Judges 2:1-5 sits inside this longer paragraph.
1Yahweh’s angel came up from Gilgal to Bochim. He said, “I brought you out of Egypt, and have brought you to the land which I swore to give your fathers. I said, ‘I will never break my covenant with you. 2You shall make no covenant with the inhabitants of this land. You shall break down their altars.’ But you have not listened to my voice. Why have you done this? 3Therefore I also said, ‘I will not drive them out from before you; but they shall be in your sides, and their gods will be a snare to you.’ ”
4When Yahweh’s angel spoke these words to all the children of Israel, the people lifted up their voice and wept. 5They called the name of that place Bochim, and they sacrificed there to Yahweh. 6Now when Joshua had sent the people away, the children of Israel each went to his inheritance to possess the land. 7The people served Yahweh all the days of Joshua, and all the days of the elders who outlived Joshua, who had seen all the great work of Yahweh that he had worked for Israel. 8Joshua the son of Nun, the servant of Yahweh, died, being one hundred ten years old. 9They buried him in the border of his inheritance in Timnath Heres, in the hill country of Ephraim, on the north of the mountain of Gaash. 10After all that generation were gathered to their fathers, another generation arose after them who didn’t know Yahweh, nor the work which he had done for Israel. 11The children of Israel did that which was evil in Yahweh’s sight, and served the Baals. 12They abandoned Yahweh, the God of their fathers, who brought them out of the land of Egypt, and followed other gods, of the gods of the peoples who were around them, and bowed themselves down to them; and they provoked Yahweh to anger. 13They abandoned Yahweh, and served Baal and the Ashtaroth. 14Yahweh’s anger burned against Israel, and he delivered them into the hands of raiders who plundered them. He sold them into the hands of their enemies all around, so that they could no longer stand before their enemies. 15Wherever they went out, Yahweh’s hand was against them for evil, as Yahweh had spoken, and as Yahweh had sworn to them; and they were very distressed. 16Yahweh raised up judges, who saved them out of the hand of those who plundered them. 17Yet they didn’t listen to their judges; for they prostituted themselves to other gods, and bowed themselves down to them. They quickly turned away from the way in which their fathers walked, obeying Yahweh’s commandments. They didn’t do so. 18When Yahweh raised up judges for them, then Yahweh was with the judge, and saved them out of the hand of their enemies all the days of the judge; for it grieved Yahweh because of their groaning by reason of those who oppressed them and troubled them. 19But when the judge was dead, they turned back, and dealt more corruptly than their fathers in following other gods to serve them and to bow down to them. They didn’t cease what they were doing, or give up their stubborn ways. 20Yahweh’s anger burned against Israel; and he said, “Because this nation transgressed my covenant which I commanded their fathers, and has not listened to my voice, 21I also will no longer drive out any of the nations that Joshua left when he died from before them; 22that by them I may test Israel, to see if they will keep Yahweh’s way to walk therein, as their fathers kept it, or not.” 23So Yahweh left those nations, without driving them out hastily. He didn’t deliver them into Joshua’s hand.
Geneva Bible translators 1599 · Public Domain On vv1, 3, 5 That is, messenger, or prophet, as some think, Phinehas.
That is, messenger, or prophet, as some think, Phinehas.
Geneva Bible (1599) marginal notes — public domain.
John Trapp 1656 · Public Domain On vv1–5 Jdg 2:1 And an angel of the LORD came…
Jdg 2:1 And an angel of the LORD came up from Gilgal to Bochim, and said, I made you to go up out of Egypt, and have brought you unto the land which I sware unto your fathers; and I said, I will never break my covenant with you.
Ver. 1. And an angel of the Lord.] Or, A messenger, as Hag 1:13 Ecc 5:6 Rev 2:1 1Co 11:10. This was Phinehas, say the Rabbis some prophet, say others; or a created angel Diodate will have it to be meant of the Son of God himself, who had before appeared to Joshua, as Captain of the Lord’s hosts, at Gilgal, {Jos 5:13} from whence also he is here said to have come up: ascenderat, Junius rendereth it, he had come up - viz., in the days of Joshua and the elders that survived him. Compare Jos 2:6; Jos 2:11-12.
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I will never break my covenant with you,] i.e., Unless you first break with me. If God shall be all-sufficient to us, we must be altogether his. {Son 2:16} His is a covenant of mercy, ours of obedience: but the rebellious, though covenanters, shall bear their iniquity, and know God’s breach of promise. {Num 14:34}
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 vv1–5 An angel of the Lord: either, first, A created…
An angel of the Lord: either, first, A created angel. Or, secondly, A prophet or man of God, for such are sometimes called angels, which signifies only messengers of God; and then the following words are spoken by him in the name of God, as may easily be understood. Or, thirdly, Christ, the Angel of the covenant, who is oft called the Angel of the Lord, as we have formerly seen, to whom the conduct of Israel out of Egypt, and through the wilderness, and into Canaan, here spoken of, is frequently ascribed, as Exo 14:19; 23:20; 33:14; Jos 5:13,14; Jdg 6:12; 13:3; who alone of all the angels could speak the following words in his own name and person; whereas created angels and prophets do universally usher in their Divine messages with, Thus saith the Lord, or some equivalent expression. And this angel having assumed the outward shape of a man, it is not strange that he imitates the local motion of a man, and comes as it were from Gilgal to the place where now they were; by which motion he signified that he was the person that brought them to Gilgal, the first place where they rested in Canaan, and there renewed covenant with them, and protected them there so long, and from thence went out with them to battle, and gave them success.
Bochim; a place so called here by anticipation, for the reason expressed here, Jdg 2:5. And it seems to be no other than Shiloh, where it seems probable that the people were met together upon some solemn festival. And this was the proper and usual place of sacrificing, Jdg 2:5. And I said, i.e. I promised, upon condition of your keeping covenant with me.
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 It was the privilege of Israel that they had…
It was the privilege of Israel that they had not only a law in general sent them from heaven, once for all, to direct them into and keep them in the way of happiness, but that they had particular messages sent them from heaven, as there was occasion, for reproof, for correction, and for instruction in righteousness, when at any time they turned aside out of that way. Besides the written word which they had before them to read, they often heard a word behind them, saying, This is the way, Isa 30:21. Here begins that way of God's dealing with them. When they would not hear Moses, let it be tried whether they will hear the prophets. In these verses we have a very awakening sermon that was preached to them when they began to cool in their religion.
I. The preacher was an angel of the Lord (Jdg 2:1), not a prophet, not Phinehas, as the Jews conceit; gospel ministers are indeed called angels of the churches, but the Old Testament prophets are never called angels of the Lord; no doubt this was a messenger we from heaven. Such extraordinary messengers we sometimes find in this book employed in the raising up of the judges that delivered Israel, as Gideon and Samson; and now, to show how various are the good offices they do for God's Israel, here is one sent to preach to them, to prevent their falling into sin and trouble. This extraordinary messenger was sent to command, if possible, the greater regard to the message, and to affect the minds of a people whom nothing seemed to affect but what was sensible. The learned bishop Patrick is clearly of opinion that this was not a created angel, but the Angel of the covenant, the same that appeared to Joshua as captain of the hosts of the Lord, who was God himself. Christ himself, says Dr. Lightfoot; who but God and Christ could say, I made you to go up out of Egypt? Joshua had lately admonished them to take heed of entangling themselves with the Canaanites, but they regarded not the words of a dying man; the same warning therefore is here brought them by the living God himself, the Son of God appearing as an angel. If they slight his servants, surely they will reverence his Son. This angel of the Lord is said to come up from Gilgal, perhaps not walking on the earth, but flying swiftly, as the angel Gabriel did to Daniel, in the open firmament of heaven; but, whether walking or flying, he seemed to come from Gilgal for a particular reason. Gilgal was long their headquarters after they came into Canaan, many signal favours they had there received from God, and there the covenant of circumcision was renewed (Mic 6:5), of all which it was designed they should be reminded by his coming from Gilgal. The remembrance of what we have received and heard will prepare us for a warning to hold fast, Rev 3:2, Rev 3:3.
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II. The persons to whom this sermon was preached were all the children of Israel, Jdg 2:4. A great congregation for a great preacher! They were assembled either for war, each tribe sending in its forces for some great expedition, or rather for worship, and then the place of their meeting must be Shiloh, where the tabernacle was, at which they were all to come together three times a year. When we attend upon God in instituted ordinances we may expect to hear from him, and to receive his gifts at his own gates. The place is called Bochim (Jdg 2:1), because it gained that name upon this occasion. All Israel needed the reproof and warning here given, and therefore it is spoken to them all.
III. The sermon itself is short, but very close. God here tells them plainly, 1. What he had done for them, Jdg 2:1. He had brought them out of Egypt, a land of slavery and toil, into Canaan, a land of rest, liberty, and plenty. The miseries of the one served as a foil to the felicities of the other. God had herein been kind to them, true to the oath sworn to their fathers, had given such proofs of his power as left them inexcusable if they distrusted it, and such engagements to his service as left them inexcusable if they deserted it. 2. What he had promised them: I said, I will never break my covenant with you. When he took them to be his peculiar people, it was not with any design to cast them off again, or to change them for another people at his pleasure; let them but be faithful to him, and they should find him unchangeably constant to them. He told them plainly that the covenant he entered into with them should never break, unless it broke on their side. 3. What were his just and reasonable expectations from them (Jdg 2:2): that being taken into covenant with God they should make no league with the Canaanites, who were both his enemies and theirs, - that having set up his altar they should throw down their altars, lest they should be a temptation to them to serve their gods. Could any thing be demanded more easy? 4. How they had in this very thing, which he had most insisted on, disobeyed him: "But you have not in so small a matter obeyed my voice." In contempt of their covenant with God, and their confederacy with each other in that covenant, they made leagues of friendship with the idolatrous devoted Canaanites, and connived at their altars, though they stood in competition with God's. "Why have you done this? What account can you give of this perverseness of yours at the bar of right reason? What apology can you make for yourselves, or what excuse can you offer?" Those that throw off their communion with God, and have fellowship with the unfruitful works of darkness, know not what they do now, and will have nothing to say for themselves in the day of account shortly. 5. How they must expect to smart by and by for this their folly, Jdg 2:3. Their tolerating the Canaanites among them would, (1.) Put a period to their victories: "You will not drive them out," says God, "and therefore I will not;" thus their sin was made their punishment. Thus those who indulge their lusts and corruptions, which they should mortify, forfeit the grace of God, and it is justly withdrawn from them. If we will not resist the devil, we cannot expect that God should tread him under our feet. (2.) It would involve them in continual troubles. "They shall be thorns in your sides to gore you, which way soever you turn, always doing you one mischief or other." Those deceive themselves who expect advantage by friendship with those that are enemies to God. (3.) It would (which was worst of all) expose them to constant temptation and draw them to sin. "Their gods" (their abominations, so the Chaldee) "will be a snare to you; you will find yourselves wretchedly entangled in an affection to them, and it will be your ruin," so some read it. Those that approach sin are justly left to themselves to fall into sin and to perish in it. God often makes men's sin their punishment; and thorns and snares are in the way of the froward, who will walk contrary to God.
IV. The good success of this sermon is very remarkable: The people lifted up their voice and wept, Jdg 2:4. 1. The angel had told them of their sins, for which they thus expressed their sorrow: the lifted up their voice in confession of sin, crying out against their own folly and ingratitude, and wept, as those that were both ashamed of themselves and angry at themselves, as having acted so directly contrary both to their reason and to their interest. 2. The angel had threatened them with the judgments of God, of which they thus expressed their dread: they lifted up their voice in prayer to God to turn away his wrath from them, and wept for fear of that wrath. They relented upon this alarm, and their hearts melted within them, and trembled at the word, and not without cause. This was good, and a sign that the word they heard made an impression upon them: it is a wonder sinners can ever read their Bible with dry eyes. But this was not enough; they wept, but we do not find that they reformed, that they went home and destroyed all the remains of idolatry and idolaters among them. Many are melted under the word that harden again before they are cast into a new mould. However, this general weeping, (1.) Gave a new name to the place (Jdg 2:5): they called it Bochim, Weepers, a good name for our religious assemblies to answer. Had they kept close to God and their duty, no voice but that of singing would have been heard in their congregation; but by their sin and folly the had made other work for themselves, and now nothing is to be heard but the voice of weeping. (2.) It gave occasion for a solemn sacrifice: They sacrificed there unto the Lord, having (as is supposed) met at Shiloh, where God's altar was. They offered sacrifice to turn away God's wrath, and to obtain his favour, and in token of their dedication of themselves to him, and to him only, making a covenant by this sacrifice. The disease being thus taken in time, and the physic administered working so well, one would have hoped a cure might be effected. But by the sequel of the story it appears to have been too deeply rooted to be wept out.
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 vv1–5 And an angel of the Lord came up from…
And an angel of the Lord came up from Gilgal to Bochim,.... The Targum calls him a prophet (y); and the Jewish commentators in general interpret it of Phinehas (z); and that a man is meant is given into by others, because he is said to come from a certain place in Canaan, and not from heaven, and spoke in a public congregation, and is not said to disappear; but neither a man nor a created angel is meant, or otherwise he would have spoken in the name of the Lord, and have said, "thus saith the Lord", and not in his own name; ascribing to himself the bringing of the children of Israel out of Egypt, and swearing to them, and making a covenant with them, and threatening what he would do to them because of their sin; wherefore the uncreated Angel, the Angel of the covenant, is meant, who brought Israel out of Egypt, was with them in the wilderness, and introduced them into the land of Canaan, and appeared to Joshua as the Captain of the Lord's host at or near Gilgal, Jos 5:13; and because he had not appeared since, therefore he is said to come from thence to a place afterwards called Bochim, from what happened at this time:
and said, I made you to go out of Egypt; that is, obliged Pharaoh king of Egypt to let them go, by inflicting plagues upon him and his people, which made them urgent upon them to depart:
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and I have brought you unto the land which I sware unto your fathers; into the land of Canaan, now for the most part conquered, and divided among them, and in which they were settled:
and I said, I will never break my covenant with you; if the covenant between them was broken, it should not begin with him, it would be their own fault; all which is mentioned, as so many instances of divine goodness to them, and as so many aggravations of their sins against God.
(y) So Maimonides, Moreh Nevochim, par. 1. c. 15. & par. 2. c. 6. (z) The Rabbins in Maimon. Moreh Nevochim, par. 2. c. 42.
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 vv1–5 An angel reproves Israel, who bewail their sins, ver.…
An angel reproves Israel, who bewail their sins, ver. 1-5. They served God during the life of Joshua and his contemporaries, ver. 4-9. Their frequent revolts to idolatry, ver. 10-19. God stops their success, ver. 20-23.
The angel - Christ the angel of the covenant, often called the angel of the Lord, to whom the conduct of Israel out of Egypt into Canaan, is frequently ascribed. He alone could speak the following words in his own name and person; whereas created angels and prophets universally usher in their message with, Thus saith the Lord, or some equivalent expression. And this angel having assumed the shape of a man, it is not strange that he imitates the motion of a man, and comes as it were from Gilgal to the place where now they were: by which motion he signified, that he was the person that brought them to Gilgal, the first place where they rested in Canaan, and there protected them so long, and from thence went with them to battle, and gave them success. Bochim - A place so called by anticipation; it seems to be no other than Shiloh, where it is probable, the people were met together upon some solemn festival. I said - That is, I promised upon condition of your keeping covenant with me.
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, 5 An angel comes to the Israelites at Bochim, and…
CHAPTER II
An angel comes to the Israelites at Bochim, and gives them
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various reproofs, at which they are greatly affected, 1-5.
They served the Lord during the days of Joshua, and the elders
who succeeded him, 6, 7.
Joshua having died, and all that generation, the people revolted
from the true God and served idols, 8-13.
The Lord, being angry, delivered them into the hands of
spoilers, and they were greatly distressed, 14, 15.
A general account of the method which God used to reclaim them,
by sending them judges whom they frequently disobeyed, 16-19.
Therefore God left the various nations of the land to plague and
punish them, 20-23.
NOTES ON CHAP. II
Verse 1. An angel of the Lord] In the preceding chapter we have a summary of several things which took place shortly after the death of Joshua; especially during the time in which the elders lived (that is, the men who were contemporary with Joshua, but survived him,) and while the people continued faithful to the Lord. In this chapter, and some parts of the following, we have an account of the same people abandoned by their God and reduced to the heaviest calamities, because they had broken their covenant with their Maker. This chapter, and the first eight verses of the next, may be considered as an epitome of the whole book, in which we see, on one hand, the crimes of the Israelites; and on the other, the punishments inflicted on them by the Lord; their repentance, and return to their allegiance; and the long-suffering and mercy of God, shown in pardoning their backslidings, and delivering them out of the hands of their enemies.
The angel of the Lord, mentioned here, is variously interpreted; some think it was Phinehas, the high priest, which is possible; others, that it was a prophet, sent to the place where they were now assembled, with an extraordinary commission from God, to reprove them for their sins, and to show them the reason why God had not rooted out their enemies from the land; this is the opinion of the Chaldee paraphrast, consequently of the ancient Jews; others think that an angel, properly such, is intended; and several are of opinion that it was the Angel of the Covenant, the Captain of the Lord's host, which had appeared unto Joshua, Jdg 5:14, and no less than the Lord Jesus Christ himself. I think it more probable that some extraordinary human messenger is meant, as such messengers, and indeed prophets, apostles, c., are frequently termed angels, that is, messengers of the Lord. The person here mentioned appears to have been a resident at Gilgal, and to have come to Bochim on this express errand.
I will never break my covenant] Nor did God ever break it. A covenant is never broken but by him who violates the conditions of it: when any of the contracting parties violates any of the conditions, the covenant is then broken, and by that party alone and the conditions on the other side are null and void.
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 vv1–2 Jdg 2:1. An angel of the Lord came up…
Jdg 2:1. An angel of the Lord came up from Gilgal — This, no doubt, was the Angel of the covenant, the same divine being that appeared to Joshua near Jericho, Jos 5:13-14; to whom the conduct of Israel out of Egypt into Canaan, and their conquests and success there, are frequently ascribed. He alone could speak the following words in his own name and person; whereas created angels and prophets universally usher in their message with, Thus saith the Lord, or some equivalent expression. And, having assumed the shape of a man, he imitates the motion of a man, and appears to come from Gilgal to the place where they now were, probably in order to remind the Israelites of his appearing to Joshua near that place, of the assurance he then gave them of his intended presence with them in the conquest of the country, and of the solemn covenant they made with him by the renewal of circumcision. This was a reproof to them for their base ingratitude to God, and their pusillanimous sloth in not endeavouring to expel the Canaanites. To Bochim — A word signifying weepers. This was not the name of the place before, but was given it on this occasion, on account of the lamentations of the children of Israel for what the angel said to them, Jdg 2:5. It seems to have been no other than Shiloh, where, it is probable, the people were met together upon some solemn festival occasion. And I said, I will never break my covenant with you — That is, upon condition of your keeping covenant with me.
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, 3, 5 The angel of the Lord (not an angel). -…
The angel of the Lord (not an angel). - The phrase is used nearly 60 times to designate the Angel of God’s presence. See Gen 12:7 note. In all cases where “the angel of the Lord” delivers a message, he does it as if God Himself were speaking, without the intervening words “Thus saith the Lord,” which are used in the case of prophets. (Compare Jdg 6:8; Jos 24:2.)
When the host of Israel came up from Gilgal in the plain of Jericho, near the Jordan Jos 4:19 to Shiloh and Shechem, in the hill country of Ephraim, the Angel who had been with them at Gilgal Exo 23:20-23; Exo 33:1-4; Jos 5:10-15 accompanied them. The mention of Gilgal thus fixes the transaction to the period soon after the removal of the camp from Gilgal, and the events recorded in Judg. 1:1-36 (of which those related in Judg. 1:1-29 took place before, and those in Jdg 1:30-36, just after that removal). It also shows that it was the conduct of the Israelites, recorded in Judg. 1 as in Jos 16:1-10; 17, which provoked this rebuke.
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, 2, 3, 5 An angel. Taking the shape of a man, (Challoner)…
An angel. Taking the shape of a man, (Challoner) such as had appeared to Josue, (chap. v. 13.; Menochius) the guardian angel of Israel. (Haydock) --- The Jews commonly suppose that it was Phinees, the high priest, Malachias ii. 8. (Drusius) But he might be dead with the rest of the ancients when this took place, as the Israelites seem to have experienced many difficulties in consequence of their repeated prevarications, before this messenger was sent to them. He might very probably be some prophet, who speaks in the name of God, (Aggeus i. 13,) as he is said to come not from heaven, but from Galgal to the place of weepers. Hebrew, at Habbocim, "the mulberry trees." Septuagint, Klauthmon. This place, the valley of tears, (Psalm lxxxiii. 7,) perhaps received his name afterwards, from what happened, ver. 4. Some suppose it designates Silo, where the people might be assembled on some great festival, and where sacrifice was offered, ver. 5. Bonfrere collects from the Septuagint and Josephus, ([Antiquities?] vii. 4,) that it lay beyond the vale of the Raphaim, on the south side of Jerusalem, (Menochius) where this messenger might summon the people together, and authorize them to offer sacrifice, as was frequently done (Calmet) by dispensation (Haydock) at a distance from the tabernacle, chap. vi. 20., and xiii. 19. --- I made. If he was an angel, his authority could not be called in question; and if he was the high priest, or a prophet known to the people, they would hear him with attention and respect. (Calmet) --- He appeared at least in human form, and spoke in the name of God. (Worthington) (Josue v.)
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 v1 The Religious Degeneracy Of Israel Which Resulted From Its…
SECOND SECTION
The Religious Degeneracy Of Israel Which Resulted From Its Disobedient Conduct With Respect To The Canaanites, And The Severe Discipline Which It Rendered Necessary, As Explaining The Alternations Of Apostasy And Servitude, Repentance And Deliverance, Characteristic Of The Period Of The Judges
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A Messenger of Jehovah charges Israel with disobedience, and announces punishment. The people repent and offer sacrifice
Jdg_2:1-5
1And an angel [messenger] of the Lord [Jehovah] came up from Gilgal to Bochim, and said, I made you to go up1 out of Egypt, and have brought you unto the land which I sware unto your fathers; and I said, I will never break my covenant with 2you. And [But] ye shall make no league [covenant] with the inhabitants of this land; ye shall throw down2 their altars: but ye have not obeyed [hearkened to] my 3voice: why have ye done this?3 Wherefore [And] I also said, [In that case—i.e. in the event of disobedience]4 I will not drive them out from before you; but they shall be as thorns in your sides,5 and their gods shall be [for] a snare unto you. 4And it came to pass, when the angel [messenger] of the Lord [Jehovah] spake [had spoken]6 these words unto all the children [sons] of Israel, that the people lifted up their voice, and wept. 5And they called the name of that place Bochim [Weepers]: and they sacrificed there unto the Lord [Jehovah].
TEXTUAL AND GRAMMATICAL
[Jdg_2:1.—אַעֲלֶה: Keil: “The use of the imperfect instead of the perfect (cf. Jdg_6:8) is very singular, seeing that the contents of the address, and its continuation in the historical tense (וָאָבִיא and וָאֹמַר), require the preterite. The imperfect can only be explained by supposing it to be under the retrospective influence of the immediately following imperfect consecutive.” De Wette translates, “I said, I will lead you up out of Egypt, and brought you into the land,” etc. This supposes that אָמַרְתִּי, or some such expression, has dropped out of the text, or is to be supplied. This mode of explaining the imperfect is favored (1), by the fact that we seem to have here a quotation from Exo_3:17; but especially (2), by the וָאֹמַר before the last clause of this verse, and the וְגַם אָמַרְתִּי of Jdg_2:3, which suggest that the same verb is to be understood in Jdg_2:1 a.—Tr.]
[Jdg_2:2.—תִּתֹּצוּן, from נָתַץ, to tear down, demolish. On the form, cf. Ges. Gram. § 47, Rem. 4.—Tr.]
[Jdg_2:2.—More literally: “What is this that ye have done!” i. e. How great is this sin you have committed! cf. Jdg_8:1.—Tr.]
[Jdg_2:3.—Dr. Bachmann interprets the words that follow as a definite judgment on Israel, announcing that henceforth Jehovah will not drive out any of the still remaining nations, but will leave them to punish Israel. It is undoubtedly true that וְגַם אָמַרְתִּי may be translated, “therefore, now, I also say;” but it is also true that it is more natural here (with Bertheau, Keil, Cass.) to render, “and I also said.” To the citations of earlier divine utterances in Jdg_2:1-2 (see the Comment.), the messenger of Jehovah now adds another, from Num_33:55, Jos_23:13. It is, moreover, a strong point against Bachmann’s view that God does not execute judgment speedily, least of all on Israel. We can hardly conceive him to shut the door of hope on the nation so soon after the departure of the latest surviving contemporaries of Joshua as this scene at Bochim seems to have occurred, cf. the comparatively mild charges brought by the messenger, as implied in Jdg_2:2, with the heavier ones in Jdg_2:11 ff. and Jdg_3:6-7. Besides, if we understand a definite and final sentence to be pronounced here, we must understand Jdg_2:20 f. as only reproducing the same (as Bachmann does), although Israel’s apostasy had become far more pronounced when the first Judge arose than it is now. It seems clear, therefore, that we must here understand a warning, while the sentence itself issues subsequently (cf. foot-note 3, on p. 62).—Tr.]
[5 Jdg_2:3.—Dr. Cassel translates: “they shall be to you for thorns.” Cf. the Commentary. The E. V. supplies “thorns” from Num_33:55; but it has to change לְצדִּים into בְּצִרֵּיכֶם or בַּצִּדִּים.—Tr.]
[6 Jdg_2:4.—Better perhaps, with De Wette: “And it came to pass, as the messenger of Jehovah spake, etc., that the people,” etc. On כְּ with the infin. cf. Ges. Lex. s. כְּ, B. 5, b.—Tr.]
EXEGETICAL AND DOCTRINAL
Jdg_2:1. And there came a messenger of Jehovah. Israel had experienced the faithfulness of the Divine Spirit who, through Moses, led them forth from Egypt, and made them a people. In him, they conquered Canaan, and took possession of a noble country. In addition to this, they had the guaranty of the divine word (cf. Lev_26:44), that God would never forsake them—that the truth on which He had thus far built up their life and nationality, would endure. Reason enough had been given them to fulfill everything prescribed by Moses, whether great or small, difficult or pleasant, whether it gave or took away. They had every reason for being wholly with their God, whether they waged war or enjoyed the fruits of victory. Were they thus with Him? Could they be thus with Him after such proceedings in relation to the inhabitants of Canaan as Judges 1 sets forth? Israel’s strength consists in the enthusiasm which springs from faith in the invisible God who made heaven and earth, and in obedience to his commands. If enthusiasm fail and obedience be impaired, Israel becomes weak. The law which it follows is not only its rule of duty, but also its bill of rights. Israel is free, only by the law; without it, a servant. A life springing from the law, exhibited clearly and uninterruptedly, is the condition on which it enjoys whatever is to its advantage. To preserve and promote such a life, was the object of the command, given by Moses, not to enter into any kind of fellowship with the nations against whom they were called to contend. The toleration which Israel might be inclined to exercise, could only be the offspring of weakness in faith (Deu_7:17) and of blind selfishness. For the sake of its own life, it was commanded not to tolerate idolatry within its borders, even though practiced only by those of alien nations. For the people are weak, and the superstitious tendency to that which strikes the senses, seduces the inconstant heart. It cannot be otherwise than injurious when Israel ceases to be entirely obedient to that word in whose organic wisdom its history is grounded, and its future secured. Ruin must result when, as has been related, the people fails in numerous instances to drive out the heathen nations, and instead thereof enters into compacts with them. Special emphasis was laid, in the preceding narrative, upon the fact that for the sake of tribute, Israel had tolerated the worship of the lewd Asherah and of the sun, in Apheca, in the Phœnician cities, in Banias, and in Beth-shemesh. When the occupation of Canaan was completed—a date is not given—the impression produced by a survey of the whole land was not such as promised enduring peace and obedience to the Word of God. The organs of this word were not yet silenced, however. When the heads of Israel asked who should begin the conflict, the Word of God had answered through the priest; and ancient exegesis rightly considered the messenger of God who now, at the end of the war, speaks to Israel, to be the same priest. At the beginning, he answered from the Spirit of God; at the end, he admonishes by an impulse of his own. There he encourages; here he calls to account. There “they inquire of God;” here also he speaks only as the “messenger of God.” He is designedly called “messenger of God.” Every word he speaks, God has spoken. His words are only reminiscences out of the Word of God. His sermon is, as it were, a lesson read out of this word. He speaks only like a messenger who verbally repeats his commission. No additions of his own; objective truth alone, is what he presents. That is the idea of the מַלְאָדְ, the messenger, ἄγγελος, according to every explanation that has been given of him. The emphasis falls here, not on who spake, but on what was spoken. God’s word comes to the people unasked for, like the voice of conscience. From the antithesis to the opening verse of the Book, where the people asked, it is evident that no angel of a celestial kind is here thought of. Earlier expositors ought to have perceived this, if only because it is said that the messenger—
Came up from Gilgal to Bochim. Heavenly angels “appear,” and do not come from Gilgal particularly.7 The connection of this statement with the whole preceding narrative is profound and instructive. The history of Israel in Canaan begins in Gilgal. There (Jos_4:20 ff.) stood the memorial which showed how they had come through the Jordan into this land (אֶל־הָאָרֶץ וָאָבִיא אֶתְכֶם). The name Gilgal itself speaks of the noblest benefit bestowed on them—their liberation from the reproach of Egypt. There the first Passover in Canaan had been celebrated. Thence also begin the great deeds that are done after the death of Joshua. As now the messenger of God comes from Gilgal, so at first Judah set out from thence to enter into his possessions. A messenger who came from Gilgal, did by that circumstance alone remind the people of Joshua’s last words and commands The memorial which was there erected rendered the place permanently suggestive to Israel of past events. From the time that Joshua’s camp was there, it never ceased to be a celebrated spot (comp. 1Sa_7:16); but that on this occasion the messenger comes from Gilgal, has its ground in the nature of his message, the history of which commences at Gilgal.
Jdg_2:2-3. Why have ye done this? This sorrowful exclamation is uttered by the priest—according to Jewish exegesis, Phinehas, the same who spoke Jdg_1:2—after he has exhibited in brief quotations from the old divine instructions, first, what God has done for Israel, and then what Israel has done in disregard of God. The eternal God has enjoined it upon you, not under any circumstances to enter into peaceful compacts with the idolatrous tribes and their altars among you, thereby authorizing them openly before your eyes to manifest their depravity and practice their abominations—what have ye done! The exclamation is full of sharp grief; for the consequences are inevitable. For God said (Jos_23:13): “I will not drive out these nations from before you.” Israel had its tasks to perform. If it failed it must bear the consequences. God has indeed said (Exo_23:29-30), and Moses reiterates it (Deu_7:22), “By little and little I will drive out the Canaanite, lest the land becomes desolate.” And this word received its fulfillment in the days of Joshua and subsequently. But when Israel disobeys, God will not prosper its disobedience. It must then experience that which the messenger now with grief and pain announces: Since Canaanites remain among you, who ought not to remain, and whom ye could have expelled, had ye been wholly with your God (Deu_7:17 ff.), they will hurt you, though they are conquered. It is not an innocent thing to suffer the presence of sin, and give it equal rights.
They shall be thorns, and their gods shall be a snare unto you. The Hebrew text has וְחָיוּ לָכֶם לְצִדִּים: literally, “they shall be sides unto you.” צַד everywhere means “the side;” and the explanations which make “adversaries, hostes” (Vulgate), “nets” (Luther), “tormentors” (Sachs), out of it, are without any foundation. Arias Montanus, who gives in lateribus, follows therein the older Jewish expositors; but neither does the idea of “hurtful neighbors” lie in the word. From the fact that the Chaldee para phrast has מְעִיקִין, “oppressors,” it would indeed seem that he read צָרִים; for in Num_33:55 he also renders וְצָרֲרוּ by וִיעִיקוּן. The Septuagint rendering συνοχάς (the Syriac version of it has the singular, cf. Rördam, p. 69), might seem to indicate a similar reading, although συνέχειν occurs perhaps only twice for צוּר (1Sa_23:8; 2Sa_20:3). None the less does it appear to me to be against the language and spirit of Scripture, to read צָרִים here. For not only does צָרִים occur but once in Scripture (Lam_1:7), but it is expressive of that hostility which arises in consequence of the state of things here described. Only after one has fallen into the snare begins that miserable condition in which one is oppressed by the enemy, while all power of resistance is lost. The following considerations may assist us to arrive at the true sense: Every sentence, from Jdg_2:1 to Jdg_2:4, is in all its parts and words a reproduction of utterances by Moses and Joshua. Verse 1 is composed of expressions found as follows: אַעֲלֶה, etc., Exo_3:17; וָאָבִיא, etc., Jos_24:8; נִשְׁבַּצְתִּי, etc., Deu_1:35; לָֹא אָפֵר, etc., Lev_26:44. Verse 2 likewise: לאֹ תִכְרְהוּ, etc., Exo_23:32, Deu_7:2; מִזְבְּחוֹתֵיהֶם, תִּתֹּצוּן, Exo_34:13, Deu_7:5; לֹא שְׁמַעְתֶּם, Num_14:22. The case is similar with Jdg_2:3, and it is to be assumed that the parallel passages may be used to throw light on the text. Now, as the first parallel to the expression, “and they shall be to you for tsiddim (צִדִּים),” we have the words in Num_33:55 : “and they shall be to you for pricks in your eyes and thorns in your sides (לִצְנִינִם בְּצִדֵּיכֶם).” Not for “sides,” therefore, but for “thorns in the sides;” and we can as little believe that the same meaning would result if the expression were only “sides,” as we can imagine the idea to remain unaltered if instead of “pricks in the eyes,” one were to say, “they shall be to you for eyes.” The second parallel passage is Jos_23:13 : they shall be to you for “scourges in your sides and thorns in your eyes.” The enemies are compared, not with “sides” and “eyes,” but with scourges and thorns by which sides and eyes are afflicted. Now as our passage as a whole corresponds entirely with those of Numbers and Joshua, save only that it abridges and epitomizes them, the threat which they contain appears here also, and in a similarly condensed form. It was sufficient to say, “they shall be to you for thorns;” accordingly, instead of צִדִּיכ we are to read צִנִּים (tsinnim for tsiddim), a change as natural as it is easily accounted for, since both words occurred not only in each of the other passages, but in one of them were joined together in the same clause. Emendation in this instance is more conservative than retention, for it rests on the internal organic coherence of Scripture.8Tsinnah, tsinnim, tseninim, are thorns, spinœ, pointed and stinging. The figure is taken from rural life. Israel, in the conquest, has acted like a slothful gardener. It has not thoroughly destroyed the thorns and thistles of its fields. The consequence will be, that sowing and planting and other field labors, will soon be rendered painful by the presence of spiteful thorns. What will turn the Canaanites into stinging weeds and snares for Israel? The influence of habitual intercourse. Familiarity blunts aversion, smooths away contrarieties, removes differences, impairs obedience. It induces forgetfulness of what one was, what one promised, and to what conditions one is subject. Familiar intercourse with idolaters will weaken Israel’s faith in the invisible God who has said, “Thou shalt not serve strange gods.”
Jdg_2:4. When the messenger had spoken these words, etc. It is most likely that the few sentences here given, are but the outlines of the messenger’s address. But every word rests on the basis of instructions delivered by Moses and Joshua. The people are sensible of the surpassing reality of the blessings which they have received, and for that reason are the more affected by the thought of the consequences which their errors have brought upon them. For the fulfillment of the law of truth as to its promises, guarantees the same as to its threatenings. Their alarm on account of sin is the livelier, the less decidedly active their disregard of the Word of God has hitherto been. They have not yet served the gods whose temples they have failed to destroy—have not yet joined in sin with the nations whom they suffered to remain. It was a weak faith, but not yet full-grown sin, by which they were led astray. God’s messenger addresses “all the sons of Israel,” for no tribe had formed an exception. In greater or less degree, they all had committed the same disobedience. The whole nation lifted up its voice and wept.
Jdg_2:5. And they called the name of the place Bochim (Weepers). The messenger of the divine word, when he wished to address Israel, must have gone up to the place where he would find them assembled. Israel had been commanded, as soon as the Jordan should have been crossed, and rest obtained, to assemble for feasts and sacrifices at a sacred place (Deu_12:10). This order applied not to Jerusalem merely, but to “the place which the Lord your God shall choose in one of the tribes.” Thither they are to go up, trusting in God and dismissing care. It was only at such festal assemblies that Israel could be met. There was the opportunity for preaching and admonition. The chosen place at that time was Shiloh. There the tabernacle had been set up (Jos_18:1); and there the people assembled (cf. Jos_21:2). Thither they went up from far and near, to attend festivals (Jdg_21:19), and to offer sacrifices (1Sa_1:3). The whole progress of Joshua was a going from Gilgal to Shiloh. Accordingly, the messenger of God can have found Israel at no other place. His discourse produced a general outburst of weeping (cf. 1Sa_11:4). And only because it was a weeping of penitence and shame before God, did the place where it occurred receive and retain the name Bochim. It was not a place otherwise nameless. How could the place where such an assembly was held be without a name! And how could it occur to the people to assemble at such a place! In Shiloh itself, some spot—perhaps that where the priest was accustomed to address the people—received the name Bochim. This name served thenceforth to recall the tears which were there shed. So do they show to-day in Jerusalem the “Jews’ wailing-place” (El Ebra, Ritter, xvi. 350 [Gage’s Transl. iv. 50]), where every Friday the Jews pray and lament. “And they offered sacrifices there.” After repentance and reconciliation comes sacrifice.
HOMILETICAL AND PRACTICAL
Faith and repentance come from preaching. God’s messenger preaches, and Israel hears. The people acknowledge their sins, and weep. At that time only a divine admonition was needed to make them sacrifice again to their God. To fall is possible even for one who has received so much grace as Israel had experienced in the lifetime of Joshua and after his death; but he rises up as soon as the messenger of God touches his heart with the preaching of repentance. A generation which experienced divine miracles, and recognized them as divine, can be brought to repentance by that miracle which in the proclamation of the word of God addresses the souls of men.
Therefore, let not the preaching of repentance fail to address all the people. But the preacher must be (1), a messenger of God; and (2), must not shun the way from Gilgal to Bochim,—must not wait till the people come to him in the place for preaching, but must go to them, until he find a Bochim, a place of tearful eyes. But as God’s messenger he must give heed that the weeping be not merely the result of affecting words, but of a penitent disposition; that it be called forth, not by the flow of rhetoric, but by memories of the grace of God hitherto experienced by the congregation.
Starke: How great concern God takes in the salvation of men, and especially in the welfare of His church, appears clearly from the fact that He himself has often reasoned with them, taught them, admonished and rebuked them.
The same: The Word of God has the power of moving and converting men.
The same: To attest our repentance by tears as well as reformation, is not improper; nay, repentance is seldom of the right sort, if it does not, at least in secret, weep for sin.
Gerlach: He reminds them of earlier commands, promises and threats, and shows them how their own transgressions are now about to turn into self-inflicted judgments. The people, however, do not proceed beyond an unfruitful sorrow in view of this announcement.
[Henry: Many are melted under the word, that harden again before they are cast into a new mould.
Scott: If transgressors cannot endure the rebukes of God’s word and the convictions of their own consciences, how will they be able to stand before the tribunal of the holy, heart-searching Judge.
The same: The worship of God is in its own nature joy, praise, and thanksgiving, and our crimes alone render weeping needful; yet, considering what we are and what we have done, it is much to be wished that our religious assemblies were more frequently called “Bochim,” the place of the weepers. “Blessed are they that mourn, for they shall be comforted.”
Wordsworth: The Israelites called the place Bochim; they named it from their own tears. They laid the principal stress on their own feelings, and on their own outward demonstrations of sorrow. But they did not speak of God’s mercies; and they were not careful to bring forth fruits of repentance; they were a barren fig-tree, having only leaves. Their’s was a religion (such as is too common) of sentiment and emotions, not of faith and obedience.
The same: Reproofs which produce only tears—religious feelings without religious acts—emotions without effects—leave the heart worse than before. If God’s rebukes are trifled with, His grace is withdrawn.—Tr.]
Footnotes:
[1][Jdg_2:1.—אַעֲלֶה: Keil: “The use of the imperfect instead of the perfect (cf. Jdg_6:8) is very singular, seeing that the contents of the address, and its continuation in the historical tense (וָאָבִיא and וָאֹמַר), require the preterite. The imperfect can only be explained by supposing it to be under the retrospective influence of the immediately following imperfect consecutive.” De Wette translates, “I said, I will lead you up out of Egypt, and brought you into the land,” etc. This supposes that אָמַרְתִּי, or some such expression, has dropped out of the text, or is to be supplied. This mode of explaining the imperfect is favored (1), by the fact that we seem to have here a quotation from Exo_3:17; but especially (2), by the וָאֹמַר before the last clause of this verse, and the וְגַם אָמַרְתִּי of Jdg_2:3, which suggest that the same verb is to be understood in Jdg_2:1 a.—Tr.]
[2][Jdg_2:2.—תִּתֹּצוּן, from נָתַץ, to tear down, demolish. On the form, cf. Ges. Gram. § 47, Rem. 4.—Tr.]
[3][Jdg_2:2.—More literally: “What is this that ye have done!” i. e. How great is this sin you have committed! cf. Jdg_8:1.—Tr.]
[4][Jdg_2:3.—Dr. Bachmann interprets the words that follow as a definite judgment on Israel, announcing that henceforth Jehovah will not drive out any of the still remaining nations, but will leave them to punish Israel. It is undoubtedly true that וְגַם אָמַרְתִּי may be translated, “therefore, now, I also say;” but it is also true that it is more natural here (with Bertheau, Keil, Cass.) to render, “and I also said.” To the citations of earlier divine utterances in Jdg_2:1-2 (see the Comment.), the messenger of Jehovah now adds another, from Num_33:55, Jos_23:13. It is, moreover, a strong point against Bachmann’s view that God does not execute judgment speedily, least of all on Israel. We can hardly conceive him to shut the door of hope on the nation so soon after the departure of the latest surviving contemporaries of Joshua as this scene at Bochim seems to have occurred, cf. the comparatively mild charges brought by the messenger, as implied in Jdg_2:2, with the heavier ones in Jdg_2:11 ff. and Jdg_3:6-7. Besides, if we understand a definite and final sentence to be pronounced here, we must understand Jdg_2:20 f. as only reproducing the same (as Bachmann does), although Israel’s apostasy had become far more pronounced when the first Judge arose than it is now. It seems clear, therefore, that we must here understand a warning, while the sentence itself issues subsequently (cf. foot-note 3, on p. 62).—Tr.]
[5][Jdg_2:3.—Dr. Cassel translates: “they shall be to you for thorns.” Cf. the Commentary. The E. V. supplies “thorns” from Num_33:55; but it has to change לְצדִּים into בְּצִרֵּיכֶם or בַּצִּדִּים.—Tr.]
[6][Jdg_2:4.—Better perhaps, with De Wette: “And it came to pass, as the messenger of Jehovah spake, etc., that the people,” etc. On כְּ with the infin. cf. Ges. Lex. s. כְּ, B. 5, b.—Tr.]
[7]Nevertheless, Keil also, in loct, has followed the older expositors. [We subjoin the main points on which Keil rests his interpretation: “מַלְאַךְ יִהוָֹה is not a prophet or any other earthly ambassador of Jehovah, as Phinehas or Joshua (Targ., Rabb., Stud., Berth., and others), but the Angel of Jehovah, consubstantial with God. In simple historical narrative no prophet is ever called מַלְאַד יְהוָֹה; such are designated נָבִיא or אִישׁ נָביא, as in Jdg_6:8, or אישׁ אֶלהִֹים, 1Ki_12:22; 1Ki_13:1, etc. The passages, Hag_1:13 and Mal_3:1, cannot be adduced against this, since there, in the prophetic style, the purely appellative significance of מַלְאָךְ is placed beyond all doubt by the context. Moreover, no prophet ever identifies himself so entirely with God, as is here done by the Angel of Jehovah, In his address Jdg_2:1-3. The prophets always distinguish themselves from Jehovah by this, that they introduce their utterances as the word of God by the formula “thus saith Jehovah,” as is also done by the prophet in Jdg_6:8. … Nor does it conflict with the nature of the Angel of Jehovah that he comes up from Gilgal to Bochim. His appearance at Bochim is described as a coming up to Bochim, with as much propriety as in Jdg_6:11 it is said concerning the Angel of Jehovah, that “he came and sat down under the terebinth at Ophra.” The only feature peculiar to the present instance is the coming up “from Gilgal.” This statement must stand in intimate connection with the mission of the angel—must contain more than a mere notice of his journeying from one place to another.” Keil then recalls the appearance to Joshua, at Gilgal, of the angel who announced himself as the “Captain of the host of Jehovah,” and promised a successful issue to the siege of Jericho. “The coming up from Gilgal indicates, therefore, that the same angel who at Gilgal, with the fall of Jericho delivered all Canaan into the hands of the Israelites, appeared to them again at Bochim, in order to announce the divine decree resulting from their disobedience to the commands of the Lord.” With this view Bachmann and Wordsworth also agree. It must be admitted, however, that the appearance of the Angel of Jehovah, or indeed of any angel, in the character of a preacher before the assembled congregation of Israel is without a parallel in sacred history. Keil’s supposition that he addressed the people only through their heads or representatives, is against the clear import of Jdg_2:4-5, and not to be justified by a reference to Jos_24:1-2. Besides, an assembly of the heads and representatives, presents the same difficulty as an assembly of all the people. Angels appear only to individuals; to Israel as a nation God speaks through prophets.—Tr.]
[8][Bachmann is not inclined to admire the “conservative” character of this emendation. He holds to the reading of the text, and finds in it a free reference to Num_33:55 and Jos_23:13, by virtue of which “the nations themselves”—for, in his view, the לֹא אֲגָרֵשׁ (Jdg_2:3) refers rather to the nations of the unconquered border districts (cf. Jdg_2:23; Jdg_3:1), than to the scattered remnants of Canaanites within the conquered territories—“are described as (sides for Israel, i. e. as cramping, burdensome, tormenting neighbors.” But is it quite “conservative” to attach the idea of something cramping, etc., to the simple word “side.” which on no other occasion appears with such horrible suggestions of compression and suffocation as Dr. B. would give it here?—Tr.]
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 v4 when the angel of the Lord spake these words…
when the angel of the Lord spake these words . . . the people lifted up their voice, and wept--The angel's expostulation made a deep and painful impression. But the reformation was but temporary, and the gratifying promise of a revival which this scene of emotion held out, was, ere long, blasted by speedy and deeper relapses into the guilt of defection and idolatry.
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 vv1–5 THE NATION REBUKED, Jdg_2:1-5.
THE NATION REBUKED, Jdg_2:1-5.
1. Angel of the Lord — This was not an inspired human messenger, because, (1) The name of such was usually prophet, or man of God; (2) The expression, angel of Jehovah, is never, in ordinary historical narrative, descriptive of a mere human being; (3) He speaks with a superhuman authority, and lays claim to the acts of Jehovah himself. He assumes to be the same Angel who led the Israelites from Egypt and went before them in the desert journey. Compare Exo_23:20-25. We have here, therefore, an undoubted theophany. The occasion, the critical condition of the chosen nation, was worthy of such a manifestation of God. Godlike are his words.
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Gilgal — The first place of encampment in the Jordan valley, where this same angel appeared to Joshua and announced himself as captain of Jehovah’s host. Jos_5:14, note. There the angel announced the capture of Jericho, and prepared Joshua for the work of conquest. Now he comes again — comes to rebuke the nation for their disobedience, and warn them of the certain punishment that shall follow their lack of faith. The words, came up from Gilgal, indicate that, in the mind of the sacred writer, this Angel was conceived of as having long lingered at the sacred spot of the old camp where he last revealed himself, and now comes from that spot to speak again to Israel. So in Jdg_5:4, Jehovah is conceived of as marching out of Mount Seir and the fields of Edom, in the fearful thunder-storm that ruined the army of Sisera. See notes there. So in Jdg_6:11, the Angel of the Lord “came and sat under an oak.” So, too, in Gen_18:16; Gen_18:22; Gen_18:33, the three angels, one of whom was called Jehovah, passed from Mamre to Sodom.
Bochim — The weepers; so called from the great weeping that occurred here when the people had heard the reproving words of the angel. Compare Jdg_2:4-5. It is impossible to identify this place, though it seems to have been in the vicinity of Shiloh, where the tabernacle then was, since all Israel were wont to assemble there. Fuerst suggests that it is identical with Allon-bacuth, the oak of weeping, beneath which Deborah was buried. Gen_35:8.
I made you to go up out of Egypt — No human being, not even Moses, could have used this language; nor could any angel, save the Angel of the Covenant, Jehovah of the Old Testament, (Isa_63:9,) and Jesus of the New. Mal_3:1.
Which I sware — Promised in connexion with the solemn covenant with Abraham, (Gen_12:7; Gen_17:7-8,) and in substance repeated to Jacob and Moses.
I will never break — Jehovah will assuredly meet his part of the covenant, so that if there is any failure in its perfect fulfilment it must be the fault of Israel, not of God.
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 vv1–5 1. the angel of the Lord] Not a prophet,…
1. the angel of the Lord] Not a prophet, as the Targ. and Rabbis interpret, and the LXX and Peshitto seem to imply when they insert the prophetic formula ‘thus saith the Lord,’ but the Angel who had led Israel to the Promised Land, Exo_23:20-23; Exo_32:34; Exo_33:2. This Angel was the self-manifestation of Jehovah, sometimes identified with Jehovah as here and Gen_31:13; Genesis cf.11, Exo_3:6; Exodus cf.2, and alluded to as God or Jehovah Jdg_6:14 cf. Jdg_6:12; Jdg_13:21 cf. Jdg_13:22; at other times distinguished from Jehovah Gen_16:11; Gen_19:13, Num_22:31; though “the only distinction implied is between Jehovah and Jehovah in manifestation” (A. B. Davidson in HDB.i. 94).
from Gilgal] where the mysterious appearance of ‘the captain of the host of the Lord’ had taken place, Jos_5:13 ff. Gilgal, on the plains of Jericho, was the first halting-place (Jos_4:19) of the tribes on the W. of Jordan, and for some time their camp, Jos_9:6; Jos_10:6 ff., Jos_9:15; Jos_14:6. The name denotes not rolling—the explanation given in Jos_5:9 is merely a word-play—but a sacred circle of stones such as existed in other parts of the country; it has survived in the mod. Birket Jiljuliyeh, near Jericho. The presence of the Angel shews that Gilgal was a sanctuary; as at Sinai, the Deity manifests Himself where He has His dwelling-place. In the 8th cent. Gilgal was still much frequented, Hos_4:15; Hos_9:15; Hos_12:11; Amo_4:4; Amo_5:5.
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to Bochim] lit. ‘to the Weepers’; but here the name anticipates the account of its origin given in Jdg_2:4 f.; we should expect the older, well known, name to come first. There is little doubt that we should substitute to Beth-el, following the LXX ἐπὶ τὸν κλαυθμῶνα [i.e. Bochim] καὶ ἐπὶ βαιθὴλ καὶ ἐπὶ τὸν οἶκον Ἰσραήλ: ‘to Bochim and’ has been inserted to harmonize with the Hebr. text; ‘to Beth-el’ is original; ‘and to the house of Israel’ is suspiciously like a corrupt repetition of ‘to Beth-el,’ though in the form ‘and to the house of Joseph’ some critics would restore it to the Hebr. text. The sequel of this half of the verse Isaiah 5 b ‘and they sacrificed there unto the Lord.’
I made you to go up] The Hebr. has ‘I make you to go up,’ an historic present; but the tense, followed by ‘and I have brought you,’ cannot be right. The versions insert ‘Thus saith the Lord,’ without removing the difficulty. It has been proposed to read ‘I surely visited you and made you to go up,’ after Exo_3:16 f.; this at any rate is good grammar. For the expression cf. Jdg_6:8; Lev_11:45 P; Deu_20:1; Jos_24:17 E.
the land which I sware unto your fathers] The oath sworn to the forefathers (Gen_22:16 f., cf. Gen_26:3 f. JE) is frequently referred to in JE, Gen_50:24; Exo_13:5; Exo_13:11; Exo_32:13; Exo_33:1; Num_11:12; Num_14:16; Num_14:23; Num_32:11; Deu_31:20 f., Deu_34:4; and particularly in D, e.g. Deu_1:8; Deu_1:35; Deu_6:10; Deu_6:18; Deu_6:23 etc., Jos_1:6; Jos_5:6 etc.—in Deut.-Josh. thirty-three times altogether. The promise is given in Gen_12:7; Gen_13:14 f., Gen_15:18 ff. (Abraham), Gen_26:3 f. (Isaac), Gen_28:13 f. (Jacob).
I will never break my covenant] The allusion is not to the ‘oath sworn to the forefathers,’ but, as the phrases in the next verse shew, to the covenant at Sinai, Exo_34:10 ff. For the expression cf. Deu_31:16; Deu_31:20 JE; Lev_26:44, Gen_17:14 P; it is used rather frequently in the later prophetic style, e.g. Isa_24:5, Jer_11:10, Eze_44:7 etc.
Ch. Jdg_2:1-5. The angel of Jehovah moves from Gilgal; he rebukes Israel’s unfaithfulness. Origin of Bochim
This section connects with ch. 1. The going up of the Angel of Jehovah from Gilgal to Beth-el marks the close of the period of invasion (Jdg_2:1 a); the settlement of the tribes in Canaan involves a transference of the sanctuary (Jdg_2:5 b); the intervening verses (1b–5a) connect the preceding narrative with the History of the Judges (Jdg_2:6 to Jdg_16:31). The latter verses were probably composed by the post-exilic editor who introduced ch. 1 into its present place, not by the author of the Introduction Jdg_2:6 to Jdg_3:6; contrast, for example, Jdg_2:3 with Jdg_2:22 f., and again with Jdg_3:1-3. The appeal to past history, and the tone of remonstrance upbraiding Israel’s neglect to exterminate the Canaanites, betray the later historian. Most of the phrases in Jdg_2:1 b–5a are borrowed from earlier writings.
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, 2, 3, 5 (1) An angel of the Lord.—The words “Maleak Jehovah”…
(1) An angel of the Lord.—The words “Maleak Jehovah” are used of Haggai, in Hag_1:13; of prophets in Isa_42:19; Mal_3:6; of priests in Mal_2:7. Hence from very ancient times these words have been interpreted as, “a messenger of the Lord” (as in the margin of our Bible). The Targum paraphrases it by “a prophet with a message from Jehovah.” R. Tanchum, from Jdg_2:6, infers that it was Joshua himself. Kimchi and others have supposed that it was Phinehas. No indications are given of anything specially miraculous. On the other hand, there is much room to suppose that the writer intended “the Angel of the Presence,” because ( 1 ) he constantly uses the phrase in this sense (Jdg_6:11-12; Jdg_6:21-22; Jdg_13:3; Jdg_13:13; Jdg_13:15, &c.); (2) the same phrase occurs in this sense elsewhere, as in Gen_16:7; Gen_22:11; Exo_2:2; Exo_2:6; Exo_2:14; Num_22:22, &c. (3) the angel speaks in the first person, and does not introduce his words by “Thus saith Jehovah,” as the prophets always do (but see below). It seems probable, therefore, that by “the angel of the Lord” the writer meant “the captain of the Lord’s host,” who appeared to Joshua at Jericho (Jos_5:13-15). Against this conclusion may be urged the fact that in no other instance does an angel appear to, or preach to, multitudes. Angels are sent to individuals, but prophets to nations.
Came up from Gilgal to Bochim.—This notice is by no means decisive against the conclusion that an angel is intended. The writer may mean to intimate that the Angel Prince of the host (Exo_23:20-23), the Angel of the Covenant, left his station in the camp of Gilgal and came up to the new camp or assembly of the people in Central Palestine (Jos_4:19; Jos_5:9-10; Jos_10:7; Jos_10:15; Jos_10:33; Jos_14:6). Ha-Bochim means “the weepers.” The locality is not known, but the LXX. render it “to the weeping-place,” and add “and to Bethel, and to the House of Israel.” Hence it has been inferred that Bochim was near Bethel. Possibly however, the LXX. may have been led to this interpretation by the vicinity to Bethel of Allon-Bachuth, “the oak of weeping” (Gen_35:8).
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And said, I made you to go up out of Egypt.—The LXX. have “the Lord, the Lord brought you out of Egypt” (Cod. Alex.). Houbigant, from the repetition of the word, precariously conjectures the loss of some words, “Thus saith the Lord, I the Lord,” &c., as in the Peshito; and, indeed, in some MSS. a blank (Piska) is left, implying at least a suspicion that this formula has accidentally fallen out of the text.
I will never break my covenant with you.—See Gen_17:7; Gen_29:12; Psa_89:28; Psa_89:34; Luk_1:54-55, &c. Exo_3:6-8.
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, 5 It is often extremely difficult to make out the…
It is often extremely difficult to make out the sequence of a Hebrew narrative, the narrator going back and travelling over the same ground in respect of time which he had already traversed, in order to introduce some circumstances which had been omitted (see Jud_1:7:25, note, and Jud_1:7:4, note). This appears to be the ease With this section. The mention of Gilgal in ver. 1 seems to point distinctly to the early time of the entrance into Canaan under Joshua, because it was quite in the beginning of the Israelite occupation that the camp was at Gilgal, and it was there that the angel of the Lord spake to Joshua. (Jos_5:9, Jos_5:10, Jos_5:13-15) We find the camp still at Gilgal in Jos_10:9, Jos_10:43, and it was from the camp at Gilgal that Caleb went forth to his conquest, (Jos_14:6) and also that Ephraim and Manasseh went forth to take their inheritance; (Jud_1:16 Jud_1:17) Jos_18:1, Jos_18:9, 10 we find Shiloh, in the hill country of Ephraim, the place of the national gathering of "the host," and the tabernacle pitched there; and the same in Jos_19:51 Jos_21:2 Jos_22:9, Jos_22:12. Josephus tells us that Joshua moved his camp from Gilgal to Shiloh in the hill country at the close of the fifth year ("J.A." 5. 1:19). This ascent of the angel from Gilgal in the plains of Jericho to Bochim in the hill country would seem, therefore, to have been about the beginning of the sixth year of the occupation of Canaan, and the rebuke in it to apply chiefly to Ephraim and Manasseh, though in part to Judah also. The place of this section chronologically would be between ver. 29 and ver. 30 of ch. 1. It should be noticed also that this section is very closely connected with Joshua 24; for, first, Jud_1:2:6 is identical With Jos_24:28, and the verses thatJdg 2:6 are also identical With those that follow Jos_24:28. It is likely, therefore, that what immediately precedes Jud_1:2:6 should be very closely connected With what immediately precedes Jos_24:28, and should relate to the same time. Now the discourse of Joshua (Jos_24:1-15) is only an expansion of the brief address of the angel in Jud 2:1-3. The expostulation about the strange gods in Jos_24:14, Jos_24:23, is in exact accordance with the complaint of the angel in Jud_1:2:2; and the warm protestation of the people, "We will serve the Lord," in Jos_24:18, Jos_24:21, Jos_24:24, is in full accordance with what is said Jud_1:2:4: "The people lifted up their voice, and wept." Again, the mention in Jos_24:1 of the people presenting themselves "before God," and of "the sanctuary of the Lord" (ver. 26), agrees with what is Jud_1:2:5: "They sacrificed there unto the Lord." And lastly, the somewhat mysterious words in Jos_24:27, "This stone...hath heard all the words of the Lord which he hath spoken to us," would have an easy solution if the message of the angel (Jud 2:1-8) had been spoken before it. The inference is that Joshua"s address in Jos 24 was delivered immediately after the transaction recorded in this section.
An angel of the Lord. Rather, the angel of the Lord, i.e. the angel of his presence, whose message consequently is delivered as if the Lord himself were speaking. (see Gen_16:7, Gen_16:9, Gen_16:11, etc.) A good example of the difference between a message delivered by a prophet and one delivered by the angel of the Lord may be seen by comparing Jud_1:6:8 with Jud 6:11-16. Bochim, i.e. weepers (vers. 4, 5). The site is unknown, but it was probably near Shiloh. The phrase "came up" denotes that it was in the hill country.
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Vers. 1-6. The expostulation.
We have here an extraordinary messenger, the angel of the Lord, but the message is one which in its spirit might be addressed to men at any time, and at any place. For it speaks of God"s flowing mercy arrested by man"s stubbornness. "I made you to go up out of Egypt I have brought you into the promised land. I have faithfully kept my covenant, but you have altogether failed to do your part. Ye have not obeyed my voice." The one requirement of God that, when they took possession of the land, they should make no league with its inhabitants, but should throw down their abominable altars, they had neglected to fulfil. They had thought of their own interest and convenience, and not of the honour of God. They had taken God"s earthly gifts, but had rejected his word. They bad shown themselves to be self-seekers, greedy, carnal, and forgetful of him from whom they had all. It was the old story of self slipping into the place of God self as the supposed giver, and self as the person for whose glory the gift was to be used. "My power and the might of mine hand bath gotten me this wealth," and therefore I will use it to my own ends. "Is not this great Babylon that I have built for the house of the kingdom, by the might of my power, and for the honour of my majesty?" This is the spirit that is constantly slipping in, in a greater or less degree, even in the Church of God. and frustrating the purposes of his unbounded grace. For it is just as in the case of Israel. When they used the gift of Canaan not for God"s purposes but for their own, which were quite contrary to God"s for God"s purpose was the extirpation of idolatry; their purpose was the enjoyment of vineyards which they had not planted, and wells which they. had not digged they at once closed up the fountain of God"s grace. "I will not drive them out from before you; they shall be as thorns in your side, and their gods shall be a snare unto you." And their future history was the history of the fulfilment of this threat. So it was in the history of the Church. The grace of God bestowed in such rich abundance upon the early Church at Pentecost and afterwards, that those who named the name of Christ might be patterns to an evil world of love and purity and unselfish service, was soon stayed and checked by strife and discord, by worldly ambitions, by compromises with sin, and by fellowship with the corruptions of heathenism. So too it is with individual Christians. We check God"s grace by not using it to the full; we hinder his mercy by not appropriating it, and not valuing it; we stop the flow of his good-will to us by setting up the objects of our own carnal desires and pursuing them, while we neglect the things which make for the glory of God. And just as the entire conquest of the Canaanites was not stopped by any deficiency of power in Almighty God, nor by any failure in love or faithfulness on his part, but simply by the sin of Israel, so now we may be quite,; sure that there is an infinite fulness of grace in Christ Jesus for all the Church"s needs, and all the spiritual wants of each individual disciple, if only the hindrances of man"s selfish disobedience are taken away, and an open channel is kept for God"s free mercy to flow unimpeded in its gracious course. But, be it ever remembered, the disobedience to God"s word, whatever it be, must be taken away. It is not enough to lift up the voice and weep over the consequences of sin past; it is not enough to sacrifice unto the Lord in hopes of averting his threatened punishments; there must be an entire return to the path of obedience, to walk with a whole heart in the way of God"s commandments, and to obey his voice. For that is the end for which God bestows his grace "Elect unto obedience and sprinkling of the blood of Jesus Christ." Let the Church, let the individual disciple, throw themselves unreservedly into this path of obedience, and God will fulfil in them all the good pleasure of his goodness, and their peace shall flow like a river.
HOMILIES BY A.F. MUIR. Vers. 1-5. Bochim.
Who this "angel of the Lord" was we do not, probably were not meant to, know. He might have been Phinehas, the same who, according to Rabbinical interpreters, was the mouth-piece of Jehovah after the death of Joshua (ver. 1). But the probabilities are decidedly against such a supposition. It is "an angel," or messenger. At any rate the personality of the messenger (surely no celestial visitant, else why the journey and apparently public discourse?) is kept in the background. He is nothing, a mere "voice," but a voice giving utterance to Israel"s consciousness of offending, and addressing and rousing it. The mere circumstance that he came from Gilgal, the first spot touched by Israel in Canaan, gave significance to his message. Bochim was probably at Shiloh, the appointed meeting-place of the tribes.
I A PLACE OF SOLEMN RECOLLECTION AND RE-STATEMENT. Shiloh, the place of Israel"s worship and sacrifice, is also the place of Israel"s repentance. A name, Bochim, is given to it. "They named the place from their tears." So the house of God becomes the monument and memorial of our deepest religious experiences. No new revelation is here made. The simple facts of the Divine deliverance of the people, their perfidy and faithlessness, are recited; in contrast with which God"s steadfastness is mentioned. The foundation article of the covenant is rehearsed, and the question asked, "Why have ye done this?" And then the connection of their punishment with their sin is set forth.
II A PLACE OF INQUIRY, REMONSTRANCE, AND SORROWFUL APPEAL. The tone of this address is sympathetic and yet severe. The question, "Why have ye done this?" suggests to the people how foolish and profitless their conduct has been. How fitting would such a question be to many sinners of to-day. We too have broken plain precepts and sinned against the light of truth. What reason has there been in the conduct of God, in the nature of the duties neglected, or in the advantages we supposed we should secure? An appeal to conscience like this is of infinitely more value than a speculative disquisition. He is a true angel who bears such a message.
III A PLACE OF REPENTANCE. Israel is invited to change its mind. God is solicitous for its repentance. He has sent "an angel" to produce this result. The tears that flow so freely are precious in his sight, and may avail, if followed up, to recover his favour and to reinstate them in their lost possessions. How great a privilege was this; not that it was a place of tears only, but that it might become a place of repentance, a turning-point in Israel"s history. This Esau found not, though he sought it carefully with tears. Let it therefore be seized as a blissful augury that God wills not the death of a sinner, hut that all men may turn to him and live. Such experiences are not to be artificially produced. A faithful recalling of God"s real dealings with us in the past ought to make tears flow from the most hardened of sinners. But let the next step be taken, and beyond the tears, even beyond the ostentatious sacrifice, let reformation commence at once with his help and blessing. Then shall we have reason to recall our tears with gratitude when we discover that our repentance is not to he repented of. M.
HOMILIES BY W.F. ADENEY Vers. 1-5. The preaching of repentance.
I THE MISSION.
1. A special messenger is sent to preach repentance. There are men whose peculiar gifts and position mark them out as called to this difficult work, e.g. Elijah, John the Baptist, Savonarola, John Knox.
1. This man was sent by God. It needs a Divine call and inspiration to speak rightly to men of their sins as well as to preach the gospel of peace. He who is thus called must not shrink from fear or false kindness to men.
2. The preacher is simply commissioned to convey a message from God. The voice is a man"s, but the words are God"s. The true preacher must always regard himself as the messenger of God, not at liberty to indulge in his own speculations, or to claim authority for his own judgment, but simply to declare, and interpret, and apply, the truth which God has entrusted to him. (1Ti_1:11)
3. The preacher carries the message to the people. He does not wait for an audience to assemble about him; he does not wait for a spontaneous repentance. He journeys from Gilgal to Bochim. They who most need the preacher are least likely to come to hear him. Therefore he must go after them. The visitor, the city missionary, etc., have here a special work to reach those who will never enter the church, but all preachers of repentance must learn to seek their hearers.
II THE MESSAGE.
1. This commences with a review of God"s goodness and faithfulness. If we have been sinful he has still been merciful to us. He has kept his side of the great covenant, so that if we miss the good fruits of it this must be because we fail on our side. It is well to call attention to these facts before pointing out the sin of men,
(1) that this may be felt more deeply in contrast with the goodness of God,
(2) that the purpose of God in calling to repentance may be recognised as gracious, not vindictive. (Rom_2:4)
2. The message contains a definite charge of sin. This must be definite to be effective. All admit they are imperfect. The difficult and delicate task of rebuking consists in making men see their special guilt in regard to particular sins.
a. In the present case the sin consists in guilty tolerance of evil. Religion should be aggressive. The Church is called to separate herself from the. (1Co_5:11)
b. The root of the sin is disobedience. All sin is disobedience to the written law, or the law in our hearts; it is the setting up of our will against God"s will.
3. The message closes with a warning of punishment. This punishment was to be a direct consequence of their tolerance of evil. Punishment is a natural fruit of sin.
III THE RESULTS. We see the preaching of repentance producing the most varied results. Some turn a deaf ear; some hear and resent it; some hear and approve, but apply the message to others; some hear and admit the truth of the rebuke, but have no feeling of the sting of it; some feel sorrow under the rebuke, but do not rise to the active repentance of will. In the present instance the people heard meekly, humbly, and penitently, and the word bore fruit in genuine repentance and reformation.
1. They wept. Sorrow for past sin is natural and helpful towards future amendment, though if left to itself it will be a barren sentiment.
2. They sacrificed. Thus they acknowledged guilt, sought forgiveness in the mercy of God, and reconsecrated themselves to his service. It is not repentance, but faith in Christ, the sacrifice for sin, following this, that secures to us God"s forgiving mercy.
3. They served the Lord. This is the final outcome, and certain proof of genuine repentance. The depth of our repentance must be measured not by the number of tears we shed, but by the thoroughness of our amendment of life, and the faithfulness of our subsequent service of God. A. (Luk_3:11)
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 An angel of the Lord came up from Gilgal…
Jdg_2:1-5
An angel of the Lord came up from Gilgal to Bochim.
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The Israelites at Bochim
I. The Assembly convened: All the children of Israel.
II. The messenger employed. This angel of the Lord is said to come up from Gilgal to Bochim. Gilgal was the scene of interesting transactions between the Lord and the Israelites. The Lord, therefore, in the riches of His mercy, again visits this people; and at Boehim revives the impressions which had been felt and the resolutions which had been formed at Gilgal.
III. The address delivered.
1. A statement of what the Lord had done for this people: I made you to go up out of Egypt, that land of slavery, that scene of degradation and toil, and have brought you unto the land which I aware unto your fathers. This was the completion of His work. It was a proof of the exceeding greatness of His power, and also of His faithfulness; for Canaan was the inheritance which He had engaged to give.
2. Next they are told what the Lord had promised to them: I said, I will never break My covenant with you. Here was additional favour, and a solemn engagement of fidelity. It had been well if their fidelity had resembled His; then would their peace have been as a river and their prosperity permanent as a rock!
3. They are also reminded of what the Lord required of them: Ye shall make no league with the inhabitants of this land. Nothing could be more reasonable. One would naturally have expected their prompt and persevering compliance.
4. But it is affecting to learn what the Lord received from them--the manner in which He was requited for all His favours: Ye have not obeyed My voice. The charge is express and pointed. They had leagued with the Canaanites, spared their altars, connived at their idolatry; and all this in direct opposition to the command of Jehovah: Why have ye done this? Their sin may be accounted for, but it can never be justified. Indolence may partly account for it: to oppose evil required vigilance and exertion. Covetousness, perhaps, had its influence; they might join with the Canaanites in hope of sordid gain. Love of idolatry, a secret inclination to the practices of heathen nations, might induce them to spare their altars and to palliate their sin. But unbelief was the grand cause, and lay at the root of all their disobedience.
5. Lastly is recorded what the Lord threatened against them: Wherefore I also said, I will not drive them out, etc. Here was righteous retribution; they were punished by weapons of their own making; nor can we wonder at this mark of the Divine displeasure.
IV. The effect produced (Jdg_2:4-5). From this remarkable fact let us apply a question to ourselves: what influence has the Word preached among us? In other words, where are your tears, and where are your prayers? Thank God, neither the one nor the other are altogether restrained. But why are they not more frequent? It is owing to the hardness of the human heart, and is an affecting proof of the deep degeneracy of man. Terrors do not move; mercies do not melt; the most attractive truths are often heard without emotion or concern; and when some appearance of penitence does exist, how transient its continuance, and how unfruitful its influence! (T. Kidd.)
Thy weepers
The voice of that weeping echoes through the ages, and Bochim becomes classic ground in the moral history of the world.
I. There is a terrible physical and moral confusion palpable on the very surface of mans life, which appears darker and deadlier the more you penetrate the depths; while the profound instinct of his being, made in the image of the one God, demands order and unity. All the heathen hecatombs, all the theodicies of philosophy, are attempts to explain the mystery. They are at least mans protests against, his struggle to be free from, the desperate confusions of his physical and moral life.
II. There is in man a native tendency to mistake the kind of help which he is to expect from God. From the Old and from the New Testament we hear alike the cry of mans natural heart, The rest is near. There is the undying hope in the heart of humanity that God will give rest. Lamech thought that Noah would give it, Abraham that Isaac would give it, the Jews saw it in Canaan, David in Solomon, Ezra in the restoration, the early Christians in the Church. Suffering is to be destroyed, so runs the human dream, by the destruction of sin. The devil is to be slain, and all things that now tempt man to transgression shall woo him sweetly to virtue and joy.
III. Gods rest, the true Canaan for which we all are pining, must spring from within, and be dependent on the vigour of the inward life.
IV. In this scene of discipline, where man exists of necessity as an imperfect moral being, he must have throngs of tempters around him. He gives them strength by his want of firmness, by his system of foolish and timid compromise. But you have Gods covenant as a rock to stand on, Gods promise as a star to cheer, Gods strength to nerve the spirit and to harden it to endurance, and Gods sword, sharp and gleaming, to cut out before you the path to victory.
V. The bitter truth, discovered at Bochim, is the deep, sad undertone of the music of history. Perhaps those who are most alive to its higher interests and aims find it saddest. But for them this sadness becomes holy; it is part of the sorrow of Christ, which is the germ of everlasting joy. It is not in anger, in its deepest purpose, but in love, that this weeping is ordained to us. Life is richer, nobler, if sadder, under such conditions, as we shall understand at last when we stand white-robed before the throne. (J. B. Brown, B. A.)
Thorough-going Christianity
The picture here presented to us is that of the people of God stopping short in their career of triumph, not following up and following out the great salvation which the Lord has wrought. They thus incur His stern rebuke and questioning: Why have ye done this? Many reasons, more or less plausible, might be given. They were weary of the wilderness and of war; they had had enough of wandering and fighting; they longed for quiet rest and peace. Motives also of seeming pity and prudence might sway them: how hard to cut off with so fell a swoop, and in one wholesale sacrifice, so many hosts and households, of whom some at least might yet be reclaimed to Jehovahs service, or made useful in some way to His people. Then, as these relentings of tenderness or considerations of expediency occasioned hesitation and delay, their enemies recovered courage and became formidable again. No wonder if, under some such influences as these, proposals of truce and compromise began to be welcome to Israel; and the wisdom of God gave way before the policy of man. It was a policy, however, alike unwarrantable and disastrous; unwarrantable, considering all that God had done for them and the assurance they had that He would not break His covenant with them (Jdg_2:1); and disastrous in the issue, for the error was irretrievable.
I. The sin. Let me speak to the young Christian, the recent convert. What now have you more urgent on hand than to make good your position and reap the full fruit of the deliverance wrought out for you? What better opportunity for carrying out fully the sternest injunctions of your Lord regarding them? How does He bid you treat these enemies? Mortify your members that are on the earth. They that are Christs have crucified the flesh with the affections and lusts. Or take another instance. Such a season as I am speaking of is the very season for remodelling your whole plan of life--its pursuits, its habits, its companionship. You come out, O believer, from the secret place of your God, where He has been speaking peace to you--you come out into the world a new man; and now, when all is fresh, and before you have committed yourself, now is the very time for arranging methodically your general course of conduct and all its details. How are you to meet with your former associates? On what terms and with what degree of intimacy? When and how are you to join yourselves to the company commonly called godly, cast in your lot with them, and avow your self partakers of their toils, their trials, and their joys? What, moreover, are to be your rules for the exercise of private devotion and the cultivation of personal piety? What the system of your studious preparation for heaven? You may take your ground, unfurl your standard, and announce your watchword so unequivocally that few ever after will think of trying to shake or to disconcert you. But alas! too generally, as to all these matters, you have no definite plan of life at all. Hence vacillation, fitfulness, inconsistency, excess, and deficiency by turns. The opportunity of setting up a high standard and a high aim is lost; and soon, amid the snares of worldly conformity and the awkwardness of the false shame that will not let you retrace your steps, you deeply sigh for the day of your visitation, when you might have started from a higher platform and run a higher race than you can now hope ever to realise.
II. The inexcusableness of the sin. Hear the remonstrance which God addresses to Israel (Jdg_2:1), and consider His threefold appeal. Look back to the past, and call to mind from what a state the Lord has rescued you, at what a price, by what a work of power. Look around on your present circumstances; see how the Lord has performed all that He sware to your fathers; the land is yours; and it is a goodly land. And if, in looking forward to the future, you have any misgivings, has He not said, I will never break My covenant with you? What can you ask more? Are these considerations not sufficient to bind you to the whole work and warfare of the high calling of God, and to make cowardice and compromise exceeding sinful?
III. The dangerous and disastrous consequences of the sin. Hear the awful sentence of God (Jdg_2:3), and then see how the children of Israel ilft up their voice and weep (Jdg_2:4). Well is the place named Bochim: it is indeed a melting scene. The golden opportunity is lost: their error is not to be retrieved; its bitter fruits are to be reaped from henceforth many days. A sad sight truly; but sadder, if possible, is the spectacle of a Christian professor suffering, in after-years, from the insufficiency of his works and the first foundation of his Christianity; from his having allowed some evil thing in his bosom, some Achan in his camp; from his having stopped short when he should have gone on unto perfection. (R. S. Candlish, D. D.)
From Gilgal to Bochim
Gilgal was the first camp of Israel after Jordan was actually crossed; it was at once a goal and a starting-point. To Christians it represents that position of vantage, that excellence of endowment whence they go forth in obedience and faith to subdue their spiritual foes. Had Israel been wise, they would have abode in Gilgal until their work of conquest was complete and the land all their own. Doubtless the angel first appeared in that deserted camp, doubtless he followed the people thence, in order to remind them that he ought to have found them there. But they had not been wise; they had not extirpated the nations, but had mingled with them and learnt their works; they had abandoned Gilgal, from whence, under the strong restraints of religious and military discipline, they might have carried through the work of conquest, and had settled themselves in some place of their own choosing: therefore, the angel of the Lord followed and found and reproached them; then they wept, and named the place Bochim--the weepers. From Gilgal to Bochim? In nature it is an ascent, but in grace it is a tremendous fall; the one named from what God did, the other from what they felt. And surely it is very expressive of a great deal amongst ourselves; surely many of us are settled in a place of feelings without acts, emotions without results, reproofs which only produce tears. From Gilgal to Bochim. How often is the story repeated in our spiritual life! Canaan is our kingdom--that kingdom of life and immortality, of light and holiness, which is already ours; not, indeed, for quiet and absolute possession, but for steady and victorious occupation. The seven nations of the Canaanites, alien intruders on the sacred soil, are the seven deadly sins which, with all their evil kith and kin, withstand our entry and dispute our enjoyment of that holy land whereof God hath made us kings and priests in Christ. It is our duty and our charge, as well as our interest, to extirpate these sins--to make a clean sweep of them, great and small. But we do not; we gain some splendid victories, we lay some threatening strongholds low, we deliver some large territories from the dominion of the foe, we do enough to show that we could do all; and then we cease. Because we would not be at the trouble, relying on the grace of God, to cast out all the sins which He detests; because we held our hand and allowed some of them to remain in their old places in our life and character; therefore hath God also restrained the working of His grace, and hath allowed those very faults to become our constant plagues, thorns in our sides, unfailing causes of irritation, self-reproach, and weakness. What we want is to be up and doing, to make a vigorous move, to get back to Gilgal, and from thence to go forth patient and resolved to complete the conquest of our own spiritual realm. Let us occupy once more that place of vantage to which God hath brought us by election and by grace; let us realise the invincible strength which is assured unto those Christians who wait upon their God in prayer and sacraments; let us rely upon that strength not to be the substitute for our own efforts, but to inspire them with supernatural ardour,to crown them with supernatural success. (R. Winterbotham, M. A.)
Bochim; or, the weepers
I. How hopeful. One could not desire anything better apparently than this.
1. They were all attentive hearers. There was not one that looked about him, or that forgot the pointed words that were spoken. It is a great thing to win peoples attention.
2. They were very feeling people.
3. They were all sorrowful hearers. Alas! that such drops did not precede a shower of grace, but passed away as the morning cloud.
4. Aye, and they all became professing hearers; for as soon as ever that service was over they held another, and they sacrificed unto Jehovah. Now let me turn to the other side and show you that there was nothing permanently good in Bochims sudden water-floods.
II. Their weeping was very disappointing.
1. I half suspect that their tears and lamentations were produced as much by the preachers person as by anything else. It was the Angel of the Lord, and who would not be moved at His presence? It may be a great blessing to you to hear a very useful preacher, but if you depend upon him in the least it will be mischievous to you. Seek that your repentance may be repentance which is wrought by the Spirit of God in your heart and conscience. Sham religion is an injury rather than a benefit.
2. Again, I am afraid that the repentance of these people had a great deal to do with their natural softness. They were tender and excitable because there was little grit in their nature; their manliness was of a degenerate type. They feared to go to battle for God; they dreaded the noise and the slaughter. They were, moreover, easily moved by their fellow-men, and took shape from those who lived near them. One grain of faith is better than a gallon of tears. A drop of genuine repentance is more precious than a torrent of weeping.
3. There is another thing about the weeping of these people, and that is, that it was caused a great deal by threatenings of punishment. Every murderer repents at the gallows, they say; that is, he repents of being hanged, but he does not repent of having killed others. We ought clearly to discern between the natural terrors that come of vivid descriptions of the wrath to come and that real spiritual touch of God the Holy Ghost which breaks and melts the heart and then casts it into another mould. These people were deceived as to the depth and sincerity of their own feelings. Doubtless they reckoned themselves choice penitents when they were only cowardly tremblers, labouring under impressions which were as useless as they were transient. Their feeling was but as a meteors blaze, shedding strong but momentary day.
4. Next, these people had not repented, for they did not bring their children up rightly. The next generation, it is said, knew not the Lord, neither the mighty works of the Lord. If parents make known the things of God to their children it cannot be said that the children do not know the works of God. If parents teach with affectionate earnestness, their children learn at least the letter of the truth. Woe unto you, with all your tears, if you have no regard for your household, and no care to bring up your children in the fear of God.
5. I know that these people did not repent aright, because they went from bad to worse. They went from weeping before God to worshipping Baal. The more tender you are, if afterwards you harden yourselves, so much the greater will be your guilt; and if you humble yourselves before God in mere appearance, so much the more terrible will be your doom if that humbleness departs and you go back to the sin from which you professed to turn.
6. I know that these people were not penitents, because God did not take away the chastisement. The punishment which He threatened He brought upon them: He gave them over to the spoilers and sold them to their enemies. But where there is a hearty repentance of sin, God will never lay punishment on a man. He will forgive him and receive him to His bosom and restore him. (C. H. Spurgeon.)
The failure of obedience
The accusation against them at Bochim was negative rather than positive. They were not charged with any specific act of avowed rebellion, but with having failed to obey the voice of God. But when the Church has begun to habitually neglect any one of her Lords known commands--still more when she begins to break one of these least commandments, and teach men so--the day is not far distant when, unless arrested in her career by the mercy or the judgments of God, she will be found openly consorting with the mammon-worshippers by whom she is surrounded. Even so it was in the history before us.
1. The Canaanites in this history represent the enemies of the Church of God, and also the inward besetting sins of individual members of that Church. Need we name pride, and lust, and covetousness, and self-conceit, and envy, and worldliness, and impatience, and fretfulness, and revengefulness--a band of brothers, tall sons of Anak, diverse in feature, yet all showing the ancestry and lineaments of the serpent? Need we mention others of the same kindred--jealousy, and sloth, and worldliness, and levity, and procrastination, and presumption, and unbelief?
2. It follows, then, that the believers warfare is not completed when he has been made a partaker of peace through believing in Christ; for we are made partakers of Christ only if we hold the beginning of our confidence steadfast unto the end. Put off, says the Scripture, the old man, which is corrupt according to the deceitful lusts. Mighty task!--for this old man is not easily ousted from his ancient habitation. He fights hard for possession; and we must give diligence, even after we have obtained our calling and election, to make it sure.
3. We are reminded that many of the spiritual Israel stop short of a full salvation, for it is to be remembered that these men had partially obeyed. They had begun well.
4. The history illustrates the causes of the weakness of the Church and people of God.
(1) One of these causes was indolence. They neglected to destroy the nations, not because of want of inclination, but because they were deficient in strength in consequence of their guilt; not from feelings of compassion, but from want of holy zeal and from slothfulness, The athlete cannot retain his strength without daily exercise; the vocalist cannot retain his power and command of voice without incessant practise; and the child of God cannot go on to perfection without a daily spiritual gymnastic, exercising himself with a view to godliness, as an athlete with a view to the games. Faith and love, correcting the indolence of our nature, will make this holy toil delightful.
(2) Another cause of spiritual weakness is a secret love of sin. In our own day there are degraded Englishmen who have settled among the savages of New Hebrides or Fiji on purpose to be free from all moral restraint, and who outdo the worst of the heathen in every kind of abomination. In religious families there are sons and daughters who, although outwardly restrained by the circumstances of their position, cherish a bitter hatred of religion and a secret love for a dissipated life. And even in the hearts of the faithful what strange occasional lingerings towards evil! What treacherous trifling with things fordidden!
(3) Another cause of spiritual weakness is unbelief, if indeed this one cause does not sum up and exhaust the whole subject. Unbelief is vitally connected with that alienation of heart and affections from God in which the deepest ruin of man consists. And is it for this cause, O ye Israel of God, that ye are so slow to believe even in the possibility of being sanctified wholly, and of being preserved blameless unto the coming of the Lord? Is this the reason why ye so stoutly contend that although the inbred foe, the spiritual Canaanite, may be humbled and put to tribute, it is impossible he should be utterly destroyed on this side the grave? When the heart pants after the living God, is it pleasant to think that, in this life at least, He will never take full and complete possession, but that some damnable lust will always be there to dispute with Him for the supremacy? (L. H. Wiseman, M. A.)
The evil of disobedience to God
Mark and note right well that it is an evil thing under any pretext whatever to depart in any degree from the commandment of the Most High God. Whatsoever may be the law which God gives, either to the whole race or to His chosen, they will find their safety in keeping close to it. But Israel forgot this. Soldiering was hard work--storming cities and warring with men who attacked them with chariots of iron was heroic service. All this required strong faith and untiring perseverance, and in these virtues the Israelites were greatly deficient; and so, in certain places, they said to the Canaanites, Let us be neighbours: let us dwell together. At any rate, it could do no harm to study their archaeology, and go to their temples, and see the gods they worshipped, and get a general acquaintance with the advanced thought of the period; for the Canaanites were a greatly advanced people--they were the advanced thinkers of the period. Tolerance led to imitation, and Israel became as vile as the heathen whom the Lord had condemned, and the Israelites became a mixed race, in whose veins there flowed a measure of Canaanite blood. Yes, if you depart from Gods Word by a heirs breadth you know not where you will end. I would to God that in these degenerate times we had back again somewhat of the stern spirit of the Cameronians and the Covenanters; for now men play fast and loose with God, and think that anything they please to do will satisfy the Most High. The offal and the refuse will suffice for sacrifice for Him; but as to strict obedience to His Word, they can by no means abide it. Mischief will surely come of this lax state of things to the Churches of this day as surely as affliction came abundantly to Israel of old. Note, next, that whenever one sin is allowed we may say of it, Gad, a troop cometh. It seemed a pardonable sort of sin to be gentle to these people and not to obey Gods severer word; but then, what came next? Why, soon they, the children of Jehovah, were found worshipping before the horrible Baal. Soon they had gone farther, and the unclean goddess Ashtaroth became their delight; and anon they forgot Jehovah altogether amid their deities and demons. With these errors in religion there had come in all sorts of errors in morals, for every fashion of immorality and lewdness defiled the worshippers of Baal-Peor, Baal-Berith, and Baal-Zebub; and the chosen people of God could scarcely be distinguished from the heathen nations among which they dwelt, or if distinguished at all, it was by their greater sin, inasmuch as they were transgressing against superior light, and holding down their consciences which God had rendered by His teaching much more tender than the consciences of those about them. Backslide a little, and you are on the way to utter apostasy. The mother of mischief is small as a midges egg; hatch it, and you shall see an evil bird larger than an ostrich. The least wrong has in it an all but infinity of evil. So Israel went aside farther and farther from God because they regarded not their way, and did not in all things obey the Lord. But then comes in a truth which, though it may seem black in the telling, is bright in the essence of it. God did not leave His people without chastisement. The Lord laid His blows upon them thick and heavy. But, before He did this, He sent a messenger to rebuke them. It is ever the Lords way to give space for repentance ere He executes vengeance. The axes which were carried before the Roman magistrates by the lictors were bound up in bundles of rods. It is said that when a prisoner was before the magistrate the lictor began to untie the rods, and with these the culprit was beaten; meanwhile the judge looked in the prisoners face and heard his defence, and if he saw reason for averting the capital sentence, because of the repentance which the offender expressed, then he only smote him with the rod, but the axe remained unused. But if, when every rod was taken off, the culprit was still hardened, and the crime was a capital one and clearly proven, then the axe was used, and used all the more sternly because space had been given for penitence, and the rods had been used in vain. When the rod is despised the axe is ready. It is certainly so with God: He waiteth to be gracious, but when patience cannot hope for penitence then justice takes her turn, and her stroke is terrible. (C. H. Spurgeon.)
The rushing of tears
If this hour we could realise Gods goodness toward us, and our conduct toward Him, a great grief would seize upon us, and repentance would meet remorse, and remorse would meet ingratitude, and memories of the past would jostle the fears of the future, and silence would be broken by sobs and shrieks.
1. I have first to remark that many Christian people have reason for a good deal of mourning. What have you been doing these ten, twenty, thirty, forty years? Did not God lead you out of Egypt? Did He not part for you the Red Sea of trouble, and has He not rained manna all around about your camp? Did He not divide the Jordan of death for your loved ones, until they went through dry-shod, not wetting even the soles of their feet? Has He not put clusters of blessings upon your table, and fed you with the finest of the wheat? And yet, we must confess, we have, like the Israelites, made a league with the world. Three-fourths of our Christian life has been wasted. Oh, weep for our derelictions! weep for our wanderings! weep for our lost opportunities that will never return! There is great reason for sadness on the part of some parents when they look over their families. You know that there must be a mighty change in your household before you can all live together in eternity. Can you placidly contemplate an eternal separation from any of your loved ones? Things are looking that way. Their opportunities of salvation less and less; your opportunities of plying them with religious motives less and less. The prospect that Gods invitation will continue to them, less and less. The day of their mercy almost gone, yet they have not put up one earnest prayer, or repented of one sin, and not given one hopeful sign, and death coming to snap the conjugal bond, and break up the fraternal and the filial tie. An aged woman came to me. I said, Are you seeking the salvation of your soul? She said, No, I have sought and found. I came in to ask your prayers for my sons. They are on the wrong road. O Lord Jesus, are we to be parted from any we have loved? Will some of us be saved and some of us be lost? Which one will it be missing, missing, missing, for eternity? I say farther: there are impenitent souls who ought to be sad from the fact that there are sins they have committed that cannot be corrected either in this world or the world to come. Suppose a man at fifty years of age becomes a Christian, but he has been all his life on the other side. He is a father. He comes to Christ now; but can he arrest the fact that for twenty or thirty years over his children he was wielding a wrong influence, and they have started in the wrong direction? And if you come to God in the latter part of your life, when you have given your children an impulse in the wrong direction, those ten, or fifteen, or twenty years of example in the wrong direction will be mightier than the few words you can utter now in the right direction. So it is with the influence you have had anywhere in community. If you have all these years given countenance to those who are neglecting religion, can you correct that? Your common sense says No. Here is an engineer on a locomotive. He is taking a long train of cars loaded with passengers. He comes on and sees a red flag. He says, What do I care for the red flag? He pushes on the train, and comes to another red flag. He says, I dont care for the red flag. After a while he sees that the bridge is down; but he is by a marsh, and he leaps and is not damaged. Does that stop the train? No! It goes on crash! crash! crash! That is the history of some men who have been converted. I congratulate them, but I cannot hide the fact that they started a train of influences in the wrong direction; and though, in the afternoon of their life, they may leap off the train, the train goes on, So, also, there is occasion for sadness in the peril that surrounds every unforgiven soul. And so you may go on placidly, smoothly, gaily for a while in your sin, but the hurricane will swoop upon your souls. Without God, without hope! Oh, what an orphanage, what an exile, what a desolation! Moan! moan! for thy lost estate. Have you not had a chance for heaven? Ah, you say, that is the worst of it. That is what makes me weep. Was your father bad? Was your mother wicked? No, you say. Say nothing against my mother. If there was ever a good woman, she was one; and I remember how, in her old days, and when bent with years, and in her plain frock she knelt down and prayed for my soul, and with her apron wiped away the tears. Oh, I have trampled on her broken heart. I am a wretch undone. Who will pray for me? I am so sick of sin. I am so weary of the world! No wonder you weep, for the greatest condemnation of the last day will be for those who had pious parents and who resisted their admonition. But what is a sadder thought is, that some of these people not only stay out of the kingdom of God themselves, but they will not let their children come in. You never invited me to Christ. You stood in my way. You gave a wrong example. Father, mother, you ruined my soul!
2. But I remember that there are tears of joy as well as tears of sorrow, and how the foundations of the deep would break up if one hundred or one thousand souls would march up and take the kingdom of heaven! But there are some who have not come. They will not come. They will not repent. (T. De Witt Talmage.)
Sorrow not repentance
Bochim might be widely inscribed in the land of Palestine, if thereby to mark the place where universal lamentations have been heard. Crying was a frequent sight and sound there. It was sometimes uncontrollable. It was often mechanical and artificial. Trouble usually provokes it, and fears and tears are closely related. But sobbings and penitence are not so nearly allied as we might expect. The vain Xerxes, as he sat on his silver throne, overlooking his vast fleet and outstretched army, and weeping to think how in a hundred years every life before him would have perished, yet who arrayed his thousands for needless and speedy slaughter, might have better spared his grief, while curbing his pride. Sentiment is not sanctity. Sorrow is not sobriety. In the abodes of shame there are burning tears and pitiful groans without a wish for a better life. The trappings of woe are common; the resolve to remove its cause is not as common. Reformatories are full of victims of their own evil choices, and many a sigh they heave over a wicked past, but it is only because of the ills it has brought upon them. They like the sin as well as ever. Could it be separated from its penalty they would be only too willing to commit it. There are three classes of weepers: the repentant, mourning both over the wrong done and the result it has necessitated, and determined never to offend again; the regretful, intending to keep from the like in future, but only slightly moved because of its evil character; the suffering, thinking only of the disaster, but ready to repeat the deed so soon as it is safe. To the second class, for the most part, the Bochimites belong. They wish for prosperity and ease, and are more sorry for the thorning and snaring in store than for having disobeyed the word of Jehovah. (De Witt S. Clark.)
Bochim
I. Observe, first, that the reprover of the people is termed an angel. An angel of the Lord came up from Gilgal. But the first utterance carries us to the thought of One higher than angel or archangel. The speaker describes Himself as the deliverer of Israel out of Egypt, and He finishes with the denunciation, Ye have not obeyed My voice. The burden of His prophecy is worthy of the Divine speaker, for it is the simple enunciation of the fundamental truth of all religion--man in covenant with God, and bound to comply with the terms of that covenant.
II. Consider the result of the prophesying. The general result was but transitory. The people wept and sacrificed unto the Lord. But no amendment ensued. The whole effect was a momentary outburst of feeling and a hasty sacrifice. Most true picture of the reception of the Word of God in after-time. It is sensational or emotional religion against which Bochim is our warning. There are two principal elements of this fruitless sorrow.
1. The first is want of depth of soul.
2. The second is the after revolt of the human mind against the supernatural. Godly sorrow issues in a repentance not to be repented of, in that thorough turning of the life to Gods service from which, in the hottest fire of temptation, there is never a turning back to the way of evil again. (Bp. Woodford.)
Wasted emotion
In California, where so much of the land requires irrigation, there is a serious effort being made to devise some scheme by which the water that goes to waste in times of flood can be stored up and used in times of drought. It has long been known that enough flood water flows back to the sea in the rainy season to more than multiply the states resource for irrigation. Therefore it is felt that if some system is workable whereby flood waters can be impounded and saved from waste, hundreds of thousands of acres of now useless lands would be made fruitful. What a wonderful thing it would be if some such scheme could be devised in the higher realm of human emotion! There is enough real heart-benevolence stirred up to fill the land with kindness and bring about human brotherhood everywhere. But it often goes to waste without producing any practical result. Many people are moved to tears by a novel or the story of some suffering fellow-being, and for a time there is a flood of charitable feeling that surges through the soul; but it runs to waste, and when opportunity for real helpfulness comes the emotion has passed away. (L. A. Banks.)
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 FROM the time of Abraham on to the settlement…
AT BOCHIM: THE FIRST PROPHET VOICE
Jdg_2:1-5
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FROM the time of Abraham on to the settlement in Canaan the Israelites had kept the faith of the one God. They had their origin as a people in a decisive revolt against polytheism. Of the great Semite forefather of the Jewish people, it has been finely said, "He bore upon his forehead the seal of the Absolute God, upon which was written, This race will rid the earth of superstition." The character and structure of the Hebrew tongue resisted idolatry. It was not an imaginative language; it had no mythological colour. We who have inherited an ancient culture of quite another kind do not think it strange to read or sing:
"Hail, smiling morn, that tipst the hills with gold,
Whose rosy fingers ope the gates of day,
Who the gay face of nature dost unfold,
At whose bright presence darkness flies away."
These lines, however, are full of latent mythology. The "smiling morn" is Aurora, the darkness that flies away before the dawn is the Erebus of the Greeks. Nothing of this sort was possible in Hebrew literature. In it all change, all life, every natural incident are ascribed to the will and power of one Supreme Being. "Jehovah thundered in the heavens and the Highest gave His voice, hailstones and coals of fire." "By the breath of God ice is given, and the breadth of the waters is straitened." "Behold, He spreadeth His light around Him; He covereth His hands with the lightning." "Thou makest darkness and it is night." Always in forms like these Hebrew poetry sets forth the control of nature by its invisible King. The pious word of Fenelon, "What do I see in nature? God; God everywhere; God alone," had its germ, its very substance, in the faith and language of patriarchal times. Christ its finest radiance flashes upon the world.
While the Hebrews were in Egypt, the faith inherited from patriarchal times must have been sorely tried, and, all circumstances considered, it came forth wonderfully pure. "The Israelites saw Egypt as the Mussulman Arab sees pagan countries, entirely from the outside, perceiving only the surface and external things." They indeed carried with them into the desert the recollection of the sacred bulls or calves of which they had seen images at Hathor and Memphis. But the idol they made at Horeb was intended to represent their Deliverer, the true God, and the swift and stern repression by Moses of that symbolism and its pagan incidents appears to have been effectual. The tribes reached Canaan substantially free from idolatry, though teraphim or fetishes may have been used in secret with magical ceremonies. The religion of the people generally was far from spiritual, yet there was a real faith in Jehovah as the protector of the national life, the guardian of justice and truth. From this there was no falling away when the Reubenites and Gadites on the east of Jordan erected an altar for themselves. "The Lord God of gods," they said, "He knoweth, and Israel he shall know if it be in rebellion, or if in transgression against the Lord." The altar was called Ed, a witness between east and west that the faith of the one Living God was still to unite the tribes.
But the danger to Israels fidelity came when there began to be intercourse with the people of Canaan, now sunk from the purer thought of early times. Everywhere in the land of the Hittites and Amorites, Hivites and Jebusites, there were altars and sacred trees, pillars and images used in idolatrous worship. The ark and the altar of Divine religion, established first at Gilgal near Jericho, afterwards at Bethel and then at Shiloh, could not be frequently visited, especially by those who settled towards the southern desert and in the far north. Yet the necessity for religious worship of some kind was constantly felt; and as afterwards the synagogues gave opportunity for devotional gatherings when the Temple could not be reached, so in the earlier time there came to be sacred observances on elevated places, a windy threshing floor, or a hilltop already used for heathen sacrifice. Hence, on the one hand, there was the danger that worship might be entirely neglected, on the other hand the grave risk that the use of heathen occasions and meeting places should lead to heathen ritual, and those who came together on the hill of Baal should forget Jehovah. It was the latter evil that grew; and while as yet only a few Hebrews easily led astray had approached with kid or lamb a pagan altar, the alarm was raised. At Bochim a Divine warning was uttered which found echo in the hearts of the people.
There appears to have been a great gathering of the tribes at some spot near Bethel. We see the elders and heads of families holding council of war and administration, the thoughts of all bent on conquest and family settlement. Religion, the purity of Jehovahs worship, are forgotten in the business of the hour. How shall the tribes best help each other in the struggle that is already proving more arduous than they expected? Dan is sorely pressed by the Amorites. The chiefs of the tribe are here telling their story of hardship among the mountains. The Asherites have failed in their attack upon the seaboard towns Accho and Achzib; in vain have they pressed towards Zidon. They are dwelling among the Canaanites and may soon be reduced to slavery. The reports from other tribes are more hopeful; but everywhere the people of the land are hard to overcome. Should Israel not remain content for a time, make the best of circumstances, cultivate friendly intercourse with the population it cannot dispossess? Such a policy often commends itself to those who would be thought prudent; it is apt to prove a fatal policy.
Suddenly a spiritual voice is heard, clear and intense, and all others are silent. From the sanctuary of God at Gilgal one comes whom the people have not expected; he comes with a message they cannot choose but hear. It is a prophet with the burden of reproof and warning. Jehovahs goodness, Jehovahs claim are declared with Divine ardour; with Divine severity the neglect of the covenant is condemned. Have the tribes of God begun to consort with the people of the land? Are they already dwelling content under the shadow of idolatrous groves, in sight of the symbols of Ashtoreth? Are they learning to swear by Baal and Melcarth and looking on while sacrifices are offered to these vile masters? Then they can no longer hope that Jehovah will give them the country to enjoy; the heathen shall remain as thorns in the side of Israel and their gods shall be a snare. It is a message of startling power. From the hopes of dominion and the plans of worldly gain the people pass to spiritual concern. They have offended their Lord; His countenance is turned from them? A feeling of guilt falls on the assembly. "It came to pass that the people lifted up their voice and wept."
This lamentation at Bochim is the second note of religious feeling and faith in the Book of Judges. The first is the consultation of the priests and the oracle referred to in the opening sentence of the book. Jehovah Who had led them through the wilderness was their King, and unless He went forth as the unseen Captain of the host no success could be looked for. "They asked of Jehovah, saying, Who shall go up for us first against the Canaanites, to fight against them?" In this appeal there was a measure of faith which is neither to be scorned nor suspected. The question indeed was not whether they should fight at all, but how they should fight so as to succeed, and their trust was in a God thought of as pledged to them, solely concerned for them. So far accordingly there is nothing exemplary in the circumstances. Yet we find a lesson for Christian nations. There are many in our modern parliaments who are quite ready to vote national prayer in war time and thanksgiving for victories, who yet would never think, before undertaking a war, of consulting those best qualified to interpret the Divine will. The relation between religion and the state has this fatal hitch, that however Christian our governments profess to be, the Christian thinkers of the country are not consulted on moral questions, not even on a question so momentous as that of war. It is passion, pride, or diplomacy, never the wisdom of Christ, that leads nations in the critical moments of their history. Who then scorn, who suspect the early Hebrew belief? Those only who have no right; those who as they laugh at God and faith shut themselves from the knowledge by which alone life can be understood; and, again, those who in their own ignorance and pride unsheathe the sword without reference to Him in Whom they profess to believe. We admit none of these to criticise Israel and its faith.
At Bochim, where the second note of religious feeling is struck, a deeper and clearer note, we find the prophet listened to. He revives the sense of duty, he kindles a Divine sorrow in the hearts of the people. The national assembly is conscience stricken. Let us allow this quick contrition to be the result, in part, of superstitious fear. Very rarely is spiritual concern quite pure. In general it is the consequences of transgression rather than the evil of it that press on the minds of men. Forebodings of trouble and calamity are more commonly causes of sorrow than the loss of fellowship with God; and if we know this to be the case with many who are convicted of sin under the preaching of the gospel, we cannot wonder to find the penitence of old Hebrew times mingled with superstition. Nevertheless, the people are aware of the broken covenant, burdened with a sense that they have lost the favour of their unseen Guide. There can be no doubt that the realisation of sin and of justice turned against them is one cause of their tears.
Here, again, if there is a difference between Israel and Christian nations, it is not in favour of the latter. Are modern senates ever overcome by conviction of sin? Those who are in power seem to have no fear that they may do wrong. Glorifying their blunders and forgetting their errors, they find no occasion for self-reproach, no need to sit in sackcloth and ashes. Now and then, indeed, a day of fasting and humiliation is ordered and observed in state; the sincere Christian for his part feeling how miserably formal it is, how far from the spontaneous expression of abasement and remorse. God is called upon to help a people who have not considered their ways, who design no amendment, who have not even suspected that the Divine blessing may come in still further humbling. And turning to private life, is there not as much of self-justification, as little of real humility and faith? The shallow nature of popular Christianity is seen here, that so few can read in disappointment and privation anything but disaster, or submit without disgust and rebellion to take a lower place at the table of Providence. Our weeping is so often for what we longed to gain or wished to keep in the earthly and temporal region, so seldom for what we have lost or should fear to lose in the spiritual. We grieve when we should rather rejoice that God has made us feel our need of Him, and called us again to our true blessedness.
The scene at Bochim connects itself very notably with one nine hundred and fifty years later. The poor fragments of the exiled tribes have been gathered again in the land of their fathers. They are rebuilding Jerusalem and the Temple. Ezra has led back a company from Babylon and has brought with him, by the favour of Artaxerxes, no small treasure of silver and gold for the house of God. To his astonishment and grief he hears the old tale of alliance with the inhabitants of the land, intermarriage even of Levites, priests and princes of Israel with women of the Canaanite races. In the new settlement of Palestine the error of the first is repeated. Ezra calls a solemn assembly in the Temple court-"every one that trembles at the words of the God of Israel." Till the evening sacrifice he sits prostrate with grief, his garment rent, his hair torn and dishevelled. Then on his knees before the Lord he spreads forth his hands in prayer. The trespasses of a thousand years afflict him, afflict the faithful. "After all that is come upon us for our evil deeds, shall we again break Thy commandments, and join in affinity with the peoples that do these abominations? wouldest not Thou be angry with us till Thou hadst consumed us so that there should be no remnant nor any to escape? Behold we are before Thee in our guiltiness; for none can stand before Thee because of this." The impressive lament of Ezra and those who join in his confessions draws together a great congregation, and the people weep very sore. Nine centuries and a half appear a long time in the history of a nation. What has been gained during the period? Is the weeping at Jerusalem in Ezras time, like the weeping at Bochim, a mark of no deeper feeling, no keener penitence? Has there been religious advance commensurate with the discipline of suffering, defeat, slaughter and exile, dishonoured kings, a wasted land? Have the prophets not achieved anything? Has not the Temple in its glory, in its desolation, spoken of a Heavenly power, a Divine rule, the sense of which entering the souls of the people has established piety, or at least a habit of separateness from heathen manners and life? It may be hard to distinguish and set forth the gain of those centuries. But it is certain that while the weeping at Bochim was the sign of a fear that soon passed away, the weeping in the Temple court marked a new beginning in Hebrew history. By the strong action of Ezra and Nehemiah the mixed marriages were dissolved, and from that time the Jewish people became, as they never were before, exclusive and separate. Where nature would have led the nation ceased to go. More and more strictly the law was enforced; the age of puritanism began. So, let us say, the sore discipline had its fruit.
And yet it is with a reservation only we can enjoy the success of those reformers who drew the sharp line between Israel and his heathen neighbours, between Jew and Gentile. The vehemence of reaction urged the nation towards another error-Pharisaism. Nothing could be purer, nothing nobler than the desire to make Israel a holy people. But to inspire men with religious zeal and yet preserve them from spiritual pride is always difficult, and in truth those Hebrew reformers did not see the danger. There came to be, in the new development of faith, zeal enough, jealousy enough, for the purity of religion and life, but along with these a contempt for the heathen, a fierce enmity towards the uncircumcised, which made the interval till Christ appeared a time of strife and bloodshed worse than any that had been before. From the beginning the Hebrews were called with a holy calling, and their future was bound up with their faithfulness to it. Their ideal was to be earnest and pure, without bitterness or vainglory; and that is still the ideal of faith. But the Jewish people like ourselves, weak through the flesh, came short of the mark on one side or passed beyond it on the other. During the long period from Joshua to Nehemiah there was too little heat, and then a fire was kindled which burned a sharp narrow path, along which the life of Israel has gone with ever-lessening spiritual force. The unfulfilled ideal still waits, the unique destiny of this people of God still bears them on.
Bochim is a symbol. There the people wept for a transgression but half understood and a peril they could not rightly dread. There was genuine sorrow, there was genuine alarm. But it was the prophetic word, not personal experience, that moved the assembly. And as at Florence, when Savonarolas word, shaking with alarm a people who had no vision of holiness, left them morally weaker as it fell into silence, so the weeping at Bochim passed like a tempest that has bowed and broken the forest trees. The chiefs of Israel returned to their settlements with a new sense of duty and peril; but Canaanite civilisation had attractions, Canaanite women a refinement which captivated the heart. And the civilisation, the refinement, were associated with idolatry, The myths of Canaan, the poetry of Tammuz and Astarte, were fascinating and seductive. We wonder not that the pure faith of God was corrupted, but that it survived. In Egypt the heathen worship was in a foreign tongue, but in Canaan the stories of the gods were whispered to Israelites in a language they knew, by their own kith and kin. In many a home among the mountains of Ephraim or the skirts of Lebanon the pagan wife, with her superstitious fears, her dread of the anger of this god or that goddess, wrought so on the mind of the Jewish husband that he began to feel her dread and then to permit and share her sacrifices. Thus idolatry invaded Israel, and the long and weary struggle between truth and falsehood began.
We have spoken of Bochim as a symbol, and to us it may be the symbol of this, that the very thing which men put from them in horror and with tears, seeing the evil, the danger of it, does often insinuate itself into their lives. The messenger is heard, and while he speaks how near God is, how awful is the sense of His being! A thrill of keen feeling passes from soul to soul. There are some in the gathering who have more spiritual insight than the rest, and their presence raises the heat of emotion. But the moment of revelation and of fervour passes, the company breaks up, and very soon those who have won no vision of holiness, who have only feared as they entered into the cloud, are in the common world again. The finer strings of the soul were made to thrill, the conscience was touched; but if the will has not been braced, if the mans reason and resoluteness are not engaged by a new conception of life, the earthly will resume control and God will be less known than before. So there are many cast down today, crying to God in trouble of soul for evil done or evil which they are tempted to do, who tomorrow among the Canaanites will see things in another light. A man cannot be a recluse. He must mingle in business and in society with those who deride the thoughts that have moved him and laugh at his seriousness. The impulse to something better soon exhausts itself in this cold atmosphere. He turns upon his own emotion with contempt. The words that came with Divine urgency, the man whose face was like that of an angel of God, are already subjects of uneasy jesting, will soon be thrust from memory. Over the interlude of superficial anxiety the mind goes back to its old haunts, its old plans and cravings. The religious teacher, while he is often in no way responsible for this sad recoil, should yet be ever on his guard against the risk of weakening the moral fibre, of leaving men as Christ never left them, flaccid and infirm.
Again, there are cases that belong not to the history of a day, but to the history of a life. One may say, when he hears the strangely tempting voices that whisper in the twilight streets, "Am I a dog that from the holy traditions of my people and country I should fall away to these?" At first he flies the distasteful entreaty of the new nature cult, its fleshly art and song, its nefarious science. But the voices are persistent. It is the perfecting of man and woman to which they invite. It is not vice, but freedom, brightness, life and the courage to enjoy it they cunningly propose. There is not much of sweetness; the voices rise, they become stringent and overbearing. If the man would not be a fool, would not lose the good of the age into which he is born, he will be done with unnatural restraints, the bondage of purity. Thus entreaty passes into mastery. Here is truth; there also seems to be fact. Little by little the subtle argument is so advanced that the degradation once feared is no longer to be seen. It is progress now; it is full development, the assertion of power and privilege, that the soul anticipates. How fatal is the lure, how treacherous the vision, the man discovers when he has parted with that which even through deepest penitence he may never regain. People are denying, and it has to be reasserted, that there is a covenant which the soul of man has to keep with God. The thought is "archaic," and they would banish it. But it stands the great reality for man; and to keep that covenant in the grace of the Divine Spirit, in the love of the holiest, in the sacred manliness learned of Christ, is the only way to the broad daylight and the free summits of life. How can nature be a saviour? The suggestion is childish. Nature, as we all know, allows the hypocrite, the swindler, the traitor, as well as the brave, honest man, the pure, sweet woman. Is it said that man has a covenant with nature? On the temporal and prudential side of his activities that is true. He has relations with nature which must be apprehended, must be wisely realised. But the spiritual kingdom to which he belongs requires a wider outlook, loftier aims and hopes. The efforts demanded by nature have to be brought into harmony with those diviner aspirations. Man is bound to be prudent, brave, wise for eternity. He is warned of his own sin and urged to fly from it. This is the covenant with God which is wrought into the very constitution of his moral being.
It would be a mistake to suppose that the scene at Bochim and the words which moved the assembly to tears had no lasting effect whatever. The history deals with outstanding facts of the national development. We hear chiefly of heroes and their deeds, but we shall not doubt that there were minds which kept the glow of truth and the consecration of penitential tears. The best lives of the people moved quietly on, apart from the commotions and strifes of the time. Rarely are the great political names even of a religious community those of holy and devout men, and, undoubtedly, this was true of Israel in the time of the judges. If we were to reckon only by those who appear conspicuously in these pages, we should have to wonder how the spiritual strain of thought and feeling survived. But it did survive; it gained in clearness and force. There were those in every tribe who kept alive the sacred traditions of Sinai and the desert, and Levites throughout the land did much to maintain among the people the worship of God. The great names of Abraham and Moses, the story of their faith and deeds, were the text of many an impressive lesson. So the light of piety did not go out; Jehovah was ever the Friend of Israel, even in its darkest day, for in the heart of the nation there never ceased to be a faithful remnant maintaining the fear and obedience of the Holy Name.
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_2:1. An angel of the Lord.] Not merely “a…
THE BEGINNING OF THE LORD’S REBUKE
CRITICAL NOTES.—
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Jdg_2:1. An angel of the Lord.] Not merely “a messenger,” but the “angel of Jehovah.” “The phrase is used nearly sixty times to designate the angel of God’s presence.” [Speaker’s Commentary.] “Not a prophet, or some other earthly messenger of Jehovah, either Phinehas or Joshua, as the Targums, the Rabbins, Berthean, and others assume, but the angel of the Lord, who is of one essence with God. In the simple historical narrative a prophet is never called Malach Jehovah. The prophets are always called either נָבִיא or אִישׁ נָבִיא, as in Jdg_6:8, or else ‘man of God,’ as in 1Ki_12:22; 1Ki_13:1, &c.; and Hag_1:13, and Mal_3:1, cannot be adduced as proofs to the contrary, because in both these passages the purely appellative meaning of the word Malach is established beyond all question by the context itself. Moreover, no prophet ever identifies himself so entirely with God as the angel of Jehovah does here. The prophets always distinguish between themselves and Jehovah by introducing their words with the declaration ‘Thus saith Jehovah,’ as the prophet mentioned in Jdg_6:8 is said to have done.” [Keil.] The language itself proclaims the presence of the Angel of the Covenant; it cannot be thought of as the utterance of a merely human messenger. Came up from Gilgal.] The situation of Bochim is unknown. As the people were assembled in congregation (Jdg_2:4), probably the gathering was in the usual locality, i.e., at or near to Shiloh (cf. Jos_18:1; Jos_18:10; Jos_19:51; Jos_21:2; Jos_22:9; Jos_22:12). Then the angel coming up “from Gilgal” would probably come from the Gilgal near to Shiloh, where the Israelites had so long encamped during the war under Joshua (cf. Preacher’s Commentary, pp. 170, 172, 199). It would be sufficiently appropriate that the angel should be seen to come with Jehovah’s rebuke from the very place from which the “Angel of His Presence” had gone up with them to mighty and repeated victories (Isa_63:9; Jos_10:6-9; Jos_10:43; Jos_11:7). The moral significance of the angel being seen to come from Gilgal—thus associated with past help—would be very great. What could be more full of tender historic reproof than that the angel who had, as it were, waited at the warrior’s camp to help the faithful, should come from such ground to rebuke the unbelieving and slothful? To Bochim.] That this is seen to be on higher ground than Gilgal, is no proof that the Gilgal was that near Jericho. All the time the site of Bochim is unknown, there is nothing to suggest that this was other than the Gilgal of Deu_11:30, and 2Ki_2:1, from which Elijah and Elisha went “down to Bethel” (וַיֵּרְדוּ בֵּית־אֵל). The LXX. place Bochim near to Bethel, saying that the angel “went up from Galgal to the (place of) weeping, and to Bæthel, and to the house of Israel.” Even if this were accepted, Bochim may have been on “the mountain east of Bethel” from whence Abraham obtained so wide an outlook in all directions (Gen_13:14-15); in which case it might be quite correct, at least of the latter part of the distance, to speak of the angel as going “up to Bochim.” Keil, however, points out that this reading of the LXX. “gives no clue whatever.”
Jdg_2:2. Why have ye done this?] Lit., “What is this which ye have done?” Not so much an inquiry as a remonstrance and a chiding.
Jdg_2:3. But they shall be as thorns in your sides.] = “But they shall be to you for adversaries.” צַד, “a side,” pl. צִדִּים, is from the root צָדַד, “to turn oneself,” “to oppose oneself,” to any one. Hence Chald. מִצַּד, “on the side of,” “the part of.” (Dan_6:5); and לְצַד, “against the side of” (Dan_7:25). Therefore צִדִּים here should be rendered “adversaries”; otherwise, the expression would stand, “they shall be to you for sides.” This makes the various conjectures on this expression unnecessary. Cf. Gesen. and Buxtorf, jun., who both refer to this verse, and both render צַד, as found here, “an adversary.”
Jdg_2:5. They sacrificed there unto the Lord.] “This indicates the close proximity of Bochim to Shechem, where the tabernacle was at this time (Jos_24:25-26).” [Speaker’s Commentary.] Keil, however, thinks that “it does not follow from this sacrifice that the tabernacle or the ark of the covenant was to be found at Bochim. In any place where the Lord appeared to the people, sacrifices might be offered to Him (Jdg_6:20; Jdg_6:26; Jdg_6:28; Jdg_13:16 sqq.; 2Sa_24:25). “On the other hand,” it is added, “it does follow from the sacrifice at Bochim, where there was no sanctuary of Jehovah, that the person who appeared to the people was not a prophet, nor even an ordinary angel, but the angel of the Lord, who is essentially one with Jehovah.”
MAIN HOMILETICS OF THE PARAGRAPH.—Jdg_2:1-5
THE INEVITABLE CONSEQUENCES OF SIN.—Jdg_2:1-4
The latter half of the previous chapter is a necessary introduction to the opening verses of this. God’s messenger of chastisement never appears till our sins have preceded him. The pleasures of sin are the evening twilight which ever comes before the night of Divine punishment. The lurid light of the evening sunset may have its fascinations; for all that, it does but precede the darkness.
This messenger of punishment is none other than “The Messenger of the Covenant” (Mal_3:1). This angel is none other than He of whom it has presently to be written, “The Angel of His presence saved them” (Isa_63:9 : cf. also, Exo_13:21; Exo_14:19; Exo_23:20; Exo_23:23; Exo_32:34; Exo_33:14; Num_20:16). How passing sad that the messenger who heralds the dark night of human suffering should be He who ever loves to come to us as the Sun of Righteousness! In these five verses we see—
I. The Lord determinately following His people. He who in after years said through Hosea, “How shall I give thee up, Ephraim? how shall I deliver thee, Israel?” here shews us that the feeling, expressed seven centuries later, was cherished long before it was expressed. Even though the tribes had all turned to sin, He would “hedge up their way with thorns” (Hos_2:6), and for this very purpose the Lord Himself, speaking in His own person, now appeared to them (Jdg_2:3).
1. His purpose at the first was too firmly taken to suffer Him to forsake them now. The promises to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob had in them no hesitation. The language to Moses, when the work of redemption was beginning, left no place for failure (Exo_6:2-8). The Divine miracles against Pharaoh had in them no appearance of faltering. Thus, God is seen following His people, even when they turn almost universally to sin.
2. He had done too much for them to give them up lightly. The price of their deliverance from Egypt had been too great to suffer it to be lost. From Goshen right up to Joshua’s tomb at Timnath-serah, the way had been lined with miracles and paved with mercy. The price of our redemption has been still more precious. We may look on the “unspeakable gift,” and find in that the Divine Amen to the Divine promise, “I will never leave thee, nor forsake thee.”
3. The glory of His name was involved in their failure. Moses had contemplated the overthrow in the wilderness, and, overcome with horror, he had turned as mediator in strong cryings to his God, saying, “What wilt Thou do unto Thy great name?” So, keeping His name as “the name which is above every name,” Jesus Christ is here seen as the angel of reproof at Bochim. Every one of the western tribes, except Issachar, whom Gideon found no better than the rest, is actually named as having departed from the Lord; yet the Lord says here, “My kindness shall not depart from thee.”
4. The love of His heart, had there been nothing else, was sufficient to constrain Him to follow them. The Divine purpose, the miracles, and the committing of His glorious name in some measure to men, had all proceeded from the Divine love. These things were but the streams; the love of Jehovah was the fountain from which all of them had flowed forth unto men. The purpose of God to save, and His unfailing covenant; miracles like those of the manna, the flowing water, the divided sea and river, the falling walls of Jericho, and the victory at Beth-horon: all these, and many similar mercies, are fit themes for glad and holy song. Yet he thinks most wisely, and is likely to sing most continuously and sweetly, who finds in all spoken promises and visible favours so many evidences of the changeless love of the living God. His mercies are precious, but His priceless love which can repeat them all again, and multiply them to meet our utmost need, is more precious still. It was in the living love of Jehovah that the cause was to be found of this gracious visit to Bochim.
II. Rebuke emphatically attending on sin. The words of the Angel are all words of rebuke (Jdg_2:1-3). Yet how calm is the rebuke. It has in it no haste, and no passion. Every word is terrible with truth and gentleness. We have here:—
1. Rebuke set in the overpowering light of past mercies. (a) The Angel reminded them of deliverance from bondage. “I made you go up out of Egypt.” The hole of the pit whence they were digged was brought before them. The rugged quarry whence they were hewn was recalled to thought. (b) The Angel reminded them of mercies on the way. “And have brought you unto the land.” These mercies are not enumerated in this record. They may have been alluded to in detail, but even this general reference to them contributed to tears. He thinks but poorly of sin who does not contemplate it in view of what God has done to deliver him from its power and sorrow. (c) The Angel reminded them of the unalterable covenant. “The land which I sware unto your fathers.” Their fathers had been encouraged by the unfailing promises of God, which had been solemnly given to three successive generations through Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. The covenant with the fathers had been renewed unto the children: “I said I will never break my covenant with you.” This covenant, however, from the first, included the condition of Israel’s obedience (Gen_17:7-14). God never did break that covenant, even when Israel was carried away to Babylon, or when the Romans overthrew Jerusalem. (d) The Angel “came up from Gilgal.” He laid emphasis upon all the mercy of the past by coming visibly from the place of the old encampment, from which He had so often gone forth with Joshua and the host to mighty victories. Probably Bochim was near to Shiloh, or Bethel (Jdg_21:19), and the site of the camp at Gilgal lay between them, so that the Angel might have been actually seen by the festive host coming from the very place from which they had so often been led out to ever successful war. What rebuke could possibly be more keen? Here were men both pleading their inability to cope with iron chariots, and yet putting their enemies under tribute. The tribute itself was answer enough to the plea about the chariots. But, as if it were not enough, the Angel of Jehovah comes up from the place from which Israel had never obediently gone forth to a single lost battle. The present wicked unbelief was exposed in a light which might well make the place a place of shame and tears. God was saying with dramatic and irresistible force, “I have been thy helper, but under the shadow of My wings thou will not rejoice.” The reproofs of the Lord are ever overwhelming. When He undertakes to rebuke, the name of the place where He so appears to us must needs henceforth be Bochim. “Will He plead against me with His great power?”
2. Rebuke sustained by the proof of direct disobedience. “Why have ye done this?” or, “What is this which ye have done?” Evidences of the league were visible all through the land. The enemies of God and truth were living in peace among the people of God. It may have been that some of them were even now present with the multitude. The altars of the idolaters were not thrown down. There they still stood, visibly, in the midst of the people of every tribe. “Why have ye done this?” When Christ, the Mediator, pleads against us, who shall answer?
3. Rebuke pointing to coming sorrow. “They shall be adversaries to you (cf. Crit. Notes), and their gods shall be a snare unto you.” The Lord’s rebuke is not vain and empty. It ever brings forth bitter fruit. “What is this that thou hast done?” when spoken to Eve, is followed by, “I will greatly multiply thy sorrow.” “What hast thou done?” when asked of Cain, does but precede the terrible words, “And now thou art cursed from the earth.” To Moses and Aaron the Lord said, “Ye believed me not, to sanctify me in the eyes of the children of Israel;” and the Lord also added, “Therefore ye shall not bring this congregation into the land which I have given them.” David heard Nathan say, “Thou art the man,” and forthwith the sentence followed, “The sword shall never depart from thine house” … “The child also that is born unto thee shall surely die.” Similarly, sentence follows rebuke all through the Scriptures. Yet are we encouraged to say, “There is forgiveness with Thee, that Thou mayest be feared.”
III. Tears, from the first, accompanying rebuke. “All the people lifted up their voice and wept.”
1. Weeping, for the most part, has to do with sin. The sources of the Nile may have to be sought many a year; the place where the river of tears takes its rise may generally be found at once, and without mistakes. The well-head of human sorrow is seldom far removed from the mountain-foot of human guilt. “By one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin.” When the tribes of humanity gather at some Bochim, there is ever something wrong as to their respective inheritances.
2. It is a mercy when the sinful can weep. Our truest tears are the venting of our guilt. Without tears for sin, sin would petrify in our nature; it would assimilate every holier emotion to itself, and then turn all to stone. It was of men who had experienced this that Paul wrote as “being past feeling.” Many about us now would be thus hardened, but for the tender power of Divine grace. The Angel of the Covenant appears, and forthwith the place of sin and formal religious festivity becomes a Bochim. “God is able of these stones to raise up children unto Abraham.” Thanks be unto God who is able, that He is also willing! Rowland Hill used to say, “Repentance is so sweet a companion, that my only regret in going to heaven is, that I shall leave her behind and know her no more.” This is hardly a wise lament. As long as sin is with us, tears are a sweet because a necessary relief; but “no more sin” must be far better than sin and tears. We may be devoutly thankful that it is written of the saints in heaven, “God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes;” we ought to be no less thankful that no hand ever altogether wipes away the tears from the sinful eyes of earth. There, tears would be an unmeaning pain; here, they are a necessity. An old poet, more than two centuries ago, wrote tenderly and beautifully on the tears of Mary Magdalene at the tomb:
“Not in the Evening’s eyes,
When they red with weeping are
For the Sun that dies;
Sits Sorrow with a face so fair.
Nowhere but here did ever meet
Sweetness so sad, sadness so sweet.
“Sadness, all the while
She sits on such a throne as this,
Can do nought but smile,
Nor believes she Sadness is:
Gladness itself would be more glad,
(Thus) to be made so sweetly sad.”
[Richard Crashaw, 1646.]
Sadness which mourns the loss of Christ’s presence, or of His Spirit, must needs be among the keenest sorrows of earth; but the sadness which has suffered this loss, and has not mourned it, must presently be the bitterest sorrow of all.
3. Weeping is of small use to the sinful, if they only weep. Bochim is of no avail unless it leads to the breaking of all leagues with idolaters, and to the throwing down of all forbidden altars. Tears must be followed by a reformation; otherwise, they are a useless pain.
IV. Punishment inevitably succeeding the tears in which there is no amendment of life. This whole book of the Judges is God’s comment on the folly of weeping without truly repenting. Emerson has written: “Crime and punishment grow out of one stem. Punishment is a fruit that, unsuspected, ripens within the flower of the pleasure which concealed it. Cause and effect, means and ends, seed and fruit, cannot be severed; for the effect already blooms in the cause, the end pre-exists in the means, the fruit in the seed.” There is no separating between sin and its natural punishment; unless there be true repentance, there is no separating between sin and its Divine punishment. Nineveh is spared; the thief enters Paradise; Saul “obtains mercy;” but the weepers of Bochim have their history, for centuries, written in bitter chastisements. As that Cornish proverb, so sentient of a rock-bound shore, puts the matter: “He who will not be ruled by the rudder must be ruled by the rock.” So he who will not be led to serve Jehovah by “the Angel of the Lord,” must be driven to seek God indeed by the chastening hand of Canaanites and Philistines.
OUTLINES AND COMMENTS ON THE VERSES
GOD’S REPROOF OF SIN.—Jdg_2:1-5
I. Sin confronted by the Lord in person. The Angel of the Lord was none other than the Lord Himself (cf. above).
1. God confronts the guilty in mercy. If He did not come to trouble the sinful, they might well despair. God came through His messengers to guilty Saul, to David, to Nebuchadnezzar. When the Lord answered Saul no more, the end was nigh. When the Saviour said to Judas, “What thou doest do quickly,” the bitterness of death was not distant. God’s silence should be interpreted by the guilty as the noise of coming judgment. “I kept silence,” is immediately followed by “I will reprove thee (Psa_50:21).
2. When God so confronts the guilty, none can answer. Throughout this brief narrative the only voice that is heard is the voice of the Lord. The sinful, like guilty children, can only answer by their tears. Job cried, “Oh that I knew where I might find Him.… I would order my cause before Him, and fill my mouth with arguments;” yet even Job in that awful Presence could only say, “Now mine eye seeth Thee: wherefore I abhor myself, and repent in dust and ashes.”
II. Sin manifested by the greatness of Divine mercy.
1. Mercies of deliverance from bondage. “I made you to go up out of Egypt.”
2. Mercies of promised help. “The land which I sware unto your fathers.” “I said I will never break My covenant with you.”
3. Mercies of actual inheritance. “I have brought you unto the land.”
III. Sin exposed, and the proofs visible on every hand. The league had been made with the inhabitants. The altars still stood throughout the land. “Ye have not obeyed My voice.” The law was even then engraven on the stones at Ebal; the book of the law was already written (Jos_8:31-32). There was no disputing either what the Lord’s voice had been, or that it had been disobeyed. Who can answer when God contends with him on account of sin? If God be against us, who can be for us?
IV. Sin the shadow of coming sorrow. “They shall be adversaries to you,” &c. Our departures from the way of the Lord ever originate in the heart. The actual commission of sin is the point of contact in the beginning of the eclipse which hides from us the Sun of Righteousness, and the hiding of His face is ever the beginning of darkness. “Thou hidest Thy face, they are troubled.”
V. Sin lamented, but not forsaken. “The people lifted up their voice, and wept.” They also offered sacrifice unto the Lord, but they did not put away the transgression. God cannot be reconciled to men who do not forsake iniquity. “Blessed is he whose sin is covered;” but no tears and no amount of sacrifice can cover the sin which is still persisted in. The Hebrew word כּפר “to cover,” “to expiate” sin, is also used in the Old Testament for a village. A village was so called because it afforded shelter, or a cover, for the inhabitants. Sacrifice can afford no dwelling-place and no covering to the man who continues in his sin. Even Calvary leaves the soul in all its wickedness, “Naked and open to the eyes of Him with whom we have to do,” so long as sin is not forsaken. He who comes to the sacrifice of Christ with such tears as lead him to turn from iniquity, will find that his sin is covered, and that Christ is as a City of Refuge.
DIVINE VISITATIONS.—Jdg_2:1-5
I. The time of the Lord’s visitation. When disobedience was at its height.
II. The method of the Lord’s visitation. He was seen to come “from Gilgal,” the place of much past help.
III. The spirit of the Lord’s visitation. He came in tender and loving reproof.
IV. The influence of the Lord’s visitation. The Israelites shed tears, called the name of that place ‘The Weepers,’ and offered sacrifice; yet, with all this, they “knew not the day of their visitation” as they should have done.
THE TIME OF GOD’S MANIFESTED HELP.—Jdg_2:1
I. God comes to men in the sorrow of that bondage wherein they were born. “I made you go up out of Egypt.”
II. God manifests Himself freely to His delivered children so long as they are faithful. The Pillar of Cloud; the Red Sea, &c.
III. God is nigh at hand in all hours of weakness and need. The passage of the Jordan; Jericho, Beth-horon; the waters of Merom.
IV. God is full of long-suffering, even when His people sin. The alternating plagues and miracles in the wilderness. The gracious manifestation at Bochim.
THE ANGEL OF THE COVENANT.—Jdg_2:1
I. The Angel of the Divine Presence (Exo_13:21; Exo_14:19).
II. The Angel of gracious promise (Exo_23:20-25; Exo_32:34; Exo_33:2).
III. The Angel of previous help (Exo_14:24-30; Num_20:16; Jos_5:14).
IV. The Angel of severe rebuke (Exo_23:21; and Jdg_2:1-3).
V. The Angel of deliverances yet to come (Jdg_6:11-23; Jdg_13:9-20).
VI. The Angel of perpetuated song (Psa_34:7; Isa_63:9).
DIVINE REMEMBRANCES.—Jdg_2:1
I. God’s remembrance of what we were. He knew Israel as having come up “out of Egypt.” “He found him in a desert land,” and the land had not been forgotten. God always remembers where He found us, and what we were.
II. God’s remembrance of the deliverances which He has wrought for us. “I made you to go up out of Egypt.” The Lord has daily in view all the help He has ever given to us. He knows where He helped us unsought. He sees, no less, where we have reached forth a secret hand to touch the hem of His garment; and knows all the virtue which has come forth to us. How great must our sin appear in the eyes of Him who sees all His mercy and our guilt at one glance!
III. God’s remembrance of His promises after they are fulfilled. He who had sworn to the fathers, and fulfilled His words to the children, forgat neither the one nor the other. God knows every promise that has ever been fulfilled to us each. He knows some promises as having been fulfilled to us many times. He who makes His promises all “Yea and Amen in Christ Jesus,” knows also how many times we have found them thus abiding and helpful.
IV. God’s remembrance of the relation between our past and our present. God who remembered the bondage of Egypt, and saw His people now in possession of Canaan, had every step from the one to the other perfectly under His gaze. He had made them to “go up out of Egypt;” He also had “brought them into the land” which they now had for an inheritance.
V. God’s remembrance of His covenant. “I said, I will never break my covenant with you.” Many a broken promise of our fellows puts the best of them to shame: God can always look upon His word in holy satisfaction that not one jot or tittle of it has ever passed away. It is not a little imposing to find our attention challenged as to God’s faithfulness at the very place where God was about to depart from the people who had already departed from Him. We cry, “Stablish Thy word unto Thy servant, upon which Thou hast caused him to hope;” but God’s unestablished words are ever because we have got where they can no longer be fulfilled. We break the covenant, and then wonder at the fragments; but the fragments are of our making, not of our Heavenly Father’s.
“FROM GILGAL TO BOCHIM.”
If Bochim was at Shiloh, or near Bethel, as is probable, it would be utterly inappropriate to anything which the assembled Israelites could observe, to speak of the Angel as coming from Gilgal, in the Arabah, near Jericho, to Bochim, near Shiloh. The historian evidently means to convey the impression that the Angel came from Gilgal, or from the direction of Gilgal, in the sight of all Israel. If the Gilgal near Jericho were meant, it would be altogether irrelevant thus to speak of a place more than twenty miles distant.
In a volume very recently published, Dr. Edersheim makes the following remarks on this question:—“From this solemn transaction (at Mount Ebal), the Israelites moved, as we gather from Jos_9:6, to Gilgal, where they seem to have formed a permanent camp. The mention of this place in Deu_11:30, where it is described as ‘beside the oaks of Moreh,’ that is, near the spot of Abraham’s first altar (Gen_12:7), implies a locality well known at the time, and, as we might almost conjecture from its after-history, a sort of traditional sanctuary. This alone would suffice to distinguish this Gilgal from the first encampment of Israel as east of Jericho, which only obtained its name from the event which there occurred. Besides, it is impossible to suppose that Joshua marched to the banks of the Jordan (Jos_9:6; Jos_10:6-7; Jos_10:9; Jos_10:15; Jos_10:43); and, again, that he did so a second time, after the battles in Galilee, to make appointment of the land among the people by the banks of the Jordan (Jos_14:6). Further, the localisation of Gilgal near the banks of the Jordan would be entirely incompatible with what we know of the after-history of that place. Gilgal was one of the three cities where Samuel judged the people (1Sa_7:16; here, also, he offered sacrifices when the Ark was no longer in the tabernacle at Shiloh (1Sa_10:8; 1Sa_13:7-9; 1Sa_15:21), and there, as in a central sanctuary, did all Israel gather to renew their allegiance to Saul (1Sa_11:14). Later on, Gilgal was the great scene of Elisha’s ministry (2Ki_2:1), and still later it became a centre of idolatrous worship (Hos_4:15; Hos_9:15; Hos_12:11; Amo_4:4; Amo_5:5). All these considerations lead to the conclusion that the Gilgal which formed the site of Joshua’s encampment is the modern Jiljilieh, a few miles from Shiloh, and about the same distance from Bethel—nearly equidistant from Shechem and from Jerusalem.” [“Israel in Canaan,” pp. 75, 76.]
This entirely agrees with the view advocated in our treatment of the respective passages in Joshua. The great importance of the point in question, not only geographically, but as it affects far more serious considerations, will probably be deemed sufficient to justify this insertion of Dr. Edersheim’s valuable corroborative notice.
LIMITATIONS OF LIBERTY BEFORE GOD AND MEN.—Jdg_2:2-3
If, as some have contended, this and the preceding chapter belonged “to the early part of Joshua’s government,” then these two verses would be utterly at variance with all that we are told of Joshua’s faithfulness, and would stand in direct contradiction to Jos_24:31, and to Jdg_2:7. The verses confront us with the fact that no man has liberty to disobey God, or to practise or tolerate in others such wickedness as is in violation of the rights of others, even though this wickedness be taught in the name of religion.
I. Fellowship with the wicked is enmity with God. “Ye shall make no league with the inhabitants of this land.” God claims the right to say with whom His children shall associate. We claim such authority over our children. We are not our own. We have been redeemed from bondage by God. The very conditions of our redemption required that we should form no league with the enemies of Him who gave us freedom. To ally ourselves with God’s enemies is to become enemies ourselves.
II. The tolerance of some forms of so-called religion is an infringement of human liberty. “Ye shall throw down their altars.” A great many altars in this world have been thrown down by a persecuting despotism. There are some altars which even the God of all liberty demands that we utterly abolish. The Canaanites were religious teachers of fornication and murder (cf. Deu_12:31; 1Ki_11:7; 1Ki_11:33; 2Ki_3:27; 2Ki_16:3; Psa_106:37-38; Isa_57:5, &c). Their religion was an overt and shameful attack on the most sacred and inherent rights of the whole human race. In such a case, toleration is out of the question. Reckless advocates of liberty might far more consistently plead for the toleration of a poisonous factory which gave off fatal vapours in the midst of a populous community. America has long hesitated as to tolerating in her midst systematic adultery under the sheltering name of Mormonism. Probably the public conscience in the United States will ere long demand that the evil be swept away. But suppose Mormonism should add to adultery the wholesale offering of human sacrifices. In that case, every true man must feel that the evil creed of sin and blood must at once be wiped out in blood. The personal faith of every man should be tolerated so long as his faith does no gross wrong to the faith and liberty of others; but when vice and murder are labelled religion, no real lover of liberty will submit to be duped by a mere name. The rights and liberties of sufferers must also be respected. There was nothing to be done but that God should command the overthrow of altars which were set apart to vice like this. For men who had begun to enter into the liberty wherewith God makes free, the only possible course was that they should be instructed to kill off from the face of the earth organised religious teachers and doers of wholesale murder and incessant fornication. “Free and independent thought,” in which partial men of a certain bias love to indulge, has seldom perpetrated any anti-climax more ridiculous than the hundreds which, in modern days, it has pronounced against this painful but necessary destruction of the Canaanites. He who contends for a liberty which has to be nurtured daily in the blood and purity of multitudes of helpless children, is either a terrible despot towards the children, or beyond the reach of all ordinary argument. Of what matter is it that the worshippers of Molech should call the screams of his burning child “acceptable to his god,” or the corpse of his murdered son or daughter “a religious sacrifice.” Should any congregation of such worshippers be found in England to-morrow, every citizen worthy of the name would demand that they be exterminated, or made to abjure their horrible faith.
III. To disregard the voice of God is to incur the reproof and correction both of God and men.
1. God calls the disobedient to account. “Ye have not obeyed my voice. Why have ye done this?”
2. Victory ceases with fidelity. “I will not drive them out from before you.” The triumphs at Jericho, and Gibeon, and over the host of Jabin, were all won when the Israelites were little used to war. Sihon and Og were conquered when the army had little discipline and almost no military experience. In the day of Canaan’s might and Israel’s weakness, the latter was everywhere triumphant. When the people were weak then were they strong. In the day of Israel’s strength and Canaan’s feebleness, Israel could win no more battles. He who fails to obey God, must not wonder if he fails everywhere.
3. God’s enmity takes form in the enmity of men. “They shall be to you for adversaries.” God has many instruments of correction, and He not seldom uses our fellow-creatures for this purpose. Many instances of this are found in the Old Testament. May not this form of Divine correction be common now? Said a popular teacher of the past generation, when vexed with disturbances in the church over which he presided, “My sins are reappearing to me in the form of men.”
IV. Disobedience to God is a seed of temptation to yet more disobedience. “Their gods shall be a snare unto you.” It may be said of all sin as it was said of vegetable life on the morning of creation—“Whose seed is in itself.” The man who transgresses sows sin in his own heart, and, alas! the seed is naturally fruitful, and the ground naturally fertile. He who has lived long in sin need not wonder that the way of holiness is difficult. By grace we are saved. The gods whom she formerly served would ensnare the Church to her ruin now, were it not that the God of gods still graciously says, “Behold, I will allure her!” He who has been lifted up from the earth, was lifted up to draw us from the sin which many previous sins had made too fascinating for us to forsake alone. “No man can come to Me, except the Father which has sent Me draw him.” Whatever occult doctrinal meanings may or may not be concealed in these emphatic words of the Son of God, the natural enslaving power of sin needs the full weight of that awful utterance to rightly depict the weakness in which sin leaves us all. Every sinful man re-writes in his own history the ancient word of Jehovah—“Thou hast destroyed thyself; in Me is thine help.” The gods of our old idolatries have surrounded us by too many snares for us ever to be able to escape them alone.
BROKEN COMMANDMENTS.—Jdg_2:2
God’s commandments are written so plainly upon the tables of Scripture, and man’s violation of them appears so clearly upon the tables of life, that when the Lord begins to expose sin, conviction must certainly and immediately follow.
The dangers of adversity may be great, but so also are the dangers of prosperity. When the Israelites were without any experience of either war or victory, they overthrew Sihon and Og, and went on to victories yet greater: when they had won the land, then they began to lose it, through love of ease and fear of iron chariots.
Mighty works of God may fail to make His servants believe, and successive years of mercy may find them increasingly ungrateful; but when the goodness of the Lord is no longer sufficient, then rebuke and chastisement at once become necessary.
Many victories often lead God’s people to think lightly of winning more. The vast importance of the divine commandments becomes obscured by the illusive light of unbroken triumphs, and a rich earthly inheritance.
The light which comes to us through adversity is often the clearest and purest that we get. So it was with the Israelites. The proof of this is again and again set before us in their history under the judges. To use the magnificent image of Edmund Burke, on a political occasion,—The light broke in upon them, “not through well-contrived and well-disposed windows, but through flaws and breaches; through the yawning chasms of their national ruin.”
THE INEXCUSABLENESS OF SIN.—Jdg_2:2, last clause
I. The sin which is done in duties which are left undone. “Why have ye done this?” Only one of these three charges has to do with sins of commission; the other two speak of sins of omission. The league with the idolaters was a transgression actual and positive; for the rest of the accusation, the altars had not been thrown down, and the Divine voice had not been obeyed. Yet the Angel says of all these things alike, “Why have ye done this?” The duties which we do not are sins which we do. Our very sins of omission are full of commission. Every altar which the Israelites suffered to stand would be a wrong actually done to the land generally, and to every child in each family. We should remember that our very neglect to obey God becomes an actual and positive wrong to men.
II. The silence of the sinner in the presence of his Divine Judge. “Why have ye done this?” No answer is given. Not a word of excuse seems to have been uttered. How awful and significant is this silence! What emphasis it lays on the righteousness of the Judge’s accusation! How clearly it manifests the guilt of the accused! Here is a nation of transgressors, and not one man can make reply. It will be so with many at the last judgment. “Friend, how camest thou in hither, not having a wedding garment? And he was speechless.” There is nothing to be said for sin. It is put to silence by Divine majesty; for who shall answer God. It is put to silence by Divine mercies; common gratitude ought to have led to obedience. It is put to silence by Divine willingness to help; all the idolatrous altars which men are too weak to throw down alone, may be thrown down by the ever-willing arm of God.
III. The poor answer which the sinner must make if he were to answer truthfully. “Why have ye done this?”
1. For ease, and been disappointed. Their unwrest was even now beginning in these tears.
2. For fear, and had to fear more. The undestroyed iron chariots were the commencement of an iron yoke.
3. For gain, and have to suffer loss. The men who were spared under tribute to cultivate the fat lands which the tribes were too idle to tend themselves, would soon take the produce of the lands, and in their turn exact tribute from the Israelites.
4. For peace, and have found ourselves at war with man, with God, and even with our own consciences. All these things were beginning, and would soon be fully felt. “The way of transgressors is hard.” He who seeks to spare himself or please himself by disobeying God, inherits all he would avoid, and loses all he would obtain.
SINS OF OMISSION.—Jdg_2:2
I. Their great magnitude. We are apt to think that great sins are only those which we actually commit. This is a mistake. We see here the following serious forms of transgression:
1. Disobedience to God’s will.
2. Disbelief in God’s Word.
3. Man’s judgment preferred before God’s unerring wisdom.
II. Their fearful consequences.
1. A troubled conscience.
2. An encumbered inheritance.
3. An open door made for temptation.
4. A fruitful source of conflict. “From henceforth thou shalt have wars” (2Ch_16:9).
5. Ultimate overthrow and captivity. This is seen in the repeated subjection of Israel under the judges, and in the great captivity at Babylon. All began here, nor did it end there.
6. The removal of the privileges of worship. Shiloh was associated with Ichabod (Jdg_18:30-31; 1Sa_4:21-22); the ark was taken to Philistia; the temple, later on, was utterly destroyed.
III. Their tremendous warnings. All this Old Testament narrative is not given merely for information. God seeks something higher than the satisfaction of our curiosity. Nor is the record only or principally for interest. The Holy Spirit meant to give us something more than an exciting history. “All these things happened unto them for ensamples; and they are written for our admonition, upon whom the ends of the world are come.”
“The accusation against them at Bochim was negative rather than positive. There are degrees of guilt in the rebellions of the Church against her Head; and as yet the Israelites were not charged, like Ahab afterwards, with doing very abominably in following idols: still less had they reached the villainy of Manasseh at a yet later period, who even ‘overpassed the deeds of the heathen,’ for he ‘did wickedly above all the Amorites did, which were before him, and shed innocent blood till he had filled Jerusalem from one end to another.’ It is true that their downward course, after they had once placed themselves on the smooth deceitful gradient, soon became rapid and headlong; but as yet they are expostulated with chiefly for sins of omission.
“When the Church has begun to habitually neglect any one of her Lord’s known commands—still more when she begins to ‘break one of these least commandments, and teach men so’—the day is not far distant when, unless arrested in her career by the mercy or judgments of God, she will be found openly consorting with the mammon-worshippers by whom she is surrounded.… From sparing the lives of the enemies of the Church, it was an easy step to make comfortable agreements with them.
“The evening twilight soon fades into total darkness; so their negative evil soon degenerated into positive revolt: ‘they did evil in the sight of the Lord, and served Baalim.’ ” [Luke H. Wiseman, M.A.]
“Sins of commission are usual punishments for sins of omission. He that leaves a duty may fear to be left to commit a crime.” [Gurnall.]
“We may lose heaven by neutrality as well as by hostility, by wanting oil as well as by drinking poison. An unprofitable servant shall as much be punished as a prodigal son. Undone duty will undo souls. The last words of the industrious Archbishop Usher were, ‘Lord, in special, forgive me my sins of omission.’ ”
“Love puts not off the pursuit of duty till it attains the possession of glory. There is no rocking this babe to sleep but in the cradle of the grave.” [Wm. Secker.]
NO LEAGUE TO BE MADE WITH GOD’S ENEMIES.—Jdg_2:2
“It is perilous work when men begin to decide who are believers and who are not, if they decide by party badges.… Nevertheless, there is an irreligion which he who runs may read. For the atheist is not merely he who professes unbelief, but, strictly speaking, every one who lives without God in the world. And the heretic is not merely he who has mistaken some Christian doctrine, but rather he who causes divisions among the brethren. And the idolater is not merely he who worships images, but he who gives his heart to something which is less than God; for a man’s god is that which has his whole soul and worship, that which he obeys and reverences as his highest. Now there are innumerable doubtful cases where charity is bound to hope the best; but there is also an abundance of plain cases: for where a man’s god is money, or position in society, or rank, there the rule holds, ‘Come ye apart.’ ” [F. W. Robertson, M.A., Lectures on Corinthians, p. 358.]
“In every age the Church of God has to drive out her spiritual Amorites—Unbelief, Ungodliness, Heresy, Idolatry, the setting up of man’s inventions and forms in place of the pure truth of God; and unless she is diligent and bold these enemies will beleaguer her and infest her, and will at length drive her out of her inheritance. These are the enemies who will dispute with the heirs of promise every foot of their expected heritage. With these it is no child’s play at arms, but a veritable struggle for life; for as the spies reported of the sons of Anak, which come of the giants, ‘We were in our own sight as grasshoppers, and so we were in their sight’—so these bold gigantic foes are not afraid of the utmost efforts the believer can put forth by the mere force of his own will.” [L. H. Wiseman, M.A.]
THE PUNISHMENT OF SIN A PUNISHMENT IN KIND.—Jdg_2:3
I. Men neglecting God, and having to hear that God will neglect them. The “Ye have not” of the people, is met by the “I will not” of God. Men omit duties, and the Lord omits help. God does not threaten the Israelites with His enmity; He simply declares that He will leave those who have so sinfully left Him. Forsaking is punished by forsaking.
II. Men making a league with the wicked, and finding that their chosen confederates are to become their direst foes. “They shall be to you for adversaries” (cf. Critical Notes). The point of departure becomes the place of chastisement. Those for whom God had been cast off, should be God’s instruments to turn that unhallowed choice into the chief cause of mourning. It is ever thus: Delilah is generally chosen to shear Samson; Gehazi lies to the healed leper, and buys the cast-off leprosy; Judas covenants with the priests, and has to hear them say in his anguish, “See thou to that;” Saul of Tarsus allies himself with the Jews to persecute Christians, and forthwith his future history is one of continued perils by his “own countrymen,” and “perils among false brethren.”
III. Men preserving idolatrous altars, and ensnared by idol gods. “Their gods shall be a snare unto you.” The altars which they spared, contrary to the command of God, became the future place of their own sacrifice. No man can afford to keep what God would have him to destroy. All our forbidden possessions, so far from being assets in the account of our individual happiness, had better at once be entered as debts which will certainly have to be paid. To strike them off the account as items which cannot be realised, is only half the loss; they must be put on the other side. The gods that we spare are not only helpless and useless; they are a snare. The altars that we leave standing not only bring us none of the joy of worship; they require us as a sacrifice.
CAUSES OF SPIRITUAL WEAKNESS
“The history illustrates the causes of the weakness of the Church and people of God.
“
I. One of these causes was indolence.… Patient labour there must be, if we would win the prize of our high calling. The athlete cannot retain his strength without daily exercise; the vocalist cannot retain his power and command of voice without incessant practice; and the child of God cannot go on to perfection without a daily spiritual gymnastic ‘exercising himself with a view to godliness’ (1Ti_4:7 Gr.), as an athlete with a view to the games. Faith and love, correcting the indolence of our nature, will make this holy toil delightful. In the second century it passed into a proverb, when men would express the impossibility of a thing, to say, ‘You may as well take off a Christian from Christ;’ and our blessed Master, whose example is the most perfect rebuke of slothfulness, declared that it was His meat and drink, not merely to begin, not merely to carry on, but to finish His Father’s work.
“
II. Another cause of spiritual weakness is a secret love of sin. The Israelites found in the habits of the men of Canaan much that was congenial to their own corrupt inclinations.… In religious families there are sons and daughters who, although outwardly restrained by the circumstances of their position, cherish a bitter hatred of religion, and a secret love for a dissipated life. And even in the hearts of the faithful, what strange occasional lingerings there are towards evil! What treacherous trifling with things forbidden! What hovering about the devil’s ground! What secret inclinations to taste the poisoned cup! What strange revival, at times, of the power of old habits which we had imagined subdued for ever! What infatuated dancing on the brink of hell, like the moth fluttering round the candle to its destruction! Who can explain the depth of that hidden treason? Who can disclose the inner sources of that secret alienation from the adorable God, that lusting of the flesh against the spirit, which so many of the faithful mourn? ‘Never,’ says Calvin, ‘does the love of piety sufficiently flourish in our hearts unless it begets in us a hatred of sin.’
“
III. Another cause of spiritual weakness is unbelief, if indeed this one cause does not sum up and exhaust the whole subject. Unbelief is vitally connected with that alienation of heart and affections from God, in which the deepest ruin of man consists.… Here is the great secret of unbelief—it is ‘the evil heart departing from the living God.’ ” [Luke H. Wiseman, M.A.]
THE POWER OF THE LORD’S WORD.—Jdg_2:4-5
From the fact that “all the children of Israel” are here spoken of, Bishop Patrick says, “By this it appears they were all met at some solemn festival, as they were bound to do three times every year, for otherwise it cannot be conceived what should occasion such an assembly of the whole congregation, and consequently the place where these words were spoken to them was Shiloh.” Probably this was so (cf. Exo_23:14-17; Deu_12:10-14). If so, we see in the very circumstances of this gathering these three things:
1. The formal services of religion carefully observed notwithstanding gross sin. With heathen altars all around them, with a league recently made with idolaters, and with the broken words of God coming between the Most High and their service, the Israelites met to worship Him whose will they had so utterly ignored. What a picture it presents of many a subsequent religious service!
2. God refusing to accept service spoiled by disobedience, and wanting the worship of the heart. That the service was not accepted, follows from the words of the Angel. And yet, while God rejects the worship He does not at once forsake the worshipper. Just as at the beginning Divine mercy gently reasons with Cain as to his rejected offering, so does that mercy here tenderly remonstrate with the formal worshippers at Bochim. Here, also, we see a Father who “knoweth our frame, and remembereth that we are dust.”
3. A festive gathering of the Lord’s people turned into an assembly of “weepers.” God loves to make His people joyful in His house of prayer, but there is much that is more important than our gladness. As has been said of the children of Dan, even “in Aijalon, the place where Joshua had commanded the sun to stand still; so far from being animated by the memory of their leader’s faith, they were actually driven back by the heathen and forced to take shelter in the mountains (Jdg_1:34-35), thus turning the noblest battle-field of the Church of God into a scene of defeat and shame.” Similar evidences of unfaithfulness were apparent all through the land. The worship of the congregation might well be turned into weeping. When the heavens are brass, and our prayer will not pass through, it is meet that we make search for idol altars, and break away from sinful leagues.
This assembly at Bochim dissolved into tears by the message of the Angel, may suggest to us the following considerations:—
I. The power of the word of the Lord to work conviction. “The people lifted up their voice and wept.” As was written to the Hebrews of a later generation, “The Word of God is quick and powerful, and sharper than any two-edged sword,” Heb_4:12). As heard on this occasion, this word—
1. Reveals the love of God. It tells of His loving acts in the past. It declares, no less, His tender concern in the present, and His care for His people’s future.
2. It makes manifest the sins of men. It spares no one. The leaders of the people are exposed even more than the mass. It is the glory of the Bible that it has no respect to persons. The sins of Noah, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Moses, Aaron, David, and Peter, are as fully revealed as are the sins of Amnon, Absalom, Gehazi, or Ananias and Sapphira. King or peasant, child of God or openly wicked, the word of the Lord declares and judges sin wherever it is found.
3. It displays the sinner’s base ingratitude. It throws the strong light of God’s past love and goodness on the dark evidences of man’s idolatrous sympathies. It “discerneth the thoughts and intents of the heart,” which after being made glad by God, wickedly turns against God. How many has it thus judged and condemned! What multitudes it is so condemning even to this day!
4. It proclaims coming punishment. Men argue against its penalties as being unlike the God whom it declares, but the Bible still goes on speaking in its awful calmness about the “worm that dieth not, and the fire that is not quenched.” Blessed be God for the faithful word! It shows that God has not given up as hopeless the sinful men to whom, through it, He still comes with words of rebuke and exhortation. Let the hands that so often hang down be lifted up to preach it, well assured that “it is the power of God unto salvation.” People still weep when they hear the words of the law of the Lord (cf. Neh_8:9).
II. Conviction expressing itself through tears. “The people lifted up their voice and wept.” The weeping seems to have been very general. Unless very many had been in tears, we should not have been told that the people wept, nor would the place have been named “The Weepers.”
1. Tears must ever follow sin. They may come as tears of genuine grief for sin. They may be delayed till sin brings punishment. In one way or the other they must certainly succeed the transgression of God’s righteous laws. Every sinner is a debtor to grief, and sooner or later the bill must be met. The longer payment is deferred, the worse for the debtor, for the interest charged on overdue tears for sin is always both high and compound. Emerson says: “The ingenuity of man has always been dedicated to the solution of one problem,—how to detach the sensual sweet, the sensual strong, the sensual bright, &c., from the moral sweet, the moral deep, the moral fair; that is, again, to contrive to cut clean off this upper surface so thin as to leave it bottomless; to get a one end without an other end.… This dividing and detaching is steadily counteracted. Up to this day, it must be owned, no projector has had the smallest success. The parted water reunites behind our hand. We can no more halve things and get the sensual good by itself, than we can get an inside that shall have no outside, or a light without a shadow. ‘Drive out Nature with a fork, she comes running back.’ ” Natural law alone exacts, unfailingly, the due penalties of sin; and behind Nature, and working through Nature, stands God, “Who will by no means clear the guilty.” He who chooses the pleasures of sin for a season will also in due season have to take its pains. It is well that this is so. If sin could be committed without tears, to use a paradox, it would be more full of tears than ever. The sorrow that multiplies upon itself and cannot weep, has need to weep indeed.
2. Tears are necessary till sin is put away. Sir Walter Scott wrote of the comparatively innocent tears of children,—
“The tear down childhood’s cheek that flows,
Is like the dewdrop on the rose:
When next the summer breeze comes by,
And waves the bush, the flower is dry.”
God has mercifully ordered it that the tears that flow for iniquity shall not be dried so quickly. In heaven, where there is no more sin, God wipes away all tears with His own hand. He will love us there no more than He loves us here. He leaves us in tears here, simply because we have too much sin to do without them.
3. Tears for sin, nevertheless, are often only temporary. Men dry their own eyes, and harden their own hearts, when God would see them still weeping. “Bochim” is not mentioned again throughout the Scriptures. The tears of these transgressors were of short duration. The tears, and the name of the place where they shed them, were alike soon forgotten. The forgiven man rejoices that tears are put away, and exclaims,—“Sing psalms to Jehovah, ye His saints, and give thanks at the remembrance of His holiness. Because His anger is for a moment, His favour for a life-time; weeping may tarry in the evening, but at morning there is joy” (cf. Heb. Psa_30:5-6).—The unforgiven man has need to weep again that his tears are dried all too soon.
4. Tears are most hopeful when most hidden. “They called the name of that place Bochim.” They named it after their weeping. They made a display of their penitence. Their tears were so poor that they must needs advertise them. It can hardly be a matter for wonder that neither name nor tears lasted long. He fasts best who “appears not unto men to fast.” He weeps best whose tears for sin have in them enough of shame to make him seek to hide them. Our Heavenly Father would no more have us cry at the corners of the streets than He would have us pray there.
III. Tears promptly followed by sacrifice. “And they sacrificed there unto the Lord.” Probably they offered special sin-offerings, on account of the message of the Angel, in addition to the festive offerings in connection with this particular gathering of the congregation.
1. Tears for sin are nothing without sacrifice. Personal offences between man and man are to be forgiven freely, even “unto seventy times seven.” Every man is commanded, without any reparation whatever, to forgive his fellows, as he hopes to be forgiven. But no ruler of a community can forgive offences thus freely. In this case, forgiveness of the one would be a wrong to all others. At the public bar the requirements of justice are simply absolute. Whatever other reasons may or may not exist with God, this alone is imperative. The law must be magnified, and made honourable. Tears can never suffice without sacrifice.
2. Tears should lead us to the sacrifice of Christ. In Him “righteousness and peace have kissed each other.”
3. Gratitude for tears wiped away should lead us to personal sacrifice. He can know little of the sacrifice of the Cross who does not believe with some self-sacrifice of his own.
IV. Conviction, tears, and sacrifice, all fruitless for want of true repentance. “The curse causeless shall not come” (Pro_26:2), but the curse foretold by the Angel did come, and come speedily. There can be only one conclusion; the repentance was too unreal for the conviction to be worth anything, for the tears to be grateful to God, or for the sacrifice to be acceptable in His sight. The final punishment of those who never repent must be dreadful; but the final punishment of those who all their life long are convicted without conversion, who weep without penitence, and who come to Christ without really giving themselves to Christ, must be terrible indeed. To all the woe of the impenitent lost, their woe must have added the awful vexation of a disappointment which must seem as though hell were added to hell. It is an apostolic conclusion, that those who in this life only have hope, “are of all men most miserable.” Unreal religion in this life is a factor by which, in the life to come, the Divine punishment of sin will be self-multiplied by the sinner to his own aggravation of the ordinary woe of the lost.
THE WAY TO AND FROM TRANSGRESSION.—Jdg_2:4-5
I. The easy way to disobedience against God. Weeds need no cultivating, but a good harvest comes of much labour. Transgression seems indigenous even to the best of human hearts. “Ill weeds grow apace;” we cannot see why they grow so readily, but the process through which they come can be traced with tolerable distinctness. The disobedience of these Israelites may be traced through the following stages:—
1. Decreasing prayer. A while back they asked, “Who shall go up for us against the Canaanites” (Jdg_1:1)? When Judah failed in faith, we hear of no fresh inquiry. When the rest of the tribes were discouraged, we are told of no further supplication to God. Had the prayer of Psalms 80 been upon the hearts and lips of the tribes now, we had heard of no such rebuke as this at Bochim. Had Israel cried, “Before Ephraim and Benjamin and Manasseh stir up Thy strength, and come and save us,” there could have been no such record as that in the last part of Judges 1. The failure of prayer is the beginning of failure “all along the line.”
2. Love of ease. Incessant conflict was probably getting more and more disagreeable. He who prefers rest in his own way to obedient rest in the word and will of God is fast nearing the place of tears.
3. Increased desires for gain. The tribes “could not drive out” their enemies, yet they “put them to tribute,” and thus betrayed the “would not” which underlay their “could not.” Tribute and no conflict, seemed easier than conflict and no tribute. That, too, led to Bochim. They were seeking to make a profit out of God’s enemies. Like Achan, they too were taking of God’s devoted things, and they also were seeking to conceal them: Achan hid his spoil in his tent, and they attempted to hide theirs under the idea of lawful tribute.
4. Growing self-assurance. When the tribes were weak, then were they so strong that they never lost a battle; when they grew strong enough to put their enemies to tribute, then they never won another victory, till out of their distress and renewed weakness they cried again unto the Lord (Jdg_3:9-10).
II. The difficulty of escaping from sin when once it has been committed. The way of escape is
(1) through tears;
(2) through sacrifice;
(3) through obedience, without which both tears and sacrifice are in vain. The real difficulty of escaping from a life of sin is thus seen to lie in the difficulty of true repentance. God is ever “ready to forgive” when we are ready to be forgiven. Esau might have found mercy as readily as Jacob, could he have found a heart to seek and wrestle with God; the difficulty was here,—Esau “found no place of repentance, though he too came to Bochim, and “sought it carefully with tears.” Pardon is ever offered to the penitent; but if they who have known God’s goodness turn from it, the difficulty is “to renew them again unto repentance” (Heb_6:4-6). The dying penitent is ever on the borders of paradise, but the dying are often very far from penitence (Luk_23:39-43).
III. The great grace of God through Jesus Christ the Saviour.
1. God sent many warnings. Repeated warnings of these very sins were given through Moses. Many more were given through Joshua. Victory was always afforded to them when faithful. Yet they sinned.
2. God came with personal remonstrance. The Angel of the Covenant Himself enters into controversy with the disobedient at Bochim. “Last of all He sent unto them His Son.” Neither did this avail. The league was still maintained. The altars were still spared.
3. God manifested gracious patience. The evil foretold in Jdg_2:3 did not come to pass at once. The Lord waited, that He might be gracious. It is not till we read that “Israel served Baalim” that we are told “the anger of the Lord was hot against Israel” (Jdg_2:11-14). The Lord tried them, and proved them.
4. God showed great readiness to hear their cries of distress. At the very first signs of penitence He raised them up judges to deliver them (Jdg_2:11; Jdg_3:9). For all that, yet did they not truly seek Him (Jdg_2:17-19). Thus, though Divine grace is so exalted, “the way of transgressors is hard;” it is hard while they pursue it, and hard for them to turn back from it into the paths of righteousness and peace.
THE TEARS OF EARTH AND THE TEARLESS HEAVEN.—Jdg_2:5 (a)
It is said that there shall be “neither sorrow nor crying” among the redeemed in heaven, but that “God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes.” The place where there is no more sin is to be a place where there shall be no more tears.
I. God, who will presently wipe all tears away, here causes them to flow abundantly. It is the angel of His presence who here constrains the people to weep.
II. God, who wipes tears away only where there is no more sin, here makes them to flow for sin. Did sin bring no tears, the sinful would know little enough of penitence. This Book of Judges is the Lord’s own commentary on the necessity for our tears. Nowhere more than here is it seen that “through much tribulation we must enter into the kingdom.”
III. God, who waits to wipe all tears from off all faces, has no pleasure in causing them. Weeping is not an arbitrary arrangement, but is born in us of Divine pity and love. “Whom the Lord loveth, He chasteneth.”
IV. God, who while we are here moves us to tears Himself, will when we are there Himself wipe them away. As at Bochim, so often; He comes to us on earth to make us weep. In heaven, it shall be as it was at the crossing of the Jordan into the land of Canaan, about which the bards of Israel presently sang: “The waters saw Thee, O God, the waters saw Thee; they were afraid:” “What ailed thee, O Thou sea, that thou fleddest? thou Jordan, that thou wast driven back?” So at our entrance to the Promised Land on high, the river of tears shall be driven back at the very sight of the God of love. We “shall see His face;” and from the everlasting joy of His countenance shall be born the tearless and immortal gladness of our own.
BOCHIM
Our tears are of small account when, moved by penitence and love, we voluntarily come into our Lord’s presence and shed them at His feet. Tears have even much sweetness in their pain then. When Peter went out from Christ to cry, he “went out and wept bitterly;” when the sinful woman came into Christ’s presence and washed His feet with her tears, who does not feel that her tears were tears of gladness? The tears, too, of Mary Magdalene, shed at the empty tomb, presently got all the pain taken out of them when she was able to exclaim, Rabboni. He who sheds his tears at the feet of Jesus will always find that he is the happier for them. When our tears for sin fall on His feet, they turn to diamonds of the first water, and as we recall how He said, “Thy sins which be many are all forgiven thee,” memory does but pick them up as jewels for our soul’s future enrichment.
Pain is God’s great teacher. No one can learn well without it. Take two boys of equal gifts and equal industry. Let one grow up with almost no crosses and suffering, and the other with trials many and deep, yet borne with patient fortitude. How shallow will the one life be when compared with the richness and depth of tone in the other!
Pain must always be interpreted relatively. You cannot look on a wounded child, on a strongman crippled suddenly for life, or on a young mother taken from several young children, and read the meaning there. These are but “parts of His ways.” You can make nothing of the Cross on Calvary if you look at that alone. You may, in spirit, join those of whom it is said that “sitting down they watched Him there,” but, like them, you also will fail to understand it thus. You will have to keep them company in yet that further experience, when they “smote their breasts, and returned.” But look out on Pentecost; look at the records of the apostles’ labours, as given in the Acts and in the Epistles; look at the eighteen centuries during which the Crucified One has been drawing all men to Himself: read the Cross in the light of all that, and it will be beautifully different from the same Cross when you look at it merely through the terrible gloom of the three hours’ darkness, or try to make out its rich and far-reaching meanings through the agonised utterances of the suffering Son of God. Even so our smaller crosses can seldom be made out amid the gloom of their own darkness. “Blessed are all they that wait patiently for Him,” to make the vision of suffering and tears plain upon the tables of life.
“They wept, but we do not find that they reformed,—that they went home and destroyed all the remains of idolatry and idolaters among them. Many are melted under the Word that harden again before they are cast into a new mould.” [Matt. Henry.]
“From Gilgal to Bochim” is a path much shorter and much easier than that from Bochim to Mount Zion. The history of the one is in a few brief pages, which record no conflict; that of the other is a history of many struggles, extending to the time of David (2Sa_5:6-10).
“If transgressors cannot endure the rebukes of God’s Word and the convictions of their own consciences, how will they be able to stand before the tribunal of the holy heart-searching Judge?” [Scott.]
“The Israelites called the place Bochim; they named it from their own tears. They laid the principal stress on their own feelings, and on their own demonstrations of sorrow. But they did not speak of God’s mercies, and they were not careful to bring forth fruits of repentance; they were a barren fig-tree, having only leaves. Theirs was a religion, such as is too common, of sentiment and emotions, not of faith and obedience.
“Reproofs which produce only tears—religious feelings without religious acts—emotions without effects, leave the heart worse than before. If God’s rebukes are trifled with, His grace is withdrawn.” [Wordsworth.]
“Repentance and temptation are the two purgatories that a Christian in his way to heaven must pass through. The first is of water, the other of fire. We can no sooner come out of the one, but we must look to enter into the other. No sooner have we bathed and washed our souls in the waters of repentance, but we must presently expect the fiery darts of Satan’s temptations to be driving at us.” [Dyke.]
“Like Janus Bifrons, the Roman god looking two ways, a true repentance not only bemoans the past but takes heed to the future. Repentance, like the lights of a ship at her bow and her stern, not only looks to the track she has made, but to the path before her. A godly sorrow moves the Christian to weep over the failure of the past, but his eyes are not so blurred with tears but that he can look watchfully into the future, and, profiting by the experience of former failures, make straight paths for his feet.” [J. G. Pilkington.]
When men are in the wilderness of sin, even the heart of rock must be made to give forth water, lest the thirsty spirit perish outright. There are times when tears are a relief. There are places where oppressed manhood cries, “Oh, that my head were waters, and mine eyes a fountain of tears, that I might weep.” Whether God Himself speak to the rocky heart, or whether “the rod of God” be used, tears, in this desert, may well be an occasion of joy and thankfulness.
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.
Alexander MacLaren 1905 · Public Domain On v1 Jdg 2:1 - Jdg 2:10.
Judges
A SUMMARY OF ISRAEL’S FAITHLESSNESS AND GOD’S PATIENCE
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Jdg 2:1 - Jdg 2:10.
The Book of Judges begins a new era, the development of the nation in its land. Jdg 1:1 contain two summaries: first, of the progress of the conquest; and second, of the history about to be unfolded in the book. The first part of this passage {Jdg 2:1 - Jdg 2:5} belongs to the former, and closes it; the second {Jdg 2:6 - Jdg 2:10} introduces the latter, and contrasts it with the state of things prevailing as long as the soldiers of Joshua lived.
I. ‘The Angel of the Lord’ had appeared to Joshua in Gilgal at the beginning of the war, and issued his orders as ‘Captain of the Lord’s host.’ Now He reappears to ask why his orders had not been carried out, and to announce that victory was no longer to attend Israel’s arms. Nothing can be plainer than that the Angel speaks as one in whom the divine name dwells. His reiterated ‘I’s’ are incomprehensible on any other hypothesis than that He is that mysterious person, distinct from and yet one with Jehovah, whom we know as the ‘Word made flesh.’ His words here are stern. He enumerates the favours which He had showed to Israel, and which should have inspired them to glad obedience. He recalls the conditions on which they had received the land; namely, that they were to enter into no entangling alliances with the remnant of the inhabitants, and especially to have no tolerance for their idolatry. Here we may observe that, according to Joshua’s last charge, the extermination of the native peoples was not contemplated, but that there should be no such alliances as would peril Israel’s observance of the covenant {Jos 23:7, Jos 23:12}. He charges them with disobedience, and asks the same question as had been asked of Eve, ‘What is this ye have done?’ And He declares the punishment about to follow, in the paralysing of Israel’s conquering arm by the withdrawal of His conquering might, and in the seductions from the native inhabitants to which they would fall victims.
Note, then, how God’s benefits aggravate our disobedience, and how He bases His right to command on them. Further, note how His promises are contingent on our fulfilment of their conditions, and how a covenant which He has sworn that He will never break He does count as non-existent when men break it. Again, observe the sharp arraignment of the faithless, and the forcing of them to bethink themselves of the true character of their deeds, or, if we adopt the Revised Version’s rendering, of the unreasonableness of departing from God. No man dare answer when God asks, ‘What hast thou done?’ No man can answer reasonably when He asks, ‘Why hast thou done it?’ Once more, note that His servants sin when they allow themselves to be so mixed up with the world that they are in peril of learning its ways and getting a snare to their souls. We have all unconquered ‘Canaanites’ in our hearts, and amity with them is supreme folly and crying wickedness. ‘Thorough’ must be our motto. Many times have the conquered overcome their conquerors, as in Rome’s conquest of Greece, the Goths’ conquest of Rome, the Normans’ conquest of England. Israel was in some respects conquered by Canaanites and other conquered tribes. Let us take care that we are not overcome by our inward foes, whom we fancy we have subdued and can afford to treat leniently.
Again, God punishes our making truce with our spiritual foes by letting the effects of the truce work themselves out. He said to Israel, in effect: ‘If you make alliances with the people of the land, you shall no longer have power to cast them out. The swift rush of the stream of victory shall be stayed. You have chosen to make them your friends, and their friendship shall produce its natural effects, of tempting you to imitation.’ The increased power of our unsubdued evils is the punishment, as it is the result, of tolerance of them. We wanted to keep them, and dreamed that we could control them. Keep them we shall, control them we cannot. They will master us if we do not expel them. No wonder that the place was named Bochim {‘Weepers’}, when such stern words were thundered forth. Tears flow easily; and many a sin is wept for once, and afterwards repeated often. So it was with Israel, as the narrative goes on to tell. Let us take the warning, and give heed to make repentance deep and lasting.
II. Jdg 2:6 - Jdg 2:10 go back to an earlier period than the appearance of the Angel. We do not know how long the survivors of the conquering army lived in sufficient numbers to leaven opinion and practice. We may, however, roughly calculate that the youngest of these would be about twenty when the war began, and that about fifty years would see the end of the host that had crossed Jordan and stormed Jericho. If Joshua was of about the same age as Caleb, he would be about eighty at the beginning of the conquest, and lived thirty years afterwards, so that about twenty years after his death would be the limit of ‘the elders that outlived Joshua.’
Jdg 2:6 - Jdg 2:9 substantially repeat Jos 24:28 - Jos 24:31, and are here inserted to mark not only the connection with the former book, but to indicate the beginning of a new epoch. The facts narrated in this paragraph are but too sadly in accord with the uniform tendencies of our poor weak nature. As long as some strong personality leads a nation or a church, it keeps true to its early fervour. The first generation which has lived through some great epoch, when God’s arm has been made bare, retains the impression of His power. But when the leader falls, it is like withdrawing a magnet, and the heap of iron filings tumbles back to the ground inert. Think of the post-Apostolic age of the Church, of Germany in the generation after Luther, not to come nearer home, and we must see that Israel’s experience was an all but universal one. It is hard to keep a community even of professing Christians on the high level. No great cause is ever launched which does not lose ‘way’ as it continues. ‘Having begun in the Spirit,’ all such are too apt to continue ‘in the flesh.’ The original impulses wane, friction begins to tell. Custom clogs the wheels. The fiery lava-stream cools and slackens. So it always has been. Therefore God has to change His instruments, and churches need to be shaken up, and sometimes broken up, ‘lest one good,’ when it has degenerated into ‘custom,’ should ‘corrupt the world.’
But we shall miss the lesson here taught if we do not apply it to tendencies in ourselves, and humbly recognise that we are in danger of being ‘hindered,’ however ‘well’ we may have begun to ‘run,’ and that our only remedy is to renew continually our first-hand vision of ‘the great works of the Lord,’ and our consecration to His service. It is a poor affair if, like Israel, our devotion to God depends on Joshua’s life, or, like King Joash, we do that which is ‘right in the eyes of the Lord all the days of Jehoiada the priest.’
Alexander MacLaren, Expositions of Holy Scripture (1904–1910) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
J. R. Dummelow 1909 · Public Domain On v1 Prologue to the Story of the Judges
Prologue to the Story of the Judges
1-5. The moral of the preceding notices, delivered by an angel at Bochim.
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1. An angel of the lord] RV 'the angel.' Cp. Jdg_6:11, Jdg_6:22; Jdg_13:3, Jdg_13:21, where it is plain (from Jdg_6:14, Jdg_6:16; Jdg_13:22) that the angel is thought of as God Himself (see on Jdg_6:14). The word translated 'angel,' however, means simply 'messenger': cp. Jdg_6:8.
Gilgal] the site of the first Hebrew camp after the crossing of the Jordan (Jos_4:19). Bochim] 'weepers' (Jdg_2:4), but LXX here reads 'Bethel' (Jdg_1:23), which was later the abode of the ark (Jdg_20:27) Allon Bacuth, 'weeping tree,' was near Bethel (Gen_25:8). Covenant] see Gen_15:18; Gen_17:19; Deu_4:13; Deu_8:18; Deu_29:1; Deu_31:16, etc.
Division 2, Jdg_2:6 to Jdg_3:4.
A return to the later scenes of Joshua's life, to connect it with the stories of the Judges. chapter Jdg_2:6-10 is very similar to Jos_24:28-31. The history of Israel in this period is here interpreted as a succession of punishments for disobedience, and deliverance after repentance, a point of view which is not emphasised in the individual stories, but not inconsistent with them. Israel's only chance of existence in Canaan lay in its adherence to the one bond of union, the worship of Jehovah. The introduction divides into three parts: Jdg_2:6-10, historical prologue; Jdg_2:11-23, interpretation of the history; Jdg_3:1-6, Israel's actual relations with the Canaanites.
6-10. Historical Prologue.
6. Cp. Jos_24:28. Evidently the beginning and not the end of conquest is here referred to. In the OT. Canaan is never regarded as a land of rest.
9. Timnathheres] 'territory of the sun': probably near Shechem. In Jos_24:30 the letters of 'heres' are transposed, to avoid the suggestion of idolatrous association (cp. also Jdg_8:13 and RV there). Gaash] unknown.
11-23. The religious interpretation of the history of the Judges.
11. Baalim] RV 'the Baalim,' i.e. the local gods worshipped by the Canaanites. Baalim is” the plural of Baal, which means 'lord' (cp. Jdg_8:33). Each place might thus have its patron god. Jehovah was never thought of by the Hebrews as a local deity in this sense.
13. Ashtaroth] RV 'the Ashtaroth,' properly the feminine counterpart of 'the Baalim.' In Babylon, the goddess Ashtoreth appears as Ishtar (with attributes corresponding in part to Aphrodite or Venus). How easily the worship of the native deities, the Baals, the Ashtoreths, in their sacred groves, would lead to licentiousness is obvious (see on Gen_38:15).
17. A whoring] Adultery and fornication are common figures for unfaithfulness to Israel's 'lord,' Jehovah, cp. Hosea 1-3; Ezekiel 16, 20; Mat_12:39. The succeeding stories make it clear that it was by uniting the Hebrews in a religious war that the Judges caused the local cults to be put aside.
18. It repented the lord] cp. 1Sa_15:11; Psa_90:13; Zec_8:14 : on the other hand, 1Sa_15:29; Jer_4:28; Eze_24:14. Here the word really means'pity.'
20. Covenant] Jos_23:16 chapter Jdg_2:1. In Joshua the ark is constantly called 'the ark of the covenant' (Jos_3:3, etc.).
22. Prove] cp. Jdg_3:1, Jdg_3:2. Such an expression shows how easily a test may become a temptation.
23. Neither delivered he, etc.] a later addition: the whole passage deals with what occurred after the death of Joshua.
J. R. Dummelow, A Commentary on the Holy Bible (Macmillan, 1909) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
C. I. Scofield 1917 · Public Domain On v1 See note. (See Scofield "Heb 1:4").
angel
See note. (See Scofield "Heb 1:4").
The Scofield Reference Bible (1917 edition), notes by C. I. Scofield — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Arno C. Gaebelein 1922 · Public Domain On v1 2. The Angel at Bochim and the History of…
2. The Angel at Bochim and the History of the Entire Book
CHAPTERS 2:1-3:4
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1. The angel at Bochim (Jdg 2:1-5)
2. Israel’s obedience remembered (Jdg 2:6-10)
3. Israel’s strange gods (Jdg 2:11-15)
4. Israel’s history under the judges outlined (Jdg 2:16-18)
5. The nations left to prove Israel (Jdg 2:19-23; Jdg 3:1-4)
The opening event of this chapter is significant. The Angel of the Lord came up from Gilgal to Bochim. This Angel is Jehovah Himself. His own words reveal this fact. In Joshua’s time after the land had been possessed the Angel of the Lord, Jehovah in visible form, was with them and as leader of the Lord’s host led them on in the conquest (Jos 5:13-15). Israel had left Gilgal, the place where the reproach had been rolled away, the place of the “sharp knives,” typical of self-judgment. It was for Israel the place of strength and power for victory, as it gave the flesh nothing to glory in. They had left Gilgal. How often we, who are crucified with Christ, leave our Gilgal and instead of glorying in the Lord and having no confidence in the flesh, we too act in self-confidence. The place to which the Angel went was “Bochim.” It means “weepers.” It was the best place for Israel to be after all their failures to do what the Lord had commanded them. It is the place today for us in the midst of the worldliness in which so many of the Lord’s people have drifted, as well as the divisions which exist among those, who are members of the one body, and other evils besides. But Bochim, the place for weeping, must be the place of self-judgment and confession. It was not so for Israel. They wept when the plain words of Jehovah told them their disobedience and when they heard what should follow. “I will not drive them out before you; but they shall be as thorns in your sides, and their gods shall be a snare unto you.” But we do not read anything of a true repentance and return unto Jehovah.
From chapter 2:6-3:4 we have the history of the whole period of Judges outlined. There is first mention made of their obedience and service, how they began in the Spirit. The second generation, as it is always the case, leads to failure. For the first time we read the words which, as already stated, appear in six other places in this book. “And the children of Israel did evil in the sight of the Lord.” They forsook Him, the loving, gracious Jehovah, whose kindness and tender mercies are so fully revealed in their past history and instead of serving such a God, they served Baal and Ashtaroth. Connected with this Canaanite “religion” were the vilest immoralities by which they were dragged down to the level of these doomed nations. All moral corruption, social and political confusion is the result of turning away from God. Rom 1:19-32 reveals the awful steps down. Christendom in apostasy, turning away from God and from the light, leads to moral corruption as well. Turning away from the truth means being turned into fables.
The Lord then acted in behalf of His backslidden people and raised up judges (verses 16-18). The result was recovery, and once more the people under these revivals rejoiced in victory over their enemies and the promised covenant blessings. Self-judgment, which is true repentance, had to precede each revival. They cried unto the Lord; they sought His face, and then deliverance came. Even so it is in the individual experience of the children of God.
Yet in spite of these revivals in Israel the tendency is downward. “When the judge died they returned and corrupted themselves beyond their fathers ... they ceased not from their own doings, nor from their stubborn way.” So it has been in the professing Church. Revivals have come and gone, but it has not remedied the wayward conditions, and the departure from God and His Word becomes more and more pronounced till the final great apostasy is reached. The only complete deliverance can be the coming of the Lord which we do not find fully revealed in the types of the book of Judges.
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 The Reproof of the Angel of the Lord
The Reproof of the Angel of the Lord
v. 1. And an Angel of the Lord, that is, the Angel of the Lord, who is equal to the Lord in essence, who had brought up Israel out of Egypt and led them to the Land of Promise, came up from Gilgal, where He had revealed Himself to Joshua as the Prince of the host of Jehovah, to Bochim, a place where the representatives of the people were assembled at that time, and said, I made you to go up out of Egypt, the speaker thus expressly identifying Himself with Jehovah, and have brought you unto the land which I sware unto your fathers; and I said, I will never break My covenant with you, Gen 17:7.
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v. 2. And ye shall make no league with the inhabitants of this land, never enter into entangling alliances with them; ye shall throw down their altars, utterly destroy all evidences of idolatry. But ye have not obeyed My voice, they had done just that against which they had been warned; why have ye done this? This is not merely a sorrowful exclamation, but a searching question, a call to repentance, a reproof because they had spared the Canaanites and had permitted their altars to remain.
v. 3. Wherefore I also said, through the mouth of Joshua, Jos 23:13, I will not drive them out from before you, as a punishment of their disobedience, but they shall be as thorns in your sides, and their gods shall be a snare unto you, Exo 23:33. "Israel, in the conquest, has acted like a slothful gardener. It has not thoroughly destroyed the thorns and thistles of its fields. The consequence will be that sowing and planting and other field labors will soon be rendered painful by the presence of spiteful thorns. What will turn the Canaanites into stinging weeds and snares for Israel? The influence of habitual intercourse. Familiarity blunts aversion, smoothes away contrarieties, removes differences, impairs obedience. It induces forgetfulness of what one was, what one promised, and to what conditions one is subject. Familiar intercourse with idolaters will weaken Israel’s faith in the invisible God. " (Lange. )
v. 4. And it came to pass, when the Angel of the Lord spake these words unto all the children of Israel, that the people lifted up their voice and wept, in deep alarm over their sin, with the bitter weeping of repentance.
v. 5. And they called the name of that place, probably before Shiloh, where the people may have been assembled for one of the great festivals, Bochim (weepers); and they sacrificed there unto the Lord, sin-offerings and burnt offerings, for the purpose of obtaining forgiveness of their sins. After repentance and reconciliation comes sacrifice, also for a Christian who has so far forgotten himself as to seek the friendship of the world and has been brought to the realization of his sin.
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 vv1, 3 angel of Yahweh
angel of Yahweh
Possible meaning are 1) "angel who represents Yahweh" or 2) "messenger who serves Yahweh" or 3) it may refer to Yahweh himself, who looked like an angel as he talked to a person. Either one of these meanings would explain the angel's use of "I" as if Yahweh himself were talking.
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went up from Gilgal to Bokim
"left Gilgal and went to Bokim"
Bokim
This is what the Israelites named this place in Jdg 2:5 after the angel rebukes the people. "Bokim" means "crying." (See: How to Translate Names)
and said
It is understood that the angel of Yahweh is speaking to the people of Israel. AT: "and said to the people of Israel" (See: Ellipsis)
brought you up from Egypt
"led you from Egypt"
your fathers
"your ancestors" or "your forefathers"
break my covenant with you
This is an idiom. AT: "fail to do what I said I would do for you" (See: Idiom)
you have not listened to my voice
Here "voice" represents what Yahweh said. AT: "you have not obeyed my commands" (See: Metonymy)
What is this that you have done?
This question is asked to cause the people of Israel to realize they have disobeyed Yahweh and will suffer because of it. AT: "You have done a terrible thing." (See: Rhetorical Question)
translationWords
angel
Yahweh
Gilgal
Egypt
oath
ancestor
covenant
altar
voice
unfoldingWord translationNotes — © Distant Shores Media and the Door43 World Missions Community, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Source: git.door43.org/Door43/en_tn.