of the one God. They had their origin as a people in a decisive revolt against polytheism. Of the great Semite forefather of the Jewish people, it has been finely said, “He bore upon his forehead the seal of the Absolute God, upon which was written, This race will rid the earth of superstition.” The character and structure of the Hebrew tongue resisted idolatry. It was not an imaginative language; it had no mythological colour. We who have inherited an ancient culture of quite another kind do not think it strange to read or sing:
“Hail, smiling morn, that tipst the hills with gold,
Whose rosy fingers ope the gates of day,
Who the gay face of nature dost unfold,
At whose bright presence darkness flies away.”
These lines, however, are full of latent mythology. The “smiling morn” is Aurora, the darkness that flies away before the dawn is the Erebus of the Greeks. Nothing of this sort was possible in Hebrew literature. In it all change, all life, every natural incident are ascribed to the will and power of one Supreme Being. “Jehovah thundered in the heavens and the Highest gave His voice, hailstones and coals of fire.” “By the breath of God ice is given, and the breadth of the waters is straitened.” “Behold, He spreadeth His light around Him; He covereth His hands with the lightning.” “Thou makest darkness and it is night.” Always in forms like these Hebrew poetry sets forth the control of nature by its invisible King. The pious word of Fenelon, “What do I see in nature? God; God everywhere; God alone,” had its germ, its very substance, in the faith and language of patriarchal times. Christ its finest radiance flashes upon the world.
While the Hebrews were in Egypt, the faith inherited from patriarchal times must have been sorely tried, and, all circumstances considered, it came forth wonderfully pure. “The Israelites saw Egypt as the Mussulman Arab sees pagan countries, entirely from the outside, perceiving only the surface and external things.” They indeed carried with them into the desert the recollection of the sacred bulls or calves of which they had seen images at Hathor and Memphis. But the idol they made at Horeb was intended to represent their Deliverer, the true God, and the swift and stern repression by Moses of that symbolism and its pagan incidents appears to have been effectual. The tribes reached Canaan substantially free from idolatry, though teraphim or fetishes may have been used in secret with magical ceremonies. The religion of the people generally was far from spiritual, yet there was a real faith in Jehovah as the protector of the national life, the guardian of justice and truth. From this there was no falling away when the Reubenites and Gadites on the east of Jordan erected an altar for themselves. “The Lord God of gods,” they said, “He knoweth, and Israel he shall know if it be in rebellion, or if in transgression against the Lord.” The altar was called Ed, a witness between east and west that the faith of the one Living God was still to unite the tribes.
But the danger to Israels fidelity came when there began to be intercourse with the people of Canaan, now sunk from the purer thought of early times. Everywhere in the land of the Hittites and Amorites, Hivites and Jebusites, there were altars and sacred trees, pillars and images used in idolatrous worship. The ark and the altar of Divine religion, established first at Gilgal near Jericho, afterwards at Bethel and then at Shiloh, could not be frequently visited, especially by those who settled towards the southern desert and in the far north. Yet the necessity for religious worship of some kind was constantly felt; and as afterwards the synagogues gave opportunity for devotional gatherings when the Temple could not be reached, so in the earlier time there came to be sacred observances on elevated places, a windy threshing floor, or a hilltop already used for heathen sacrifice. Hence, on the one hand, there was the danger that worship might be entirely neglected, on the other hand the grave risk that the use of heathen occasions and meeting places should lead to heathen ritual, and those who came together on the hill of Baal should forget Jehovah. It was the latter evil that grew; and while as yet only a few Hebrews easily led astray had approached with kid or lamb a pagan altar, the alarm was raised. At Bochim a Divine warning was uttered which found echo in the hearts of the people.
There appears to have been a great gathering of the tribes at some spot near Bethel. We see the elders and heads of families holding council of war and administration, the thoughts of all bent on conquest and family settlement. Religion, the purity of Jehovahs worship, are forgotten in the business of the hour. How shall the tribes best help each other in the struggle that is already proving more arduous than they expected? Dan is sorely pressed by the Amorites. The chiefs of the tribe are here telling their story of hardship among the mountains. The Asherites have failed in their attack upon the seaboard towns Accho and Achzib; in vain have they pressed towards Zidon. They are dwelling among the Canaanites and may soon be reduced to slavery. The reports from other tribes are more hopeful; but everywhere the people of the land are hard to overcome. Should Israel not remain content for a time, make the best of circumstances, cultivate friendly intercourse with the population it cannot dispossess? Such a policy often commends itself to those who would be thought prudent; it is apt to prove a fatal policy.
Suddenly a spiritual voice is heard, clear and intense, and all others are silent. From the sanctuary of God at Gilgal one comes whom the people have not expected; he comes with a message they cannot choose but hear. It is a prophet with the burden of reproof and warning. Jehovahs goodness, Jehovahs claim are declared with Divine ardour; with Divine severity the neglect of the covenant is condemned. Have the tribes of God begun to consort with the people of the land? Are they already dwelling content under the shadow of idolatrous groves, in sight of the symbols of Ashtoreth? Are they learning to swear by Baal and Melcarth and looking on while sacrifices are offered to these vile masters? Then they can no longer hope that Jehovah will give them the country to enjoy; the heathen shall remain as thorns in the side of Israel and their gods shall be a snare. It is a message of startling power. From the hopes of dominion and the plans of worldly gain the people pass to spiritual concern. They have offended their Lord; His countenance is turned from them? A feeling of guilt falls on the assembly. “It came to pass that the people lifted up their voice and wept.”
This lamentation at Bochim is the second note of religious feeling and faith in the Book of Judges. The first is the consultation of the priests and the oracle referred to in the opening sentence of the book. Jehovah Who had led them through the wilderness was their King, and unless He went forth as the unseen Captain of the host no success could be looked for. “They asked of Jehovah, saying, Who shall go up for us first against the Canaanites, to fight against them?” In this appeal there was a measure of faith which is neither to be scorned nor suspected. The question indeed was not whether they should fight at all, but how they should fight so as to succeed, and their trust was in a God thought of as pledged to them, solely concerned for them. So far accordingly there is nothing exemplary in the circumstances. Yet we find a lesson for Christian nations. There are many in our modern parliaments who are quite ready to vote national prayer in war time and thanksgiving for victories, who yet would never think, before undertaking a war, of consulting those best qualified to interpret the Divine will. The relation between religion and the state has this fatal hitch, that however Christian our governments profess to be, the Christian thinkers of the country are not consulted on moral questions, not even on a question so momentous as that of war. It is passion, pride, or diplomacy, never the wisdom of Christ, that leads nations in the critical moments of their history. Who then scorn, who suspect the early Hebrew belief? Those only who have no right; those who as they laugh at God and faith shut themselves from the knowledge by which alone life can be understood; and, again, those who in their own ignorance and pride unsheathe the sword without reference to Him in Whom they profess to believe. We admit none of these to criticise Israel and its faith.
At Bochim, where the second note of religious feeling is struck, a deeper and clearer note, we find the prophet listened to. He revives the sense of duty, he kindles a Divine sorrow in the hearts of the people. The national assembly is conscience stricken. Let us allow this quick contrition to be the result, in part, of superstitious fear. Very rarely is spiritual concern quite pure. In general it is the consequences of transgression rather than the evil of it that press on the minds of men. Forebodings of trouble and calamity are more commonly causes of sorrow than the loss of fellowship with God; and if we know this to be the case with many who are convicted of sin under the preaching of the gospel, we cannot wonder to find the penitence of old Hebrew times mingled with superstition. Nevertheless, the people are aware of the broken covenant, burdened with a sense that they have lost the favour of their unseen Guide. There can be no doubt that the realisation of sin and of justice turned against them is one cause of their tears.
Here, again, if there is a difference between Israel and Christian nations, it is not in favour of the latter. Are modern senates ever overcome by conviction of sin? Those who are in power seem to have no fear that they may do wrong. Glorifying their blunders and forgetting their errors, they find no occasion for self-reproach, no need to sit in sackcloth and ashes. Now and then, indeed, a day of fasting and humiliation is ordered and observed in state; the sincere Christian for his part feeling how miserably formal it is, how far from the spontaneous expression of abasement and remorse. God is called upon to help a people who have not considered their ways, who design no amendment, who have not even suspected that the Divine blessing may come in still further humbling. And turning to private life, is there not as much of self-justification, as little of real humility and faith? The shallow nature of popular Christianity is seen here, that so few can read in disappointment and privation anything but disaster, or submit without disgust and rebellion to take a lower place at the table of Providence. Our weeping is so often for what we longed to gain or wished to keep in the earthly and temporal region, so seldom for what we have lost or should fear to lose in the spiritual. We grieve when we should rather rejoice that God has made us feel our need of Him, and called us again to our true blessedness.
The scene at Bochim connects itself very notably with one nine hundred and fifty years later. The poor fragments of the exiled tribes have been gathered again in the land of their fathers. They are rebuilding Jerusalem and the Temple. Ezra has led back a company from Babylon and has brought with him, by the favour of Artaxerxes, no small treasure of silver and gold for the house of God. To his astonishment and grief he hears the old tale of alliance with the inhabitants of the land, intermarriage even of Levites, priests and princes of Israel with women of the Canaanite races. In the new settlement of Palestine the error of the first is repeated. Ezra calls a solemn assembly in the Temple court-“every one that trembles at the words of the God of Israel.” Till the evening sacrifice he sits prostrate with grief, his garment rent, his hair torn and dishevelled. Then on his knees before the Lord he spreads forth his hands in prayer. The trespasses of a thousand years afflict him, afflict the faithful. “After all that is come upon us for our evil deeds, shall we again break Thy commandments, and join in affinity with the peoples that do these abominations? wouldest not Thou be angry with us till Thou hadst consumed us so that there should be no remnant nor any to escape? Behold we are before Thee in our guiltiness; for none can stand before Thee because of this.” The impressive lament of Ezra and those who join in his confessions draws together a great congregation, and the people weep very sore. Nine centuries and a half appear a long time in the history of a nation. What has been gained during the period? Is the weeping at Jerusalem in Ezras time, like the weeping at Bochim, a mark of no deeper feeling, no keener penitence? Has there been religious advance commensurate with the discipline of suffering, defeat, slaughter and exile, dishonoured kings, a wasted land? Have the prophets not achieved anything? Has not the Temple in its glory, in its desolation, spoken of a Heavenly power, a Divine rule, the sense of which entering the souls of the people has established piety, or at least a habit of separateness from heathen manners and life? It may be hard to distinguish and set forth the gain of those centuries. But it is certain that while the weeping at Bochim was the sign of a fear that soon passed away, the weeping in the Temple court marked a new beginning in Hebrew history. By the strong action of Ezra and Nehemiah the mixed marriages were dissolved, and from that time the Jewish people became, as they never were before, exclusive and separate. Where nature would have led the nation ceased to go. More and more strictly the law was enforced; the age of puritanism began. So, let us say, the sore discipline had its fruit.
And yet it is with a reservation only we can enjoy the success of those reformers who drew the sharp line between Israel and his heathen neighbours, between Jew and Gentile. The vehemence of reaction urged the nation towards another error-Pharisaism. Nothing could be purer, nothing nobler than the desire to make Israel a holy people. But to inspire men with religious zeal and yet preserve them from spiritual pride is always difficult, and in truth those Hebrew reformers did not see the danger. There came to be, in the new development of faith, zeal enough, jealousy enough, for the purity of religion and life, but along with these a contempt for the heathen, a fierce enmity towards the uncircumcised, which made the interval till Christ appeared a time of strife and bloodshed worse than any that had been before. From the beginning the Hebrews were called with a holy calling, and their future was bound up with their faithfulness to it. Their ideal was to be earnest and pure, without bitterness or vainglory; and that is still the ideal of faith. But the Jewish people like ourselves, weak through the flesh, came short of the mark on one side or passed beyond it on the other. During the long period from Joshua to Nehemiah there was too little heat, and then a fire was kindled which burned a sharp narrow path, along which the life of Israel has gone with ever-lessening spiritual force. The unfulfilled ideal still waits, the unique destiny of this people of God still bears them on.
Bochim is a symbol. There the people wept for a transgression but half understood and a peril they could not rightly dread. There was genuine sorrow, there was genuine alarm. But it was the prophetic word, not personal experience, that moved the assembly. And as at Florence, when Savonarolas word, shaking with alarm a people who had no vision of holiness, left them morally weaker as it fell into silence, so the weeping at Bochim passed like a tempest that has bowed and broken the forest trees. The chiefs of Israel returned to their settlements with a new sense of duty and peril; but Canaanite civilisation had attractions, Canaanite women a refinement which captivated the heart. And the civilisation, the refinement, were associated with idolatry, The myths of Canaan, the poetry of Tammuz and Astarte, were fascinating and seductive. We wonder not that the pure faith of God was corrupted, but that it survived. In Egypt the heathen worship was in a foreign tongue, but in Canaan the stories of the gods were whispered to Israelites in a language they knew, by their own kith and kin. In many a home among the mountains of Ephraim or the skirts of Lebanon the pagan wife, with her superstitious fears, her dread of the anger of this god or that goddess, wrought so on the mind of the Jewish husband that he began to feel her dread and then to permit and share her sacrifices. Thus idolatry invaded Israel, and the long and weary struggle between truth and falsehood began.
We have spoken of Bochim as a symbol, and to us it may be the symbol of this, that the very thing which men put from them in horror and with tears, seeing the evil, the danger of it, does often insinuate itself into their lives. The messenger is heard, and while he speaks how near God is, how awful is the sense of His being! A thrill of keen feeling passes from soul to soul. There are some in the gathering who have more spiritual insight than the rest, and their presence raises the heat of emotion. But the moment of revelation and of fervour passes, the company breaks up, and very soon those who have won no vision of holiness, who have only feared as they entered into the cloud, are in the common world again. The finer strings of the soul were made to thrill, the conscience was touched; but if the will has not been braced, if the mans reason and resoluteness are not engaged by a new conception of life, the earthly will resume control and God will be less known than before. So there are many cast down today, crying to God in trouble of soul for evil done or evil which they are tempted to do, who tomorrow among the Canaanites will see things in another light. A man cannot be a recluse. He must mingle in business and in society with those who deride the thoughts that have moved him and laugh at his seriousness. The impulse to something better soon exhausts itself in this cold atmosphere. He turns upon his own emotion with contempt. The words that came with Divine urgency, the man whose face was like that of an angel of God, are already subjects of uneasy jesting, will soon be thrust from memory. Over the interlude of superficial anxiety the mind goes back to its old haunts, its old plans and cravings. The religious teacher, while he is often in no way responsible for this sad recoil, should yet be ever on his guard against the risk of weakening the moral fibre, of leaving men as Christ never left them, flaccid and infirm.
Again, there are cases that belong not to the history of a day, but to the history of a life. One may say, when he hears the strangely tempting voices that whisper in the twilight streets, “Am I a dog that from the holy traditions of my people and country I should fall away to these?” At first he flies the distasteful entreaty of the new nature cult, its fleshly art and song, its nefarious science. But the voices are persistent. It is the perfecting of man and woman to which they invite. It is not vice, but freedom, brightness, life and the courage to enjoy it they cunningly propose. There is not much of sweetness; the voices rise, they become stringent and overbearing. If the man would not be a fool, would not lose the good of the age into which he is born, he will be done with unnatural restraints, the bondage of purity. Thus entreaty passes into mastery. Here is truth; there also seems to be fact. Little by little the subtle argument is so advanced that the degradation once feared is no longer to be seen. It is progress now; it is full development, the assertion of power and privilege, that the soul anticipates. How fatal is the lure, how treacherous the vision, the man discovers when he has parted with that which even through deepest penitence he may never regain. People are denying, and it has to be reasserted, that there is a covenant which the soul of man has to keep with God. The thought is “archaic,” and they would banish it. But it stands the great reality for man; and to keep that covenant in the grace of the Divine Spirit, in the love of the holiest, in the sacred manliness learned of Christ, is the only way to the broad daylight and the free summits of life. How can nature be a saviour? The suggestion is childish. Nature, as we all know, allows the hypocrite, the swindler, the traitor, as well as the brave, honest man, the pure, sweet woman. Is it said that man has a covenant with nature? On the temporal and prudential side of his activities that is true. He has relations with nature which must be apprehended, must be wisely realised. But the spiritual kingdom to which he belongs requires a wider outlook, loftier aims and hopes. The efforts demanded by nature have to be brought into harmony with those diviner aspirations. Man is bound to be prudent, brave, wise for eternity. He is warned of his own sin and urged to fly from it. This is the covenant with God which is wrought into the very constitution of his moral being.
It would be a mistake to suppose that the scene at Bochim and the words which moved the assembly to tears had no lasting effect whatever. The history deals with outstanding facts of the national development. We hear chiefly of heroes and their deeds, but we shall not doubt that there were minds which kept the glow of truth and the consecration of penitential tears. The best lives of the people moved quietly on, apart from the commotions and strifes of the time. Rarely are the great political names even of a religious community those of holy and devout men, and, undoubtedly, this was true of Israel in the time of the judges. If we were to reckon only by those who appear conspicuously in these pages, we should have to wonder how the spiritual strain of thought and feeling survived. But it did survive; it gained in clearness and force. There were those in every tribe who kept alive the sacred traditions of Sinai and the desert, and Levites throughout the land did much to maintain among the people the worship of God. The great names of Abraham and Moses, the story of their faith and deeds, were the text of many an impressive lesson. So the light of piety did not go out; Jehovah was ever the Friend of Israel, even in its darkest day, for in the heart of the nation there never ceased to be a faithful remnant maintaining the fear and obedience of the Holy Name.
Fuente: B.H. Carroll’s An Interpretation of the English Bible
Fuente: John Trapp’s Complete Commentary (Old and New Testaments)
Fuente: Expositions Of Holy Scripture by Alexander MacLaren
Fuente: Companion Bible Notes, Appendices and Graphics
Fuente: Through the Bible Commentary
Fuente: An Exposition on the Whole Bible
Fuente: F.B. Meyer’s Through the Bible Commentary
Fuente: Gaebelein’s Annotated Bible (Commentary)
Fuente: Scofield Reference Bible Notes
Fuente: The Treasury of Scripture Knowledge
Fuente: Gary Hampton Commentary on Selected Books
Fuente: Joseph Bensons Commentary on the Old and New Testaments
Fuente: Sutcliffe’s Commentary on the Old and New Testaments
Fuente: Peake’s Commentary on the Bible
Fuente: Grant’s Commentary on the Bible
Fuente: Geneva Bible Notes
Fuente: Expository Notes of Dr. Constable (Old and New Testaments)
Fuente: Expositors Bible Commentary