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After the death of Joshua, the children of Israel asked of Yahweh, saying, “Who should go up for us first against the Canaanites, to fight against them?”
Yahweh said, “Judah shall go up. Behold, I have delivered the land into his hand.”
Judah said to Simeon his brother, “Come up with me into my lot, that we may fight against the Canaanites; and I likewise will go with you into your lot.” So Simeon went with him.
Judges 1:1-3 sits inside this longer paragraph.
After the death of Joshua, the children of Israel asked of Yahweh, saying, “Who should go up for us first against the Canaanites, to fight against them?”
Yahweh said, “Judah shall go up. Behold, I have delivered the land into his hand.”
Judah said to Simeon his brother, “Come up with me into my lot, that we may fight against the Canaanites; and I likewise will go with you into your lot.” So Simeon went with him. Judah went up, and Yahweh delivered the Canaanites and the Perizzites into their hand. They struck ten thousand men in Bezek. They found Adoni-Bezek in Bezek, and they fought against him. They struck the Canaanites and the Perizzites. But Adoni-Bezek fled. They pursued him, caught him, and cut off his thumbs and his big toes. Adoni-Bezek said, “Seventy kings, having their thumbs and their big toes cut off, scavenged under my table. As I have done, so God has done to me.” They brought him to Jerusalem, and he died there. The children of Judah fought against Jerusalem, took it, struck it with the edge of the sword, and set the city on fire.
After the death of Joshua, the children of Israel asked of Yahweh, saying, “Who should go up for us first against the Canaanites, to fight against them?”
Yahweh said, “Judah shall go up. Behold, I have delivered the land into his hand.”
Judah said to Simeon his brother, “Come up with me into my lot, that we may fight against the Canaanites; and I likewise will go with you into your lot.” So Simeon went with him.
Now after the death of Joshua it came to pass, that the children of Israel asked the LORD, saying, Who shall go up for us against the Canaanites first, to fight against them?
And the LORD said, Judah shall go up: behold, I have delivered the land into his hand.
And Judah said unto Simeon his brother, Come up with me into my lot, that we may fight against the Canaanites; and I likewise will go with thee into thy lot. So Simeon went with him.
AND IT came to pass after the death of Joshua, that the children of Israel asked the LORD, saying: 'Who shall go up for us first against the Canaanites, to fight against them?'
And LORD said: 'Judah shall go up; behold, I have delivered the land into his hand.'
And Judah said unto Simeon his brother: 'Come up with me into my lot, that we may fight against the Canaanites; and I likewise will go with thee into thy lot.' So Simeon went with him.
Questions where the Bible appears to say two different things, with the passages on each side set together.
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Geneva Bible translators 1599 · Public Domain On vv1, 3 Who shall be our captain?
Who shall be our captain?
By the judgment of Urim, read Exod. 28:30; Num. 27:21; 1 Sam. 28:6.
Geneva Bible (1599) marginal notes — public domain.
John Trapp 1656 · Public Domain On vv1–3 Jdg 1:1 Now after the death of Joshua it…
Jdg 1:1 Now after the death of Joshua it came to pass, that the children of Israel asked the LORD, saying, Who shall go up for us against the Canaanites first, to fight against them?
The Book of Judges,] Who were God’s lieutenants, extraordinarily raised up, as occasion required: for himseff still held the iura regalia, the royal rights and royalties, till Saul’s reign: whence Josephus calleth the government of this people a theocracy, or God government. Whether Samuel wrote this book, as the Hebrews say he did, or some other holy prophet or prophets, it mattereth not. Regis epistolis acceptis, saith Gregory, when a king sendeth his letters to his subjects, it is ridiculous for them to inquire with what pen he wrote them. God is the author of this book; and the argument of it we have in the second chapter, as also in Psa 106:1-48. And whereas Vopiscus {a} saith, Neminem historicorum non aliquid esse mentitum; that all heathen historians have taken some liberty to lie; of this, and the rest of the sacred writings, we may safely say, as Rev 22:6, "These sayings are faithful and true"; they are also "profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness." {2Ti 3:16}
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{a} In Vita Aureliani
Ver. 1. Now after the death of Joshua.] The enemies haply might hope to hold their own, now that the lion was dead; as the loss of a valiant general is sometimes the ruin of a whole state; witness the Thebans, known by their calamities only, after the death of their renowned Epaminondas. But Israel, whilst they kept close to their covenant, might truly triumph and say, as in Isa 33:22, "The Lord is our judge, the Lord is our lawgiver, the Lord is our king; he will save us."
The children of Israel asked the Lord.] They had miscarried at Ai by not consulting first with God: so did afterwards David when he carted the ark, and Josiah when he went against Pharaoh Necho, king of Egypt. The heathens usually consulted their oracles before they waged war: and they called a sacrifice Hostia, because when they went against their enemies they offered it.
1 Jude, the servant of Jesus Christ, and brother of James, to them that are sanctified by God the Father, and preserved in Jesus Christ, and called:
Ver. 1. Jude the servant] To distinguish him from Judas the traitor, lest he should suffer by mistake, as Nicholas the deacon is thought to do, as if he were the author of the sect of the Nicolaitans, which Christ hated. This Jude or Judas, was also surnamed Lebbaeus, that is, hearty; as Hooper the martyr was called hearty Hooper. He was indeed a hearty friend to the truth, earnestly contending for the faith once delivered unto the saints; and ( haereticorum malleus) a hammer against heretics, whom he describeth here to the life, and opposeth them to his utmost.
To them that are sanctified] Or to them that are beloved, as other copies have it.
Preserved] "Kept by the power of God through faith unto salvation," 1Pe 1:5.
John Trapp, A Commentary or Exposition upon All the Books of the Old and New Testament (1647–1656) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Matthew Poole 1685 · Public Domain On vv1–3 After the death of Joshua; not long after it,…
After the death of Joshua; not long after it, because Othniel, the first judge, lived in Joshua's time.
The children of Israel asked the Lord; being assembled together at Shiloh, they inquired of the high priest by the Urim and Thummim. See Num 27:21; Jdg 20:18; 1Sa 23:9.
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Who shall go up for us against the Canaanites first? Being sensible that the Canaanites are troublesome to them, and expected great advantage against them by their heedless condition, and finding their people to increase and multiply exceedingly, and consequently the necessity of enlarging their quarters, they renew the war. They do not inquire who shall be the captain-general to all the tribes; but (as appears by the answer) what tribe shall first undertake the expedition, that by their success the other tribes may be encouraged to make the like attempt upon the Canaanites in their several lots.
Matthew Poole's English Annotations on the Holy Bible (1683–1685) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
Matthew Henry 1710 · Public Domain On v1 Here, I. The children of Israel consult the oracle…
Here, I. The children of Israel consult the oracle of God for direction which of all the tribes should first attempt to clear their country of the Canaanites, and to animate and encourage the rest. It was after the death of Joshua. While he lived he directed them, and all the tribes were obedient to him, but when he died he left no successor in the same authority that he had; but the people must consult the breast-plate of judgment, and thence receive the word of command; for God himself, as he was their King, so he was the Lord of their hosts. The question they ask is, Who shall go up first? Jdg 1:1. By this time, we may suppose, they were so multiplied that the places they were in possession of began to be too strait for them, and they must thrust out the enemy to make room; now they enquire who should first take up arms. Whether each tribe was ambitious of being first, and so strove for the honour of it, or whether each was afraid of being first, and so strove to decline it, does not appear; but by common consent the matter was referred to God himself, who is the fittest both to dispose of honours and to cut out work.
II. God appointed that Judah should go up first, and promised him success (Jdg 1:2): "I have delivered the land into his hand, to be possessed, and therefore will deliver the enemy into his hand, that keeps him out of possession, to be destroyed." And why must Judah be first in this undertaking? 1. Judah was the most numerous and powerful tribe, and therefore let Judah venture first. Note, God appoints service according to the strength he has given. Those that are most able, from them most work is expected. 2. Judah was first in dignity, and therefore must be first in duty. He it is whom his brethren must praise, and therefore he it is who must lead in perilous services. Let the burden of honour and the burden of work go together. 3. Judah was first served; the lot came up for Judah first, and therefore Judah must first fight. 4. Judah was the tribe out of which our Lord was to spring: so that in Judah, Christ, the Lion of the tribe of Judah, went before them. Christ engaged the powers of darkness first, and foiled them, which animates us for our conflicts; and it is in him that we are more than conquerors. Observe, The service and the success are put together: "Judah shall go up; let him do his part, and then he shall find that I have delivered the land into his hand." His service will not avail unless God give the success; but God will not give the success unless he vigorously apply himself to the service.
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III. Judah hereupon prepares to go up, but courts his brother and neighbour the tribe of Simeon (the lot of which tribe fell within that of Judah and was assigned out of it) to join forces with him, Jdg 1:3. Observe here, 1. That the strongest should not despise but desire the assistance even of those that are weaker. Judah was the most considerable of all the tribes, and Simeon the least considerable, and yet Judah begs Simeon's friendship, and prays an aid from him; the head cannot say to the foot, I have no need of thee, for we are members one of another. 2. Those that crave assistance must be ready to give assistance: Come with me into my lot, and then I will go with thee into thine. It becomes Israelites to help one another against Canaanites; and all Christians, even those of different tribes, should strengthen one another's hands against the common interests of Satan's kingdom. Those who thus help one another in love have reason to hope that God will graciously help them both.
IV. The confederate forces of Judah and Simeon take the field: Judah went up (Jdg 1:4), and Simeon with him, Jdg 1:3. Caleb, it is probable, was commander-in-chief of this expedition; for who so fit as he who had both an old man's head and a young man's hand, the experience of age and the vigour of youth? Jos 14:10, Jos 14:11. It should seem too, by what follows (Jdg 1:10, Jdg 1:11), that he was not yet in possession of his own allotment. It was happy for them that they had such a general as, according to his name, was all heart. Some think that the Canaanites had got together into a body, a formidable body, when Israel consulted who should go and fight against them, and that they then began to stir when they heard of the death of Joshua, whose name had been so dreadful to them; but, if so, it proved they did but meddle to their own hurt.
V. God gave them great success. Whether they invaded the enemy, or the enemy first gave them the alarm, the Lord delivered them into their hand, Jdg 1:4. Though the army of Judah was strong and bold, yet the victory is attributed to God: he delivered the Canaanites into their hand; having given them authority, he here gives them ability to destroy them - put it in their power, and so tried their obedience to his command, which was utterly to cut them off. Bishop Patrick observes upon this that we meet not with such religious expressions in the heathen writers, concerning the success of their arms, as we have here and elsewhere in this sacred history. I wish such pious acknowledgments of the divine providence had not grown into disuse at this time with many that are called Christians. Now, 1. We are told how the army of the Canaanites was routed in the field, in or near Bezek, the place where they drew up, which afterwards Saul made the place of a general rendezvous (Sa1 11:8); they slew 10,000 men, which blow, if followed, could not but be a very great weakening to those that were already brought so very low. 2. How their king was taken and mortified. His name was Adoni-bezek, which signifies, lord of Bezek. There have been those that called their lands by their own names (Psa 49:11), but here was one (and there has been many another) that called himself by his land's name. He was taken prisoner after the battle, and we are here told how they used him; they cut off his thumbs, to disfit him for fighting, and his great toes, that he might not be able to run away, Jdg 1:6. It had been barbarous thus to triumph over a man in misery, and that lay at their mercy, but that he was a devoted Canaanite, and one that had in like manner abused others, which probably they had heard of. Josephus says, "They cut off his hands and his feet," probably supposing those more likely to be mortal wounds than only the cutting off of his thumbs and his great toes. But this indignity which they did him extorted from him an acknowledgment of the righteousness of God, Jdg 1:7. Here observe, (1.) What a great man this Adoni-bezek had been, how great in the field, where armies fled before him, how great at home, where kings were set with the dogs of his flock; and yet now himself a prisoner, and reduced to the extremity of meanness and disgrace. See how changeable this world is, and how slippery its high places are. Let not the highest be proud, nor the strongest secure, for they know not how low they may be brought before they die. (2.) What desolations he had made among his neighbours: he had wholly subdued seventy kings, to such a degree as to have them his prisoners; he that was the chief person in a city was then called a king, and the greatness of their title did but aggravate their disgrace, and fired the pride of him that insulted over them. We cannot suppose that Adoni-bezek had seventy of these petty princes at once his slaves; but first and last, in the course of his reign, he had thus deposed and abused so many, who perhaps were many of them kings of the same cities that successively opposed him, and whom he thus treated to please his own imperious barbarous fancy, and for a terror to others. It seems the Canaanites had been wasted by civil wars, and those bloody ones, among themselves, which would very much facilitate the conquest of them by Israel. "Judah," says Dr. Lightfoot, "in conquering Adoni-bezek, did, in effect, conquer seventy kings." (3.) How justly he was teated as he had treated others. Thus the righteous God sometimes, in his providence, makes the punishment to answer the sin, and observes an equality in his judgments; the spoiler shall be spoiled, and the treacherous dealer dealt treacherously with, Isa 33:1. And those that showed no mercy shall have no mercy shown them, Jam 2:13. See Rev 13:10; Rev 18:6. (4.) How honestly he owned the righteousness of God herein: As I have done, so God has requited me. See the power of conscience, when God by his judgments awakens it, how it brings sin to remembrance, and subscribes to the justice of God. He that in his pride had set God at defiance now yields to him, and reflects with as much regret upon the kings under his table as ever he had looked upon them with pleasure when he had them there. He seems to own that he was better dealt with than he had dealt with his prisoners; for though the Israelites maimed him (according to the law of retaliation, an eye for an eye, so a thumb for a thumb), yet they did not put him under the table to be fed with the crumbs there, because, though the other might well be looked upon as an act of justice, this would have savoured more of pride and haughtiness than did become an Israelite.
VI. Particular notice is taken of the conquest of Jerusalem, Jdg 1:8. Our translators judge it spoken of here as done formerly in Joshua's time, and only repeated on occasion of Adoni-bezek's dying there, and therefore read it, "they had fought against Jerusalem," and put this verse in a parenthesis; but the original speaks of it as a thing now done, and this seems most probable because it is said to be done by the children of Judah in particular, not by all Israel in general, whom Joshua commanded. Joshua indeed conquered and slew Adoni-zedec, king of Jerusalem (Jos. 10), but we read not there of his taking the city; probably, while he was pursing his conquests elsewhere, this Adoni-bezek, a neighbouring prince, got possession of it, whom Israel having conquered in the field, the city fell into their hands, and they slew the inhabitants, except those who retreated into the castle and held out there till David's time, and they set the city on fire, in token of their detestation of the idolatry wherewith it had been deeply infected, yet probably not so utterly as to consume it, but to leave convenient habitations for as many as they had to put into the possession of it.
Matthew Henry's Commentary on the Whole Bible (1708–1710) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.
John Gill 1763 · Public Domain On vv1–3 Now after the death of Joshua,.... With the account…
Now after the death of Joshua,.... With the account of which the preceding book is concluded, and therefore this very properly follows after that; though Epiphanius (b) places the book of Job between them:
it came to pass that the children of Israel asked the Lord; that is, the heads of them who gathered together at Shiloh, where the tabernacle was; and standing before the high priest, either Eleazar, or rather Phinehas his son, Eleazar being in all probability dead, inquired by Urim and Thummim:
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saying, who shall go up for us against the Canaanites first, to fight against them? for they had no commander in chief, Joshua leaving no successor, though the Samaritan Chronicle (c) pretends he did; one Abel, a son of Caleb's brother, of the tribe of Judah, on whom the lot fell, out of twelve of the nine tribes and a half, to whom Joshua delivered the government of the nation, and crowned him: but this inquiry was not for any man to go before them all as their generalissimo, but to know what tribe should first go up, and they were desirous of having the mind of God in it, when they might expect to succeed; which to do, at their first setting out, would not only be a great encouragement to them to go on, but strike dread and terror into their enemies; and this is to be understood of the Canaanites who remained unsubdued, that dwelt among them, and in cities, which though divided to them by lot, they were not in the possession of; and these being troublesome neighbours to them, and besides the Israelites daily increasing, needed more room and more cities to occupy, and more land to cultivate.
(b) De Mensur. & Ponder. c. 13. (c) Apud Hottinger. Smegma, p. 522.
John Gill's Exposition of the Whole Bible (1746–1763) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.
John Wesley 1765 · Public Domain On vv1–3 The conquests made by Judah and Simeon, ver. 1-20.…
The conquests made by Judah and Simeon, ver. 1-20. Benjamin failed, ver. 21. The house of Joseph took Bethel, ver. 22-26. But Manasseh did not drive out the Canaanites, ver. 27, 28. Nor Ephraim, ver. 29. Nor Zebulun, ver. 30. Nor Asher, ver. 31, 32. Nor Naphtali, ver. 33. Nor Daniel, ver. 34-36.
After the death - Not long after it; for Othniel, the first judge, lived in Joshua's time. Asked the Lord - Being assembled together at Shiloh, they inquired of the high-priest by the Urim and the Thummim. Against the Canaanites first - Finding their people multiply exceedingly, and consequently the necessity of enlarging their quarters, they renew the war. They do not inquire who shall be captain general to all the tribes; but what tribe shall first undertake the expedition, that by their success the other tribes may be encouraged to make the like attempt upon the Canaanites in their several lots.
John Wesley, Explanatory Notes Upon the Whole Bible (1754–1765) — public domain. Text via the GEBible commentary corpus.
Adam Clarke 1810 · Public Domain On vv1–3 -Year before the common year of Christ, 1443.
THE BOOK OF JUDGES
-Year before the common year of Christ, 1443.
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-Julian Period, 3271.
-Year from the Flood, 904.
-Year before the first Olympiad, 667.
-Creation from Tisri, or September, 2561.
CHAPTER I
After the death of Joshua the Israelites purpose to attack the
remaining Canaanites; and the tribe of Judah is directed to go
up first, 1, 2.
Judah and Simeon unite, attack the Canaanites and Perrizites,
kill ten thousand of them, take Adoni-bezek prisoner, cut off
his thumbs and great toes, and bring him to Jerusalem, where
he dies, 3-7.
Jerusalem conquered, 8.
A new war with the Canaanites under the direction of Caleb,
9-11.
Kirjath-sepher taken by Othniel, on which he receives, as a
reward, Achsah, the daughter of Caleb and with her a south
land with springs of water, 12-15.
The Kenites dwell among the people, 16.
Judah and Simeon destroy the Canaanites in Zephath, Gaza, c.,
17-19.
Hebron is given to Caleb, 20.
Of the Benjamites, house of Joseph, tribe of Manasseh, &c.,
21-27.
The Israelites put the Canaanites to tribute, 28.
Of the tribes of Ephraim, Zebulun, Asher, and Naphtali, 29-33.
The Amorites force the children of Dan into the mountains,
34-36.
NOTES ON CHAP. I
Verse 1. Now after the death of Joshua] How long after the death of Joshua this happened we cannot tell it is probable that it was not long. The enemies of the Israelites, finding their champion dead, would naturally avail themselves of their unsettled state, and make incursions on the country.
Who shall go up] Joshua had left no successor, and every thing relative to the movements of this people must be determined either by caprice, or an especial direction of the Lord.
Adam Clarke's Commentary on the Bible (1810–1826) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
Joseph Benson 1811 · Public Domain On vv1–3 Jdg 1:1. After the death of Joshua — Not…
Jdg 1:1. After the death of Joshua — Not long after it; for Othniel, the first judge, lived in Joshua’s time. Asked the Lord — Being assembled together at Shiloh, they inquired of the high-priest by the Urim and the Thummim. Against the Canaanites first — Finding their people multiply exceedingly, and consequently the necessity of enlarging their quarters, they renew the war. They do not inquire who shall be captain-general to all the tribes; but what tribe shall first undertake the expedition, that, by their success, the other tribes might be encouraged to make the like attempts upon the Canaanites in their several lots.
Joseph Benson's Commentary on the Old and New Testaments (1811–1818) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Albert Barnes 1834 · Public Domain On vv1–2 After the death of Joshua - But from Jdg…
After the death of Joshua - But from Jdg 1:1 to Jdg 2:9 is a consecutive narrative, ending with the death of Joshua. Hence, the events in this chapter and in Jdg 2:1-6 are to be taken as belonging to the lifetime of Joshua. See Jdg 2:11 note.
Asked the Lord - The phrase is only found in Judges and Samuel. It was the privilege of the civil ruler, to apply to the high priest to consult for him the Urim and Thummim (marginal reference). (Compare Jos 14:1; Jos 18:1, Jos 18:10; Jos 19:51). Here it was not Phinehas, as Josephus concludes from placing these events after the death of Joshua, but Eleazar, through whom the children of Israel inquired “who” (or, rather), “which tribe of us shall go up!”
Albert Barnes' Notes on the Bible (1834–1885) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
Haydock's Catholic Bible Commentary 1859 · Public Domain On vv1–3 After. Hebrew, "And after," as if this consultation had…
After. Hebrew, "And after," as if this consultation had taken place immediately after the decease of their late victorious general, who had not pointed out his successor. But it is probable that the ancients who governed in their respective tribes, (Calmet) were only roused to this act of vigour some time after, on seeing the preparations of the Chanaanites, particularly of Adonibezec, whose power became very alarming. (Haydock) --- Indeed it is wonderful how he had escaped the vigilance of Josue, if he had been king during the lifetime (Calmet) of that enterprising leader. It is therefore more likely that he took advantage of the lethargy of the Israelites after his death, and rose to a degree of eminence, which made the people of God consult the high priest, how they were to resist his efforts, (Haydock) who was to be their generalissimo, (Calmet) or which of the tribes was to make head against him. (Menochius) --- God only gave answer to the last question, and it does not appear that all Israel was engaged in this war. After the defeat of the king, the different tribes might easily have subdued the enemies who held possession of part of their territory, if they had been vigorous.
George Leo Haydock (1774–1849), Haydock's Catholic Family Bible and Commentary, 1859 edition — public domain. Excludes Psalms (Douay-Rheims chapter numbering differs from Protestant) and Deuterocanonical books (Catholic canon only).
Lange's Commentary on the Holy Scriptures 1864 · Public Domain On vv1, 3 Part First
Part First
Introductory Delineation of the Condition of Israel after the Death of Joshua; Sin, and the Judgments entailed by it, rendering the Judgeship necessary.
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FIRST SECTION
The Relations Of Israel Towards The Remaining Canaanites As Forming The Background Of The Ensuing History. Believing And Obedient Israel Enjoys Divine Direction And Favor, Is United Within And Victorious Without; But Faithlessness And Disobedience Lay The Foundations Of Apostasy And Servitude.
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“Who shall first go up against the Canaanite?”
Jdg_1:1-2
1Now [And] after the death of Joshua it came to pass, that the children [sons] of Israel asked the Lord [Jehovah],1 saying, Who shall go up for us2 against3 the Canaanites first to fight against them? 2And the Lord [Jehovah] said, Judah shall go up: behold,4 I have delivered the land into his hand.
TEXTUAL AND GRAMMATICAL
[Jdg_1:1.—The author renders: “the sons of Israel asked God;” and by way of explanation adds the following note: “Thus do we intend constantly to render יְהוָֹה, on the ground that it expresses the absolute idea of the true God in Israel. Since אֱלֹהִים is also used in connection with heathen worship, it corresponds to our ‘Godhead, Deity’ or ‘the Gods.’ ” In this translation the word Jehovah will be inserted.—Tr.]
[Jdg_1:1.—מִי־יַעֲלֶה־לָּנוּ. Dr. Cassel takes לָנוּ in a partitive sense, and translates, “who of us shall go up.” It is more properly regarded as dat. commodi; for, (1.) The partitive relation, though sometimes indicated by לְ (apparently, however, only after numerals, cf. Ges. Lex. s. v. לְ, 4 b), would be more properly expressed by בְּ or מִן; and (2.) If the writer had intended to connect לָנוּ with מִי, he would not have placed the verb between them, cf. Isa_48:14; Jdg_21:8. As it stands, the expression is a perfect grammatical parallel with Isa_6:8 : מִי־יֵלֶךְ־לָנוּ Moreover, לָנוּ, in the sense of בָּנוּ or מִמֶּנּוּ, adds nothing which is not already implied in the words, מִי יַעֲלֶה בַּתְּחִלָּה, “who shall first go up.” On the other hand, taken in its natural sense, as indirect object after the verb, it expresses the thought that whoever “goes first,” makes a beginning, will do it for the advantage of all. What that advantage was, may be seen from our author’s exposition of the inquiry.—Tr.]
[Jdg_1:1.—אֶל, properly, towards. Dr. Cassel has gegen, which means both “towards” and “against.” The same preposition occurs in Jdg_1:10-11; and though translated “against,” is not to be taken in the sense of עַל. The hostile intent in these passages is not expressed by אֶל, but appears from the context. In this verse, attention to the proper meaning of אֶל, does away with the appearance of tautology which in English the inquiry presents.—Tr.]
[Jdg_1:2.—Dr. Cassel: “Wohlan! Up then!” On this rendering of הִנֵּה, cf. the foot-note on p. 26.—Tr.]
EXEGETICAL AND DOCTRINAL
Jdg_1:1. And after the death of Joshua it came to pass. This commencement corresponds entirely with that of Joshua, Jdg_1:1׃ “and after the death of Moses, the servant of Jehovah, it came to pass.” On account of this correspondence the usual addition, “the son of Nun,” but also the designation “servant of Jehovah,” elsewhere applied to Joshua (Jos_24:29; Jdg_2:8), is omitted. A similar correspondence exists between Jos_24:29, and Deu_34:5. Wherever Joshua is compared with Moses, care is taken to indicate at the same time the important difference between them. Joshua also is a “servant of Jehovah,” but not in the same high sense as his master. Joshua also died, but not like Moses “through the mouth of Jehovah” (עַל־פִּי יְהוָֹה). Moses was clothed with the authority of origination and establishment. He had been the Father (cf. Num_11:12), the Priest (Exo_24:8), the sole Regent (Num_16:13), and Judge (Exo_18:16), of his tribes. He transferred the priesthood from himself to Aaron (Exo_28:1); he selected those who assisted him in deciding minor lawsuits (Exo_18:21; Num_11:17). He took seventy men of the “elders of the people,” to bear with him the burden of governing the tribes (Num_11:16); he imparted of his own honor to Joshua, that the congregation of Israel might obey him (Num_27:20.) With the death of Moses the work of legislation is closed.
After him, Joshua exercises the authority of government and direction. By his deeds he gains for himself respect among the people, like that which Moses had (Jos_1:5; Jos_1:17; Jos_4:14; Jos_17:4; Jos_18:3); similar wonders arc wrought through him: but he executes only inherited commands; his task demands the energy of obedience. Moses had always been named before Aaron (Moses and Aaron);5 but when Joshua and the Priest were named together, Eleazar stood first. (Thus, Num_34:17; Jos_14:1; Jos_17:4; Jos_19:51; Jos_21:1). When Moses lived, the priesthood received their commands through him; after his death, Joshua received support and aid through the Priest (Num_27:21). In accordance with this, we must understand what is said, Jos_1:1, namely, that “the Lord spake unto Joshua.” For henceforth “there arose not a prophet like unto Moses.” That which Moses was, could not repeat itself in any other person. Joshua, therefore, was only the reflection of a part of the power of Moses; but as such he had conducted the first historical act of fulfillment demanded by the Mosaic law. The conquest of Canaan was the necessary presupposition of the Mosaic system. Israel, having been liberated, received a national homestead. When Joshua died, the division of the land among the tribes was completed. With the death of Moses the spirit revealed in the law enters upon its course through the history of the world. With the departure of Joshua, the national development of Israel in Canaan commences. The position of Moses was unique, and like that of a father, could not be refilled. When he dies, the heir assumes the house and its management. This heir was not Joshua, but the people itself. Joshua was only a temporary continuator of the Mosaic authority, specially charged with the seizure of the land. He was but the executive arm of Moses for the conquest (מְשָׁרֵת, “minister,” Jos_1:1). His personality is inseparable from that of Moses. As Elijah’s spirit does not wholly depart from the nation until Elisha’s death, so the personal conduct and guidance of the people by Moses do not entirely cease until the death of Joshua. Joshua’s activity is just as unique as that of his teacher. He is no lawgiver, but neither is he a king or judge, as were others who came after him. He is the servant of Jehovah, inasmuch as he is the minister of Moses. The correspondence between Jdg_1:1 and Jos_1:1, is therefore a very profound one. The death of the men, which these verses respectively record, gave rise to the occurrences that follow.
The sons of Israel asked Jehovah. Literally: “And it came to pass ….and the sons of Israel asked,” etc. The first “and” (ו) introduces the cause,6 the second the consequence. It is moreover intimated that the consequence is speedy in coming, follows its cause without any interval. The translation might have been: “And it came to pass … that the sons of Israel immediately asked;” or, “Scarcely had Joshua died, when the sons of Israel,” etc. It lies in the nature of the Hebrew copula, that when it introduces a consequence, it also marks it as closely connected with its antecedent in point of time. The Greeks and Romans made similar use of καὶ and et. Cf. the line of Virgil (Æneid, iii. 9): Vix prima inceperat œstas, et pater Anchises dare fatis vela jubebat. The Hebrew idiom has also passed over into the Greek of the New Testament, cf. Luk_2:21; καὶ ὅτε ἐπλήςθησαν ἡμέραι ὀκτὼ .… καὶ ἐκλήθη, etc.: “and the child was eight days old, when forthwith it was named Jesus,” where the Gothic version likewise retains the double yah, “and.” This brings out the more definite sense, both in the parallel passage, Jos_1:1, and here. Scarcely had Moses died, if the idea there, when God spake to Joshua. The government of Israel was not for a moment to be interrupted. Scarcely was Joshua dead, when the sons of Israel asked Jehovah. As Joshua succeeded Moses in the chief direction of affairs, so the congregation of the children of Israel succeeded Joshua. The representatives of this congregation, as appears from Jos_24:31 and Jdg_2:7, an the Elders (זְקֵנִים). Jewish tradition, accordingly, makes the spiritual doctrine pass from Moses to Joshua, and from Joshua to the Elders. These Elders are the seventy men chosen by Moses (Num_11:16) to assist him in bearing the burden of the people. The term “Elder,” it is true, is applied to every authority among the people, especially civil. “Elders,” as representatives of the people, are witnesses of the wonders of God in the desert (Exo_17:5). The “Elders” are Judges 7 (Deu_22:16); the civil authorities of each city are “Elders” (Deu_25:7). “Seventy of the Elders,” with Moses and the priests, behold the glory of God (Exo_24:1, seq.). The שֹׁטְרִים, shoterim, officers charged with executive and police duties, become “Elders” as soon as they execute the regulations of Moses among the people (Exo_12:21). The seventy Elders who assisted Moses in bearing the burden that pressed upon him must, therefore, be distinguished from the authorities of the several tribes and cities. They represent the whole nation. As such, they unite with Moses, at the close of his career, in commanding the people to keep the law, and after passing the Jordan to erect a memorial of great stones (Deu_27:1-2). During the regency of Joshua, the authorities and representatives of the people, beside the priests and Levites, consist of Elders, heads of tribes, judges, and magistrates (shoterim). Such is the enumeration after the conquest of Ai, and particularly in Jos_23:2, where, in order to give his last instructions to Israel, Joshua calls all the representatives of the people together. Again, in Jos_24:1, it is stated that Joshua “called for the Elders of Israel, and for their heads, judges, and magistrates.” If no distinction were intended here, it had been sufficient to say, “elders and heads;” for judges and magistrates were also “elders.” But he called together the national representatives and those of the several tribes, like two “Houses” or “Chambers.” The tribal representatives and authorities he dismisses; but the “Elders,” who belong to all the tribes in common, remain near him, as they had been near Moses. These, therefore are they who, when Joshua dies, step into his place. As on him, so on them, there had been put of the spirit that was on Moses (Num_11:17). They quickly and zealously undertake the government. They determine to begin at once where Joshua stopped, to make war on the nations who have not yet been conquered, though their lands have been assigned to the several tribes (Jos_23:4). Joshua is scarcely dead, before the Elders inquire of God.8
No father ever cared for his children as Moses, under divine direction, cared for his people. Who, then, when he is gone, shall determine what the people are or are not to undertake? The answer to this question is recorded Num_27:21 : After the death of Moses, Joshua is to stand before Eleazar the priest, inquire of him after the judgment of Urim from Jehovah, and according to his answer they shall go out and come in. That Joshua ever did this, the book which bears his name nowhere records. It is characteristic of his exceptional position, as bound by the word and directions of Moses, that the word of God comes directly to him, although he ranks after Eleazar the priest. But this is not the position of the congregation of Israel; and hence the provision made by Moses for Joshua now formally becomes of force. For the first time since Num_27:21, we find here the word שָׁאַל with בְּ, in the signification “to inquire of Jehovah;” for the שָׁאל בּאוּרִים of that passage and the שָׁאל בּיהוָֹה of this are equivalent expressions. Inquiries put to the Urim and Thummim were answered by none but God. In the sublime organism of the Mosaic law every internal thought, every spiritual truth, presents itself in the form of an external action, a visible symbol. Urim and Thummim (Light and Purity) lie in the breast-plate on the heart of the priest, when he enters into the sanctuary (Exo_28:30). They lie on the heart; but that which is inquired after, receives its solution from the Spirit of God in the heart of the priest. Consequently, although in the locus classicus (Num_27:21), the expression is, “to inquire of the Urim,” here and elsewhere in the Book of Judges it is always, “and they inquired of Jehovah.” The Greeks also used the expression ἑρωτᾶν τὸν θεόν for “inquiring of the oracle,” cf. Xenoph., Mem., viii. 3). The Urim also were an oracle, and a priest announced the word of God. The God of Israel, however, does not speak in riddles (Num_12:8), but in clear and definite responses. Israel asks:—
Who of us9 shall first go up against the Canaanite to fight against him? The word “go up” is not to be taken altogether literally. The Hebrew עָלָה, here and frequently answers in signification to the Greek ἐφορμᾶν, Latin aggredi. It means to advance to the attack, but conceives the defense as made from a higher level. The point and justification of the inquiry lies in the word “first.” The question is not whether aggressive measures shall or shall not be adopted, but which of the tribes shall initiate them. Hitherto, Moses, and after him, Joshua have directed the movements of the people. Under Joshua, moreover, all the tribes united in common warfare. All for one, each for all. The general war is at an end; the land is divided, the tribes have had their territories assigned them. Now each single tribe must engage the enemies still settled within its borders. This was another, very difficult task. It was a test of the strength and moral endurance of the several tribes. The general war of conquest under Joshua did not come into collision with the joy of possession and rest, for these had as yet no existence But after the dispersion of the tribes such a common war, under one leadership, was no longer practicable. It may also have appeared unwise that all the tribes should be engaged in general and simultaneous action within their several territories. Had one tribe been defeated, the others would not have been in a position to assist it. The question there fore concerned the honor and duty of the first attack. As yet no tribe held any definite priority of rank. For the sake of peace and right, it was left with God to determine who should first go up to fight against the inhabitants of the land, to grind them, as the word used expresses it, and thus deprive them of that power for evil which as nations they possessed. The signification “to war” of לָחַם, is illustrated by the meaning “to eat,” which it also has. The terrible work of war is like the action of the teeth on bread, it tears and grinds its object. Hence the Greek μάχαιρα, knife, belongs to μάχομαι, to fight, just as the Hebrew מַאֲכֶלֶת, knife, belongs to אָכל, to eat.
Jdg_1:2. And Jehovah said, Judah shall go up. Judah takes a prominent position among the sons of Jacob, even in the lifetime of their father The misdemeanors of his elder brethren favor this. It is he who saves Joseph from the pit in which the wrath of the others designed him to perish; and who, by suggesting his sale into Egypt, paves the way for the wonderful destinies which that land has in store for Israel. He is capable of confessing his sins (Gen_38:26). He pledges himself to Jacob for the safe return of Benjamin, and him the patriarch trusts. He, also, in the hour of peril, speaks the decisive word to the yet unrecognized Joseph (Gen_44:18); and, although he bows himself before Joseph, the blessing of Jacob nevertheless says of him (Gen_49:8 ff.): “Thy brethren praise thee; the sceptre shall not depart from Judah.” The tribe of Judah holds the same prominent position. It is the most numerous tribe. At the first census (Numbers 2), its military strength is greater than that of both the tribes of Joseph. In the desert, it leads the first of the four encampments,—that, namely, which faces the east (Num_2:3).10 It began the decampment and advance (Num_10:14). Among those appointed by Moses to allot the land, the representative of Judah is named first (Num_34:19); and hence when the allotment was actually made under Joshua, the lot of Judah came out first (Jos_15:1).
But the tribe of Judah had yet other merits, by reason of which it took the initiative on the present occasion. When Moses sent twelve men to reconnoitre the land, one man from each tribe, the messengers of Judah and Ephraim alone, full of faith and courage, sought to awaken within the people a spirit pleasing to God. The messenger of Ephraim was Joshua, the son of Nun, the minister of Moses; the representative of Judah was Caleb. Both obtained great credit for their conduct. Joshua became the successor of Moses. When Joshua died, Caleb still lived. The great respect which he enjoyed, as head of the tribe of Judah, and on account of the approbation of Moses, may also be inferred from Jos_14:6.11
Up then! I have delivered the land into his hand. “Up then,” the address of encouragement: agite, macte!12 Judah may boldly attack—victory is certain. Caleb stands at the head of the tribe. He has already been assured of victory by Moses (Num_14:24; Jos_14:9). Josephus (Ant. v. 2, 1) calls the priest who officiates Phinehas. He infers this from Jos_24:33, where the death of Eleazar is recorded. According to Jewish tradition, Phinehas also wrote the conclusion of the Book of Joshua.
HOMILETICAL AND PRACTICAL
Jdg_1:1. Israel is believing and obedient after the death of Joshua. Like a child after the death of its father, it has the best intentions. It is zealous to perform, with speed and vigor, the task imposed by Joshua. As directed by the law (Num_27:21), it inquires of God through His priest, the appointed medium for announcing His will. The recollection of benefits received from the departed hero, and the feelings of piety toward him, are still exerting their influence. So does many a child finish the period of instruction preparatory to confirmation, with a heart zealously resolved to be pious. Many a Christian comes away from an awakening sermon with resolutions of repentance. Principium fervet. First love is full of glowing zeal. To begin well is never without a blessing. The best inheritance is to continue obedient toward God.
Starke: God gives more than we seek from him.—Gerlach: Not even the task which had been imposed on each individual tribe, will they take in hand, without having inquired of the Lord concerning it.
Jdg_1:2 God therefore vouchsafes direction and promise. Judah is to go before. When Israel is believing and obedient, Judah always goes before (Gen_49:10): in the desert, at the head of the host; after the time of the Judges, when David sits upon the throne of Israel; and finally, when the Lion of the tribe of Judah conquers the last enemy, which is death.
Starke: If we also desire to war against our spiritual Canaanites, the first attack must be made, and the war must be conducted, by Christ Jesus, the Lion of the tribe of Judah (Rev_5:5).
Lisco: The words, “I have delivered the land,” are meant prophetically; with God that which is certain in the future is as if it were present.
[Bush (combining Scott and Henry): The precedency was given to Judah because it was the most numerous, powerful, and valiant of all the tribes, and that which the Lord designed should possess the preëminence in all respects, as being the one from which the Messiah was to spring, and for that reason crowned with the“excellency of dignity” above all its fellows. Judah therefore must lead in this perilous enterprise; for God not only appoints service according to the strength and ability He has given, but “would also have the burden of honor and the burden of labor go together.” Those who have the precedency in rank, reputation, or influence, should always be disposed to go before others in every good work, undismayed by danger, difficulty, or obloquy, that they may encourage others by their example.
Wordsworth: The death of Joshua is the date of degeneracy. So in spiritual respects, as long as the true Joshua lives in the soul, there is health. St. Paul says, “I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me.” The true Joshua lives in the souls of his saints; but if He dies in the soul, that death is theirs; the death of their souls (Origen).
Bachmann: As the Book of Joshua opens with the mention of Moses’ death, so the Book of Judges with that of Joshua. The servants of the Lord die one after the other; but the history of his kingdom goes on uninterruptedly.—Tr.]
Footnotes:
[1][Jdg_1:1.—The author renders: “the sons of Israel asked God;” and by way of explanation adds the following note: “Thus do we intend constantly to render יְהוָֹה, on the ground that it expresses the absolute idea of the true God in Israel. Since אֱלֹהִים is also used in connection with heathen worship, it corresponds to our ‘Godhead, Deity’ or ‘the Gods.’ ” In this translation the word Jehovah will be inserted.—Tr.]
[2][Jdg_1:1.—מִי־יַעֲלֶה־לָּנוּ. Dr. Cassel takes לָנוּ in a partitive sense, and translates, “who of us shall go up.” It is more properly regarded as dat. commodi; for, (1.) The partitive relation, though sometimes indicated by לְ (apparently, however, only after numerals, cf. Ges. Lex. s. v. לְ, 4 b), would be more properly expressed by בְּ or מִן; and (2.) If the writer had intended to connect לָנוּ with מִי, he would not have placed the verb between them, cf. Isa_48:14; Jdg_21:8. As it stands, the expression is a perfect grammatical parallel with Isa_6:8 : מִי־יֵלֶךְ־לָנוּ Moreover, לָנוּ, in the sense of בָּנוּ or מִמֶּנּוּ, adds nothing which is not already implied in the words, מִי יַעֲלֶה בַּתְּחִלָּה, “who shall first go up.” On the other hand, taken in its natural sense, as indirect object after the verb, it expresses the thought that whoever “goes first,” makes a beginning, will do it for the advantage of all. What that advantage was, may be seen from our author’s exposition of the inquiry.—Tr.]
[3][Jdg_1:1.—אֶל, properly, towards. Dr. Cassel has gegen, which means both “towards” and “against.” The same preposition occurs in Jdg_1:10-11; and though translated “against,” is not to be taken in the sense of עַל. The hostile intent in these passages is not expressed by אֶל, but appears from the context. In this verse, attention to the proper meaning of אֶל, does away with the appearance of tautology which in English the inquiry presents.—Tr.]
[4][Jdg_1:2.—Dr. Cassel: “Wohlan! Up then!” On this rendering of הִנֵּה, cf. the foot-note on p. 26.—Tr.]
[5] If in Exo_6:20; Exo_6:26, the order is “Aaron and Moses,” it is only to indicate Aaron as the first-born; hence, Jdg_1:27 of the same chapter, as if by way of correction, says, “these are that Moses and Aaron.” For the same reason Num_3:1 reads: “These are the generations of Aaron and Moses.” As the order is everywhere Moses and Aaron, so it is naturally also “Moses and Eleazar.” This difference in the relations of Moses and Joshua respectively to the Priest, it is important to notice. For it is of itself sufficient to show the untenableness of Bertheau’s assertion (Buch der Richter, p. 9), that Num_27:21 is to be so taken that Joshua is to ask, not before, but for, instead of, Eleazar, whether he shall go out; that is (as he thinks), “in a manner just as valid as if the high-priest had inquired of Jehovah.” To inquire of God by means of the Urim, the Priest alone could do, for he alone had it. Moses and the prophets received revelations immediately; but when the Urim is mentioned, the Priest is the only possible medium. The passages to which Bertheau refers, speak against his assertion. The LXX. are as plain as the Hebrew text. In 1Sa_22:10, it is the Priest who inquires of God for David. Josephus, Ant. iv. 7, 2, is an irrelevant passage, and therefore cannot be cited at all. Moreover, Josephus himself puts Eleazar before Joshua, when he speaks of both (iv. 7, 3). Nor is there any good ground for doubt as to the clearness of the passage in Numbers 27. If we find no mention anywhere of Joshua’s having inquired by Urim, the foundation of this fact is deeply laid in his relations to Moses. He was called only to be the executor of the designs of Moses. His activity expends itself in continuing the work of Moses. It moves entirely within the lines prescribed by Moses, and is impelled by his inviolable authority. Joshua’s deeds are but the historical outgrowth of the spirit of Moses. The Book of Joshua is but the narrative of Joshua’s obedience to the word of Moses. Whatever Joshua ordains, is rendered sacred by an appeal to Moses. Even the division of the land is conducted according to this authority (Joshua 13-15). “Every place have I given you, as I said unto Moses,” is the language used (Jos_1:3). Remember what Moses commanded you, says Joshua to the tribes of Reuben, Gad, and Manasseh (Jos_1:13). The fact is brought out with peculiar emphasis in the following passages: “Be strong and very courageous to do according to all the laws which Moses my servant commanded thee: turn not from it to the right hand or the left” (Jos_1:7). “There was not a word of all that Moses commanded which Joshua read not before all the congregation of Israel” (Jos_8:35). “As the Lord commanded Moses his servant, so did Moses command Joshua, and so did Joshua; he left nothing undone of all that the Lord commanded Moses” (Jos_11:15).
Wherever, therefore, Joshua simply executes the will of God as expressed in the commands of Moses, the necessity for inquiring by Urim does not arise. It is precisely in this execution of the Mosaic commands that God speaks to Joshua, as Jos_4:10 clearly teaches: “until everything was finished that the Lord commanded Joshua to speak, according to all that Moses commanded Joshua.” The direct command of God to Moses operates on Joshua who executes it.
That Joshua is the executor of the commands of Moses, cannot consistently with the spirit of the book which relates his history, be overlooked. When, however, the decision by Urim is alluded to, and it is said, “according to his mouth” (עַל פִּיו), the reference is to the same (priestly) mouth which, Jos_19:50, assigns an inheritance to Joshua, “according to the mouth of Jehovah” (עַל פִּי יְהוָֹה). This method of decision comes into play when Joshua has no instructions from Moses according to which to act. The peculiar position of Joshua, by whom, through the word of Moses, God still always speaks and acts as through Moses (Jos_3:7), and who nevertheless does not like Moses stand before, but after, the priest, becomes everywhere manifest. This position also is unique, and never again recurs. It is therefore at his death, and not till then, that the preponderance of the Priest as the sole possessor of the word of God, becomes fully manifest. The fact, therefore, that we now first hear of an “asking of the Lord,” so far from being obscure, is full of instruction on the historical position of affairs.
[6][Bertheau: “וַיְהִי, in conjunction with the words, ‘after the death of Joshua,’ first connects itself with the closing narrative of the Book of Joshua (Jos_24:29-33), and secondly designates the Book of Judges as a link in the chain of books which relate, in unbroken connection, the [sacred] history of the world, from the creation to the exile of the inhabitants of the southern kingdom. The several books which contain this connected historical account are joined together by the connective ו.”—Tr.]
[7]Cf. Josephus, Ant. iv. 8, 14, who states on the authority of Jewish tradition that there were in every city seven judges, each with two Levitical assistants, corresponding to the seventy-two of the general senate.
[8][Bachmann: “The sons of Israel here are not the whole nation, but only the tribes west of the Jordan, who are spoken of in the same way, and in express contradistinction from the tribes east of the Jordan, in Jos_22:12-13; Jos_22:32. According to Jos_13:23. the further conflict with the Canaanites was incumbent on the western, not on the eastern tribes. Hence, also, the following account treats only of the doings and omissions of the western Israel.”—Tr.]
[9][Cf. on this rendering the note under the text on p. 23.—Tr.]
[10]Cf. Psa_114:2, and the Pesikta and Jalkut on the Book of Judges (Ed. Amsterd.) § 37, p. 2, Judges 8.
[11]The history of Athens contains a similar instance. The council of war before the battle of Marathon was presided over by Callimachus, of the tribe Ajax. A preponderance of voices, exaggerating the danger, already inclined to avoid the Persian army, when Callimachus voted for the course urged by Miltiades, and turned the tide. In consequence of this, the tribe of Ajax was specially honored. Notwithstanding the use of the lot, the last place in the chorus was never assigned to this tribe (Plutarch, Qu. Symp., i. 10; cf. Böckh, Staatshaushalt der Athener, i. 743, note). It is said that Charlemagne, induced by the heroic deeds of Count Gerold, bestowed on the Swabians the right of forming the vanguard in every campaign of the empire.
[12][Occasionally הִנֵּה may be properly rendered by “Up!” or “Now then!” cf. Psa_134:1, where it is followed by an imperative; but in situations like the present such a rendering is unnecessarily free. The word is designed to excite the attention and put it on the alert for what is coming. Of course, the assurance which here follows it, would animate and incite; but the agite! macte! are in the words to which הִנֵּה calls attention, not in הִנֵּה itself. Tr.]
Lange's Commentary on the Holy Scriptures (Critical, Doctrinal, and Homiletical), ed. John Peter Lange, English translation edited by Philip Schaff (1864–1880) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Robert Jamieson, A. R. Fausset & David Brown 1871 · Public Domain On vv2–3 the Lord said, Judah shall go up--The predicted pre-eminence…
the Lord said, Judah shall go up--The predicted pre-eminence (Gen 49:8) was thus conferred upon Judah by divine direction, and its appointment to take the lead in the ensuing hostilities was of great importance, as the measure of success by which its arms were crowned, would animate the other tribes to make similar attempts against the Canaanites within their respective territories.
I have delivered the land into his hand--not the whole country, but the district assigned for his inheritance.
Jamieson, Fausset & Brown — Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible (1871) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.
Daniel D. Whedon 1874 · Public Domain On vv1–3 INTRODUCTION. — CHAPTERS Jdg_1:1 to Jdg_3:6.
PART FIRST.
INTRODUCTION. — CHAPTERS Jdg_1:1 to Jdg_3:6.
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THE LEADERSHIP, Jdg_1:1-2.
1. After the death of Joshua — Probably not long after. Till Joshua died the affairs of the nation were closely associated with one great master mind, upon which came the chief responsibility of government. Moses and Joshua were to Israel like the chief generals of a great army, and the great body of the people had little sense of a national responsibility. But as soon as these great leaders are gone there comes a dawning sense of national unity and responsibility, and now not one man, but the whole people, the children of Israel, ask counsel of Jehovah. The children of Israel are here to be understood as the tribes west of the Jordan, represented by their elders.
Asked the Lord — By means of the urim and thummim. See note on Jos_1:1. The people and the elders had not forgotten the last counsels of Joshua. Joshua 23-24.
Who shall go up — Joshua died leaving no chosen successor. As he had himself been called of God to succeed Moses, (Jos_1:2,) so he trusted God to select his successor in office. The divine commission did not resound in the ear nor stir the heart of any man. Hence the nation resorts to prayer to God in this season of suspense. The expression go up is to be taken in a military sense, not as implying an actual ascent, but an aggressive warfare: who shall take the lead in battle with our Canaanitish foes? The enemy is conceived as occupying higher ground than the aggressors, though sometimes the march to battle may not have been a literal going up.
Against the Canaanites — These enemies were not all exterminated in Joshua’s day, and when the great commander was dead the elders of Israel began to feel anxiety about the national safety. They feared their enemies might seize the moment when Israel was without a leader to recover their former possessions.
First — Or, at the beginning. The thought is, Who shall make the beginning of aggressive warfare? This form of words seems to imply that a personal leader was not sought, but rather what the Greeks called the hegemony, the precedence among the tribes: which tribe shall make a beginning?
Bishop Hervey, in the “Speaker’s” or “Bible Commentary,” maintains that the events of this chapter and the first five verses of chapter 2 must have occurred before Joshua’s death, and he suggests that the reading in this first verse should be, Now after the death of MOSES. But this whole argument rests mainly upon two assumptions, both of which may be rejected as unnecessary. He assumes, (1) That a war with the Canaanites for the possession of tribe territory is incompatible with the conquest of Canaan and the settlement of the tribes under Joshua’s leadership, and (2) That the narrative commencing at Jdg_2:6, is a direct continuation of the verses preceding it. On this latter assumption see note at Jdg_2:6. The former has been sufficiently refuted in our notes on Jos_11:23; Jos_21:44. Joshua, indeed, subdued the Canaanites on all sides, and the tribes received their portions during his lifetime, but the Canaanites were by no means all exterminated, and after the death of Israel’s great chieftain they would naturally rally to recover, as far as possible, their lost possessions; and subsequent history shows how long-continued were their conflicts with the Canaanitish nations that remained in the land.
The exact chronology of various events recorded in these opening chapters is very uncertain, and in view of the Hebrew historians’ well-known lack of precision in such matters, and the absence of sufficient data to construct a definite chronology of these events, it is altogether needless to suppose or assume that they occurred before Joshua’s death. The passage in Jdg_1:10-15 is manifestly episodical, interrupting the direct narrative of the chapter, and therefore proves nothing in the case.
Daniel D. Whedon (gen. ed.), Commentary on the Old and New Testaments (1874–1909) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges 1878 · Public Domain On vv1–3 1. And it came to pass after the death…
1. And it came to pass after the death of Joshua] The events which follow belong, however, to the life-time of Joshua and to the period covered by Joshua 9-12; moreover, the death of Joshua is recorded in chap. Jdg_2:6-10, in due sequel to Jos_24:28. As referring to what immediately follows the words are therefore incorrect; but taking them in connexion with the entire Book they have a certain fitness, for the death of Joshua may be regarded as marking the division between the period of conquest and the period of occupation. In the same way the Book of Joshua opens with the death of Moses, Jos_1:1 a. The sentence is an editorial addition.
asked of the Lord] most likely at the sanctuary, through the medium of the priest; cf. Jdg_18:5, 1Sa_22:10; 1Sa_22:13; 1Sa_22:15 etc. The ephod and the Urim and Thummim came into use on such occasions; the divine response was conveyed as a priestly oracle. See Jdg_17:3, Jdg_18:5, 1Sa_14:18 (RVm.), 41 (LXX), 1Sa_23:9 ff., Deu_33:8; and Driver, Exodus, p. 312 f.
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go up] From Gilgal, 800 ft. below sea-level, the march into the Southern Highlands (2500 to 3600 ft. above the sea) was a continuous ascent. The verb may be used, however, in a general sense, of a military expedition, 2Sa_5:19, Isa_7:6.
first] of time, cf. Jdg_10:18; not first in order or rank.
the Canaanites] The Jehovist’s name for the various tribes of Palestine; the Elohist calls them ‘Amorites,’ cf. Jdg_1:34. If the Canaanites had been extirpated in the manner described in the Book of Joshua there would have been no need to attack them again.
The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges (gen. ed. J. J. S. Perowne; Cambridge University Press, 1878–1918) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Ellicott's Commentary for English Readers 1878 · Public Domain On vv1–3 (1) Now.—The “now” should rather be rendered And, as…
(1) Now.—The “now” should rather be rendered And, as in Lev_1:1, Num_1:1, Jos_1:1, 1Sa_1:1, 2Sa_1:1, 2Ki_1:1. The word connects this book with the last, “as a link in the chain of books which relate in unbroken connection the sacred history of the world from the Creation to the Exile” (Bertheau).
Alter the death of Joshua.—In these first words we are met by a difficulty, for there can be little reasonable doubt that most, at any rate, of the events narrated from this verse to Jdg_2:5 took place before the death of Joshua, whose death and burial are accordingly mentioned in Jdg_2:8-9. For (1) the whole passage (Jdg_1:1 to Jdg_2:5) evidently describes the first movements of the Israelites after their establishment on the western side of the Jordan. (See Jos_18:1-3; Jos_21:43; Jos_22:32; Jos_24:28.) (2) It is inconceivable that the Israelites should have remained inactive during the long life of Joshua, who attained the age of 110 years. (3) The events in Jdg_1:10-36 are evidently identical with those in Jos_12:9-24; Jos_12:14; Jos_12:19 (4) The angel’s message (Jdg_2:1-5) and the subsequent notices (6-18) are closely parallel with, and sometimes verbally the same as, those in Jos_24:24-33. That these should be records of different and yet most closely analogous series of circumstances is all but impossible. Various ways of accounting for the difficulty have been suggested. (1) Some suppose that many events narrated or touched upon in the Book of Joshua (especially Jdg_15:14-19; Jdg_15:16-17, &c.) are narrated by anticipation. (2) Clericus arbitrarily supplies the words, “After the death of Joshua the Canaanites recovered strength, but in his lifetime the children of Israel.” (3) Schmidt renders the verbs as pluperfects: “It came to pass after the death of Joshua, the children of Israel had consulted Jehovah,” &c. (4) A more recent conjecture is that the name “Joshua” has here crept in by an error of the scribes. If we read, “After the death of Moses,” all becomes clear and coherent; and if the book, in its original form, possibly began at Jdg_3:7, with the words, “And it came to pass, after the death of Joshua, that the children of Israel did evil in the sight of the Lord,” &c., the clerical error may have been caused by the addition of prefatory matter to the book at the same time that the appendix (Judges 17-21) was added. It is in favour of the possibility of this suggestion that there are close resemblances between the style and the allusions of the preface, or perhaps we may say of the two prefaces (Jdg_1:1 to Jdg_2:10; Jdg_2:11-23), and the style and allusions of the last five chapters: e.g., in the references to Judah, Jerusalem, and Bethlehem (Jdg_1:1-21; Jdg_1:19; Jdg_20:18), Dan (Jdg_1:34; Jdg_18:1-31) and the Twelve Tribes (passim); the consultations of the Lord by Urim (Jdg_1:1-2; Jdg_20:26-28); the silence as to the existence of Judges; and the recurrence of various phrases, such as “set on fire,” and “with the edge of the sword” (Jdg_1:8; Jdg_20:48), “unto this day” (Jdg_1:21; Jdg_19:30), “give his daughter to wife” (Jdg_1:12; Jdg_21:1; Jdg_21:14; Jdg_21:18), &c. (5) On the other hand, the conjecture can only be regarded as possible, since it is not supported by a single MS. or suggested by any ancient commentator. It is perhaps simpler to suppose that the book originally began with the words, “Now after the death of Joshua,” and that this beginning was left unaltered as a general description of the book when the prefatory matter and appendix were attached to it.
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The children of Israel.—Mainly, it would seem, the western tribes.
Asked the Lord.—The phrase is peculiar, meaning, literally, enquired in Jehovah (as we find it in the LXX.). The usual construction is “Shaal eth-Jehovah” (“asked the Lord”). This phrase (shaal be) is only found again in. Jdg_20:23-27. Rabbi Tanchum (whose commentary on this book has been edited by Schnurrer and Haarbürcker) says that the phrase implies the consultation of Jehovah through the high priest by means of the Urim and Thummim. “To ask of Elohim” occurs in Jdg_18:5; Jdg_20:18. Similarly in Greek, “to ask God” (Xen. Mem. viii. 3) means to consult an oracle. If the narrative of this chapter be retrospective, the high priest must have been Eleazar, the son of Aaron (Jos_14:1); if not, it must have been his son Phinehas (Jos_24:33), as Josephus seems to imply (Jos. Antt. v. 2, § 1). On this method of inquiring of God, in the absence of any authoritative declaration on the part of a prophet, see Num_27:21, Jos_9:14. On the Urim and Thummim, which was not the jewelled “breastplate of judgment,” but something which was put “in it,” see Exo_28:30. It is probably useless to inquire as to the method by which the will of God was revealed by the Urim and Thummim. The words mean “lights and perfections,” or something closely resembling those conceptions. The Rabbis were themselves ignorant as to the exact nature of the Urim and Thummim, and the mode in which they were used. One favourite theory is that adopted by Milton, when he speaks of Aaron’s breastplate as having been “ardent with gems oracular.” It identifies the Urim with the twelve gems, and supposes that the answers of God were spelt out by a mystic light which gleamed over these gems. But not to dwell on the fact that the names of the tribes did not contain all the letters of the Hebrew alphabet, this explanation is not consistent with the distinction made between the breastplate which was on the ephod, and the Urim and Thummim that were placed inside it (Exo_28:30). Another theory supposes that the mind of the high priest was abstracted from earthly things by gazing on the gems until the will of God was revealed to him. A third regards the Urim and Thummim as cut and uncut gems, kept in the folds of the breastplate, and used almost like lots. These are but theories, and in all probability the exact truth, which has now been forgotten for thousands of years, will never be discovered.
Who shall go up for us . . .?—At the solemn investiture of Joshua, as the successor of Moses, Moses is directed to “set him before Eleazar the priest,” who was “to ask consent for him after the judgment of Urim before the Lord: at his word they shall go out, and at his word they shall come in” (Num_27:18-21).
A Bible Commentary for English Readers, edited by Charles John Ellicott (1878–1897) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Pulpit Commentary 1880 · Public Domain On vv1, 3 Vers. 1-7. Inquiry of God.
Vers. 1-7. Inquiry of God.
Three lessons stand out from the above section which we shall do well to consider in the order in which they present themselves.
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I The first is, THAT BEFORE TAKING IN HAND ANY IMPORTANT BUSINESS WE OUGHT TO SEEK GOD"S DIRECTION. Distrust of our own wisdom, misgivings as to our motives, and the feeling that the issues of all events are in the hands of God"s unerring providence, should always prompt us to look to God for guidance. Even when we do so no little care is needed to be sure that our interpretations of God"s will arc not biassed by our inclinations. We read in Jeremiah 42 that the captains of the forces of the remnant of the Jews went to Jeremiah after the deportation of their countrymen to Babylon, and said to him, "Pray for us unto the Lord thy God, that he may show us the way wherein we may walk, and the thing that we may do," and even bound themselves by a solemn oath to obey the voice of the Lord, and do whatsoever he should command them by the mouth of Jeremiah. But when, after ten days, God s answer came, bidding them abide in the land of Judah, and condemning in distinct terms the course on which their hearts were set, viz., to go down to Egypt, they boldly accused Jeremiah of falsehood, and went down to Egypt in spite of his prophetic message. And so it too often is. Men ask God"s direction, hoping that the answer will be in accordance with their own inclinations, and do their best to twist it into such accordance. But if this is impossible they act in bold defiance of it. In seeking God"s guidance, therefore, especial care should be taken so to mortify our self-will that we may be ready to act upon the answer of God, however contrary it may be to the dictates of our own hearts. This may be applied to cases where pecuniary loss, or sacrifice of worldly advantages or pleasures, or self-humiliation and self-denial, or mortification "of enmities, resentment, jealousy, pride, vanity, love of praise, and so on, are involved in an entire obedience to the dictates of the word and Spirit of God given in answer to prayer. As regards the ways in which a Christian now can "ask the Lord" concerning" the course he ought to pursue on any particular occasion, we may say, following the analogy of the inquiries to which our text refers, that
1. He may inquire or ask counsel of Holy Scripture. He may seek light and truth from that word which is the expression of the mind and will of God. There is no state of darkness, or perplexity as to the true path of duty, to which Holy Scripture, wisely and prayerfully interrogated, will not bring satisfactory light; no question of morality or conduct on which it will not shed the ray of truth. The old superstition of the sortes Virgilianae applied to the Bible, so that the page opened at random should supply the answer required, had this much of truth in it, that the Bible has an answer for every question of an inquiring soul. But this answer must be sought in intelligent, prayerful study, and not as a matter of blind chance or in the presumptuous expectation of a miraculous answer. The answer may be obtained either from the example of some eminent saint under similar circumstances as of Abraham giving up his right in order to avoid strife with Lot, (Gen_13:8, Gen_13:9) Elisha refusing Naaman"s gifts, Job blessing God in the extremity of his affliction and the numerous examples in Luk_6:3 Heb 11 Jam_5:17, etc.; or by impregnating the mind with the teaching of the word of God, such as Deu_6:5, or the Sermon on the Mount, or the precepts in Ro 12 Ro 13 Gal_5:22, 23 Eph_4:22, sqq., and 1 Peter throughout. And either way the answer will be sure if it is sought faithfully.
2. A Christian may inquire of the Lord by seeking the counsel of a wise and honest friend, who will give him impartial advice. The prophets were distinguished for their faithful boldness in speaking unwelcome truths as much as for their inspired knowledge. Nathan speaking to David, Isaiah counselling Hezekiah, Daniel reproving Nebuchadnezzar or Belshazzar, Jeremiah advising Zedekiah, are instances of such faithfulness. Let the Christian then who is in doubt or perplexity as to the course which he ought to take seek the counsel of a wise and faithful friend, whose mind will not be biassed by passion or prejudice, and let him act according to it.
3. God"s guidance may be sought by simple prayer. Just as Hezekiah in his great perplexity and distress spread Sennacherib s letter before the Lord, and betook himself to earnest prayer, so may a Christian man spread out before God all the particular circumstances of his case, and all the doubts and difficulties by which he is harassed, and in simple-minded earnestness ask God to direct and guide him aright. And the answer will doubtless come, either by the Holy Spirit suggesting to his mind the considerations which ought chiefly to influence him, or strengthening feeble convictions, and confirming uncertain opinions and hesitating reasonings, or clearing away the clouds which obscured his path , or in some providential interference barring, as it were, the wrong course, and throwing open the gates of the right one for him to pass through. The opportune arrival of Rebekah at the well while Abraham"s servant was in the very act of prayer; (Gen_24:15) the arrival of the messengers of Cornelius while Peter was in doubt what the vision which he had seen might mean; (Act_10:17) the dream which Gideon heard the Midianite tell to his fellow, just when he was hesitating whether he ought to attack the Midianite host, are examples, to which many more might be added, how providential circumstances come in to give to the servant of God the guidance which he asks. It is obvious to add that these three modes of inquiry may be combined.
II The second lesson is THE ADVANTAGE IN ALL IMPORTANT UNDERTAKINGS OF COOPERATION AND THE MUTUAL ASSISTANCE OF FRIENDS. The answer from God to the inquiry, Who shall go up first? had come. "Judah shall go up: behold, I have delivered the land into his hand." Yet none the less did Judah say to Simeon his brother, "Come up with me,... and I likewise will go with thee into thy lot." It is not enough then even to have the help of God: the laws under which humanity is placed by God require that man have also the help of man. "As iron sharpeneth iron, so a man"s countenance his friend." Our Lord sent out the seventy "two and two before his face." "Separate me Barnabas and Saul for the work whereunto I have called them," was the saying of the Holy Ghost. The strength of two is greater than the strength of one. The wisdom of two is better than the wisdom of one. In cooperation one can supply what the other lacks. One has courage, another has prudence. One has knowledge, another knows how to use it. One has wealth, the other has the wit to use wealth. One has wisdom, but is "slow of speech;" the other "can speak well," but is foolish in counsel. (Ex 32) No man has all the qualities which go to make up perfect action, and therefore no man should think to do without the help of his fellow-man. It is a presumptuous state of mind which makes a man seem sufficient to himself, and an uncharitable state of mind which prompts him to withhold help from his fellow. A beautiful lesson may be learnt from the cooperation of the blind with the deaf and dumb in institutions where they are trained together. What the blind learn by the ear they communicate to the eye of the deaf, and what the deaf learn by the eye they communicate to the ear of the blind. And so it should be in everything. A man should seek help from his neighbour, and should be equally ready to give help to him in return. "Come up with me into my lot,... and I likewise will go with thee into thy lot," should be the law of human fellowship running through all the transactions of human life. But yet not so as to weaken individual responsibility, or to destroy just independence of character; but so as to give to each the full help towards the performance of duty which God has provided for him, and to nourish man"s care for his neighbour by listening to his neighbour"s calls for help.
III The third lesson may be briefly stated. DIFFERENT PARTS ARE ASSIGNED TO DIFFERENT PERSONS: MORE SHOWY ONES TO SOME, MORE HUMBLE ONES TO OTHERS, But the humbler part may he as really useful and as acceptable to God as the more showy one. To some the lot is assigned of merely helping others to rise to their destined eminence, and then being forgotten. And yet they really have a share in all that is well done by those whom they helped to raise, and who could not have risen without their help. Thus Simeon helped Judah to take possession of his lot, and Judah ever after took the foremost place among the tribes of Israel; but Simeon almost disappears from view. In like manner Andrew first brought his brother Simon to Jesus; but it is Simon Peter to whom were given the keys of the kingdom of heaven, and who occupies the first place among the twelve. Barnabas took Saul and brought him to the apostles, and again went to seek him at Tarsus, and brought him to Antioch; but the place filled by St. Paul in the Church of God as far transcends that of Barnabas as the place of Judah among the tribes transcends that of Simeon. This should give encouragement to those whose work is humble and out of sight. Let the servant of God do "what he can." Let him not envy the talents, the brilliant gifts, the powers, the fame, the glory of others. But let him be content if by the grace of God he can in any way help forward the work of God"s Church on earth, although his name he not mentioned till he receives his reward before the judgment-seat of Christ.
HOMILIES BY A.F. MUIR. Vers. 1, 2. Transfer of authority.
Periods when supreme power passes from rulers to their descendants are always of critical importance. It is then that the greatest constitutional modifications take place. Partly from the differences of disposition and view, partly from the force of new circumstances, partly from the failure or creation of peculiar official sanctions and dignities, the legislative or executive function seldom remains wholly unchanged in passing from one holder to another. In this case, as the dignity and authority of Moses did not entirely pass to Joshua, so the office the latter filled must have greatly altered with its occupancy by the numerous body, "the sons of Israel," or elders and tribesmen. More frequent deliberation, the consultation of competing interests, etc., had to precede any national action against the common enemy. The great Lawgiver had passed away, the Soldier-Dictator had also been gathered to his fathers, and now it devolved upon a simply appointed but sacredly authoritative constitutional assembly to carry into effect the purposes of their predecessors. Compare with this the rise of parliamentary influence in Europe, and especially in England.
I THE MODIFICATION OF GOVERNMENT. Sometimes this is sudden, sometimes gradual. Here it does not affect the essential principle of the theocracy. There is something very pathetic in the spectacle of an orphaned nation appealing to the "God of their fathers." It was not an extraordinary outburst of reverence and religious humility, but the beginning of a habitual and necessary practice. The voice of Jehovah through his authorised representatives was the supreme law for Israel.
1. It behoves all nations and individuals to ask God for wisdom and direction, especially at such times of transition. The altered conditions of life; the transfer of legislative authority; the attainment of mature years; a youth"s leaving,home; the death of parents, guardians, rulers, etc., are reasons for a closer walk with God, and a more attentive heed to his word.
2. Responsibility is inevitably transferred with authority. A sacred war is the legacy of the fathers of Israel to the children. If they are disposed to lag in its carrying forward, untoward events prick them on, and discomfort and disorder increase the necessity for action. "Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown." The peasant envies the king, the child the parent, only to be in turn regarded with a greater envy by those they assume to be fortunate and happy. Authority tempers and chastens power. The assumption of the latter without regard to its obligations is a profane and wicked thing, and must in the end defeat itself. Responsibility is the moral and religious side of authority; duty of right. In no case has a ruler or government lightly to regard inherited responsibilities. Freedom is not the result of violent changes, but "broadens slowly down from precedent to precedent." That one has had no part or choice in the making of an agreement or the inauguration of a policy is no reason by itself for repudiation. What is wrong must be put right, and false steps retraced; but the practicable policy of the present is generally a modification of the former and traditional one, rather than entire departure from it. The oneness of responsibility in past and present, ought to be carefully observed, and acknowledged even where changes are introduced. None of us makes his own circumstances. Most of them are inherited. Our duties are often born before ourselves, awaiting us in the appointed time.
3. The advantages and disadvantages of a plurality of rulers are here illustrated.
(1) Where there are several or many in power there is a representation of popular views and interests,
(2) the advantage of collective and deliberative wisdom, and
(3) mutual stimulus and emulation.
On the other hand,
(1) they are liable to jealousies and envies,
(2) it is difficult to preserve a good understanding,
(3) they are more subject to popular panics, and
(4) are unlikely to take a bold initiative.
II UNCHANGEABLENESS OF THE SUPREME AUTHORITY. Under all circumstances the ideal government for Israel must ever be the theocracy. Moses, Joshua, the elders, the judges, the kings these are but the human representatives of the absolute and Divine; they are but the stewards of a heavenly mystery, holding authority from the Supreme, and liable at his bidding to restore it again. Paul (Rom_13:1-5) summarises the general aspects of this principle: every soul be subject unto the higher powers. For there is no power but of God: the powers that be are ordained of God. Whosoever therefore resisteth the power, resisteth the ordinance of. God: and they that resist shall receive to themselves damnation. For he is the minister of God to thee for good Wherefore ye must needs be subject, not only for wrath, but also for conscience sake.
1. This must be recognised by human delegates. The elders immediately and publicly "asked Jehovah." The force of the original expression is that no time was lost. Only as he led them could they be preserved from error.
2. To make men subject to the Supreme must ever be the goal of their efforts. Their whole policy will be, therefore, in a wide sense evangelical, viz., to bring men to God, to deepen their reverence for truth, righteousness, purity, and to encourage a personal attachment to Christ as the embodiment of these. M.
Spiritual initiatives.
The one stern fact facing every Israelite is God"s command to uproot the Canaanite. There must be at least one land wholly consecrated to Jehovah and freed from idolatry. The warfare is an inheritance, even as the land is. There is a common obligation to fulfil this task; but it is not to be done severally, at haphazard. United action being difficult on account of the loss of the great captain, representative action is the next best. Now upon one tribe, and now upon another, will the honour devolve of carrying the war into the ranks of the enemy. It is a kind of conscription of the tribes, the honour of the burden being borne in turn by one for all. In this case no lot is cast. Jehovah is the disposer of the forces of his kingdom.
I THE LEADERSHIP IS MADE KNOWN THROUGH PRAYER AND INQUIRY. As yet no tribe had premier rank amongst its fellows. God must decide who shall go up first. He is the fountain of honour, and he must be approached by the wonted avenues. Accordingly, the priest or the prophet is called upon to exercise his functions. There is something very beautiful and pathetic in this united asking of Jehovah by the tribes. Where God is acknowledged as the Supreme Arbiter, harmony is certain to prevail. It is well for Christians to submit all their anxieties to their Divine Father. So we find the early disciples praying after their Master"s ascension. And the Church at Antioch observed a like rule ere it sent its missionaries forth to the region beyond. Spiritual work must ever be prefaced by prayer; and although God may not declare the leaders of it by a special utterance, tokens will be given which will enable them to be discovered.
II IT IS RENDERED OBLIGATORY BY A "CALL." We are not informed as to the precise manner in which the will of God was made known. Probably the Urim and Thummim were consulted. Joshua is never mentioned as doing this; like Moses, he receives the word of God directly. The leaders of Israel receive the word of God from the priest, and the response is not oracular, but clear and definite. A twofold advantage pertained to this decision. It obtained for the chosen one the recognition of his brethren, and confirmed his own faith. An articulate supernatural "call" is not always required for undertaking God"s work, but we have a right to demand of those who assume the lead in spiritual things that they shall have clear and unmistakable proof of a vocation. And it stands to reason that one who feels a "necessity laid upon him" to do certain spiritual work shall be more likely to succeed in it.
III THE DIVINE CHOICE IS JUSTIFIED BY THE CHARACTER AND PAST CAREER OF ITS SUBJECT, This is not to say that these furnish a reason for it. With regard to all Divine work it may well be asked, "Who is sufficient for these things?" But frequently human insight and experience justify Divine measures, so far as they go. It was Judah who delivered Joseph from the pit. He confessed his sins. (Gen_38:26) Jacob intrusted Benjamin to his care, and blessed him in the words brethren praise thee; the sceptre shall not depart from Judah." His tribe became the most numerous and warlike; (Nu 2) and of the commissioners appointed to allot the land, the representative of Judah is first mentioned. (Num_34:19) But above all, it was Judah and Ephraim alone who furnished the spies that gave a faithful account of the land Caleb and Joshua. The former still lived, chief of the tribe of Judah. Ephraim, the tribe of Joshua, being already settled, Judah"s turn crones next. We see therefore that although human merit cannot be said to determine Divine appointments, the latter will often be found to run in the same line. M.
HOMILIES BY W.F. ADENEY Vers. 1, 2. The death of the great.
The circumstances which accompanied and followed the death of Joshua are suggestive of the common difficulties which arise on the death of great men, and the conduct of Israel is an example of the right spirit in which to face these difficulties.
I THE MOST USEFUL MEN ARE OFTEN CALLED AWAY BEFORE THEIR WORK IS FINISHED. The measure of work which God requires of them may always be accomplished, for he sets no task for which he does not supply all needful talents and opportunities. But the work which a man aims at accomplishing, which he sees needing to be done, which men trust him to achieve for them, is commonly greater than his time and powers allow of perfect performance.
1. This fact should teach the most active workers
1. diligence, since at the best they can never overtake their work, and
2. humility, in the thought of the little that the ablest can accomplish compared with what he aims at.
2. This fact should lead all men
1. not to lean too much on any one individual,
2. to be ready to welcome new men,
3. to train children to take the places of their parents.
II THE DEATH OF GREAT MEN SHOULD INSPIRE US WITH A DESIRE TO CONTINUE THEIR UNFINISHED WORK.
1. It is foolish to be content with idle panegyrics, as though we could live for ever on the glory of the past. Life must not be spent in a dreamy contemplation of the sunset, however brilliant this may be. While we gaze the radiance fades; night will soon fall. We must be up and preparing for shelter under the darkness, and for work in a new day.
2. It is weak to sink into mere regrets and despondency. We do not honour the dead by wasting our lives in barren grief. When the great and good are gone the future may look blank and hopeless; but God is still with us, and he will still provide for us. Therefore we should do as Israel did. Not satisfied with the glory of Joshua"s victories, nor stunned by the blow of his death, the people look forward, seek for guidance for the future, and endeavour to continue his unfinished work. The richest legacy we can receive from the great is the unfinished task which drops from their dying hands. The noblest monument we can erect to their memory will be the completion of that task; the most honourable epitaph we can write for them will be the story of the good works for which their lives and examples have inspired their successors.
III As POSTS OF RESPONSIBILITY BECOME VACANT, IT IS WISE TO SEEK THE GUIDANCE OF GOD IN THE CHOICE OF NEW MEN TO OCCUPY THEM. After the death of Joshua Israel consulted "the Eternal." It is a blessing that the loss of our most trusted earthly friends should drive us to the refuge of the great heavenly Friend. In the present case new leaders do not now arise by selfish ambition, nor are they chosen by popular election. The selection of them is referred to God. Israel thus recognises its constitution as a theocracy. Every nation should consider itself under a supreme theocracy. Political leaders should be chosen by a Christian nation only after prayer for Divine guidance. Much more evident is it that the selection of men for service in spiritual things, as ministers, as missionaries, etc., should not be left to the mere inclination of the individual or the unaided human judgment of others, but determined after the most earnest prayer for Divine light. (Act_1:24) Note such a method of election implies a willingness that the chosen leaders should be called to do God"s will, not merely to humour the popular caprice.
IV WHEN GREAT MEN ARE TAKEN AWAY IT IS OFTEN THE CASE THAT NO MEN OF EQUAL ABILITY ARE FOUND TO SUCCEED THEM. Joshua was not equal to Moses, but he was still well able to take the staff of leadership from his master"s hand. But Joshua left no successor. Nothing but anarchy faced the nation "after the death of Joshua it seemed as though there could be no "after." There are advantages in the absence, of great men. The multitude may become indolent, trusting too much to the work of the few. When these are removed men are thrown back on their own resources; thus the courage and energy of the whole people is put on trial. Yet on the whole we must feel that it is better to have the great among us. The death of Joshua is the signal for the decadence of the nation from its ancient heroic glory. Therefore let us pray that God will continue the race of good and great men: and seek to educate and discover such among the young. Let us be thankful that our Joshua Christ will never be taken from his people. A. (Mat_28:20)
The Pulpit Commentary (1880–1919), ed. H.D.M. Spence-Jones & Joseph S. Exell — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Biblical Illustrator 1887 · Public Domain On v1 The children of Israel asked the Lord.
Jdg_1:1-10
The children of Israel asked the Lord.
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Simplicity in prayer
Just that! How we have modernised and complicated and destroyed prayer! The children of Israel asked the Lord. How simple, how direct, how sensible, how likely to succeed! The altar may have lost its power: no atheist has pulled down the altar, no outsider has taken away one stone from the holy pile; the suppliants may have torn down their own altar. We will modernise and invent and enlarge and embroider the simplicity that would have saved us. The children of Israel asked the Lord, whispered to Him, hailed Him, arrested His condescending attention by some sign of necessity. They whispered to the Lord, they told Him plainly the condition in which they were placed, and brought the whole need under His attention; they wanted leadership and captaincy and guidance, and they said, Who shall do this? The method has not been changed; Jesus Christ added nothing to this old method. Said He, Ask, and it shall be given you; seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you. If any man lack wisdom, let him ask. We have changed all that; we now are in danger of approaching the Lord as if He were an infinite Shah, and must needs be approached with long words and logical sequence. Speaking to God elevates the mind; prayer, however brief and however tremulous, takes the suppliant up to a higher level than he has ever scaled before. The whole idea of religion is intellectually elevating; no man can be truly religious and meanly little; to touch the Divine garment even at its edge is to rise to a new stature and to breathe a new air. I repeat, therefore, that asking God, talking to God, communing with God, elevates the mind. It is the spiritual exercise that elevates the soul; the words themselves may be poor, they may be ungrammatical, they may be uttered in a very halting and stumbling tone, but the exercise, spiritually understood, rightly interpreted, lifts the soul world on world a thousand worlds higher than can ever be occupied by a mere denizen of this world of dust. We cannot look God in the face without catching something of the brightness of His smile. Do they take knowledge of us that we have been with the literature of the day, with the journals of the morning, with the gossip of the time? or do they take knowledge of us that we have just come from the altar, that we have just seen the King, that we have not a moment ago been closeted with Christ, having shut the door, and do we come out of the presence-chamber new born, newly ordained, just crowned with the approbation of the Divine love? Talking to God, asking God, laying the whole case before God, sometimes laying it before Him without words, sometimes simply looking into His face, sometimes letting our throbbing, aching misery look into the infinite peace of the Divine tranquillity, will lift a man to a new status and clothe him with a new influence and enrich him with an abiding benediction. Let your misery seek the face of the King. Do not keep anything from God; yon know perfectly well that you cannot keep anything from His omniscience; that is not the meaning of the exhortation; the meaning rather is, tell God everything as if He had never heard it; go and tell Jesus. Do not ask the man who never prayed to tell you what he thinks of prayer. People are tempted to make a great mistake in that matter. They are going to hear an agnostic lecture on the subject of prayer! A prayerless man cannot lecture on that theme. Sooner ask a dead man to tell you his candid opinion of Beethoven than ask a prayerless man to tell you what he thinks of prayer. Ask the man who never was an inch from his own fireside what he thinks of the climate of the North Pole or the South. Consult saintly souls about the value of prayer. The children of Israel asked the Lord. They did not dictate to Him. Prayer is not dictation; prayer is not always even suggestion, and when prayer is suggestion it is offered with halting breath and with a most reverent faith, lest a suggestion should be not only a sophism but an expression of selfishness. Ask God about everything; you undervalue life if you think there is anything beneath His attention; the very smallest thing that concerns you concerns Him; He has told us so in many a beauteous parable. Saith He, A sparrow cannot fall to the ground without My notice. Observe, the people in question were the children of Israel. Character is implied; character is not only implied, it is recognised and held up as a lesson. They belong to a praying host, to a covenanted ancestry, they were involved in the baptism of an oath. Do not imagine that a man can leap out of atheism and begin to pray for some selfish purpose, and have his answer on the spot. Character determines prayer; the simple heart suggests the right petition; the sincere spirit, praying at the Cross and in the name of Christ, can alone pray with lasting and ennobling effect. In this respect there is something in heredity, there is something in the covenant, something in the eternal decree. We stand the last members up to this moment of a great ancestry of prayer. (J. Parker, D. D.)
Who shall go up for us against the Canaanites first, to fight against them?--
Dead leaders and living duties
I. A great leader dead, and lifes duties as pressing as ever.
1. Let who will and what will pass away, our own work only passes with our own life.
2. The advancement of Gods purpose is dependent on no life in particular.
3. Great lives are sometimes removed that other lives may better feel their responsibility and cultivate their strength.
II. human direction suddenly failing, and Divine guidance specially sought.
1. Prayer prompted by the removal of long familiar light.
2. Prayer over unfulfilled commandments.
3. Prayer provoked by gathering dangers.
4. Prayer for Gods appointment of our post in life.
5. The realism of prayer to every true-hearted suppliant.
III. An eminently faithful past demanding a no less vigorous future. Judah had already done well. He who has done well in the past is under perpetual obligation to do no less well in the future. God also chooses those for new duties who have best served in the past.
IV. God specially choosing some of His servants, but leaving them liberty to seek the help of others.
1. The benefits of co-operation. What one cannot do, two can. What one can only do with difficulty, two can do easily.
2. The limits of co-operation. Judah might only seek aid from his own brethren, not from idolaters.
V. The Lords call to great duties followed by His rich blessing on those who seek faithfully to perform them. The Lord delivered the Canaanites and the Perizzites into their hand.
1. God calls and sends none of His servants in vain.
2. Gods blessing answers to His own promise of blessing.
3. Gods blessing satisfies His peoples highest hopes. (F. G. Marchant.)
Dead heroes missed
1. In that this people was now constrained to look about them, and (now Joshua was dead) to do that themselves for their peace and quiet which he was wont to do for them, we are taught that when special persons are taken away then they who were left behind must put forth themselves and take the more pain than before. The which being so, men should make this use of such changes to provide and learn to want their good helps and friends beforehand. They should also acknowledge daily with hearty thanks to God what a benefit they have of them, while they enjoy them, and do all good that they may by the help of them. Which they cannot do, but they must of necessity feel the loss of them to be very great, and see that they must now lay their shoulders to the burden. For the which purpose this I add--oh, how sweetly and to their good liking have many lived when they had others to bear their burdens for them--as husbands, wives, subjects, children, neighbours: there is no doubt but that (which is the chiefest of all} they have therewith, that God is their friend also. But seeing many depend only on them in a carnal manner, and on their living still with them, and rest not on God, therefore their props fail them, and their desolation cometh upon them as the enemy upon an unarmed man.
2. We are taught here by their example, who sought to God in their doubts for counsel and resolution, that in all our doubtful eases, partly touching our estate towards God, and partly particular duties and actions if our special callings and conditions of life, while we remain here on earth we should consult with and ask counsel of God for our resolution, in such manner as He hath taught us, and in no wise to conceal and bury our wants and defects that trouble us, or pass by the sins that cleave to us, or other difficulties in our dealings and business that oppress us, for so we provide ill for ourselves, even to live in ignorance and sorrow (with ether inconveniences annexed thereunto) for ever after. (R. Rogers.)
And the Lord said, Judah shall go up.
God sovereign over His servants
May we not pause here to allow this oracular response to sink into the heart? How full it is in its manifold meaning! It asserts the sovereignty of God in disposing and ordering the work which His servants have to perform. It reminds us that every one is not to attempt everything; for Judah is to fight the enemy and the other tribes are to remain at home. It promises victory, not to every ardent soldier who might volunteer to take the field, but to the tribe whom the Lord shall order to the battle. It disturbs all rule-of-three calculations of success in proportion to the number of agents men may induce to go to work; success is for those whom the Lord shall send. It allows of no objection, no plea of incompetency, no deceitful humility, on the part of the called soldier: Judah shall go up; it is the word of a King. It hides pride from man, by declaring that although Judah would conquer, it would be only through Divine ordination and help. (L. H. Wiseman, M. A.)
Adoni-bezek.--
The punishment of Adoni-bezek
I. The instability and uncertainty of worldly greatness. Look at this man--and behold in what slippery places God sets the mighty and noble. From the eagerness with which mankind pursue the distinctions of life, we should conclude, not only that they were very valuable in themselves, but that no kind of precariousness attached to them. But let not the strong be secure; let not the honourable be vain; let not the rich be high-minded. What is all history but a narrative of the reverses to which all earthly things are liable, however firmly established they once appeared to be; of the revolutions of empires; the destruction of cities; of the mighty put down from their seats; of counsellors led away spoiled, or politicians disgraced, generals banished, and monarchs put to death!
II. Judgment overtaking the sinner in this life. Nor does Adoni-bezek stand alone as an instance of the present punishment of sin. Adam and Eve driven out of paradise; flood; cities of the plain; Lots wife; Gehazi; Ananias and Sapphira, etc. This, however, is not always the case. The misery of the sinner is principally reserved for a future world, and we are now in a state of probation. But God would confirm our faith in His adorable providence. If all sin was punished here, we should look no further; if no sin, we should not easily believe in the power, the holiness, the truth of God. We may add that the punishment of sin in this world is sometimes unavoidable. If nations are punished at all, they must be punished in time--for in eternity men exist only as individuals. Nearly the same may be said of a family. Yea, the present punishment of sin is in some measure natural. For how frequently do mens sufferings arise from the very sins they commit! Extravagance breeds ruin--indolence, poverty--intemperance, disease.
III. Punishment inflicted after long delay. Behold the career of this sinner! What a lengthened course of iniquity was here! So long and so often had I done this, that I thought God had not seen, or did not remember. But He has found me out; and I live long enough to be a miserable instance of this awful truth--that however long punishment may be delayed, it will at last be inflicted--as I have done, so God hath requited me.
IV. A correspondence between sin and suffering: What I have inflicted upon others, is now inflicted upon me; and in my very punishment I read my crime--as I have done, so God hath requited me.
1. Between sin and punishment there is sometimes a comparative conformity. This is the case when we suffer things which have some resemblance to our crimes.
2. Sometimes there is also between them a direct conformity. This is the case when we suffer in the same way and in the same things in which we sin.
3. But there is a future conformity still mere dreadful (Gal_6:7).
V. The hand of God acknowledged, while men are only employed--God hath requited me. But who saw anything of Him? A good man perceives the hand of God in all events, and he wishes to see it. But it is otherwise with the sinner. His apprehension of God is forced upon him; he would gladly get rid of the conviction: it is all terror and dismay to him--for he knows that God is his adversary, and He may now be coming to lay hold of him; he knows that he has a long account to give, and this may be the time of reckoning. Hence the bitterness of affliction: it is regarded not only as a trial, but as a punishment.
Lessons:
1. Abhor cruelty. It is equally disgraceful to religion and humanity. It renders you unpitied of God and man.
2. Improve the case of examples. If they were not particularly adapted to do us good, the Word of God would not be so full of them. Lodge them in your memory. Often reflect upon them. And make use of the dreadful as well as the pleasing. It is necessary that we should be awakened to flee from the wrath to come. (W. Jay.)
The story of requital
I. The life of man cannot escape the judgment of God: Be not deceived, God is not mocked, etc. Man may deny it, may theoretically disregard it, but cannot escape it! At the heart of things is the spirit of judgment. Human life appears to be confused, but before the Almighty it has shape, and plan, and purpose.
II. Let no man take the law into his own hands: Vengeance is Mine, I will repay, saith the Lord. Why have we suffered loss in business? May it not be that we have oppressed the poor and needy? Why are our schemes delayed and thwarted? Probably because we have been obstinate and unfriendly towards the schemes of others. Why are we held in disesteem or neglect? Probably because of the contempt in which we have held our brethren. So we are to look at the moral working of things, and to see in the results which are forced upon us, not the petty anger of men, but the holy and righteous judgment of God.
III. Every good deed will be honoured with appropriate reward.
1. Good deeds are their own reward.
2. Deeds done merely for the sake of reward cannot be good.
IV. Though justice be long delayed, yet it will be vindicated eventually. (J. Parker, D. D.)
Adoni-bezek; or, righteous retribution
In the accompaniments of war, not only have the most terrible injuries been inflicted during the battles, but when over the persons of the conquered have sometimes been subjected to worse torments than any they could have endured on the field. These doings have often been defended on the ground that they were necessary to self-defence and self-preservation. Alas! they are sometimes only to be explained by the depraved desire in the human heart of exercising arbitrary and cruel power. The practice referred to in this chapter--that of excision of the thumbs of captives--comes under this class. Probably it was to brand men as cowards that Adoni-bezek carried on such a cruel practice. He had evidently delighted in practising as much cruelty as possible. If he had thus treated seventy-two kings, it is probable that he had maltreated, or caused to be tormented, many others of inferior rank. The victorious Israelites advance, and Adoni-bezek has to fight a battle in which, instead of being the victor, he is the captive. He was taken and led, a prisoner, into the presence of another. Never had he anticipated this; much less that he would have to suffer as others had done through him. With hands and feet writhing from the recent excision, he makes this acknowledgment: As I have done, so God hath requited me.
1. Adoni-bezek notices the remarkable correspondence between previous barbarity and present suffering. He takes it in the sense of retribution.
2. The evil which falls upon us may ofttimes be the consequence of the wrong-doing of others. Sometimes various circumstances connected with bringing the offender to justice are so remarkable, and seemingly so responsive to crime, that there arises in the minds of others the belief that it is a special and divinely-imposed retribution.
3. The recognition of the correspondence between past acts and his present misfortune leads Adoni-bezek to ascribe it to a Divine hand: God has requited me. He was not an Israelite, had probably been an idolater, and may have trusted in false gods for a long time, He had heard of God, and what He had done to other nations; now he finds himself conquered, and is led to attribute his personal sufferings to the God of the Israelites. God has so arranged natural law that it works in harmony with eternal justice. There is a subtle connection between our acts and our sufferings. We may see illustrations of this every day. A man may act in a certain loose and careless way and prepare for himself consequences the most terrible and unlooked-for. Another gives way to fierce, ungoverned passions, and makes himself, thereby, wretched. Another chooses to spend his time only in the pursuits of pleasure, and to squander his money on every foolish thing that pleases his eye; he soon finds himself without the power to enjoy, and without money to procure such enjoyment. Another gives way to pilfering, and soon finds himself discharged, characterless. Even if he is not punished by law, he is dishonoured. Or a youth may have kind parents, and every opportunity of making his way in the world, but he gives way to dissipated habits, and finally, when character is gone and friends are dead, is glad to earn the most trifling sum under men whom he once despised A just retribution in all such cases certainly follows the sin. Like Adoni-bezek, such must confess that God hath requited the wrong-doing.
4. This acknowledgment concerning the just requital of sin is sure to take place in the other world, if not in this. Pagan mythology taught that the mean and sly will, in the other world, take the lynx form; the slanderers, that of the vampire fanning ever to sleep, and sucking the life-blood at the same time; that the hypocritical will be as crocodiles, crawling in mud and shedding false tears; and that the narrow and bigoted, fearful of truth and loving error, may be as owls, hooting amid darkness and ruin, in the forsaken and desolate regions of the other world. May not the dishonest man there have to cringe and hide himself still more? May not the drunken man have a constant craving, a burning thirst, a racking brain? May not the ambitious man have a constant anxiety to obtain power, and the torment of always being supplanted, or effectually checked, by others? May not the avaricious man be in a constant fever of suspicion? May not the ill-tempered man be in a constant whirl of passion, and make himself more and more wretched? May not the ruthless and cruel fear the scorn of their victims and clutches of their enemies? May not the voluptuary have to bear the torment of an inflamed heart and ungratified lusts? (Fred. Hastings.)
A thrilling life and its lessons
I. The life. Brief biography. Throned. Successful in war. Cruel. At last a defeated tyrant, Three scenes.
1. Celebrating his victories.
2. Feeding royal captives.
3. The defeated tyrants unsuccessful flight.
II. The lessons. Note three--
1. To what depths of cruelty it is possible for some to sink themselves. How came Adoni to be such a tyrant?
(1) Possibly, in part, through parental neglect.
(2) Through neglect of self-discipline.
2. Honoured men sometimes fall from palace to prison.
3. Be not deceived; God is not mocked; for whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap. (Homiletic Review.)
Punishment delayed
God often forbears and defers His punishments. As I did long ago, saith Adoni-bezek, yea again and again, seventy times one after another--so long and so often that I thought God had either not seen or quite forgotten me; yet now I see He requiteth me. How true this observation is, is sufficiently witnessed by their experience who have little less than stumbled hereat. This made Care, a heathen man, to cry out: The disposals of Divine providence are not a little cloudy and dark. This made David, a man after Gods own heart, to confess and say: My feet were almost gone, my steps had well-nigh slipped. This made Jeremiah cry out from the bottom of an amazed soul: Righteous art Thou, O Lord, when I plead with Thee; yet let me talk with Thee of Thy judgments. Wherefore doth the way of the wicked prosper? Why are they happy that deal very treacherously? Yea, those martyred saints (Rev_6:10) are heard to cry from under the altar, How long? etc. Now as these forenamed have stumbled at Gods delaying His judgments, so others there are who have been quite deceived, verily believing that with God what was forborne was also forgotten. Such an one was Adoni-bezek here, who, having escaped so long, thought to have escaped ever. And such were those whereof David spake (Psa_10:6). Such an one is the great whore of Babylon, that sings: I sit like a queen, and am no widow, and shall see no sorrow. Such an one was Pherecydes Syrins, master of Pythagoras, and a famous philosopher, and one that is said to have been the first philosopher that taught among the Greeks the soul to be immortal; and yet among all his knowledge had not learned this one principle: The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. For, as AElian reports, he used among his scholars to vaunt of his irreligion after this manner, saying that he had never offered sacrifice to any god in all his life, and yet had lived as long and as merrily as those who had offered several hecatombs. But he that thus impiously abused the long-suffering of God came at length to an end as strange as his impiety was unusual; for so they report of him that he was stricken, like Herod by the angel of the Lord, with such a disease that serpents bred of the corrupt humours of his body, which ate and consumed him being yet alive. But that we may neither distrust the righteous ways of God, nor prevent His unsearchable counsels with our over-hasty expectation, let us a little consider of the ends why God oftentimes defers and prolongs His judgments.
1. For the sake of godly ones, for whom God useth to forbear even multitudes of sinners. So had there been but ten righteous persons in Sodom, Sodom had never been destroyed: I will not destroy it for tens sake. So for good Josiahs sake God deferred the plagues He had decreed to bring upon that people (2Ki_22:20).
2. To give time of repentance and amendment (2Pe_3:9). This is shown by the parable of the fig-tree (Luk_13:7). A hundred and twenty years the old world had given them before the flood came.
3. The opportunity of example by them unto others and of manifesting His own glory. God is Lord of times; and as He created them, so He alone knows a fit time for all things under the sun. He, therefore, who knows all occasions, when He seeth a fit time for His judgments to profit other men by example, and most of all to set forth His own glory, then He sends them forth and till then He will defer them.
4. When God, intending some extraordinary judgment, suffers mens sins to grow unto a full ripeness that their sin may be as conspicuous unto the world as His purpose in their punishment shall be. Thus God punished not the Canaanites in Abrahams time, but deferred it till Israels coming out of Egypt; and that, as Himself witnesseth (Gen_15:16): Because the iniquity of the Amorites was not yet full. And therefore is not this last end to be looked for in all Gods delays; but it seemeth proper to His extraordinary punishments--when God meaneth, as it were, to get Himself a name amongst men, then God stays to have the sin full, upon which He will pour a full vial of wrath and indignation. (Joseph Mede, B. D.)
Adoni-bezeks confession
I. The suffering of punishment extorts the confession of sin. The reason whereof is the very nature of punishment, which always implieth some offence, and therefore is a good remembrancer of the same. Thus Josephs brethren, when they were distressed in Egypt, cried, We are verily guilty concerning our brother. Proud Pharaoh, when he saw the plague of hail and thunder, said: I have now sinned; the Lord is righteous, and I and my people are wicked. The proud stomachs of the Israelites came down when once the fiery serpents stung them, and then they came to Moses and said: We have sinned; for we have spoken against the Lord and against thee. Manasseh, whom all the threatenings of Gods prophets in fifty years space could never move, yet when he was bound in fetters and carried prisoner unto Babylon, then he besought the Lord his God, and humbled himself greatly before the God of his fathers. Whosoever, therefore, he be that feels not this fruit and makes not this use of his afflictions is worse than hard-hearted Pharaoh, worse than cruel Adoni-bezek. But if by this means we come to see and acknowledge our sin, then may we say with David: It is good for me that I was afflicted, and give praise unto our God, who is able out of such hard rocks as these to make flow the saving waters of repentance.
II. Gods judgment for sin is one of the strongest motives to make an atheist confess there is a God. Those who say, There is no God, David accounteth them in the number of fools (Psa_53:1). Solomon styleth punishment the schoolmaster of fools. If for all fools, then also for atheistical fools, that they, either by their own or by example of Gods plagues upon others, may be taught to put away their folly. Most certain it is, the not observing of Gods judgments, or the supposed examples of some who seem to escape the hand of God in the greatest sins, is a main occasion of atheism. For this cause, therefore, David, as jealous of Gods honour and knowing what force Gods judgments have to keep atheism from creeping into the hearts of men, desireth God (Psa_59:13). Hence it is also that God often in Ezekiel doth plainly affirm this to be the end of His judgments, that it might be known that He was the Lord. As in Eze_6:6 thus He threatens Israel: Your cities shall be laid waste, and your high places shall be desolate, etc. verse 7: And the slain shall fall in the midst of you; and you shall know that I am the Lord. And again, verses 12, 13: He that is far off shall die by the pestilence; and he that is near shall fall by the sword. Then shall ye know that I am the Lord. And Eze_25:17, concerning the Philistines: I will execute great vengeance upon them, saith the Lord, with furious rebukes; and they shall know that I am the Lord when I shall lay My vengeance upon them. If this, then, be so as ye have heard, let us learn hence a good preservative against atheism and all the ill motions of the devil and our flesh drawing thereunto; not lightly, as most men do, to pass over the judgments of God upon sin, but duly and diligently to observe them; if in ourselves, then more severely; if in our neighbours, curiously but charitably.
III. As punishment in general bringeth sin to mind which else would be forgotten, so the fashion and kind thereof well considered may lead us as it were by the hand, to know the very sin we are punished for. Gods visible judgments have usually in them a stamp of conformity with the sin for which they are inflicted; for either we suffer the same thing ourselves that we have done to others or something resembling or like unto it, or else are punished about the same thing wherein our sin was, or, lastly, in the place or time where and when we sinned. I am persuaded there is no judgment which God sends for any special sin but it hath one of these marks in it. Come, therefore, to Adoni-bezek, and let us learn of him by Gods stamp in our punishment to find out what sin He aims at. If we would once use to read this handwriting of God in our afflictions, what a motive would it be to make us leave many a sin wherein the devil nuzzles us the greater part of our life without sense and feeling? For if anything would scare us from sin, sure this would, to hear word from God Himself what the sin is He plagues us for and so sharply warns us to amend. Whensoever, therefore, any cross or calamity befalls us or any of ours, either in body, goods, or name, or in the success of anything we take in hand, let us not rebel against God with an impatient heart, or fret at the occasion or author of our misery; but let us take a just account of our life past, and thus reason with ourselves: This is surely none other but the very finger of God; I am punished, therefore have I sinned. I am punished thus and thus, in this or that sort, in this or that thing, in this or that place or time; therefore God is angry with me for something I have done, the same with that I suffer, or something like unto it, or because I sinned in this thing, or at this time, or in this place, when and where I am now punished. As I have done, so surely God hath requited me. Therefore I will not look any longer upon any other cause or occasion of this misery, of this cross or calamity, but look unto my sin and give glory unto God who sent the hand which hath done all this unto me. (Joseph Mede, B. D.)
The law of retribution
The fox finds himself at last at the furriers, and his fate is all the more certain because of the foxy conduct in which he has been engaged. They say A bad deed never dies; and they might further say that its life is quickened and its sting intensified by the cumulative influence of time. He cant reap wheat that sows hemlock; the harvest must be to the full as poisonous as the seed. As we brew, we must drink; so we cannot be too prudent as to the purity of the materials or too careful of the mixing. Do well, and have well; do ill, and look for the like. Remember the reckoning is a pregnant old saw that might well be suspended in home and office, hearthstone and wayside; it would often save men a tremendous balance on the contra side of the ledgers both of money and morals. Sin and punishment are like the body and the shadow, never very far apart. Who sin for their profit will not profit by their sin; you may see nothing but well in its commission, you will see nothing but woe in its conclusion. The law of retribution is as fixed as the law of gravitation. There is a connecting string between ourselves and our misdeeds. We tie ourselves by an invisible and enduring thread to every evil deed we do. There is an Australian missile called the boomerang, which is thrown so as to describe singular curves, and falls again at the feet of the thrower. Sin is that boomerang, which goes off into space, but turns again upon its author, and, with tenfold force, strikes him who launched it. (J. Jackson Wray.)
The retribution of God acknowledged
In saying, God hath requited me, it is to be noted that he, an heathen idolater, could see so far as to ascribe to God his affliction. Whereby we may see that very bad men do acknowledge God to be the striker and punisher of them. But where should he learn it? for though it did him no good to acknowledge it, yet it is that which many who have been baptized do not come to, but curse and ban, rage and fret, in their afflictions, crying out of their ill-fortune, as they call it, so far are they from resting in the justice of God, and to say, He hath done righteously. Also as they ascribe to chance and fortune their calamities, so do they run for help to witches and sorcerers when they be oppressed with them, which is greatly to the convicting of them. (R. Rogers.)
Retribution inevitable
Gravitation is not more unerring than retribution. Sin and punishment have been said by Emerson to grow out of one stem. Sin is like the flower that appears first; but punishment is the fruit lurking and swelling within, and destined to appear when the flower is blown. (G. A. Sowter, M. A.)
The Biblical Illustrator, edited by Joseph S. Exell (c. 1880s–1900s) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Expositor's Bible 1887 · Public Domain On v1 IT was a new hour in the history of…
PROBLEMS OF SETTLEMENT AND WAR
Jdg_1:1-11
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IT was a new hour in the history of Israel. To a lengthened period of serfdom there had succeeded a time of sojourn in tents, when the camp of the tribes, half-military, half-pastoral, clustering about the Tabernacle of Witness, moved with it from point to point through the desert. Now the march was over; the nomads had to become settlers, a change not easy for them as they expected it to be, full of significance for the world. The Book of Judges, therefore, is a second Genesis or Chronicle of Beginnings so far as the Hebrew commonwealth is concerned. We see the birth-throes of national life, the experiments, struggles, errors, and disasters out of which the moral force of the people gradually rose, growing like a pine tree out of rocky soil.
If we begin our study of the book expecting to find clear evidence of an established Theocracy, a spiritual idea of the kingdom of God ever present to the mind, ever guiding the hope and effort of the tribes, we shall experience that bewilderment which has not seldom fallen upon students of Old Testament history. Divide the life of man into two parts, the sacred and the secular; regard the latter as of no real value compared to the other, as having no relation to that Divine purpose of which the Bible is the oracle; then the Book of Judges must appear out of place in the sacred canon, for unquestionably its main topics are secular from first to last. It preserves the traditions of an age when spiritual ideas and aims were frequently out of sight, when a nation was struggling for bare existence, or, at best, for a rude kind of unity and freedom. But human life, sacred and secular, is one. A single strain of moral urgency runs through the epochs of national development from barbarism to Christian civilisation. A single strain of urgency unites the boisterous vigour of the youth and the sagacious spiritual courage of the man. It is on the strength first, and then on the discipline and purification of the will, that everything depends. There must be energy, or there can be no adequate faith, no earnest religion. We trace in the Book of Judges the springing up and growth of a collective energy which gives power to each separate life. To our amazement we may discover that the Mosaic Law and Ordinances are neglected for a time; but there can be no doubt of Divine Providence, the activity of the redeeming Spirit. Great ends are being served, -a development is proceeding which will by and by make religious thought strong, obedience and worship zealous. It is not for us to say that spiritual evolution ought to proceed in this way or that. In the study of natural and supernatural fact our business is to observe with all possible care the goings forth of God and to find as far as we may their meaning and issue. Faith is a profound conviction that the facts of the world justify themselves and the wisdom and righteousness of the Eternal; it is the key that makes history articulate, no mere tale full of sound and fury signifying nothing. And the key of faith which here we are to use in the interpretation of Hebrew life has yet to be applied to all peoples and times. That this may be done we firmly believe: there is needed only the mind broad enough in wisdom and sympathy to gather the annals of the world into one great Bible or Book of God.
Opening the story of the Judges, we find ourselves in a keen atmosphere of warlike ardour softened by scarcely an air of spiritual grace. At once we are plunged into military preparations; councils of war meet and the clash of weapons is heard. Battle follows battle. Iron chariots hurtle along the valleys, the hillsides bristle with armed men. The songs are of strife and conquest; the great heroes are those who smite the uncircumcised hip and thigh. It is the story of Jehovahs people; but where is Jehovah the merciful? Does He reign among them, or sanction their enterprise? Where amid this turmoil and bloodshed is the movement towards the far off Messiah and the holy mountain where nothing shall hurt or destroy? Does Israel prepare for blessing all nations by crushing those that occupy the land he claims? Problems many meet us in Bible history; here surely is one of the gravest. And we cannot go with Judah in that first expedition; we must hold back in doubt till clearly we understand how these wars of conquest are necessary to the progress of the world. Then, even though the tribes are as yet unaware of their destiny and how it is to be fulfilled, we may go up with them against Adoni-bezek.
Canaan is to be colonised by the seed of Abraham, Canaan and no other land. It is not now, as it was in Abrahams time, a sparsely peopled country, with room enough for a new race. Canaanites, Hivites, Perizzites, Amorites cultivate the plain of Esdraelon and inhabit a hundred cities throughout the land. The Hittites are in considerable force, a strong people with a civilisation of their own. To the north Phoenicia is astir with a mercantile and vigorous race. The Philistines have settlements southward along the coast. Had Israel sought a region comparatively unoccupied, such might, perhaps, have been found on the northern coast of Africa. But Syria is the destined home of the tribes.
The old promise to Abraham has been kept before the minds of his descendants. The land to which they have moved through the desert is that of which he took earnest by the purchase of a grave. But the promise of God looks forward to the circumstances that are to accompany its fulfilment; and it is justified because the occupation of Canaan is the means to a great development of righteousness. For, mark the position which the Hebrew nation is to take. It is to be the central state of the world, in verity the Mountain of Gods House for the world. Then observe how the situation of Canaan fits it to be the seat of this new progressive power. Egypt, Babylon, Assyria, Greece, Rome, Carthage, lie in a rude circle around it. From its seaboard the way is open to the west. Across the valley of Jordan goes the caravan route to the East. The Nile, the Orontes, the Aegean Sea are not far off. Canaan does not confine its inhabitants, scarcely separates them from other peoples. It is in the midst of the old world.
Is not this one reason why Israel must inhabit Palestine? Suppose the tribes settled in the highlands of Armenia or along the Persian Gulf; suppose them to have migrated westward from Egypt instead of eastward, and to have found a place of habitation on towards Libya: would the history in that case have had the same movement and power? Would the theatre of prophecy and the scene of the Messiahs work have set the gospel of the ages in the same relief, or the growing City of God on the same mountain height? Not only is Canaan accessible to the emigrants from Egypt, but it is by position and configuration suited to develop the genius of the race. Gennesaret and Asphaltitis; the tortuous Jordan and Kishon, that "river of battles"; the cliffs of Engedi, Gerizim and Ebal, Carmel and Tabor, Moriah and Olivet, - these are needed as the scene of the great Divine revelation. No other rivers, no other lakes nor mountains on the surface of the earth will do.
This, however, is but part of the problem which meets us in regard to the settlement in Canaan. There are the inhabitants of the land to be considered - these Amorites, Hittites, Jebusites, Hivites. How do we justify Israel in displacing them, slaying them, absorbing them? Here is a question first of evolution, then of the character of God.
Do we justify Saxons in their raid on Britain? History does. They become dominant, they rule, they slay, they assimilate; and there grows up British nationality strong and trusty, the citadel of freedom and religious life. The case is similar, yet there is a difference, strongly in favour of Israel as an invading people. For the Israelites have been tried by stern discipline: they are held together by a moral law, a religion divinely revealed, a faith vigorous though but in germ. The Saxons worshipping Thor, Frea, and Woden sweep religion before them in the first rush of conquest. They begin by destroying Roman civilisation and Christian culture in the land they ravage. They appear "dogs," "wolves," "whelps from the kennel of barbarism" to the Britons they overcome. But the Israelites have learned to fear Jehovah, and they bear with them the ark of His covenant.
As for the Canaanitish tribes, compare them now with what they were-when Abraham and Isaac fed their flocks in the plain of Mamre or about the springs of Beersheba. Abraham found in Canaan noble, courteous men. Aner, Eshcol and Mature, Amorites, were his trusted confederates; Ephron the Hittite matched his magnanimity; Abimelech of Gerar "feared the Lord." In Salem reigned a king or royal priest, Melchizedek, unique in ancient history, a majestic unsullied figure, who enjoyed the respect and tribute of the Hebrew patriarch. Where are the successors of those men? Idolatry has corrupted Canaan. The old piety of simple races has died away before the hideous worship of Moloch and Ashtoreth. It is over degenerate peoples that Israel is to assert its dominance; they must learn the way of Jehovah or perish. This conquest is essential to the progress of the world. Here in the centre of empires a stronghold of pure ideas and commanding morality is to be established, an altar of witness for the true God.
So far we move without difficulty towards a justification of the Hebrew descent on Canaan. Still, however, when we survey the progress of conquest, the idea struggling for confirmation in our minds that God was King and Guide of this people, while at the same time we know that all nations could equally claim Him as their Origin, marking how on field after field thousands were left dying and dead, we have to find an answer to the question whether the slaughter and destruction even of idolatrous races for the sake of Israel can be explained in harmony with Divine justice. And this passes into still wider inquiries. Is there intrinsic value in human life? Have men a proper right of existence and self-development? Does not Divine Providence imply that the history of each people, the life of each person will have its separate end and vindication? There is surely a reason in the righteousness and love of God for every human experience, and Christian thought cannot explain the severity of Old Testament ordinances by assuming that the Supreme has made a new dispensation for Himself. The problem is difficult, but we dare not evade it nor doubt a full solution to be possible.
We pass here beyond mere "natural evolution." It is not enough to say that there had to be a struggle for life among races and individuals. If natural forces are held to be the limit and equivalent of God, then "survival of the fittest" may become a religious doctrine, but assuredly it will introduce us to no God of pardon, no hope of redemption. We must discover a Divine end in the life of each person, a member it may be of some doomed race, dying on a field of battle in the holocaust of its valour and chivalry. Explanation is needed of all slaughtered and "waste" lives, untold myriads of lives that never tasted freedom or knew holiness.
The explanation we find is this: that for a human life in the present stage of existence the opportunity of struggle for moral ends-it may be ends of no great dignity, yet really moral, and, as the race advances, religious-this makes life worth living and brings to every one the means of true and lasting gain. "Where ignorant armies clash by night" there may be in the opposing ranks the most various notions of religion and of what is morally good. The histories of the nations that meet in shock of battle determine largely what hopes and aims guide individual lives. But to the thousands who do valiantly this conflict belongs to the vital struggle in which some idea of the morally good or of religious duty directs and animates the soul. For hearth and home, for wife and children, for chief and comrades, for Jehovah or Baal, men fight, and around these names there cluster thoughts the sacredest possible to the age, dignifying life and war and death. There are better kinds of struggle than that which is acted on the bloody field; yet struggle of one kind or other there must be. It is the law of existence for the barbarian, for the Hebrew, for the Christian. Ever there is a necessity for pressing towards the mark, striving to reach and enter the gate of higher life. No land flowing with milk and honey to be peaceably inherited and enjoyed rewards the generation which has fought its way through the desert. No placid possession of cities and vineyards rounds off the life of Canaanitish tribe. The gains of endurance are reaped, only to be sown again in labour and tears for a further harvest. Here on earth this is the plan of God for men; and when another life crowns the long effort of this world of change, may it not be with fresh calls to more glorious duty and achievement?
But the golden cord of Divine Providence has more than one strand; and while the conflicts of life are appointed for the discipline of men and nations in moral vigour and in fidelity to such religious ideas as they possess, the purer and stronger faith always giving more power to those who exercise it, there is also in the course of life, and especially in the suffering war entails, a reference to the sins of men. Warfare is a sad necessity. Itself often a crime, it issues the judgment of God against folly and crime. Now Israel, now the Canaanite becomes a hammer of Jehovah. One people has been true to its best, and by that faithfulness it gains the victory. Another has been false, cruel, treacherous, and the hands of the fighters grow weak, their swords lose edge, their chariot wheels roll heavily, they are swept away by the avenging tide. Or the sincere, the good are overcome; the weak who are in the right sink before the wicked who are strong. Yet the moral triumph is always gained. Even in defeat and death there is victory for the faithful.
In these wars of Israel we find many a story of judgment as well as a constant proving of the worth of mans religion and virtue. Neither was Israel always in the right, nor had those races which Israel overcame always a title to the power they held and the land they occupied. Jehovah was a stern arbiter among the combatants. When His own people failed in the courage and humility of faith, they were chastised. On the other hand, there were tyrants and tyrannous races, freebooters and banditti, pagan hordes steeped in uncleanness who had to be judged and punished. Where we cannot trace the reason of what appears mere waste of life or wanton cruelty, there lie behind, in the ken of the All-seeing, the need and perfect vindication of all He suffered to be done in the ebb and flow of battle, amid the riot of war.
Beginning now with the detailed narrative, we find first a case of retribution, in which the Israelites served the justice of God. As yet the Canaanite power was unbroken in the central region of Western Palestine, where Adoni-bezek ruled over the cities of seventy chiefs. It became a question who should lead the tribes against this petty despot, and recourse was had to the priests at Gilgal for Divine direction. The answer of the oracle was that Judah should head the campaign, the warlike vigour and numerical strength of that tribe fitting it to take the foremost place. Judah accepting the post of honour invited Simeon, closely related by common descent from Leah, to join the expedition; and thus began a confederacy of these southern tribes which had the effect of separating them from the others throughout the whole period of the judges. The locality of Bezek which the king of the Canaanites held as his chief fortress is not known. Probably it was near the Jordan valley, about halfway between the two greater lakes. From it the tyranny of Adoni-bezek extended northward and southward over the cities of the seventy, whose submission he had cruelly ensured by rendering them unfit for war. Here, in the first struggle, Judah was completely successful. The rout of the Canaanites and Perizzites was decisive, and the slaughter so great as to send a thrill of terror through the land. And now the rude judgment of men works out the decree of God. Adoni-bezek suffers the same mutilation as he had inflicted on the captive chiefs and in Oriental manner makes acknowledgment of a just fate. There is a certain religousness in his mind, and he sincerely bows himself under the judgment of a God against Whom he had tried issues in vain. Had these troops of Israel come in the name of Jehovah? Then Jehovah had been watching Adoni-bezek in his pride when, as he daily feasted in his hall, the crowd of victims grovelled at his feet like dogs.
Thus early did ideas of righteousness and of wide authority attach themselves in Canaan to the name of Israels God. It is remarkable how on the appearance of a new race the first collision with it on the battlefield will produce an impression of its capacity and spirit and of unseen powers fighting along with it. Joshuas dash through Canaan doubtless struck far and wide a belief that the new comers had a mighty God to support them; the belief is reinforced, and there is added a thought of Divine justice. The retribution of Jehovah meant Godhead far larger and more terrible, and at the same time more august, than the religion of Baal had ever presented to the mind. From this point the Israelites, if they had been true to their heavenly King, fired with the ardour of His name, would have occupied a moral vantage ground and proved invincible. The fear of Jehovah would have done more for them than their own valour and arms. Had the people of the land seen that a power was being established amongst them in the justice and benignity of which they could trust, had they learned not only to fear but to adore Jehovah, there would have been quick fulfilment of the promise which gladdened the large heart of Abraham. The realisation, however, had to wait for many a century.
It cannot be doubted that Israel had under Moses received such an impulse in the direction of faith in the one God, and such a conception of His character and will, as declared the spiritual mission of the tribes. The people were not all aware of their high destiny, not sufficiently instructed to have a competent sense of it; but the chiefs of the tribes, the Levites and the heads of households, should have well understood the part that fell to Israel among the nations of the world. The law in its main outlines was known, and it should have been revered as the charter of the commonwealth. Under the banner of Jehovah the nation ought to have striven not for its own position alone, the enjoyment of fruitful fields and fenced cities, but to raise the standard of human morality and enforce the truth of Divine religion. The gross idolatry of the peoples around should have been continually testified against; the principles of honesty, of domestic purity, of regard for human life, of neighbourliness and parental authority, as well as the more spiritual ideas expressed in the first table of the Decalogue, ought to have been guarded and dispensed as the special treasure of the nation. In this way Israel, as it enlarged its territory, would from the first have been clearing one space of earth for the good customs and holy observances that make for spiritual development. The greatest of all trusts is committed to a race when it is made capable of this; but here Israel often failed, and the reproaches of her prophets had to be poured out from age to age.
The ascendency which Israel secured in Canaan, or that which Britain has won in India, is not, to begin with, justified by superior strength, nor by higher intelligence, nor even because in practice the religion of the conquerors is better than that of the vanquished. It is justified because, with all faults and crimes that may for long attend the rule of the victorious race, there lie, unrealised at first, in conceptions of God and of duty, the promise and germ of a higher education of the world. Developed in the course of time, the spiritual genius of the conquerors vindicates their ambition and their success. The world is to become the heritage and domain of those who have the secret of large and ascending life.
Judah, moving southward from Bezek, took Jerusalem, not the stronghold on the hilltop, but the city, and smote it with the edge of the sword. Not yet did that citadel which has been the scene of so many conflicts become a rallying point for the tribes. The army, leaving Adoni-bezek dead in Jerusalem, with many who owned him as chief, swept southward still to Hebron and Debir. At Hebron the task was not unlike that which had been just accomplished. There reigned three chiefs, Sheshai, Ahiman, and Talmai, who are mentioned again and again in the annals as if their names had been deeply branded on the memory of the age. They were sons of Anak, bandit captains, whose rule was a terror to the countryside. Their power had to be assailed and overthrown, not only for the sake of Judah which was to inhabit their stronghold, but for the sake of humanity. The law of God was to replace the fierce unregulated sway of inhuman violence and cruelty. So the practical duty of the hour carried the tribes beyond the citadel where the best national centre would have been found to attack another where an evil power sat entrenched.
One moral lies on the surface here. We are naturally anxious to gain a good position in life for ourselves, and every consideration is apt to be set aside in favour of that. Now, in a sense, it is necessary, one of the first duties, that we gain each a citadel for himself. Our influence depends to a great extent on the standing we secure, on the courage and talent we show in making good our place. Our personality must enlarge itself, make itself visible by the conquest we effect and the extent of affairs we have a right to control. Effort on this line needs not be selfish or egoistic in a bad sense. The higher self or spirit of a good man finds in chosen ranges of activity and possession its true development and calling. One may not be a worldling by any means while he follows the bent of his genius and uses opportunity to become a successful merchant, a public administrator, a great artist or man of letters. All that he adds to his native inheritance of hand, brain and soul should be and often is the means of enriching the world. Against the false doctrine of self-suppression, still urged on a perplexed generation, stands this true doctrine, by which the generous helper of men guides his life so as to become a king and priest unto God. And when we turn from persons of highest character and talent to those of smaller capacity, we may not alter the principle of judgment. They, too, serve the world, in so far as they have good qualities, by conquering citadels and reigning where they are fit to reign. If a man is to live to any purpose, play must be given to his original vigour, however much or little there is of it.
Here, then, we find a necessity belonging to the spiritual no less than to the earthly life. But there lies close beside it the shadow of temptation and sin. Thousands of people put forth all their strength to gain a fortress for themselves, leaving others to fight the sons of Anak-the intemperance, the unchastity, the atheism of the time. Instead of triumphing over the earthly, they are ensnared and enslaved. The truth is, that a safe position for ourselves we cannot have while those sons of Anak ravage the country around. The Divine call therefore often requires of us that we leave a Jerusalem unconquered for ourselves, while we pass on with the hosts of God to do battle with the public enemy. Time after time Israel, though successful at Hebron, missed the secret and learnt in bitter sadness and loss how near is the shadow to the glory.
And for anyone today, what profits it to be a wealthy man, living in state with all the appliances of amusement and luxury, well knowing, but not choosing to share the great conflicts between religion and ungodliness, between purity and vice? If the ignorance and woe of our fellow creatures do not draw our hearts, if we seek our own things as loving our own, if the spiritual does not command us, we shall certainly lose all that makes life-enthusiasm, strength, eternal joy.
Give us men who fling themselves into the great struggle, doing what they can with Christ-born ardour, foot soldiers if nothing else in the army of the Lord of Righteousness.
William Robertson Nicoll, ed., The Expositor's Bible (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1887–1910) — public domain. 65 of 66 books (1 Corinthians is not separately keyed, as that volume carries no machine-parseable verse references); section-level commentary keyed to the opening verse. Introductory and overview sections not keyed to a specific passage are excluded.
The Preacher's Complete Homiletical Commentary 1892 · Public Domain On v1 Jdg_1:1. Now after the death of Joshua.] The Speaker’s…
FAITHFULNESS AND UNFAITHFULNESS IN THE LORD’S WAR
CRITICAL NOTES.—
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Jdg_1:1. Now after the death of Joshua.] The Speaker’s Commentary says on these opening words: “But from Jdg_1:1 to Jdg_2:9 is a consecutive narrative, ending with the death of Joshua. It is therefore impossible that it should begin with the death of Joshua.” This is obviously incorrect. “A consecutive narrative” is precisely what these two chapters are not; they are a narrative containing two long parentheses (cf. Introduction.) It is not necessary to offer any remark on the suggestion of the Commentary that, under certain circumstances, “the chapter might have begun, Now after the death of Moses,” and that, “If Moses is read instead of Joshua, all difficulty disappears at once.” This, in the face of Jdg_2:2; Jdg_2:7, is unanswerable from its innocence.
Jdg_1:2. Who shall go up for us against the Canaanites?] Heb. = “Who shall go up for us to the Canaanites?” the purpose of the going up being stated in the words, “to fight against them.” “The reason why Judah was to commence the hostilities is not to be sought for in the fact that Judah was the most numerous of all the tribes, but rather in the fact that Judah had already been appointed by the blessing of Jacob (Gen_49:8-10) to be the champion of his brethren.” [Keil.]
Jdg_1:3. Come up with me into my lot.] This invitation must have been given to Simeon while the tribe of Judah was located in its own lot, though not in full possession of it. It is unnatural to suppose with Professor Cassel that when Judah gave this invitation to Simeon both tribes were dwelling at Gilgal, near Jericho, and that the Canaanites were in full possession of the territory assigned to Judah and Simeon. This would be to conclude that Joshua’s conquest of the south had almost entirely failed, and that during Joshua’s own lifetime, and is altogether at variance with Jos_15:13-19; Jos_15:63; Jos_18:1; Jos_21:43-45; Jos_22:4; Jos_23:1; Jos_24:28, and, indeed, to the whole of the latter half of that book. The request for Simeon to aid in conquering the Canaanites in the lot of Judah, made under the promise that Judah would similarly assist the tribe of Simeon in their lot, shows that the men of Judah were only appointed to recommence hostilities on their own account. Thus, the phrase, “for us,” in Jdg_1:1, must not be taken to mean that the Judahites were to make war on behalf of all the tribes, but that, after the death of Joshua, they were to begin, in their own tribe, to fulfil the commands of the Lord, and thus set an example of faithfulness to all Israel.
Jdg_1:4. The Perizzites.] The Canaanites and Perizzites are occasionally put for all the inhabitants of the land, and the latter are spoken of, not simply as dwellers in the South, as here, but in all parts of the land (Gen_13:7; Gen_34:30; Jos_11:3; Jos_17:15.) Dr. Kalisch says, “The etymology of the word ‘Perizzite’ proves that they were the inhabitants of open towns and villages (פְּרָזוֹת p’râzoth); it is clearly explained by Eze_38:11 to denote the population of places ‘without walls and bars and gates;’ and it is, in Est_9:19, used for the unfenced cities, in contradistinction to the metropolis named in Jdg_1:18. The two names of the Canaanites and Perizzites, if so coupled, designate, therefore, both the inhabitants of the walled towns and of the open country; and describe, with a certain emphasis, the two chief portions of the population.” In Bezek.] “According to the Onomast there were at that time two places very near together both named Bezek, seventeen Roman miles from Neapolis on the road to Scythopolis, i.e., about seven hours to the north of Nabulus on the road to Beisan. This description is perfectly reconcilable with 1Sa_11:8.” [Keil.]
MAIN HOMILETICS OF THE PARAGRAPH.—Jdg_1:1-4
DEAD LEADERS AND LIVING DUTIES
One generation passeth away and another followeth. The book of Joshua began with, “Now after the death of Moses.” This book opens with the similar words, “Now after the death of Joshua.” Human life is a succession of revolutions, beginning with a cradle and ending with a coffin. Generations and individuals have in them, in their relation to other generations and individuals, much of variety, but something also of monotony. We see in these opening verses—
I. A great leader dead, and life’s duties as pressing as ever. Joshua had departed from Israel, but the necessity for conflict was still with them. Of that the people now made no question whatever. As Peter Martyr observes, “They doubted not whether they should make war against the Canaanites, but their doubt was which tribe should fight before all the others.” That the fighting must be done was sufficiently manifest to everybody. Possibly the death of Joshua at once made that more manifest than it had been for some time, the death of Israel’s mighty captain encouraging their enemies to bestir themselves.
1. Let who will and what will pass away, our own work only passes with our own life. Joshua himself had diligently laboured to the very last. After resting from war, he had divided the land; after dividing the land, he built his own city of Timnath-serah, and appointed the cities of refuge and those of the Levites; while the very close of life finds him twice gathering together and earnestly counselling the people of his charge. “The night cometh when no man can work;” till it come, no one should look to rest from what he has strength to perform. In God’s army there are no retired officers, and none on half-pay. He who is too “old and stricken in years” to fight as he fought when younger may still find some city to build, and some of his fellows who are less experienced than himself to whom he can offer holy encouragement and counsel. He who began by saying, “Wist ye not that I must be about My Father’s business,” never ceased to prosecute that business till He laid down His life upon the cross.
2. The advancement of God’s purpose is dependent on no life in particular. Though the great leader of Israel was no more, the conquest of the land must still go forward. Just as the advance of the people was not formerly stayed by the death of Moses, so they were not to be kept back now by the death of Joshua. Only God is necessary. There is no man who cannot be spared when God’s time comes for his removal.
3. Great lives are sometimes removed that other lives may better feel their responsibility and cultivate their strength. Children cannot always have their parents, without the penalty of always remaining children. He who is always led will never learn to lead. It had already been said of Jacob: “As an eagle stirreth up her nest, fluttereth over her young, spreadeth abroad her wings, taketh them, beareth them on her wings, so the Lord alone did lead him, and there was no strange god with him.” He who fears he may fall is in a fair way to learn how to stand.
II. Human direction suddenly failing, and Divine guidance specially sought. “After the death of Joshua, the children of Israel asked the Lord.”
1. Prayer prompted by the removal of long familiar light. Joshua had been the Lord’s guide and helper for the people. A consciousness of increasing darkness around us, or within us, should ever prompt us to come as near as possible to Him who is the Light of the world.
2. Prayer over unfulfilled commandments. The charge to cast out the Canaanites, and to make no alliance with them, had been very solemnly given by God. As long as Joshua was alive, he was the responsible head of the people. When Joshua was removed, the commandment forthwith became so much direct obligation resting upon every Israelite. Thus burdened, the people drew near unto God for counsel. Corporate duties are a matter for individual concern and supplication. That which is a national obligation affects also every citizen. A commandment of God fulfilled in humble obedience, is as a field sown with good seed, which will presently yield a harvest of blessing; a commandment unfulfilled, is ever tending to bring forth fruit unto our discomfort, and sickness, and death. He who neglects the Divine precepts is in sore need of prayer.
3. Prayer provoked by gathering dangers. The death of Joshua was very probably the sign for increased activity among the Canaanites. Adoni-bezek had evidently gathered a large army, or he could not have lost in one battle ten thousand men.
4. Prayer for God’s appointment of our post in life. “Who shall go up?” An appeal to God to assign the post of honour to whom He would. With some, it may have been an appeal to God in the hope of not being chosen. He whom God exalts should wear his honours meekly. He whom God calls to battle should enter into conflict without fear.
5. The realism of prayer to every true-hearted suppliant. It was no light thing to ask this counsel of God, and then wait for a categorical and manifest answer. All true prayer wants real courage. When a man knows God will answer, it is no light thing to pray. The man may be sent to the battle-field. He may be deprived of a great honour, or be charged with an arduous duty. Many engage in what they call prayer, who would not dare to come before God if they believed that He would audibly or visibly impose His commands upon them. It is because they never expect any answer that myriads are bold to pray.
III. An eminently faithful past demanding a no less vigorous future. “Judah shall go up.” As the Jdg_1:8-16 show, the Judahites had already played a conspicuous part in those more detached conflicts which, after the great national battles, had fallen to the separate tribes. They had taken the lower city of Jerusalem (cf. Jdg_1:8 with Jdg_1:21, and Jos_12:10), and under the lead of Caleb and Othniel, Hebron and Kirjath-sepher had both fallen before their attack. He who has done well in the past is under perpetual obligation to do no less well in the future. God also chooses those for new duties who have best served in the past.
IV. God specially choosing some of His servants, but leaving them liberty to seek the help of others. “And Judah said unto Simeon his brother, Come up with me into my lot.”
1. The benefits of co-operation. What one cannot do, two can. What one can only do with difficulty, two can do easily. No one should despise the assistance of his brethren. He who accepts assistance should be willing to assist others: “I likewise will go with thee into thy lot.” This mutual help one of another becomes strength and joy to both.
2. The limits of co-operation. Judah might only seek aid from his own brethren. He might ask help from Simeon, but not from idolaters. God allows us to unite with all who are our brethren in Him, but He will suffer no union with the ungodly. For nothing more sharply than for this were the Israelites rebuked in the time of the monarchy.
V. The Lord’s call to great duties followed by His rich blessing on those who seek faithfully to perform them. “The Lord delivered the Canaanites and the Perizzites into their hand.”
1. God calls and sends none of His servants in vain. To be set to work by Him, is to be set to work which will be presently fruitful of enlarged possessions and greater peace.
2. God’s blessing answers to His own promise of blessing. To the man who is faithful, the Divine promise is the shadow which the actual mercy, in its coming to us, casts before. Thus, the words of promise in Jdg_1:2, herald the same words, as history, in Jdg_1:4.
3. God’s blessing satisfies His people’s highest hopes. If this was so with Judah in his earthly possession, much more will it be true in relation to the inheritance above.
OUTLINES AND COMMENTS ON THE VERSES
THREATENED DANGER AND ANXIOUS PRAYER.—Jdg_1:1-2
It is thought that the Canaanites were, at this time, preparing to act on the offensive against the Israelites. From Jdg_1:4-7, it would appear that large numbers of warriors had again ventured to mass themselves together. Probably Adoni-bezek was gathering his forces to attack the southern tribes of the recent conquerors of the land. Regarded in this light, the verses may be treated as follows:—
I. The Lord’s enemies threatening the Lord’s people.
1. The Canaanites may have judged Israel’s strength by outward appearances. Joshua was now dead. The able soldier could act against them no more. But they forgot Joshua’s God. Then, the Canaanites had long been allowed to rest in peace. Probably they learned to interpret this interval of peace as a sign of Israel’s weakness. Jehovah had not recently done many mighty works. They mistook the visible for the actual. Thousands do that every day that passes.
2. The Canaanites seem to have been tempted to renew the war by Israel’s apparent weakness. The time of the weakness of the Church is the time of the world’s boldness. But wicked men should remember the God of the Church: “These things hast thou done and I kept silence,” says Jehovah. He adds, “But I will reprove thee.” The silence of Jehovah is not any sign of His weakness.
II. The Lord’s people driven to prayer by danger. “Israel asked of the Lord.” The removal of Joshua, and the bold front of their enemies, made them ask counsel of God. His prayer has the following features:—
1. It recognised the necessity of human effort. “Who shall go up?” Some one must go. God will not so work as to save us from conflict; He thinks it enough to turn our conflict into victory.
2. It was a simple and direct prayer. It had no redundancies and “vain repetitions.” Men in deep want seldom use superfluous sentences and phrases. The eloquence of prayer is in its sense of need, and in its directness.
3. This prayer was based on a known command. There was no inquiry as to the work being a duty, but only as to the manner in which the duty was to be done.
4. The prayer manifestly anticipates some answer. The words of the inquiry leave no impression that the suppliants so much as thought of a refusal. They had no idea that God would be silent. Their brief and urgent question is full of the faith pressed upon the Hebrews of a later generation: “He that cometh to God must believe that He is, and that He is a rewarder of them that diligently seek Him.”
III. The Lord’s gracious answer to His people’s earnest inquiry.
1. The answer was prompt. It seems to have been given at once.
2. The answer was clear. It left no one in doubt. “Judah shall go up.”
3. The answer was in excess of the prayer. The people did but ask, “Who shall go?” God both answered that, and gave them a gracious promise of success: “Behold, I have delivered the land into his hand.”
4. The answer was sufficient. In the strength of God’s gracious words, Judah and Simeon went on to victory.
“GOD, WHO GIVETH TO ALL MEN LIBERALLY.”—Jdg_1:2
I. God gives to all who ask.
II. God promises more than we ask.
III. God gives fully as much as He promises.
IV. God both promises and gives according to our need.
ENTICEMENTS TO PRAYER
“God gives more than is asked, or thought needful. The which dealing of His doth add yet greater heartening and encouraging of us to prayer. Joseph, whose feet were pinned in the stocks, prayed that he might be delivered out of prison; and God not only delivered him, but brought him out with great honour. Esther prayed against the spiteful attempt of Haman, that she and her people might be preserved from the deadly snare which he laid for their lives. But what did the Lord? He not only saved them, but utterly destroyed both Haman and all his seed. So, when the prodigal son, in his penury and misery, desired that he might be received but as a servant into his father’s house, he was taken in and entertained as a son, and nothing of the costliest apparel and daintiest food was thought too good for him.” [Richard Rogers, 1615.]
THE MANIFOLD MEANING OF GOD’S ANSWER TO ISRAEL’S PRAYER
“It asserts the sovereignty of God in disposing and ordering the work which His servants have to perform.
“It reminds us that every one is not to attempt everything; for Judah is to fight the enemy, and the other tribes are to remain at home.
“It promises victory, not to every ardent soldier who might volunteer to take the field, but to the tribe whom the Lord should order to the battle.
“It disturbs all rule-of-three calculations of success in proportion to the number of agents men may induce to go to work; success is for those whom the Lord shall send.
“It allows of no objection, no plea of incompetency, no deceitful humility, on the part of the called soldier; ‘Judah shall go up:’ it is the word of a King.
“It hides pride from man, by declaring that although Judah would conquer, it would be only through Divine ordination and help.” [Luke H. Wiseman, M.A.]
BEGINNING AND CONTINUING
“Israel is believing and obedient after the death of Joshua. Like a child after the death of its father, it has the best intentions. First love is full of flowing zeal. To begin well is never without a blessing. The best inheritance is to continue obedient towards God.” [Dr. Cassel.]
“The words, ‘I have delivered the land,’ are meant prophetically; with God that which is certain in the future is as if it were present.” [Lisco.]
“The death of Joshua is the date of degeneracy. So in spiritual respects: as long as the true Joshua lives in the soul, there is health. St. Paul says, ‘I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me.’ ” [Origen.]
PRAYER TO GOD, AND CO-OPERATION WITH MEN.—Jdg_1:3-4
I. God’s promises are not to provoke careless ease, but to stimulate us to holy caution and effort. Judah has received an unconditional and absolute promise, but seeks nevertheless the aid of Simeon. As Bachmann says, “It is not incompatible with the obedience of faith that Judah makes use of the helps placed by God at his disposal.” It would be incompatible with true faith not to use such helps.
II. Those who are “workers together with God” must not despise the aid even of their weaker brethren. When men are working for the Lord and with the Lord
(1) They must not seek aid from the Lord’s enemies;
(2) They have a claim on all who are brethren;
(3) The very weakest of their brethren may afford good help.
III. Such as seek help from their brethren should be very willing to render help in return. “Come with me into my lot, that we may fight against the Canaanites; and I likewise will go with thee into thy lot.” Trapp says, “The number two hath by the heathen been accounted accursed, because it was the first departure from unity.” By the Christian, with a loftier outlook, that same number two might rather be blessed, because it is the first number at which true unity can begin. Real union is not in any one particle, or unit, but in the blending of many. The weakest may find some one he can help—may help even the strong.
“Let me not deem that I was made in vain,
Or that my being was an accident,
Which Fate, in working its sublime intent,
Not wished to be, to hinder would not deign.
Each drop uncounted in a storm of rain
Hath its own mission, and is duly sent
To its own leaf or blade, not idly spent
’Mid myriad dimples on the shipless main.
The very shadow of an insect’s wing,
For which the violet cared not while it stayed,
Yet felt the lighter for its vanishing,
Proved that the sun was shining by its shade:
Then can a drop of the Eternal Spring,
Shadow of living lights, in vain be made?”
—HARTLEY COLERIDGE.
Thus, the weakest worker has his mission: there is some one to whom he may be of service; but he who receives aid from the weak should not refuse to help the weak.
IV. “Those who help one another in love have reason to hope that God will graciously help them both.” God helps us more willingly when we are found in the union of brotherhood, than in the isolation of selfishness. Judah might have triumphed without Simeon; what we should rather remember is this—with Simeon, Judah did triumph.” [Partly from Matt. Henry.]
UNION IN WORKS OF FAITH AND OBEDIENCE
“As by this specimen at the beginning of this book, showing what two tribes of Israel could do by faith and obedience against Adoni-bezek, who had subdued and enslaved seventy kings, God showed what the twelve tribes might have done, if they had believed and obeyed Him; and that all their subsequent miseries were due to defection from God. In like manner, also, the Christian Church, if men had followed the example of the Apostles—the Judahs and Simeons of the first ages—and gone forth in their spirit of faith and love against the powers of darkness, they might long since have evangelised the world. All the distresses of Christendom are ascribable to desertions from Christ, and not to any imperfection, as some have alleged, in Christianity.” [Dr. Wordsworth.]
THE USE OF MEANS
“All they are counted to tempt God, which trusting to God’s promises do neglect human help. Christ hath no otherwise confuted the devil, which counselled Him to cast Himself down headlong, under the pretence of God’s promise. David, in the latter book of Samuel, setteth himself forth unto us as an example, who being wonderfully adorned with the promises of God, used for all that in the insurrection of Absalom not only to flee away, but also the diligence of Hushai the Archite and of the priests. Yea, and Paul the Apostle, although his only confidence was in Christ, yet he appealed unto Cæsar, and made a dissension between the Pharisees and Sadducees, and testified that he was a citizen of Rome. It is evident, therefore, that we must use the help of nature and wisdom to obtain those things which God hath promised to give us. Wherefore the young men of our time are diligently to be admonished to attain unto languages, good arts and sciences, and that with great study; which they may, when opportunity serveth, use in preaching and defending the Gospel. For although God has promised that the preaching of His Word shall be fruitful through the benefit of His Spirit, yet must every man instruct himself in his vocation according to his ability.” [Peter Martyr, 1560.]
The Preacher's Complete Homiletical Commentary (gen. ed. Joseph S. Exell; Funk & Wagnalls, c. 1892) — public domain (pre-1929). A full-Bible homiletical/sermon-outline anthology covering 65 of 66 books (2 John is absent from the source module). Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Sermon Bible 1900 · Public Domain On v1 Judges 1 and 2
Judges 1 and 2
The character of Joshua is, like that of many soldiers, simple and easily understood. He was strong and of a good courage, a man, fit not only for battle, but for tedious campaigning; full of resources, and able to keep up the heart of a whole people by his hopeful bearing. It was one of the most difficult of tasks which was entrusted to Joshua. He was to lead the people through a series of the most brilliant and exciting military successes, and then to turn them to the most peaceful pursuits. It has been said of the Romans, that they conquered like savages and ruled like philosophic statesmen. The same transition had to be accomplished by Israel, and into the strong hand of Joshua was the delicate task committed.
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I. But the work he did needs some justification. Many persons have been staggered by the slaughter of the Canaanites. No doubt the Canaanites were idolaters, but is this not to propagate religion by the sword? The key to this difficulty was given in the very first confirmation of the grant made to Abraham. When the land of Canaan was made over to him and his descendants, he was told that they could not at once enter on possession, "because the iniquity of the Amorites was not full" The transference of territory was thus from the first viewed and treated as a judicial transaction. Between this and many other outwardly similar conquests there was all the difference which there is between a righteous execution, which rejoices the hearts of all good men, and murder, which makes us ashamed of our nature.
II. The new leader of Israel received a name which, by identifying his leadership with God’s, gave constant promise of victory. Originally called Hoshea, or Salvation, this name was changed, when he led the spies, to Jehoshua, or the Lord is my Salvation. And it has never ceased to seem significant to the Christian that this name of Joshua should have been that by which our Lord was called. (1) We are, in the first place, reminded by this parallel that the help afforded to us in Christ is God’s help, and this in a fuller sense than was true in Israel’s case. The Angel of the Lord was one person, and Joshua another. But in the person of Jesus Christ these two are one—the human Leader and divine Saviour. (2) We are reminded by this parallel that as in the conquest of the land by Joshua, so in our salvation, there is a somewhat perplexing mixture of miracle and hard fighting. (3) We see in this conquest to which Israel was led by Joshua, in what sense and to what extent we should look for present victory over sin. Joshua did not deal only in promises, and no one who is in earnest about sin will be put off with mere expectations of deliverance. The Saviour I need is one who can help me to-day, one who counts my present enemies His enemies, and who can communicate to me such real strength as shall make the difference between my being defeated and my conquering them. If you fall into sin that makes you doubt whether Christ is a present Saviour, there is really nothing else to say than this: You must win back again the ground you have lost.
M. Dods, Israel’s Iron Age, p. 3.
Jdg 1:7
I. As I have done, so God hath requited me—then the life of man cannot escape the judgment of God. Man may deny it, may theoretically disregard it, but cannot escape it.
II. As I have done, so God hath requited me—then let no man take the law into his own hands. We are to look at the moral workings of things, and to see in the results which are forced upon us, not the petty anger of man, but the holy and righteous judgment of God.
III. As I have done, so God hath requited me every good deed will be honoured with appropriate reward. Remember: (1) Good deeds are their own reward. (2) Deeds done merely for the sake of reward cannot be good.
IV. As I have done, so God hath requited me—then though justice be long delayed, yet it will be vindicated eventually.
Parker, City Temple, vol. iii., p. 182 (see also Pulpit Notes, p. 133).
References: Jdg 1:7.—Parker, vol. vi., p. 162. Jdg 1:7.—Homiletic Magazine, vol. ix., p. 16. Jdg 1:19, Jdg 1:20.—Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xxviii., No. 1690. Jdg 1:27-36.—Parker, vol. v., p. 313. 1.—Expositor, 3rd series, vol. v., p. 51. 1, etc.—G. Gilfillan, Alpha and Omega, vol. ii., p. 179.
Jdg 2:1-5
This is clearly an incident to arrest our attention and to arouse our curiosity. Let us inquire: (1) Who this angel was? (2) What the meaning of "Gilgal" and "Bochim" is; and (3) What significancy may lie in that apparently meaningless ascent of the heavenly visitant from Gilgal to Bochim.
I. Most commentators recognise in this angel the uncreated angel of the covenant, even the second person of the Blessed Trinity. This "Angel" uses words which are emphatically the words of God Himself and of no lesser being.
II. 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. Bochim was the place of weepers—the place of mere feelings, emotions, idle fears, barren sorrow, unavailing regret.
III. The visit of the angel to reproach us should teach us to make a vigorous move, to break up from Bochim, and make Gilgal once more our headquarters. Sentimental regrets, self-bewailing tears, barren religious emotions, only divert attention from real remedies and practical duties.
R. Winterbotham, Sermons and Expositions, p. 59.
I. The sin of Israel, here reproved, consisted in their not thoroughly driving out the inhabitants of the land and throwing down their altars. Christ bids His people mortify their members which are on the earth. Come out and be separate and touch not the unclean thing. For generally we 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 aim is lost, and soon, amid the snares of worldly conformity, we sigh for the day of our visitation, when we might have started from a higher platform and run a higher race than we can now hope ever to realise.
II. Consider the inexcusableness of the sin in question. 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 swore 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? A past redemption, a present possession, and a covenant never to be broken. 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. Consider the dangerous and disastrous consequences of the sin in question. Hear the awful sentence of God: "They shall be as thorns in your sides," etc. (Jdg 2:3), and then see how the children of Israel lift up their voice and weep. The golden opportunity is lost, their error is not to be retrieved, its bitter fruits are to be reaped from henceforth many days.
R. S. Candlish, Sermons, p 155.
References: Jdg 2:1-5.—J. Baldwin Brown, The Sunday Afternoon, p. 185.
Jdg 2:4
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 coming up from Gilgal seems to connect at once the prophet of Bochim with Joshua’s vision of the Captain of the Lord’s host. In this place and in many others, we have a previous manifestation of the second person of the Trinity in the form of the manhood which in the latter days He was about to take into God. We here see the eternal Word in one of His three great offices, viz., that of prophet or teacher. 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. The first is want of depth of soul. 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 God’s service, from which, in the hottest fire of temptation, there is never a turning back to the way of evil again.
Bishop Woodford, Oxford Lent Sermons, 1870, p. 63.
References: Jdg 2:4, Jdg 2:5.—Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xxviii., No. 1680. Jdg 2:18.—Parker, vol. vi., p. 162. 2—Ibid., vol. v., p. 324. Jdg 3:4.—Ibid., vol. vi., p. 163. Jdg 3:9, Jdg 3:10.—Ibid., vol. v., p. 333. Jdg 3:15.—Ibid., vol. v., p. 339. Jdg 3:16.—S. Baring-Gould, Village Preaching for a Year, vol. ii., Appendix, p. 16. Jdg 3:20.—T. Guthrie, Sunday Magazine, 1873, p. 281; T. Cartwright, Thursday Penny Pulpit, vol. vi., p. 125. Jdg 3:31.—S. Baring-Gould, Village Preaching for a Year, vol. ii., Appendix, p. 47; Parker, vol. v., p. 344; T. Kelly, Pulpit Trees, p. 21. Jdg 4:1-24. —Clergyman’s Magazine, vol. iv., p. 279. Jdg 4:8.—J. Keble, Sermons for the Christian Year: Sundays after 2rinity, Part I., p. 64. Jdg 4:8, Jdg 4:9.—S. Leathes, Truth and Life, p. 99. Jdg 4:14.—Clergyman’s Magazine, vol. xvi., p. 273.
The Sermon Bible, ed. William Robertson Nicoll (1888–1900) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
F. W. Grant 1903 · Public Domain On v1 Subdivision 1. (Jdg 1:1-36; Jdg 2:1-5.)
Subdivision 1. (Jdg 1:1-36; Jdg 2:1-5.)
Mingling with the Nations to be Dispossessed.
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1. There are here five sections, in which the grading of the lessons is evident, and the commencing decline apparent even from the first. Judah, the leader in the wilderness, the leader, too, in the settlement of the land, the lion-tribe of Jacob’s prophecy, comes before us as the leader now, and that by divine appointment; and yet to illustrate this. At the same time, the sovereignty and sufficiency of God are illustrated also in the most striking way, that we may see there is no failure upon His part. With the people it begins, indeed, at the highest, -not, as we might suppose,with the lowest: and this is noteworthy, -a thing of which we have many examples in Scripture; for high and low are alike dependent upon divine grace, and in the littleness of humanity not far removed from one another.
(1) Israel are at first one; and in that subjection to God, which is true unity: "Who shall go up for us against the Canaanites first," they ask, "to fight against them?" And the Lord not only names the champion, but assures success: "Judah shall go up; behold, I have delivered the land into his hand." We have before seen what is the reason, spiritually, of Judah being thus in the front; and that the spirit of "praise" is the spirit of power. Necessarily: for it puts God first, and implies devotedness to Him, -a joy in obedience which gives courage and enthusiasm. The cause is God’s, and it must prosper. If Judah be weak, Israel as a whole must languish.
But Judah is, in fact, weak already. The land is pledged to him by God, and to him alone. The word is precise, and none may add to it any more than diminish from it: to add to it is really to diminish from it. Yet Judah turns to Simeon, his brother, for help, as if the promise of God were not enough. "Come with me," he says, "into my lot, and let us fight against the Canaanites; and I will go with thee into thy lot."
A little thing this will seem even to most, in a day when men supplement God’s word after their own pleasure. But is it not, in fact, unbelief in God’s truth or power, that is at work in it? Simeon, Judah’s brother in a special way, may be for him the most suited of all companions, and God even has linked their inheritance, in a special way, together: but all this is no argument, if God’s word is to be followed, and be the perfect word that indeed it is. Simeon, "hearing," stands, as we have seen, for communion, which all right "hearing" surely is; and communion, can it not aid worship against the Canaanites, -in the spiritual warfare to which God’s Israel is called? Yes, in its place, but not out of it; wherever the word of God is given its place also, for what communion can there be apart from this? And do we not need the reminder that communion and the authority of the Word must go together, and that what purports to be communion can never really be made to eke out a worship which has lost the simplicity of obedience which certifies it to be truly that. We shall find, accordingly, in due time, the loss of power which is the result.
Such things are not, however, always at once discovered. Judah and Simeon go together, and the Canaanites and Perizzites are delivered into their hand: they smite in Bezek a host ten thousand strong. In Bezek they find, also, Adoni-bezek, whom they pursue and maim, inflicting the judgment of God upon him for cruelties of this kind inflicted upon others. He himself owns it as this, -a remarkable witness to Israel of how and why God was against the Canaanites; and that He whose judgments they were executing was over all. His name goes with the lesson: Bezek* means "fettered," and so were these hosts that they destroyed; Adonibezek, "lord of Bezek," it being doubtless his chief city, but thus also and literally, "a lord in fetters." So it is with the freest, when in opposition to God, and with the mightiest, in His hand.
{* Bezeq, literally "in a fetter."}
He is brought to Jerusalem, only to die there; and the city itself is smitten with the sword and burnt; for the "foundation of peace" must be righteousness, and the Jebusite city is only an hypocrisy, though few may believe this now.
(2) Judah proceeds to other victories; and here we have the repetition of a story familiar to us, mostly in the words in which it has been given us before. The taking of Hebron and the destruction of the Anakim, which had been before ascribed to Caleb, are here ascribed to Judah, the tribe to which Caleb belongs; but Caleb himself appears in the next incident, in which Othniel and Achsah also are found as before. Scripture is not afraid of a repetition which emphasizes God’s delight in the achievements of His people, among which Achsah’s request for the water-springs figures alongside of Othniel’s capture of Debir. How little should we, perhaps, think of putting these things together! And, indeed, the spiritual interpretation must be found in order rightly to understand it. Then Othniel, the "lion of God," is the type of the heroism of faith, which, like the son of Kenaz, finds strength in Another, and its helpmeet in that simplicity which claims and receives the fullness of the Spirit for making good its portion in the land. These two must come together in the Canaan-dweller even now; and where they are found, a "book of remembrance" will not be wanting. And still the rule is, "Conquer, and work the land"; but it must be said today, there are few Othniels, fewer Achsahs, fewest of all those in whom the two are united. The Lord increase their race!
Thus, as we have had in the first part of this section the sovereignty and sufficiency of God for His people, we have in the second part the relationships of faith in those who apprehend it. And let us remember that Caleb, Othniel, Achsah, are Judeans -worshipers. Worship has to do intimately with the things here spoken of, which test and manifest it. With Caleb, the "whole-hearted," this is easily seen; but we have found, also, before, how Judah shines in the battlefield, and the quiet activity which Achsah implies Achsah, or "anklet," she of the decorated foot? -is not less really intelligible. Altogether we have, on the whole, a bright picture to begin Judges with. Even in the next section, however, the clouds are gathering.
(3) We find here notice of the Kenite settling among the children of Judah in the South. They are the Midianite tribe out of which Moses’ wife had come, thus descendants of Abraham by Keturah, linked in this double way with Israel, and who, upon Moses’ invitation, had accompanied them into the land. But they never unite themselves with the people of God, though settling among them, and are viewed in Balaam’s prophecy as separate to the last. The play upon the name there -"thou puttest thy nest (ken) in the rock" -shows, evidently, the meaning of it. They are Midianites, men of the world, but not at strife with Israel, as others of their race. Nay, they make a nest for themselves among them, and it is for the nest they are there. They come now and dwell on the southern border of Judah in the wilderness, their natural home, south of Arad, the place of the "wild ass." They keep their wilderness manners in the land, -are not at home there, though they may like the security it affords. All this describes but too well the condition of many who attach themselves, in every dispensation, to the people of God, yet are not of them. The victories of the children of Judah invite them and make way for them; but their presence is no strength, and no sign for good.
(4) Next we find Judah with Simeon in his lot. Hormah here had been so named before, being in the territory of Arad when the children of Israel overthrew its king and executed the ban upon his cities (Num 21:3). There we looked at it as the representation of the power of the world in Satan’s hand to hinder the progress of the people of God. In the time that had elapsed it had revived again, -how easily the world recovers power! -and now is called Zephath, overlaying." This is what the world is, indeed, -an overlaying, bright and glittering enough, of what is devoted to destruction, a crust over the curse. It is the part of Simeon (communion) to take off the false show and reveal the evil, -to make Zephath Hormah, as it really is.
(5) Judah goes on to conquest; and now three of the Philistine cities fall, -Gaza, Ashkelon, Ekron. Jehovah is with him: but then most strangely as it would seem, we hear of a limit to the power which he displays. "Jehovah was with Judah, and he obtained possession of the mountains, but the inhabitants of the valley were not to be driven out, because they had chariots of iron"! What a collocation that seems! Omnipotence was stopped, as it would seem, by chariots of iron; and so often it does seem, -nay, in a sense, even it is true; for the removal of difficulties is often conditioned upon the simplicity of a faith which (alas!) is so little simple. Had not God said that He had delivered the land into Judah’s hand? Yes; and Judah had turned round to Simeon, his brother, for help, as if no promise had been given. Judah has measured the might of Jehovah; and Jehovah measures the strength put forth for him. Thus the divine ways are equal; and Judah loses the fullness of a blessing he cannot grasp. May we give heed to this!
On the other hand, it is in contrast, yet in conformity with this, that we are here reminded of Caleb’s complete success against the terrible sons of Anak. Faith shall not suffer defeat, be men at large -be the people of God, even -unbelieving as they may.
2. Benjamin now follows Judah and Simeon, but has only one verse devoted to him here. And in it we find him -little as Judah may show us the ideal of faith -in contrast even with Judah. This is marked: for Judah has already taken Jerusalem and burned it with fire, as we have seen; while Benjamin, without an effort that we read of, permits the Jebusites to dwell there with themselves.* This, too, while Benjamin was the warrior tribe, as is plain in all the notices of it. The failure is thus mere indifference; and the breach of the Lord’s express command is as plain as can be.
{*Jerusalem lay on the border, between these two tribes, the main part of the city, with the citadel, lying in Benjamin. It may have been only what lay within their boundary that Judah burned. The citadel was strong, as we see, in David’s time.}
No need for many words about it: yet how important that it should be here -that we should see the true condition of things as we open the book. That this failure is in Benjamin also, when we realize the spiritual significance of Benjamin as Joshua has declared it to us, deepens the meaning. Benjamin is the apprehension of Christ, as having our place in Him -being identified with Him; the knowledge of the new man, as expressed in Colossians, "where there is neither Jew nor Greek, barbarian, Scythian, bond nor free, but Christ is all and in all." Benjamin in alliance with Canaanites is the utter contradiction and opposite of all this. The forgetfulness of our place in Christ is the core of all unfaithfulness to God, of refusal of His judgment upon the world, of toleration of what is evil in His sight, of false associations and inconsistency of walk. Thus the relation of this to the long tale of evil that follows in the book is unmistakably plain.
3. The third section seems to continue this assurance of Benjamin’s weakness. Bethel belongs to Benjamin, as we know; yet it is the house of Joseph that takes it out of the enemy’s hand. Lying upon Ephraim’s border, there is, of course, a reason for this: but the spiritual reason always underlies the natural. Bethel, we are reminded, was, in Canaanitish hands, Luz; and the capture of the city was, of course, its transformation. "Separation," which Luz means, has many Canaanite forms. The selfishness of the natural heart makes necessarily for disintegration in the world; and while it may seek alliance for its own ends, this is in itself but a form of division. This is only the effect of being away from God: one must then, because without faith in Him, toil in self-service. But because the world is away from God, "separation" is necessary; "be not unequally yoked together" results from "touch not the unclean thing." The line must be indeed drawn, but so drawn that God shall be owned and honored, and then Luz becomes Bethel, as we have elsewhere seen, the relationship of God’s house is capable of being realized (2Co 6:14-18). It is simple enough how Joseph may help Benjamin in this -Joseph, not simply Ephraim: Manasseh’s earnest pressing on is needed to give the full Joseph-character. Seeking to win Christ, all alien things drop off; and in that path we shall find none but those who seek Him. Bethel with all its blessedness is thus surely attained.
But there is another lesson in this place also. One Canaanite is spared out of the city; and there is no similarity here to Rahab’s case, no faith resembling hers. He does not take his place henceforth with Israel, but goes away into the land of the Hittites, and among these "sons of terror" a new Luz springs up. The tree, though cut down to the root, may revive from the root; and the old error, left as no longer formidable, may even go afar to sojourn, yet survive and have to be met once more. Indeed, with how many of these Canaanitish cities do we find it so!
4. What follows is a dismal story of failure. In part a repetition from the book of Joshua, it brings together the items of God’s bill of account against the people, as divided among the tribes, six of which are here named. It does not follow that the rest were guiltless, however; indeed, Benjamin has been already spoken of; nor does it follow that all the failure even of the tribes mentioned is reported here. That Tyre is not among the cities named as remaining in the hands of the Canaanites, seems a proof against this, hardly to be doubted; Endor is found also in Joshua (17: 11), and not here. Those enumerated are given as representative, and with a higher meaning running through all: and this we think can be established, although some of the names are difficult to interpret.
(1) Manasseh heads the tribes on this accusing list; significantly enough if we remember that Manasseh stands for progress, the forgetting what is behind and pressing on. Yet he has a record of five cities left to the Canaanite with depending villages, and that when he had the power also to drive them out. How could the loss of energy be more plainly shown?
The names are, of course, significant: first, Bethshean, "the house of quiet," which as connected with Manasseh and with Issachar (Jos 17:11), would speak of that practical rest of heart which a right walk furnishes to the one who presses on. There is nothing to draw such an one back from the pursuit of what is before him: no entanglement with the world around, no alarm of conscience, or need of self-occupation. The loss of Bethshean is thus a most serious one; and yet how may, in fact, a failed Manasseh consent to such a loss, bribed by some dishonorable bargain with the Canaanite!
In the second place we have Taanach, "sandy soil," whose import may be seen in its connection with Gath-rimmon among the Levitical cities (Jos 21:25). Taanach’s lesson, as that of the wilderness, is the weaning from other dependency than upon God alone -a thing again of first importance for a Manassite. But Taanach must be retained or Bethshean cannot be: dependence and rest are linked inseparably together.
We have next Dor, the most obvious meaning of which is "generation." In its application it may naturally speak of that limiting of human life which it implies: "One generation goeth and another cometh." The word means in its first significance a "circle," and a collection of tents in a Bedouin encampment (generally circular) is called a dowar; from which Parkhurst supposes the application to contemporaries. Coming as it does, after a memorial of the wilderness, in which under the ban of God a whole Israelitish generation perished, it cannot but impress one the more, as intended to convey such meaning. And the brevity of human life may well impress deeply a Manassite: "So teach us to number our days," says the Psalmist, "that we may apply our hearts unto wisdom." The loss of Dor implies the slipping back into the world’s error, gross as it is, of ignoring what none can deny, and this is followed naturally by the loss of —
Ibleam, "it consumes the people," which in the fourth place and in connection with the last word, one cannot be at a loss to interpret. Sin is indeed the devourer of the people, mightier than the Balaam whose name here it bears, and alas, prevailing how much, against the people of God themselves. Can a child of Manasseh forget this also? Surely even too much. None of these cities were wholly gone from them, but a rabble of Canaanites had practical possession.
Megiddo is the last of these names, meaning, I believe, "the manifestation of it": and this, under the number that speaks of responsibility and recompense, carries us on, of necessity, to the day of account and manifestation. The realization of this must be lost, if the things of which the last names remind us have been. Megiddo must go with Dor and Ibleam. Plainly these names, the whole of them, are a series in close relation with one another: a meaning runs through them which must have guided in some way the hand of the writer. Was the wisdom in himself, or beyond himself then? Can these simple histories be, after all, prophetic? The Jews in fact speak of them as "the former prophets;" and we have proof that in them "holy men that were of God spake as they were moved by the Holy Ghost."
Ephraim’s failure naturally follows Manasseh’s, inasmuch as in the order of attainment, as we have seen long since (Gen 48:1-22 n), Ephraim is dependent on Manasseh. Gad on the other side of Jordan stands in similar dependence upon Reuben, and indeed approaches Ephraim very nearly in this place. Ephraim loses but one place to the Canaanites, or at least there is but one loss recorded -that of Gezer. It is a most important place, however, being a Levitical city, and for what we have found it typify as that. Gezer means "isolation," "a place cut off;" as belonging to the Canaanites it is but the expression of natural independence, as away from God. But as Israelite and Levitical it speaks of that land cut off" into which Christ has borne the sins of His people, and in which the independence of man is seen in its awful reality of isolation from God.* How the awful reality, if it be indeed entered into by the soul, will produce in it a horror of the liberty man loves away from God; and how this will turn to fruitfulness in joyful dependence upon Him who has brought us out of that darkness into His marvelous light, needs little telling. Alas for us, when the Canaanite hold upon Gezer has not been loosed! Ephraim’s one city lost is no light loss!
{*Will the reader note here a partial return to a former thought, disclaimed in the first line of the notes (Vol. i., page 342.), but which is not really inconsistent with the fact that atonement is not made or figured by the scapegoat. That it is not is plain from the passage in Leviticus; and yet it is not unsuitable, that where deliverance from the burden of sin is most fully proclaimed, there should be the tender and solemn reminder of the place in which this was borne and put away; -a thought which is needed to make the liberty derived from this a holy liberty, a deep and inward deliverance. Yet it Is not in fact "death" -this "land cut off" -but a deeper thought.}
(3) Zebulon loses two cities, Kitron and Nahalol; the first of which is nearly the same word as Keturoth, which in Eze 46:22 is rendered by the Septuagint, Vulgate, Syriac, and Arabic, "small," and thus taken to represent Kattath, which in Jos 19:15 stands immediately before Nahalol. Keturoth is, however, generally taken, as in our common version, to mean "joined": which Hengstenberg (on Ezekiel) refuses again, for "fuming, smoking," undoubtedly the common, if not exclusive, sense in scriptural Hebrew. In the Chaldee (Dan 5:6), however, the noun means "joints"; and the Talmudists use the verb in the same form as "joining."
On the whole, the Hebrew certainly favors the meaning of "fuming," either in the sense of perfuming or of using incense; above all, the latter. The identification with Kattath is very uncertain, and in the word of God every change in a name must have significance. In connection with Zebulon, where "dwelling in relationship" to God is plainly the thought, the lack of incense would have sad significance indeed -the lack of prayer and praise, along with that also of which Nahalol speaks -"pasture." These things do indeed go largely together, are enjoyed or lost together.
(4) Asher, under the number of experience, follows with a long list of cities; and here we find, for the first time, an expression which reveals at once a still lower state of things. "The Asherites," it is said, "dwelt among the Canaanites, the inhabitants of the land" -not simply, bad enough as that would be, the Canaanites among the Asherites. It is easy to understand it, inasmuch as the Phoenician sea-board was in the inheritance of Asher, and the prosperous, mercantile cities were never, even in the days of David and Solomon, brought into even modified subjection to Israel. They were then friends and allies, but not servants, although of the race of which it had been long before said, "A servant of servants shall he be unto his brethren."
Three of the seven names that are found here are absent from the list in Joshua, and this, with the doubt attaching to the meaning of two of these, makes the first three difficult of interpretation. Of these Accho, the first, is given by some from the Arabic as "hot sand," or "sand heated by the sun;" but if taken as Hebrew, it would be, rather, "straitened." Zidon means "taking the prey." Ahlab is said to mean "fatness," the meaning given also (and rightly) to Helbah. It might be a compound word and signify "brother in heart;" but of none of these can I speak with any assurance.
The last four are plainer, and connect more simply together, three of them occurring in similar connection in the list ill Joshua. Of these Achzib, "a flow indeed," has been already taken as applying to the Spirit. With this Helbah, "fatness," Aphik, "a channel," and Rehob, "room," are easily associated, and the last two have been already considered in this way (page 151). Together, the loss of these cities implies much spiritual loss to the failing Asherite: the experience (Achzib is in the fourth place) of the Spirit’s energy; the "fatness" which speaks of plenteous nourishment; the ability to convey to others the blessing we have received; and lastly, liberty and enlargement of heart. How necessary these things are to true Christian happiness needs little to be affirmed.
(5) Naphtali comes in the next place with two cities, Bethshemesh and Bethanath, names which are simple enough as "house of the sun" and "house of response." They require not much interpretation either: for if still "there be many that say, Who will show us any good?" every believing soul will with the psalmist be able for himself to find it in the light of God’s countenance. This is alone our sun, and "a pleasant thing" indeed "it is to behold" it. Bethanath, the "house of response," speaks of what surely goes with this, -the answer of God to the soul that seeks Him; the answer, too, again, of the soul to God: that sweet and tender intimacy of fellowship which is strength for all the way.
The "Beths" in both cases imply what is settled and abiding. The "house" is, as we say, the home, the place of relationship and of the interchange of affection.
The greater the blessing here, the greater the loss, of course. Naphtali, the struggler, needs this sanctuary home that he may be the overcomer that he is called to be. Alas, like the other tribes here, he is losing character; and the precious things which God has made his own are but witnesses of a glory which is now departed from him.
(6) Dan closes the tale of ruin with worse sorrow. He recedes from the seventh place in the Joshua list to the sixth in this; and the history shows the significance of the change. For the Danites are forced by the Amorites out of the valley, the low level so necessary for true spiritual judgment; and they dwelt, besides, in Mount Heres, the "mountain of the sun," in Ajalon and in Shaalbim. The last two speak, as we have elsewhere seen, of the judgment of the world, in its apprehensiveness of God, and in its hollowness at heart; if Mount Heres be in the same line with these, it would naturally speak of the world’s self-glorification. The Danite would thus lose with these the ability for true judgment; and it is striking that it is to the Amorite (the "talker"?) that he loses them. The Amorite, we are told, had occupied all this land from its southern border.
5. And now we find the pronounced judgment of God upon this wide-spread departure from His plain command. The angel of Jehovah who had in Joshua’s day taken His place with them at Gilgal as Captain of the Lord’s host, now comes from Gilgal to Bochim ("weepers") to announce to them His acceptance in righteous government of their own decision. They would not drive out the nations, and so He would not; and the consequences of this, again and again predicted, would come upon them. The people weep and sacrifice to Jehovah; but there is no real repentance: and this first step downward is soon followed by another in which the breach between them and Him is consummated.
F. W. Grant, The Numerical Bible (4th ed., 1903) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
J. R. Dummelow 1909 · Public Domain On v1 Introductory (Jdg_1:1 to Jdg_3:4)
Introductory (Jdg_1:1 to Jdg_3:4)
Division 1, Jdg_1:1 to Jdg_2:5.
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This section of the book contains a brief recapitulation of the early conquest of Palestine, told from a somewhat different point of view from that of Joshua 7-21, and supplying much that is there not mentioned. From these vv. it is clear that Palestine was not conquered in one great invasion; and the whole of the book shows Israel to be only in very precarious possession of the land. The narrative in Joshua emphasises the influence over the whole collection of tribes wielded by the Ephraimite hero, Joshua himself; Jdg_1:1 to Jdg_2:5 narrates the movements of separate tribes, leaving some of them (Issachar, Levi and Benjamin) unmentioned. It would seem that after the main body of Israelites had crossed the Jordan, captured Jericho, and made Gilgal their headquarters, the larger number of them, under Joshua, faced northwards, while Judah and Simeon remained in the south, and, for some time, were almost detached from the main body. The actual narratives of this division of Part 1 deal with (1) the conquest of Adoni-bezek by Judah and Simeon (Jdg_1:1-8); (2) conquests of Othniel in the south (Jdg_1:9-15); (3) further conquests of Judah and Simeon (Jdg_1:16-21); (4) capture of Bethel (Jdg_1:22-26); (5) limits to the conquests of Manasseh, Ephraim, Zebulun, Asher, Naphtali and Dan (Jdg_1:27-36); (6) the moral, delivered by the angel at Bochim (Jdg_2:1-5).
The Conquests of Judah, Simeon, and other Tribes
1-8. Conquests of Judah and Simeon.
1. After the death of Joshua] This joins the beginning of Judges to the end of Joshua; but in what follows the author refers to events which must have preceded the partition of Joshua 13 f., and the campaigns of Joshua 10, 11. Asked the lord] Consulted the oracle of the Lord': cp. Jdg_18:5; Jdg_20:18. See also Exo_28:30; Num_27:21.
2. The land] the S. part of Palestine.
3. Simeon] The towns of Simeon (Jos_19:1-9) are also attributed to Judah (Jos_15:26-36, Jos_15:42). Later, Simeon ceases to exist as an independent tribe. My lot] Each tribe has had a part of Canaan allotted to it, whose conquest it is to attempt. Judah is chosen to make the first inroad.
4. Perizzites] see on Gen_13:7. Canaanites] in its special sense of 'lowlanders': cp. Gen_13:7; Gen_34:30. Bezek] lying on the road from Gilgal to South Palestine.
5. Adoni-bezek] (perhaps the same as Adoni-zedek of Jos_10:1) is king of Jerusalem, which city also lies in the path of Judah and Simeon to Judah's 'lot.'
6. Cut off] to make them unfit for warfare.
7. Kings] chiefs or sheikhs of a city or even village. They] his own people.
8. Jerusalem] The city was not held, but remained in the possession of the Jebusites till the time of David (2Sa_5:6-9). Not till then would Judah really dominate Southern Palestine (cp. Jdg_1:21, and chapter Jdg_19:12).
9-15. Conquests of Othniel in the south.
9. The mountain denotes the central ridge, stretching from N. of Jerusalem to Hebron; the south, the wild country S. of Hebron, called in Hebrew the Negeb, and the valley (RV 'lowland') the maritime plain to the W.
10. Hebron] see on Gen_13:18. Kirjatharba] 'city of four' (quarters). In Jos_14:15; Jos_15:13-14, however, Arba is regarded as a personal name; he is 'the father of Anak,' or 'a great man among the Anakims' (a primitive gigantic race, of which Sheshai, etc., are names of divisions or clans).
11. Debir] in the Negeb. Kirjath-sepher] 'Book-city' He] should be Caleb (see Jos_15:13), to whom (Jos_14:6-15) Moses had promised this territory.
13. Othniel is also the hero of the deliverance from Chushan-rishathaim (Jdg_3:9.).
15. Blessing] a present (cp. Gen_33:11) or solemn token of paternal affection. Thou hast given me] RV, better, 'thou hast set me in.' A south land] RV 'the land of the South'; for the most part a waterless region, where springs would be precious. Upper and nether springs are proper names.
16-21. Further conquests of Judah and Simeon.
16. The Kenite] Hobab (cp. Jdg_4:11, elsewhere called Jethro: cp. also Exo_2:18). The Kenites are joined (in Gen_15:19) with the Keniazites, Caleb's tribe (Kenaz, Jdg_1:13), a Bedouin people in firm league with Israel: see Jdg_4:17 and 1Sa_15:6. They do not, like Judah, attack the Canaanites. City of palm trees] Jericho, which, with Grilgal, was Israel's base of operations. Arad] SE. of Hebron. Among the people] A more probable reading is 'with the Amalekite,' i.e. not actually in Judah.
17. Zephath] not known. Hormah] 'utter destruction.' To 'destroy utterly' is to put under a ban, or exterminate: cp. Jos_6:17 mg;('devoted,' i.e. to destruction).
18. These, with Gath and Ashdod, are the five Philistine cities. The LXX reads 'did not take,' which accords with subsequent references to the Philistines.
19. Chariots of iron] Always an object of dread to the light-armed Israelites (cp. Jdg_4:3), but useless in the hill-country, where the Israelites were more firmly established.
Could not] The Lord being with Judah, they should have been able to drive them out. Probably their faith failed at sight of the iron chariots. The Hebrew, indeed, does not say 'could not drive them out,' but 'there was no driving out.'
21. Cp. Jos_15:63.
22-26. Capture of Bethel.
22. House of Joseph] i.e. Ephraim and Manasseh, the leading division of the nation. Later writers use Ephraim as a synonym for the ten northern tribes (e.g. Hos_11:8; Isa_28:3).
23. Descry] RV 'spy out.' Beth-el] 9 ½ m. N. of Jerusalem. See Gen_28:19; Gen_35:6.
26. Hittites] see on Gen_10:15-19. Luz] Evidently a different city from that mentioned in Jdg_1:23.
27-36. Limits to the conquests of Manasseh, etc.
27. These towns are all in the plain of Esdraelon (see on Judges 4), by their hold upon which the Canaanites drove a wedge between the Israelites of Northern and Central Palestine. Beth-shean is at the E. of the plain, Taanach and Megiddo (recently excavated and revealing a wealth of Canaanite remains) on the S., Ibleam on the SE., and Dor on the coast. Would dwell] i.e. succeeded in dwelling.
28. Tribute] RV 'taskwork.' So Israel had been treated in Egypt.
29. Gezer] On the edge of the maritime plain; later on, taken by Egypt and given to Solomon (1Ki_9:15). Here also extensive remains have been found, demonstrating the pagan worship carried on by its inhabitants.
30. Kitron.. Nahalol] unknown.
31. Accho (Akka), Zidon (Saida), and Achzib (Ez-Zib, N. of Akka) are all on the coast: the other towns are unknown.
33. Beth-shemesh ('house of the sun'), not the wellknown Beth-shemesh in Judah: cp. Jos_19:38. Beth-anath (house of the goddess Anath) is perhaps a town 6 m. N. of Kadesh-naphtali.
34. Dan fails in securing a foothold: later, the Danites make an expedition northwards (Judges 18) and Ephraim gains an entrance into the territory from which they are driven (Jdg_1:35). Amorites] see on Gen_10:16.
35. Mount Heres] 'the mountain of the sun.' Aijalon] 12 m. W. of Jerusalem; the scene of Joshua's great victory (Jos_10:12). Shaalbim] possibly 3 m. to the N.
36. Coast] RV 'border.' The ascent of (RV) Akrabbim (scorpions) is said in Jos_15:3 to be on the border of Judah and Edom. Amorites is probably a misreading for 'Edomites.' The spot lies on a line between Hebron and Petra, the Edomite capital. As it stands, this v. has no connexion with its context.
36. The rock] should be, as RM, 'Sela,' i.e. Petra in Edom.
J. R. Dummelow, A Commentary on the Holy Bible (Macmillan, 1909) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Arno C. Gaebelein 1922 · Public Domain On v1 Analysis and Annotations
Analysis and Annotations
I. THE INTRODUCTION: ISRAEL’S FAILURE AND THE RESULTS
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1. Israel’s Failure in mingling with the Canaanites
CHAPTER 1
1. The question and the answer (Jdg 1:1-4)
2. Adoni-Bezek (Jdg 1:5-7)
3. Jerusalem (Jdg 1:8)
4. Judah’s victory and failure (Jdg 1:9-20)
5. The children of Benjamin and their failure (Jdg 1:21)
6. The failures of others (Jdg 1:22-36)
The book begins with an inquiry of the Lord. This was immediately after the death of Joshua. From chapter 2:7-10 we learn that the people served the Lord during the days of Joshua and the elders who had seen the great works of the Lord and who outlived their leader. Israel looked to the Lord for guidance. They feel their dependence upon Him. How different the history of His people would have been if they had maintained this dependence on the Lord, and acted always in subjection to Him! And the Lord answered the inquiry as He always delights to answer those who put their trust in Him. Judah is to go up to fight against the Canaanite, and the Lord promises victory. The first sign of weakness follows at once. Judah invites Simeon his brother to go with him to fight against the Canaanites, and he promises in return to help Simeon in conquering his lot. It showed that Judah had not full confidence in Jehovah. He put some dependence in his brother, as if he needed his help to gain the promised victory. How often His people have dishonored the Lord by trusting in something besides Himself. Judah going forward by divine command, yet asking the help of Simeon, gained victories, yet he could not drive out the inhabitants of the valley, for they had chariots of iron (verse 19). What is iron to omnipotence! Had Judah gone forth in utter dependence on Jehovah and in His promise, “I have delivered the land into his hand,” the chariots of iron would have not stopped him.
But there were great victories, the blessed assurance that Jehovah is with His people, if they go but forward. Adoni-Bezek is punished in the same manner as he in his wickedness had done to others. Infidels have often found fault with the extermination of the Canaanites. The confession of Adoni-Bezek answers these objections. “As I have done, so God hath requited me.” Their punishment was just and well deserved.
The eighth verse is of interest. In Jos 10:1 Jerusalem is mentioned for the first time in the Bible and that in connection with war. Here the city is smitten by the sword and burned with fire. This has been her history over and over again, and will be again in the future, till the times of the Gentiles are fulfilled.
Then there is mentioned once more the most refreshing picture of Caleb, Othniel and Achsah. (See Jos 15:16-19.) Othniel, which means “lion of God,” is the center of it. God delights in whole-heartedness and the victories of His people.
The rest of this first chapter has failure stamped upon it. Benjamin, the warrior tribe permitted the Jebusites to dwell with them and did not drive them out. There is not even a reported attempt. The command of the Lord was wholly ignored by them. They were in the worst condition (chapters 20-21). Manasseh failed. Ephraim did not drive out the Canaanites that dwelt in Gezer. Zebulun, Asher and Naphtali all failed to dislodge the enemies God had commanded them to destroy entirely. And Dan instead of conquering was conquered. The Amorites forced them into the hill country. Unbelief, lack of confidence in Jehovah, was the cause of it all. These enemies here are typical of the flesh and the fleshly lusts in the believer. And these lusts, the carnal nature, must be put and kept in the place of death. We are enabled to do this by faith in our Lord Jesus Christ and through the power of the Holy Spirit, who is given to us of God. If we walk not in the Spirit, that is, in faith, we shall be overcome by these things; instead of conquering we will be conquered. The old nature not triumphed over will bring us into bondage as it is with so many of God’s children.
Arno C. Gaebelein, The Annotated Bible (1913–1922) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Paul E. Kretzmann 1924 · Public Domain On v1 Overthrow of Various Enemies
Overthrow of Various Enemies
v. 1. Now, after the death of Joshua, which was related in the last chapter of the Book of Joshua, it came to pass, as the author states in taking up the thread of the narrative, that the children of Israel asked the Lord, through the Urim and Thummim of the high priest, Num 27:21, saying, Who shall go up for us against the Canaanites first to fight against them? Joshua had very emphatically enjoined upon them the extermination of the tribes of Canaan which still remained, and therefore the question of the representatives of the entire nation was who it was to be that should initiate the aggressive measures, to which tribe the leadership had been assigned in beginning the final conquest of the land.
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v. 2. And the Lord said, Judah shall go up, for this tribe had been made the leader and champion of Israel even by the blessing of Jacob, Gen 49:8-10; behold, I have delivered the land into his hand. As it pleased the Lord to receive the inquiry of the people in this manner, so He gave the promise of His divine assistance in the coming struggle.
v. 3. And Judah said unto Simeon, his brother, the tribe having its cities in the midst of the possession of Judah, Jos 19:1-9, Come up with me into my lot, share my lot with me, join forces with me in this undertaking, that we may fight against the Canaanites; and I likewise will go with thee into thy lot, join forces with him in conquering the cities allotted to him. So Simeon went with him.
v. 4. And Judah went up, reinforced by the army of Simeon; and the Lord delivered the Canaanites and the Perizzites, who evidently had gained the necessary courage to join their forces at this time, with the purpose of ejecting the invaders, into their hand; and they slew of them in Bezek, a place not yet definitely identified, ten thousand men.
v. 5. And they found Adoni-bezek, the leader of the heathen forces, in Bezek; they met his armies there, having been informed of their presence and of their hostile intention; and they fought against him, and they slew the Canaanites and the Perizzites.
v. 6. And Adoni-bezek fled; and they pursued after him, and caught him, and cut off his thumbs and great toes, making it impossible for him to use his bow or to escape.
v. 7. And Adoni-bezek said, Threescore and ten kings, having their thumbs and their great toes cut off, gathered their meat under my table; after mutilating them in this manner, he had forced them to pick up their food under his table, where he threw them scraps as he might have done to hungry dogs. As I have done, so God hath requited me; he realized and confessed that he was but receiving his just deserts, that the tribe of Judah simply recompensed him by the direction of God. And they, apparently his own servants, brought him to Jerusalem, for which reason some commentators think that this was his home, and there he died, under the just punishment of God.
v. 8. Now the children of Judah had fought against Jerusalem, literally, "And there fought the sons of Judah against Jerusalem"; for they followed up the advantage which they had gained and attacked the city which sheltered Adoni-bezek, and had taken it, and smitten it with the edge of the sword, and set the city on fire. Thus the power of this king was definitely broken, although the army of Judah did not take, or retain possession of, the city at this time, probably because they expected the tribe of Benjamin to occupy the stronghold.
v. 9. And afterward, after the taking of Jerusalem,the children of Judah, with their allies, went down to fight against the Canaanites that dwelt in the mountain, in the highland of Judah, and in the south, the steppes toward the southeast and south, and in the valley, the lowland in the west, including Philistia.
v. 10. And Judah went against the canaanites that dwelt in Hebron, under the leadership of Caleb; (now the name of Hebron before was Kirjath-arba;) and they slew Sheshai, and Ahiman, and Talmai, the three sons of Anak; for after the first conquest of the city by Joshua the Anakim had reoccupied it.
v. 11. And from thence he went against the inhabitants of Debir, a city some ten miles southwest of Hebron; and the name of Debir before was Kirjath-sepher;
v. 12. and Caleb said, He that smiteth Kirjath-sepher and taketh it, to him will I give Achsah, my daughter, to wife.
v. 13. And Othniel, the son of Kenaz, Caleb’s younger brother, took it; and he gave him Achsah, his daughter, to wife.
v. 14. And it came to pass, when she came to him, that she moved him to ask of her father a field; and she lighted from off her ass; and Caleb said unto her, What wilt thou?
v. 15. And she said unto him, Give me a blessing; for thou hast given me a south land; give me also springs of water. And Caleb gave her the upper springs and the nether springs. This paragraph, which agrees exactly with Jos 15:14-19, is here repeated to make the zeal of Caleb, the unselfishness of Othniel, and the prudence of Achsah points of instruction. "The thing to be especially noted, however, is the firmness of Othniel in resisting his wife’s enticement to make requests which it is more becoming in her to make. Not many men have so well withstood the ambitious and eagerly craving projects of their wives. " (Lange. )
v. 16. And the children of the Kenite, Moses’ father-in-law, whom Moses had apparently persuaded to join Israel, Num 10:29-32, went up out of the city of palm trees, Jericho, Deu 34:3, with the children of Judah into the wilderness of Judah, which lieth in the south of Arad, a district about eight hours south of Hebron, whose king had attacked Israel during the march through the wilderness, Num 21:1; and they went and dwelt among the people, in the immediate neighborhood of Judah, with whom they were allied.
v. 17. And Judah went with Simeon, his brother, according to the promise made
v. 3. and they slew the Canaanites that inhabited Zephath, on the boundary of the desert, and utterly destroyed it. And the name of the city was called Hormah, a name sometimes given to it before, but now definitely connected with it, Num 21:2; 1Sa 30:29.
v. 18. Also Judah, carrying the campaign into the land of the Philistines, took Gaza with the coast thereof, and Askelon with the coast thereof, and Ekron with the coast thereof, three city-states with the smaller towns tributary to them. These the army of Judah took by storm, in a sudden onslaught, but did not garrison them and therefore soon lost them again.
v. 19. And the Lord was with Judah, in this campaign of swift destruction; and he drave out the inhabitants of the mountain, where personal valor and strength were the chief factors in battle; but could not drive out the inhabitants of the valley, because they had chariots of iron. When it came to a contest with these engines of destruction, the faith of the soldiers of Judah failed them, causing them to abandon the duty of gaining entire mastery of the land.
v. 20. And they gave Hebron unto Caleb, as Moses said, this taking place after the completion of the conquest, when the entire tribe entered upon its possessions; and he expelled thence the three sons of Anak. Thus the aged hero received the gift which had been promised him. Everyone who takes part in the suffering and in the fighting of the people of God will in the end take part in the glorious heritage of the children of God.
Paul E. Kretzmann, Popular Commentary of the Bible (1921–1924) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
unfoldingWord translationNotes 2017 · CC BY-SA 4.0 On v1 Connecting Statement:
Connecting Statement:
The book of Judges continues the story about Joshua and is also the beginning of a new part of the story.
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Yahweh
This is the name of God that he revealed to his people in the Old Testament. See the translationWord page about Yahweh concerning how to translate this.
will attack the Canaanites for us
The word "us" refers to the people of Israel, but not to Yahweh. (See: Exclusive and Inclusive "We")
Judah will attack
Here "Judah" represents the men of the tribe of Judah. Yahweh is commanding these men to attack first. AT: "The men of Judah must attack first" (See: Synecdoche)
See
"Look" or "Listen" or "Pay attention to what I am about to tell you"
this land
This refers to the land where the Canaanites lived. AT: "the land of the Canaanites" (See: Assumed Knowledge and Implicit Information)
their brothers
"their fellow Israelites" or "their relatives"
Come up with us
The people of the tribes of Judah and Simeon were camped with the rest of the Israelite people in the valley of the Jordan River. The land given to Judah was in the hills above the valley. Some languages do not usually indicate whether people were going up or down. AT: "Come with us" or "Go with us"
that was assigned to us ... that was assigned to you
This can be stated in active form. AT: "that Yahweh assigned to us ... that Yahweh assigned to you" (See: Active or Passive)
We will likewise go with you
"We will also go with you" or "In the same way, we will go with you"
translationWords
die
Joshua
people group
Israel
Yahweh
Canaan
Judah
Simeon
brother
tribe
unfoldingWord translationNotes — © Distant Shores Media and the Door43 World Missions Community, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Source: git.door43.org/Door43/en_tn.