Now these are the nations which Yahweh left, to test Israel by them, even as many as had not known all the wars of Canaan;
Parallel Translations
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Now these are the nations which Yahweh left, to test Israel by them, even as many as had not known all the wars of Canaan;
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Now these are the nations which the LORD left, to prove Israel by them, even as many of Israel as had not known all the wars of Canaan;
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Now these are the nations which the LORD left, to prove Israel by them, even as many as had not known all the wars of Canaan;
Examined in Scripture Analysis
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Cross-references (14)
Passages linked to Judges 3:1 in the Treasury of Scripture Knowledge, ordered by reader-vote popularity; verse text shown in World English Bible.
- Judges 2:21-22 I also will no longer drive out any of the nations that Joshua left when he died from before them; that 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.”
- Deuteronomy 7:22 Yahweh your God will cast out those nations before you little by little. You may not consume them at once, lest the animals of the field increase on you.
- Proverbs 17:3 The refining pot is for silver, and the furnace for gold, but Yahweh tests the hearts.
- Deuteronomy 8:16 who fed you in the wilderness with manna, which your fathers didn’t know, that he might humble you, and that he might prove you, to do you good at your latter end;
- 1 Peter 4:12 Beloved, don’t be astonished at the fiery trial which has come upon you to test you, as though a strange thing happened to you.
- Deuteronomy 8:2 You shall remember all the way which Yahweh your God has led you these forty years in the wilderness, that he might humble you, to test you, to know what was in your heart, whether you would keep his commandments or not.
- Judges 2:10 After 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.
- Job 23:10 But he knows the way that I take. When he has tried me, I will come out like gold.
- Jeremiah 6:27 “I have made you a tester of metals and a fortress among my people, that you may know and try their way.
- John 2:24 But Jesus didn’t entrust himself to them, because he knew everyone,
- Jeremiah 17:9-10 The heart is deceitful above all things and it is exceedingly corrupt. Who can know it? “I, Yahweh, search the mind. I try the heart, even to give every man according to his ways, according to the fruit of his doings.”
- Zechariah 13:9 I will bring the third part into the fire, and will refine them as silver is refined, and will test them like gold is tested. They will call on my name, and I will hear them. I will say, ‘It is my people;’ and they will say, ‘Yahweh is my God.’ ”
- 1 Peter 1:7 that the proof of your faith, which is more precious than gold that perishes even though it is tested by fire, may be found to result in praise, glory, and honor at the revelation of Jesus Christ—
- Revelation 2:23 I will kill her children with Death, and all the assemblies will know that I am he who searches the minds and hearts. I will give to each one of you according to your deeds.
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Geneva Bible translators 1599 · Public Domain Which were achieved by the hand of God, and…
Which were achieved by the hand of God, and not by the power of man.
Geneva Bible (1599) marginal notes — public domain.
John Trapp 1656 · Public Domain Jdg 3:1 Now these [are] the nations which the…
Jdg 3:1 Now these [are] the nations which the LORD left, to prove Israel by them, [even] as many [of Israel] as had not known all the wars of Canaan;
Ver. 1. Which the Lord left, to prove.] God proveth us by afflictions, Non ut ipse sciat, sed ut scire nos faciat, not to better his own knowledge, but ours, saith Augustine. See Jdg 2:22.
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 i.e. Such who had no experience of those wars,…
i.e. Such who had no experience of those wars, nor of God’s extraordinary power and providence manifested in them.
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 We are here told what remained of the old…
We are here told what remained of the old inhabitants of Canaan. 1. There were some of them that kept together in united bodies, unbroken (Jdg 3:3): The five lords of the Philistines, namely, Ashdod, Gaza, Askelon, Gath, and Ekron, Sa1 6:17. Three of these cities had been in part reduced (Jdg 1:18), but it seems the Philistines (probably with the help of the other two, which strengthened their confederacy with each other thenceforward) recovered the possession of them. These gave the greatest disturbance to Israel of any of the natives, especially in the latter times of the judges, and they were never quite reduced until David's time. There was a particular nation called Canaanites, that kept their ground with the Sidonians, upon the coast of the great sea. And in the north the Hivites held much of Mount Lebanon, it being a remote corner, in which perhaps they were supported by some of the neighbouring states. But, besides these, 2. There were every where in all parts of the country some scatterings of the nations (Jdg 3:5), Hittites, Amorites, etc., which, by Israel's foolish connivance and indulgence, were so many, so easy, and so insolent, that the children of Israel are said to dwell among them, as if the right had still remained in the Canaanites, and the Israelites had been taken in by their permission and only as tenants at will.
Now concerning these remnants of the natives observe,
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I. How wisely God permitted them to remain. It is mentioned in the close of the foregoing chapter as an act of God's justice, that he let them remain for Israel's correction. But here another construction is put upon it, and it appears to have been an act of God's wisdom, that he let them remain for Israel's real advantage, that those who had not known the wars of Canaan might learn war, Jdg 3:1, Jdg 3:2. It was the will of God that the people of Israel should be inured to war, 1. Because their country was exceedingly rich and fruitful, and abounded with dainties of all sorts, which, if they were not sometimes made to know hardship, would be in danger of sinking them into the utmost degree of luxury and effeminacy. They must sometimes wade in blood, and not always in milk and honey, lest even their men of war, by the long disuse of arms, should become as soft and as nice as the tender and delicate woman, that would not set so much as the sole of her foot to the ground for tenderness and delicacy, a temper as destructive to every thing that is good as it is to every thing that is great, and therefore to be carefully watched against by all God's Israel. 2. Because their country lay very much in the midst of enemies, by whom they must expect to be insulted; for God's heritage was a speckled bird; the birds round about were against her, Jer 12:9. It was therefore necessary they should be well disciplined, that they might defend their coasts when invaded, and might hereafter enlarge their coast as God had promised them. The art of war is best learnt by experience, which not only acquaints men with martial discipline, but (which is no less necessary) inspires them with a martial disposition. It was for the interest of Israel to breed soldiers, as it is the interest of an island to breed sea-men, and therefore God left Canaanites among them, that, by the less difficulties and hardships they met with in encountering them, they might be prepared for greater, and, by running with the footmen, might learn to contend with horses, Jer 12:5. Israel was a figure of the church militant, that must fight its way to a triumphant state. The soldiers of Christ must endure hardness, Ti2 2:3. Corruption is therefore left remaining in the hearts even of good Christians, that they may learn war, may keep on the whole armour of God, and stand continually upon their guard. The learned bishop Patrick offers another sense of Jdg 3:2 : That they might know to teach them war, that is, they shall know what it is to be left to themselves. Their fathers fought by a divine power. God taught their hands to war and their fingers to fight; but now that they have forfeited his favour let them learn what it is to fight like other men.
II. How wickedly Israel mingled themselves with those that did remain. One thing God intended in leaving them among them was to prove Israel (Jdg 3:4), that those who were faithful to the God of Israel might have the honour of resisting the Canaanites' allurements to idolatry, and that those who were false and insincere might be discovered, and might fall under the shame of yielding to those allurements. Thus in the Christian churches there must needs be heresies, that those who are perfect may be made manifest, Co1 11:19. Israel, upon trial, proved bad. 1. They joined in marriage with the Canaanites (Jdg 3:6), though they could not advance either their honour or their estate by marrying with them. They would mar their blood instead of mending it, and sink their estates instead of raising them, by such marriages. 2. Thus they were brought to join in worship with them; they served their gods (Jdg 3:6), Baalim and the groves (Jdg 3:7), that is, the images that were worshipped in groves of thick trees, which were a sort of natural temples. In such unequal matches there is more reason to fear that the bad will corrupt the good than to hope that the good will reform the bad, as there is in laying two pears together, the one rotten and the other sound. When they inclined to worship other gods they forgot the Lord their God. In complaisance to their new relations, they talked of nothing by Baalim and the groves, so that by degrees they lost the remembrance of the true God, and forgot there was such a Being, and what obligations they lay under to him. In nothing is the corrupt memory of man more treacherous than in this, that it is apt to forget God; because out of sight, he is out of mind; and here begins all the wickedness that is in the world: they have perverted their way, for they have forgotten the Lord their God.
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 Now these are the nations which the Lord left…
Now these are the nations which the Lord left to prove Israel by them,.... Which are later mentioned, Jdg 3:3,
even as many of Israel as had not known all the wars of Canaan; those that Joshua, and the people of Israel under him, had with the Canaanites, when they first entered the land and subdued it; being then not born, or so young as not to have knowledge of them, at least not able to bear arms at that time.
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 A general account of Israel's enemies, ver. 1-7. A…
A general account of Israel's enemies, ver. 1-7. A particular account of Othniel, ver. 8-11, Of Ehud, ver. 12-30. and of Shamgar, ver. 31.
Had not known - That is, such as had no experience of those wars, nor of God's extraordinary power and providence manifested in them.
John Wesley, Explanatory Notes Upon the Whole Bible (1754–1765) — public domain. Text via the GEBible commentary corpus.
Adam Clarke 1810 · Public Domain An account of the nations that we left to…
CHAPTER III
An account of the nations that we left to prove Israel, 1-4.
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How the people provoked the Lord, 5-7.
They are delivered into the power of the king of Mesopotamia,
by whom they are enslaved eight years, 8.
Othniel is raised up as their deliverer; he discomfits the king
of Mesopotamia, delivers Israel, and the land enjoys peace for
forty years, 9-11.
They again rebel, and are delivered into the hand of the king
of Moab, by whom they are enslaved eighteen years, 12-14.
They are delivered by Ehud, who kills Eglon, king of Moab, and
slays ten thousand Moabites, and the land rests fourscore
years, 15-40.
NOTES ON CHAP. III
Verse 1. Now these are the nations] The nations left to prove the Israelites were the five lordships or satrapies of the Philistines, viz., Gath, Askelon, Ashdod, Ekron, and Gaza; the Sidonians, the Hivites of Lebanon, Baal-hermon, c. with the remains of the Canaanites, viz., the Hittites, Amorites, Perizzites, and Jebusites.
Those who were left to be proved were those Israelites that had not seen all the wars of Canaan.
Adam Clarke's Commentary on the Bible (1810–1826) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
Joseph Benson 1811 · Public Domain Jdg 3:1. Now these are the nations, &c. —…
Jdg 3:1. Now these are the nations, &c. — The sacred historian having declared, in general, that God did not judge it proper to drive out all the Canaanites, because he intended to try the fidelity and zeal of his people in his service, proceeds now to enumerate the particular nations which remained unsubdued. As many as had not known all the wars of Canaan — That is, such as were born since the conclusion of the wars, or were but infants during their continuance, and therefore had no experience of them, nor of God’s extraordinary power and providence manifested therein.
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 Even as many of Israel ... - These words…
Even as many of Israel ... - These words show that the writer has especially in view the generation which came to man’s estate immediately after the close of the wars with the Canaanites Jos 23:1. Compare Jdg 2:10.
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 Instruct. The original is translated try, ver. 4, and…
Instruct. The original is translated try, ver. 4, and chap. ii. 22. --- And all. Hebrew, "as many of Israel as had not," &c. (Haydock) --- Those who had served under Josue, were so strongly impressed with a sense of the divine power and severity, that they never forgot them: but there was a danger lest their children should grow careless, if they were suffered to enjoy a constant state of prosperity. Virtue or power is made perfect in infirmity, 2 Corinthians xii. 9. (Calmet) --- He that hath been experienced in many things, multiplieth prudence, Ecclesiasticus xxxiv. 10.
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 Enumeration of the heathen nations left to prove Israel
Enumeration of the heathen nations left to prove Israel
Jdg_3:1-4
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1Now these are the nations which the Lord [Jehovah] left [at rest], to prove Israel by them, (even as many of Israel as had not known [by experience] all the wars of Canaan; 2Only that the generations of the children [sons] of Israel might know to teach them 3war, at the least such as before knew nothing thereof;)1 Namely, five lords [principalities] of the Philistines, and all the Canaanites, and the Sidonians, and the Hivites that dwelt [dwell] in mount Lebanon, from mount Baal-hermon unto the entering in of 4[lit. unto the coming i.e. the road to] Hamath. And they were to prove Israel by them, to know whether they would hearken unto the commandments of the Lord [Jehovah], which he commanded their fathers by the hand of Moses.
TEXTUAL AND GRAMMATICAL
[1 Jdg_3:2—Dr. Cassel renders this verse freely: “Only that to give experience to the generations of the sons of Israel, they might teach them war which they did not formerly learn to know.” He supplies a second לִמַעַן before ללַמְּדָם (see the exposition below), and in a note (which we transfer from the foot of the page), remarks: “Jdg_3:2 contains two subordinate clauses dependent on the subject of the principal sentence in Jdg_3:1, which is ‘Jehovah.’ In the first of these clauses (each of which is introduced by לְמַעַן), the subject is ‘Israel’ (fully, דֹּרוֹת בִּנֵי־ישׂ׳); in the second, ‘the nations.’ The first expresses the result of the second; that which Israel experiences is, that the nations teach it war.” Keil (who follows Bertheau) explains as follows: “only (רַק, with no other view than) to know the subsequent generations (דֹּרוֹת, the generations after Joshua and his contemporaries) of the sons of Israel, that He (Jehovah) might teach them war, only those who had not learned to know them (the wars of Canaan).” But, 1, if דֹּרוֹת were in the accus., the author could hardly have failed to remove all ambiguity by prefixing אֶת־ to it. 2. An infin. of design with לְ, following one with לְמַעַן, without ו to indicate coördination, can only be subordinate to the preceding. Thus in the English sentence: “We eat in order to live to work,” “to work,” would be at once interpreted as subordinate to “to live.” A second לְמַעַן might indicate coördination even without the assistance of ו, cf. in English: “We eat in order to live, in order to work;” where we feel at once that “to live” and “to work” are coördinate so far as their relation to the principal verb is concerned. Hence, Dr. Cassel inserts a second לְמַעַן; but this is an expedient too much like cutting the Gordian knot to be satisfactory. Bachmann, who in the main agrees with our author, avoids this by treating לְלַמְּדָם as a gerundive adverbial phrase. As for דַּעַת it is not indeed impossible that, remembering what he said in Jdg_2:10 (לֹא יָדְעוּ, etc.), and just now substantially repeated in Jdg_3:1 b, the writer of Judges uses it here absolutely, to indicate briefly the opposite of the condition there described, in which case Dr. Cassel’s rendering would be sufficiently justified. But since בְּנֵי ישׂ׳ דֹּרוֹת (Jdg_3:2 a) clearly represents the אֵת כָּל־אְשֶׁר לֹא of Jdg_3:1 b, it seems obvious that the דַּעַת of Jdg_3:2 in like manner resumes the יָדְעוּ אֵת כָּל־מִלְחֲמוֹת כְּנָעַן of Jdg_3:1. We may suppose, therefore, that the pronoun “them” is here, as frequently, omitted after דַּעַת, and translate, freely, thus: “And these are the nations which Jehovah left to prove Israel by them—all that Israel which did not know all the wars of Canaan, in order that the after generations of Israel (they also) might know (understand and appreciate) them (i.e. those wars), in that he (i.e. Jehovah, or they, the nations) taught them war, (not war in general, however, but) only the wars which (or, such wars as) they did not formerly know.” The first רַק, as Bachmann remarks, limits the design of Jehovah, the second the thing to be taught. As to the last clause of Jdg_3:2, if the accents be disregarded, the only difficulty in the way of the rendering here given is the plural suffix ם; but this probably arises from the fact that the writer’s mind at once recurs to the “wars of Canaan.” The לְפָנִים, of old, is used from the point of time occupied by the “after generations,” as was natural to a writer who lived so late as the period of kings, and not from that in which the הִנִיחַ of Jdg_3:1, and its design, took place. The masculine ם to represent a fem. plur. is not very unfrequent, cf. 2Sa_20:3; 2Ki_18:13. Dr. Bachmann connects the last clause with דּעַת, respects the accents (which join לְפָנִים with אֲשֶׁר, not with לאֹ יְדָעוּם), and renders: “that Israel might learn to know …. war, namely, only those (wars) which were formerly, they did not know them = only the former wars which they did not know.” The sense is not materially affected by this change.—Tr.]
EXEGETICAL AND DOCTRINAL
Jdg_3:1. All who had not experienced the wars of Canaan. These are they of whom it was said, Jdg_2:10, that they “knew not the works of the Lord.” This younger generation, after the death of Joshua and the elders, enjoyed the fruits of conquest, but did not estimate aright the greatness of the dangers endured by the fathers, and therefore did not sufficiently value the help of God. The horrors of war, to be known, must be experienced. As if the conquest of Canaan had been of easy achievement! It was no light thing to triumph over the warlike nations. Was not the tribe of Judah, although victorious, obliged nevertheless to abandon the valley to the iron chariots? But of that the rising generation no longer wished to know anything. They did not know what “a war with Canaan signified.”
Jdg_3:2. Only that to give experience to the generations of the sons of Israel they might teach them war, with which they did not before become acquainted. The construction of the sentence is difficult, and consequently has been frequently misunderstood (among others, by Bertheau). The book which the narrator is about to write, is a Book of Wars; and it is therefore incumbent upon him to state the moral causes in which these originated. God proves Israel for its own good. With this in view, “He left the nations in peace, to prove Israel by them.” How prove Israel? By depriving it of rest through them. They compel Israel to engage in conflict. In defeat the people learn to know the violence of Canaanitish oppression, and, when God sends them heroes, the preciousness of the boon of restored freedom. Only for this; the emphasis of the verse falls on only (רַק), which is introduced twice. Between יִשְׂרָאֵל and לְלַמְּדָם a לְמַעַן2 is to be supplied. The Hebrew usus loquendi places both clauses (לְמַעַן דַּעַת and לְמַעַן לְלַמְּדָם), each beginning with לְמַעַן alongside of each other without any connective, whereby one sets forth the ground of the other. God leaves the nations in peace, “in order that they might teach the Israelites what war with Canaan signified,—in order that those generations might know it who had not yet experienced it.” It is not for technical instruction in military science that He leaves the heathen nations in the land, but that Israel may know what it is to wage war, that without God it can do nothing against Canaan, and that, having in the deeds of contemporary heroes a present counterpart of the experience of their fathers, who beheld the mighty works which God wrought for Israel through Moses and Joshua, it may learn humility and submission to the law. This reason why God did not cause the Canaanites to be driven out, does not, however, contradict that given in Jdg_2:22. Israel can apostatize from God, only when it has forgotten Him. The consequence is servitude. In this distress, God sends them Judges. These triumph, in glorious wars, over victorious Canaan. Grateful Israel, being now able to conceive, in their living reality, the wonders by which God formerly raised it to the dignity of nationality, has learned to know the hand of its God. Cf. Jdg_3:4.
Jdg_3:3. Five principalities of the Philistines. Jos_13:2, seq., enumerates the nations which were to remain, with still more distinctness. There, however, the reason, given in our passage, why God let them remain, is not stated. The principalities of the Philistines must be treated of elsewhere. The Canaanites and the Zidonians are the inhabitants of the Phœnician coast. The importance of Zidon has already been pointed out in Jdg_1:31. The districts not under Zidonian supremacy, are referred to by the general term “Canaanite.” The Hivite, here mentioned as an inhabitant of Mount Lebanon, does not occur under that name in Jos_13:5. He is there spoken of under the terms, “land of the Giblites (Byblus, etc.) and all Lebanon;” here, a more general designation is employed. The name חִוִּי indicates and explains this in a manner highly interesting. The LXX. render חִוִּי by Εὐαῖος, as for חַוָּה, the mother of all the living, they give Εὔα. The word חָוָה, חָיָה, to live, whence הַוָּה, includes the idea of “roundness, circularity of form,” So the ὠόν, ovum, egg, is round, and at the same time the source of life. Consequently, חַיָּה and חַיָּה came to signify battle-array or encampment (cf. 2Sa_23:11) and village (Num_32:41), from the circular form in which camps and villages were disposed. The people called Hivite is the people that resides in round villages. Down to the present day—marvelous tenacity of national custom!—the villages in Syria are so built that the conically-shaped houses form a circular street, inclosing an open space in the centre for the herds and flocks. Modern travellers have found this style of building still in use from the Orontes to the Euphrates (Ritter, xvii. 1698). It distinguished the Hivite from the other nations. And it is, in fact, found only beyond the boundary here indicated; on northern Lebanon, above Mount Hermon. This therefore also confirms the remarks made above (at Jdg_1:33), on the parallel passage, Jos_13:5, where we find the definition “from Baal-gad under Mount Hermon,” whereas here we read of a “mount Baal Hermon.” Baal Hermon, according to its signification, corresponds exactly with the present name Jebel esh-Sheikh, since on the one hand Sheikh may stand for Baal, while, on the other, Hermon derived its name from its peculiar form. חֶרְמוֹן is a dialectic equivalent of the Hebrew אַרְמוֹן. אֲרָם is the height, the highlands: אַרְמוֹן the prominent point, the commanding fortress. Hermon, as the southern foot of Anti-Libanus, is its loftiest peak. It towers grandly, like a giant (cf. Ritter, xvii. 151, 211), above all its surroundings,—like a silver-roofed fortress of God. This is not the only instance in which Hermon is apparently the name of a mountain. It is probable indeed that to the Greeks the Hermæan Promontory (̔Ερμαία ἄκρα, Polyb. I. xxxvi. 11; cf. Mannert, Geogr., x. ii. 512) suggested only some reference to Hermes. But the greater the difficulty of seeing why Hermes should give names to mountain peaks, the more readily do we recognize a חֶרְמוֹן, not only in this but also in the promontory of Lemnos, the Hermæan Rock (̔Ερμαῖον λέπας) mentioned by Greek poets (Æschyl. Agam., 283). It accords with this that Ptolemy specifies a Hermæan Promontory in Crete also. It is evident how appropriately Hermon, in its signification of Armon, “a fortress-like, towering eminence,” is used to denote a promontory. The Greek ἄκρα also has the twofold signification of fortress and promontory; and Mount Hermon itself may to a certain extent be considered to be both one and the other.
It is evident that when in Jos_13:5 the boundary of the hostile nations is defined as running from “Baal-gad under Mount Hermon,” and here as extending “from Baal Hermon” onward, the same sacred locality is meant in both passages, and that Baal Hermon is identified with Baal-gad. This is further confirmed by the following: The Talmud (Chulin, 40 a) speaks of the sinful worship which is rendered לְנָדָא דְחַר, the Goda of the mountain, i.e. as Raschi explains, the angel like unto Michael, who is placed over the mountains of the world. Moses ha-Cohen advances an equally ancient conception, current also among the Arabians, when he states (ap. Ibn Ezra, on Isa_65:11), that Baal-gad is the star Zedek, i.e. Zeus. For Zeus is in fact the Hellenic deity of all mountain-peaks,3 the Great Baal Hermon. Hence it was customary among the Hellenes also to prepare sacrificial tables in the service of Zeus; and with Isa_65:11 we may profitably compare Paus. ix. 40, where we learn that in Chæronea, where the sceptre of Zeus was venerated as a palladium, “a table with meat and pastry was daily” prepared. At the birth of a son to her maid, Leah says (Gen_30:11): בָּא נָּד; which the Chaldee translators already render by נָּדָא טָבָא (Jerus. Targ.) and מַזָּלָא טָבָא (Jonath.). מַזָּלָה (Cf. 2Ki_23:5), means, star; מַזּל טוֹב is the good star that appears,—fortune, as the Septuaginta render τύχη. Two planets, Jupiter and Venus, were ἀγαθουργοί (Plutarch, De Is. et Os., cap. xlviii.), bearers of what is good,—fortune-bringers. Hence, Gad, as “Fortune,” could be connected both with Astarte (cf. Movers, Phœn., i. 636), and with Baal (Jupiter). נָּד is manifestly the same as the Persian חדא (cf. נָּדַד and חָדַד, נָּבַל and חָבַל, etc.), Ghoda, which signifies god and lord, quite in the sense of בַּעַל (cf. Vullers, Lex. Pers. Lat., i. 660). If there be any connection between this term and the Zendic Khadhâta, it is only that the latter was used to designate the constellations. In heathen views of life, fortune and good coincide. To enjoy the good things of life is to be fortunate. Αγαθὴ τύχη is the Hellenic for happiness. The Syriac and Chaldee versions almost uniformly render the terms אֵשְׁרֵי and μακάριος, blessed, which occur in the Old and New Testaments, by טוֹב, good (cf. my work Irene, Erf. 1855, p. 9). In נָּד the ideas God and Fortune coëxist as yet unresolved; subsequently, especially in the Christian age, they were separated in the Germanic dialects as God and Good. For there is no doubt that in Gad (God), the good (fortunate) god and constellation, we find the oldest form, and for that reason a serviceable explanation, of the name God, which, like Elohim, disengaging itself from heathen conceptions, became the sacred name of the Absolute Spirit. At the same time it affords us the philological advantage of perceiving, what has often been contested (cf. Dieffenbach, Goth. Lex. ii. 416; Grimm. Myth. pp. 12, 1199, etc.), that God and Good actually belong together. Baal-gad was the God of Fortune, which was held to be the highest good.4—The meaning of לְבוֹא חֲמָת has been indicated above (p. 46).
HOMILETICAL AND PRACTICAL
[Compare the Homiletical Hints of the preceding section.—Keil: In the wars of Canaan under Joshua, Israel had learned and experienced that the power which subdued its enemies consisted not in the multitude and valor of its warriors but in the might of its God, the putting forth of which however depended upon Israel’s continued faithfulness towards its Possessor. …. Now, in order to impress them with this truth, on which the existence and prosperity of Israel, and the realization of the purpose for which they had been divinely called, depended; in other words, in order to show them by the practical lessons of experience that the People of Jehovah can fight and conquer only in the strength of their God, the Lord had suffered the Canaanites to be left in the land. Necessity teaches prayer. The distress into which Israel fell by means of the remaining Canaanites, was a divine discipline, by which the Lord would bring the faithless back to Himself, admonish them to follow his commands, and prepare them for the fulfillment of his covenant-engagements. Hence, the learning of war, i.e. the learning how the People of the Lord should fight against the enemies of God and his kingdom, was a means ordained by God of tempting or trying Israel, whether they would hearken to the commands of their God and walk in the ways of the Lord. When Israel learned so to war, it learned also to keep the divine commands. Both were necessary to the People of God. For as the realization by the people of the blessings promised in the covenant depended on their giving heed to the voice of the Lord, so also the conflict appointed for them was necessary, as well for their personal purification, as for the continued existence and growth of the kingdom of God on earth.—Bertheau: The historian cannot sufficiently insist on the fact that the remaining of some of the former inhabitants of the land, after the wars of Joshua, is not a punishment but only a trial; a trial designed to afford occasion of showing to the Israelites who lived after Joshua benefits similar to those bestowed on his contemporaries. And it is his firm conviction that these benefits, consisting chiefly of efficient aid and wonderful deliverances in wars against the remaining inhabitants, would assuredly have accrued to the people, if they had followed the commands of Jehovah, especially that on which such stress is laid in the Pentateuch, to make no league with the heathen, but to make war on them as long as a man of them remains.
Henry: It was the will of God that Israel should be inured to war,—1. Because their country was exceeding rich and fruitful, and abounded with dainties of all sorts, which if they were not sometimes made to know hardship, would be in danger of sinking them into the utmost degree of luxury and effeminacy,—a state as destructive to ‛everything good as it is to everything great, and therefore to be carefully watched against by all God’s Israel. 2. Because their country lay very much in the midst of enemies, by whom they must expect to be insulted; for God’s heritage was as a speckled bird; the birds round about were against her. …. Israel was a figure of the church militant, that must fight its way to a triumphant state. The soldiers of Christ must endure hardness. Corruption is therefore left remaining in the hearts even of good Christians, that they may learn war, keep on the whole armor of God, and stand continually on their guard.
Wordsworth: “To teach them war.” So unbelief awakens faith, and teaches it war; it excites it to contend earnestly for the truth. The dissemination of false doctrines has led to clearer assertions of the truth. Heresies have produced the creeds. “There must be heresies,” says the Apostle, “that they who are approved among you may be made manifest” (1Co_11:19).—Tr.]
Footnotes:
[1][Jdg_3:2—Dr. Cassel renders this verse freely: “Only that to give experience to the generations of the sons of Israel, they might teach them war which they did not formerly learn to know.” He supplies a second לִמַעַן before ללַמְּדָם (see the exposition below), and in a note (which we transfer from the foot of the page), remarks: “Jdg_3:2 contains two subordinate clauses dependent on the subject of the principal sentence in Jdg_3:1, which is ‘Jehovah.’ In the first of these clauses (each of which is introduced by לְמַעַן), the subject is ‘Israel’ (fully, דֹּרוֹת בִּנֵי־ישׂ׳); in the second, ‘the nations.’ The first expresses the result of the second; that which Israel experiences is, that the nations teach it war.” Keil (who follows Bertheau) explains as follows: “only (רַק, with no other view than) to know the subsequent generations (דֹּרוֹת, the generations after Joshua and his contemporaries) of the sons of Israel, that He (Jehovah) might teach them war, only those who had not learned to know them (the wars of Canaan).” But, 1, if דֹּרוֹת were in the accus., the author could hardly have failed to remove all ambiguity by prefixing אֶת־ to it. 2. An infin. of design with לְ, following one with לְמַעַן, without ו to indicate coördination, can only be subordinate to the preceding. Thus in the English sentence: “We eat in order to live to work,” “to work,” would be at once interpreted as subordinate to “to live.” A second לְמַעַן might indicate coördination even without the assistance of ו, cf. in English: “We eat in order to live, in order to work;” where we feel at once that “to live” and “to work” are coördinate so far as their relation to the principal verb is concerned. Hence, Dr. Cassel inserts a second לְמַעַן; but this is an expedient too much like cutting the Gordian knot to be satisfactory. Bachmann, who in the main agrees with our author, avoids this by treating לְלַמְּדָם as a gerundive adverbial phrase. As for דַּעַת it is not indeed impossible that, remembering what he said in Jdg_2:10 (לֹא יָדְעוּ, etc.), and just now substantially repeated in Jdg_3:1 b, the writer of Judges uses it here absolutely, to indicate briefly the opposite of the condition there described, in which case Dr. Cassel’s rendering would be sufficiently justified. But since בְּנֵי ישׂ׳ דֹּרוֹת (Jdg_3:2 a) clearly represents the אֵת כָּל־אְשֶׁר לֹא of Jdg_3:1 b, it seems obvious that the דַּעַת of Jdg_3:2 in like manner resumes the יָדְעוּ אֵת כָּל־מִלְחֲמוֹת כְּנָעַן of Jdg_3:1. We may suppose, therefore, that the pronoun “them” is here, as frequently, omitted after דַּעַת, and translate, freely, thus: “And these are the nations which Jehovah left to prove Israel by them—all that Israel which did not know all the wars of Canaan, in order that the after generations of Israel (they also) might know (understand and appreciate) them (i.e. those wars), in that he (i.e. Jehovah, or they, the nations) taught them war, (not war in general, however, but) only the wars which (or, such wars as) they did not formerly know.” The first רַק, as Bachmann remarks, limits the design of Jehovah, the second the thing to be taught. As to the last clause of Jdg_3:2, if the accents be disregarded, the only difficulty in the way of the rendering here given is the plural suffix ם; but this probably arises from the fact that the writer’s mind at once recurs to the “wars of Canaan.” The לְפָנִים, of old, is used from the point of time occupied by the “after generations,” as was natural to a writer who lived so late as the period of kings, and not from that in which the הִנִיחַ of Jdg_3:1, and its design, took place. The masculine ם to represent a fem. plur. is not very unfrequent, cf. 2Sa_20:3; 2Ki_18:13. Dr. Bachmann connects the last clause with דּעַת, respects the accents (which join לְפָנִים with אֲשֶׁר, not with לאֹ יְדָעוּם), and renders: “that Israel might learn to know …. war, namely, only those (wars) which were formerly, they did not know them = only the former wars which they did not know.” The sense is not materially affected by this change.—Tr.]
[2]Cf. Jos_4:24. [Compare the note under “Textual and Grammatical.”—Tr.]
[3]Cf. Preller, Gr. Mythol., i. 77. He is such as ἀκραῖος, ἐπάκριος, etc. That ἀπεσάντιος also has no other meaning, Preller shows elsewhere. Mountain temples, says Welcker (Mythologie, i. 170), were erected to other gods only exceptionally. As for the temple of Hermes on Mount Cellene (Paus. viii. 17, 1), it could perhaps be made probable that here also the name of the mountain suggested the worship of Hermes.
[4]Movers (Phœn. ii. 2, 515) thinks that he can explain the name of the Numidian seaport Cirta from רֹאשׁ גָּד, which is doubtful. On the other hand, when the Etymolog Magnum, under Γάδειρα, expresses the opinion that Gades in Spain was so named because “γάδον παῤ αν̓τοῖςτὸ ἐκ μικρῶν ᾠκοδομημένον,” there is evidently no reference to קָטֹן, but to Gad in the sense of Fortune. For the stress is laid not on the small beginnings, but on the good for tune, which from a small city made it great. This on Movers, ii. 2, 621, not. 89 a.
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.
Daniel D. Whedon 1874 · Public Domain LIST OF THE NATIONS LEFT, Jdg_3:1-6.
LIST OF THE NATIONS LEFT, Jdg_3:1-6.
1. Which the Lord left — In Hebrew usage, God is often said to do what men alone are responsible for; as in the case of Pharaoh hardening his heart, which God is said to have done, though the hardening really resulted from his own perversity. God works through appointed agencies; but when his agencies fail to co-operate in the attainment of any end, he is said to fail. In this sense he left the Canaanites. Another peculiarity of the Hebrew idiom is the representation of results as if they were purposes. The grand purpose of Jehovah was the complete extermination of these pagan tribes, that there might be free scope for the development of the Hebrew commonwealth. Since this purpose was defeated by the defection of his human allies, Jehovah controls the consequences of their disobedience so that as little evil and as much good as possible shall result. In this case the intended good results were: 1st. The trial and proof of Israel. 2d. The beasts of prey are kept from overrunning the land. Deu_7:22.
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3d. The cultivation of the art of war by habituating the people to the constant use of arms for their protection against foes near at hand, so that they might be prepared to defend themselves against a foreign foe.
Even as many… as had not known all the wars of Canaan — The generation which arose after the death of Joshua had little or no experience in the wars for the conquest of Canaan. “This younger generation,” says Cassel, “enjoyed the fruits of the conquest, but did not estimate aright the greatness of the dangers endured by the fathers, and therefore did not sufficiently value the help of God. It was no light thing to triumph over the warlike nations. They did not know what a war with Canaan signified.”
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 Jdg_3:1-3 explain why Jehovah left these nations (Jdg_2:23); it…
Jdg_3:1-3 explain why Jehovah left these nations (Jdg_2:23); it was merely to teach succeeding generations of Israelites the practice of war (Jdg_3:2 in the main). The idea is obviously an ancient one, and belongs to the same historical stand-point as ch. 1. This nucleus has been adapted (Jdg_3:1) and commented on (Jdg_3:2 in part, Jdg_3:3) by later hands, which it is difficult to specify more exactly. The editorial process has left the text of Jdg_3:2 confused and overloaded.
these are the nations] i.e. those mentioned in Jdg_3:3. Instead of the Lord left the LXX. cod. A has Joshua left, as in Jdg_2:21, but the verb here is different.
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to prove Israel] goes back to the thought of Jdg_2:22. The proof was necessary for the generations after Joshua who ‘had not known’ all the great work of Jehovah, Jdg_2:7 note.
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 (1) To prove Israel.—The verb here used is the…
(1) To prove Israel.—The verb here used is the same as in Jdg_2:22 and Jdg_3:4, but, as R. Tanchum observes, it is used in a slightly different sense, meaning “to train them.” Symmachus renders it askçsai.
As many of Israel as had not known all the wars of Canaan.—This expression clearly implies the generation after that of Joshua. “The wars of Canaan” are equivalent to “the wars of the Lord,” and refer to the struggles of the actual conquest.
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 Now these are the nations, etc. We are now…
Now these are the nations, etc. We are now told in detail what was stated in general in Jud_1:2:22, 23, after the common method of Hebrew narrative. To prove Israel. This word to prove is used here in a somewhat different sense from that which it bears in ver. 4 and in Jud_1:2:22. In those passages it is used of their moral probation, of proving or testing their faith and obedience; but here it is rather in the sense of "to exercise" or "to accustom them," to train them to war. A considerable period of rest had followed Joshua"s conquest, during which the younger Israelites had no experience of war; but if they were to keep their hold of Canaan, it was needful that the warlike spirit should be kept up in their breasts.
HOMILETICS Vers. 1-6. Ungodly marriages.
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The distinctive lesson of this section seems to be the fatal influence of an ungodly marriage. And this lesson is one of such daily importance to Christians in every station in life, that we shall do well to concentrate our attention upon it. On entering upon the history of that troublous and calamitous time for the tribes of Israel which intervened between the triumphant governments of Moses and Joshua and the glorious reigns of David and Solomon, the time of the Judges, we find it initiated By the intermarriage of the Israelites with the idolatrous Canaanites. No sooner was that shameful alliance contracted than the national apostasy followed instantly. "They forgat the Lord their God, and served Baalim and Ashtaroth." And the connection between this religious apostasy and the first servitude by which they lost their national independence was no less close. "The children of Israel served Chushan-rishathalm." If then we read Scripture with a view to our own admonition, our attention must be arrested by this striking example of the danger of ungodly unions. And the example does not stand alone. The marriage of Esau with the daughters of Heth, in connection with the loss of his birthright and his blessing; the degradation and death of Samson in spite of his splendid gifts and powers; the tarnished fame of Solomon"s old age, and the break-up of his kingdom after his death; the dynastic ruin and destruction of Ahab and all his house from his marriage with Jezebel, these and many other examples in Holy Scripture convey a solemn warning against the peril of ungodly marriages. And it must be so in the nature of things. The marriage union is so close and intimate, it gives the opportunity for such constant influence, it makes continual resistance to that influence so irksome and tedious, it gives such advantage to the working of influence through the affections, that no man with a due regard for his own soul"s salvation would expose himself to such peril. Moreover, the true notion of the partnership of marriage is a fellowship in heart, in thought, in affection, in interest; an identity of aim and purpose in life, each helping the other, each contributing a portion to the common aim; a joint action in all that relates to God and man; united counsels in fulfilling the various duties of the home, of the human society, of the Church of God. How could the Israelite, seeking the glory of Jehovah, wrapped up in the triumphs of his own favoured race and pure creed, and hating the detestable abominations of heathenism, so insulting to God, and so injurious to man, have such fellowship with the daughter of an Amorite or Canaanite? And how can any true servant of the Lord Jesus Christ have such fellowship with one whose heart is wholly given up to the world, and has no concern for the kingdom of heaven. "Marriage is not to betaken in hand unadvisedly, lightly, or wantonly by any Christian man or woman, but reverently, discreetly, advisedly, soberly, and in the fear of God." And it is the object of these remarks to induce young men and young women, in deciding upon marriage, to take into consideration the probable influence of their partner upon their moral and religious life, and the aid or the hindrance they are likely to have in the fulfilment of their Christian duties. The life-long loss of domestic happiness, the blighting of affections, and a heavy crop of trouble and vexation, the sure fruit of an ill-assorted union, is a heavy price to pay for the momentary gratification of a mere fancy; but the permanent loss of moral tone, and forfeiture of one"s place in the kingdom of God, is an unspeakably heavier one.
HOMILIES BY A.F. MUIR. Vers. 1-4. The proving of Israel.
The general lesson of the Book of Judges is here repeated. There is shown to have been a Divine providence prevailing through and above the defections of Israel. God uses the consequences of their neglect as a means of grace. The nations that had not been rooted out became in turn their tempters and their tyrants; and thus they outlive their minority, and are prepared for the great place they have to take in the history of the kingdom of God.
I IT WAS A RESULT OF PARENTAL NEGLECT. The fathers had left much of their task undone. A determined attitude on their part, and vigorous measures, would have rid the land of the nuisance. One generation may do much good or evil to its successors. We never reap all the results of our own misdoing; a great portion is left for the children of after generations. The neglect of the laws of health, of the canons of a moral life, of educational institutions, social and political progress, may entail grievous disadvantage upon those who come after us; as much that comes in this way, comes in this way alone, and cannot be produced suddenly. And so it is with the growth of theological truth, and the habits and usages of the spiritual life.
II BUT THE CHILDREN TOO WERE TO BLAME. The oracle of God at Shiloh could have been consulted still. God"s will could easily have been ascertained. Thorough and absolute trust in Jehovah, and devotion to his service, would have rid them of their enemies. They were therefore the children of their fathers in this also, viz., that they were not wholly given to God"s service and the desire after righteousness. How much of human guilt consists in mere letting alone , or in supinely submitting to evils as if they were inevitable or incurable!
III IT WAS AN INSTANCE OF EVIL DIVINELY UTILISED. A probation. To call forth the courage and faith of the new generation. To prevent them accepting the situation as a final one, or calmly submitting to and acquiescing in the wicked customs and idolatries of their neighbours. Some natures find the way of transgression harder than others. They are finer, more susceptible, have more deeply-set longings after goodness. They feel the inherent contradictions of evil more acutely; its penalties press more heavily upon them. This is not an injustice on the part of their Maker; it is a mark of his goodness and mercy. He would have them fenced in by the sanctions of righteousness; driven back into his fold. He has meant them for a better life. So it was with his elect people then. They and their heathen neighbours were upon a different footing. It was the destiny of Israel not to be let alone. A later experience in order to the comprehension of an earlier experience. One of the most valuable uses of experience to throw light backward. It reveals the true value of an inheritance, and renders precious things more precious. Otherwise the younger Israelites who entered into the conquests of the first warriors would not have known the severity of their toils, or the mighty hand of God which wrought their deliverance. There are some lessons every man must learn for himself. A true appreciation of God"s saving grace is a personal and, for the most part, an incommunicable thing. To teach them war, i.e. to inure them to it as a necessary discipline, and as the preliminary work that had to be done ere the kingdom of God could be brought in; and, as above, to show them how much spiritual privileges cost, and how difficult and yet how honourable it was to defend and secure them. Still it was
IV AN INSTANCE OF A PROVISIONAL ALLOWANCE OF COMPARATIVE IMMORALITY. The world was not ripe for the morality of Jesus. The self-contradiction of a continual state of warfare was to be their schoolmaster to bring them to Christ. The state of peace is not of itself more moral than that of war. It is "the things that make for peace," the spirit of brotherhood and Christian charity, that are the aim of the righteous mind. The world must first be righteous ere it can be peaceful. M.
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 The nations which the Lord left, to prove Israel…
Jdg_3:1-5
The nations which the Lord left, to prove Israel by them.
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The trial and chastisement of an unfaithful people
I. It was Gods own thought to put them to the proof.
1. Far otherwise were the thoughts of the nations.
(1) When Israel was strong their thoughts were of alliances.
(2) When Israel became weak their thoughts were of conquest and revenge.
2. The nations could do nothing without Gods permission.
3. This proving of character was done out of respect to His covenant.
(1) God acted by principle and not by temporary impulse.
(2) He acted according to His established manner of dealing with His peoples sins.
(3) Provision made for this through the intervention of the coming Messiah, the real Mediator of the covenant.
4. God puts His people under discipline to serve wise and holy ends.
(1) Nor real injury is ever intended.
(2) Never is the rod without some gracious instruction: Hear ye the rod, and Him who appointeth it.
5. God Himself determines the time, manner, and severity of the trial.
II. It was necessary to put Israel to the proof.
1. Their allegiance to their God must be ascertained.
(1) Gods jealousy required it.
(2) Without allegiance the people were not in a fit state to receive Divine blessings.
(3) Ways and means were easy where there was allegiance.
2. Human protestations of obedience are little to be trusted.
III. This testing of character was made in love, not in anger.
1. All Gods dealings with His covenant people are necessarily in love. This is the very spirit of His covenant: Your God--God is for you--always on your side.
2. It was love to prevent a breach of the covenant.
3. It was love to teach the heart the bitterness of sin.
4. It is love to teach self-knowledge and humility.5. It is love where a false character exists to have the discovery of it made known in good time.
IV. Obedience is with God the all-important requirement.
1. Obedience is the index which shows that the heart is right with God.
2. Obedience springs naturally from the fear and the love of God.
3. In the gospel obedience must spring from love.
4. Obedience in the gospel is the obedience of children.
5. Obedience must be shown in the face of opposition. (J. P. Millar.)
Tests and chastisement
I. the work to be done.
1. Chastisement as well as trial.
2. A special mark is put on the reason for this course of dealing (chap. 2:20-23).
II. Gods choice of instruments.
1. God designates His own agency to do His work.
2. God selects His instruments from the camp of His enemies equally with His friends.
3. A sinning people often supply the means of their own correction.
4. God can turn the most unlikely persons into fit instruments for doing His work.
III. The tendency of the covenant people to apostatise from their God.
1. It is what might have been least expected.
2. The root-cause lies in the depravity of the human heart.
3. Remissness of parental training one of the immediate causes.
IV. Each new generation requires in some degree to be taught by an experience of its own.
1. The strange incapacity of the human heart for receiving Divine lessons.
2. Personal experience is the most effective method of teaching.
(1) A more vivid impression is made.
(2) Personal interests are more deeply touched.
3. Each generation must have a character of its own, and answer for itself. (J. P. Millar.)
To teach them war.
It was Gods will, then
it was a necessity for the Israelites that they should learn war. In their case learning war meant learning that God alone could fight for them. Do not the Canaanites of unbelief, heresy, and worldliness still remain? And is not the evil of their remaining presence overruled for a twofold good--that of teaching His Church how to make war, and of proving their faithfulness toward Himself? (L. H. Wiseman, M.A.)
The Biblical Illustrator, edited by Joseph S. Exell (c. 1880s–1900s) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Expositor's Bible 1887 · Public Domain WE come now to a statement of no small…
THE ARM OF ARAM AND OF OTHNIEL
Jdg_3:1-11
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WE come now to a statement of no small importance, which may be the cause of some perplexity. It is emphatically affirmed that God fulfilled His design for Israel by leaving around it in Canaan a circle of vigorous tribes very unlike each other, but alike in this, that each presented to the Hebrews a civilisation from which something might be learned but much had to be dreaded, a seductive form of paganism which ought to have been entirely resisted, an aggressive energy fitted to rouse their national feeling. We learn that Israel was led along a course of development resembling that by which other nations have advanced to unity and strength. As the Divine plan is unfolded, it is seen that not by undivided possession of the Promised Land, not by swift and fierce clearing away of opponents, was Israel to reach its glory and become Jehovahs witness, but in the way of patient fidelity amidst temptations, by long struggle and arduous discipline. And why should this cause perplexity? If moral education did not move on the same line for all peoples in every age, then indeed mankind would be put to intellectual confusion. There was never any other way for Israel than for the rest of the world.
"These are the nations which the Lord left to prove Israel by them, to know whether they would hearken unto the commandments of the Lord." The first named are the Philistines, whose settlements on the coast plain toward Egypt were growing in power. They were a maritime race, apparently much like the Danish invaders of Saxon England, sea rovers or pirates, ready for any fray that promised spoil. In the great coalition of peoples that fell on Egypt during the reign of Ramses III, about the year 1260 B.C., Philistines were conspicuous, and after the crushing defeat of the expedition they appear in larger numbers on the coast of Canaan. Their cities were military republics skilfully organised, each with a seren or war chief, the chiefs of the hundred cities forming a council of federation. Their origin is not known; but we may suppose them to have been a branch of the Amorite family, who after a time of adventure were returning to their early haunts. It may be reckoned certain that in wealth and civilisation they presented a marked contrast to the Israelites, and their equipments of all kinds gave them great advantage in the arts of war and peace. Even in the period of the Judges there were imposing temples in the Philistine cities and the worship must have been carefully ordered. How they compared with the Hebrews in domestic life we have no means of judging, but there was certainly some barrier of race, language, or custom between the peoples which made intermarriage very rare. We can suppose that they looked upon the Hebrews from their higher worldly level as rude and slavish. Military adventurers not unwilling to sell their services for gold would be apt to despise a race half-nomad, half-rural. It was in war, not in peace, that Philistine and Hebrew met, contempt on either side gradually changing into keenest hatred as century after century the issue of battle was tried with varying success. And it must be said that it was well for the tribes of Jehovah rather to be in occasional subjection to the Philistines, and so learn to dread them, than to mix freely with those by whom the great ideas of Hebrew life were despised.
On the northward seaboard a quite different race, the Zidonians, or Phoenicians, were in one sense better neighbours to the Israelites, in another sense no better friends. While the Philistines were haughty, aristocratic, military, the Phoenicians were the great bourgeoisie of the period, clever, enterprising, eminently successful in trade. Like the other Canaanites and the ancestors of the Jews, they were probably immigrants from the lower Euphrates valley; unlike the others, they brought with them habits of commerce and skill in manufacture, for which they became famous along the Mediterranean shores and beyond the pillars of Hercules. Between Philistine and Phoenician the Hebrew was mercifully protected from the absorbing interests of commercial life and the disgrace of prosperous piracy. The conscious superiority of the coast peoples in wealth and influence and the material elements of civilisation was itself a guard to the Jews, who had their own sense of dignity, their own claim to assert. The configuration of the country helped the separateness of Israel, especially so far as Phoenicia was concerned, which lay mainly beyond the rampart of Lebanon and the gorge of the Litany; while with the fortress of Tyre on the hither side of the natural frontier there appears to have been for a long time no intercourse, probably on account of its peculiar position. But the spirit of Phoenicia was the great barrier. Along the crowded wharves of Tyre and Zidon, in warehouses and markets, factories and workshops, a hundred industries were in full play, and in their luxurious dwellings the busy prosperous traders, with their silk-clad wives, enjoyed the pleasures of the age. From all this the Hebrew, rough and unkempt, felt himself shut out, perhaps with a touch of regret, perhaps with scorn equal to that on the other side. He had to live his life apart from that busy race, apart from its vivacity and enterprise, apart from its lubricity and worldliness. The contempt of the world is ill to bear, and the Jew no doubt found it so. But it was good for him. The tribes had time to consolidate, the religion of Jehovah became established before Phoenicia thought it worthwhile to court her neighbour. Early indeed the idolatry of the one people infected the other and there were the beginnings of trade, yet on the whole for many centuries they kept apart. Not till a king throned in Jerusalem could enter into alliance with a king of Tyre, crown with crown, did there come to be that intimacy which had so much risk for the Hebrew. The humbleness and poverty of Israel during the early centuries of its history in Canaan was a providential safeguard. God would not lose His people, nor suffer it to forget its mission.
Among the inland races with whom the Israelites are said to have dwelt, the Amorites, though mentioned along with Perizzites and Hivites, had very distinct characteristics. They were a mountain people like the Scottish Highlanders, even in physiognomy much resembling them, a tall, white-skinned, blue-eyed race. Warlike we know they were, and the Egyptian representation of the siege of Dapur by Ramses II shows what is supposed to be the standard of the Amorites on the highest tower, a shield pierced by three arrows surmounted by another arrow fastened across the top of the staff. On the east of Jordan they were defeated by the Israelites and their land between Arnon and Jabbok was allotted to Reuben and Gad. In the west they seem to have held their ground in isolated fortresses or small clans, so energetic and troublesome that it is specially noted in Samuels time that a great defeat of the Philistines brought peace between Israel and the Amorites. A significant reference in the description of Ahabs idolatry -"he did very abominably in following idols according to all things as did the Amorites"-shows the religion of these people to have been Baal worship of the grossest kind; and we may well suppose that by intermixture with them especially the faith of Israel was debased. Even now, it may be said, the Amorite is still in the land; a blue-eyed, fair-complexioned type survives, representing that ancient stock.
Passing some tribes whose names imply rather geographical than ethnical distinctions, we come to the Hittites, the powerful people of whom in recent years we have learned something. At one time these Hittites were practically masters of the wide region from Ephesus in the west of Asia Minor to Carchemish on the Euphrates, and from the shores of the Black Sea to the south of Palestine. They appear to us in the archives of Thebes and the poem of the Laureate, Pentaur, as the great adversaries of Egypt in the days of Ramses I and his successors; and one of the most interesting records is of the battle fought about 1383 B.C. at Kadesh on the Orontes, between the immense armies of the two nations, the Egyptians being led by Ramses II. Amazing feats were attributed to Ramses, but he was compelled to treat on equal terms with the "great king of Kheta," and the war was followed by a marriage between the Pharaoh and the daughter of the Hittite prince. Syria too was given up to the latter as his legitimate possession. The treaty of peace drawn up on the occasion, in the name of the chief gods of Egypt and of the Hittites, included a compact of offensive and defensive alliance and careful provisions for extradition of fugitives and criminals. Throughout it there is evident a great dependence upon the company of gods of either land, who are largely invoked to punish those who break and reward those who keep its terms. "He who shall observe these commandments which the silver tablet contains, whether he be of the people of Kheta or of the people of Egypt, because he has not neglected them, the company of the gods of the land of Kheta and the company of the gods of the land of Egypt shall secure his reward and preserve life for him and his servants." From this time the Amorites of southern Palestine and the minor Canaanite peoples submitted to the Hittite dominion, and it was while this subjection lasted that the Israelites under Joshua appeared on the scene. There can be no doubt that the tremendous conflict with Egypt had exhausted the population of Canaan and wasted the country, and so prepared the way for the success of Israel. The Hittites indeed were strong enough, had they seen fit to oppose with great armies the new comers into Syria. But the centre of their power lay far to the north, perhaps in Cappadocia; and on the frontier towards Nineveh they were engaged with more formidable opponents. We may also surmise that the Hittites, whose alliance with Egypt was by Joshuas time somewhat decayed, would look upon the Hebrews, to begin with, as fugitives from the misrule of the Pharaoh who might be counted upon to take arms against their former oppressors. This would account, in part at least, for the indifference with which the Israelite settlement in Canaan was regarded; it explains why no vigorous attempt was made to drive back the tribes.
For the characteristics of the Hittites, whose appearance and dress constantly suggest a Mongolian origin, we can now consult their monuments. A vigorous people they must have been, capable of government, of extensive organisation, concerned to perfect their arts as well as to increase their power. Original contributors to civilisation they probably were not, but they had skill to use what they found and spread it widely. Their worship of Sutekh or Soutkhu, and. especially of Astarte under the name of Ma, who reappears in the Great Diana of Ephesus, must have been very elaborate. A single Cappadocian city is reported to have had at one time six thousand armed priestesses and eunuchs of that goddess. In Palestine there were not many of this distinct and energetic people when the Hebrews crossed the Jordan. A settlement seems to have remained about Hebron, but the armies had withdrawn; Kadesh on the Orontes was the nearest garrison. One peculiar institution of Hittite religion was the holy city, which afforded sanctuary to fugitives; and it is notable that some of these cities in Canaan, such as Kadesh-Naphtali and Hebron, are found among the Hebrew cities of refuge.
It was as a people at once enticed and threatened, invited to peace and constantly provoked to war, that Israel settled in the circle of Syrian nations. After the first conflicts, ending in the defeat of Adoni-bezek and the capture of Hebron and Kiriath-sepher, the Hebrews had an acknowledged place, partly won by their prowess, partly by the terror of Jehovah which accompanied their arms. To Philistines, Phoenicians and Hittites, as we have seen, their coming mattered little, and the other races had to make the best of affairs, sometimes able to hold their ground, sometimes forced to give way. The Hebrew tribes, for their part, were, on the whole, too ready to live at peace and to yield not a little for the sake of peace. Intermarriages made their position safer, and they intermarried with Amorites, Hivites, Perizzites. Interchange of goods was profitable, and they engaged in barter. The observance of frontiers and covenants helped to make things smooth, and they agreed on boundary lines of territory and terms of fraternal intercourse. The acknowledgment of their neighbours religion was the next thing, and from that they did not shrink. The new neighbours were practically superior to themselves in many ways, well informed as to the soil, the climate, the methods of tillage necessary in the land, well able to teach useful arts and simple manufactures. Little by little the debasing notions and bad customs that infest pagan society entered Hebrew homes. Comfort and prosperity came; but comfort was dearly bought with loss of pureness, and prosperity with loss of faith. The watchwords of unity were forgotten by many. But for the sore oppressions of which the Mesopotamian was the first, the tribes would have gradually lost all coherence and vigour and become like those poor tatters of races that dragged out an inglorious existence between Jordan and the Mediterranean plain.
Yet it is with nations as with men; those that have a reason of existence and the desire to realise it, even at intervals, may fall away into pitiful languor if corrupted by prosperity, but when the need comes their spirit will be renewed. While Hivites, Perizzites, and even Amorites had practically nothing to live for, but only cared to live, the Hebrews felt oppression and restraint in their inmost marrow. What the faithful servants of God among them urged in vain the iron heel of Cushan-rishathaim made them remember and realise-that they had a God from Whom they were basely departing, a birthright they were selling for pottage. In Doubting Castle, under the chains of Despair, they bethought them of the Almighty and His ancient promises, they cried unto the Lord. And it was not the cry of an afflicted church; Israel was far from deserving that name. Rather was it the cry of a prodigal people scarcely daring to hope that the Father would forgive and save.
Nothing yet found in the records of Babylon or Assyria throws any light on the invasion of Cushan-rishathaim, whose name, which seems to mean Cushan of the Two Evil Deeds, may be taken to represent his character as the Hebrews viewed it. He was a king one of whose predecessors a few centuries before had given a daughter in marriage to the third Amenophis of Egypt, and with her the Aramaean religion to the Nile valley. At that time Mesopotamia, or Aram-Naharaim, was one of the greatest monarchies of western Asia. Stretching along the Euphrates from the Khabour river towards Carchemish and away to the highlands of Armenia, it embraced the district in which Terah and Abram first settled when the family migrated from Ur of the Chaldees. In the days of the judges of Israel, however, the glory of Aram had faded. The Assyrians threatened its eastern frontier, and about 1325 B.C., the date at which we have now arrived, they laid waste the valley of the Khabour. We can suppose that the pressure of this rising empire was one cause of the expedition of Cushan towards the western sea.
It remains a question, however, why the Mesopotamian king should have been allowed to traverse the land of the Hittites, either by way of Damascus or the desert route that led past Tadmor, in order to fall on the Israelites; and there is this other question, What led him to think of attacking Israel especially among the dwellers in Canaan? In pursuing these inquiries we have at least presumption to guide us. Carchemish on the Euphrates was a great Hittite fortress commanding the fords of that deep and treacherous river. Not far from it, within the Mesopotamian country, was Pethor, which was at once a Hittite and an Aramaean town-Pethor the city of Balaam with whom the Hebrews had had to reckon shortly before they entered Canaan. Now Cushan-rishathaim, reigning in this region, occupied the middle ground between the Hittites and Assyria on the east, also between them and Babylon on the southeast; and it is probable that he was in close alliance with the Hittites. Suppose then that the Hittite king, who at first regarded the Hebrews with indifference, was now beginning to view them with distrust or to fear them as a people bent on their own ends, not to be reckoned on for help against Egypt, and we can easily see that he might be more than ready to assist the Mesopotamians in their attack on the tribes. To this we may add a hint which is derived from Balaams connection with Pethor, and the kind of advice he was in the way of giving to those who consulted him. Does it not seem probable enough that some counsel of his survived his death and now guided the action of the king of Aram? Balaam, by profession a soothsayer, was evidently a great political personage of his time, foreseeing, crafty, and vindictive. Methods of his for suppressing Israel, the force of whose genius he fully recognised, were perhaps sold to more than one kingly employer. "The land of the children of his people" would almost certainly keep his counsel in mind and seek to avenge his death. Thus against Israel particularly among the dwellers in Canaan the arms of Cushan-rishathaim would be directed, and the Hittites, who scarcely found it needful to attack Israel for their own safety, would facilitate his march.
Here then we may trace the revival of a feud which seemed to have died away fifty years before. Neither nations nor men can easily escape from the enmity they have incurred and the entanglements of their history. When years have elapsed and strifes appear to have been buried in oblivion, suddenly, as if out of the grave, the past is apt to arise and confront us, sternly demanding the payment of its reckoning. We once did another grievous wrong, and now our fondly cherished belief that the man we injured had forgotten our injustice is completely dispelled. The old anxiety, the old terror breaks in afresh upon our lives. Or it was in doing our duty that we braved the enmity of evil-minded men and punished their crimes. But though they have passed away their bitter hatred, bequeathed to others, still survives. Now the battle of justice and fidelity has to be fought over again, and well is it for us if we are found ready in the strength of God.
And, in another aspect, how futile is the dream some indulge of getting rid of their history, passing beyond the memory or resurrection of what has been. Shall Divine forgiveness obliterate those deeds of which we have repented? Then the deeds being forgotten the forgiveness too would pass into oblivion, and all the gain of faith and gratitude it brought would be lost. Do we expect never to retrace in memory the way we have travelled?
As well might we hope, retaining our personality, to become other men than we are. The past, good and evil, remains and will remain, that we may be kept humble and moved to ever-increasing thankfulness and fervour of soul. We rise "on stepping stones of our dead selves to higher things," and every forgotten incident by which moral education has been provided for must return to light. The heaven we hope for is not to be one of forgetfulness, but a state bright and free through remembrance of the grace that saved us at every stage and the circumstances of our salvation. As yet we do not half know what God has done for us, what His providence has been. There must be a resurrection of old conflicts, strifes, defeats, and victories in order that we may understand the grace which is to keep us safe forever.
Attacked by Cushan of the Two Crimes the Israelites were in evil case. They had not the consciousness of Divine support which sustained them once. They had forsaken Him whose presence in the camp made their arms victorious. Now they must face the consequences of their fathers deeds without their fathers heavenly courage. Had they still been a united nation full of faith and hope, the armies of Aram would have assailed them in vain. But they were without the spirit which the crisis required. For eight years the northern tribes had to bear a sore oppression, soldiers quartered in their cities, tribute exacted at the point of the sword, their harvests enjoyed by others. The stern lesson was taught them that Canaan was to be no peaceful habitation for a people that renounced the purpose of its existence. The struggle became more hopeless year by year, the state of affairs more wretched. So at last the tribes were driven by stress of persecution and calamity to call again on the name of God, and some faint hope of succour broke like a misty morning over the land.
It was from the far south that help came in response to the piteous cry of the oppressed in the north; the deliverer was Othniel, who has already appeared in the history. After his marriage with Achsah, daughter of Caleb, we must suppose him living as quietly as possible in his south-lying farm, there increasing in importance year by year till now he is a respected chief of the tribe of Judah. In frequent skirmishes with Arab marauders from the wilderness he has distinguished himself, maintaining the fame of his early exploit. Better still, he is one of those who have kept the great traditions of the nation, a man mindful of the law of God, deriving strength of character from fellowship with the Almighty. "The Spirit of Jehovah came upon him and he judged Israel; and he went out to war, and Jehovah delivered Cushan-rishathaim king of Mesopotamia into his hand."
"He judged Israel and went out to war." Significant is the order of these statements. The judging of Israel by this man, on whom the Spirit of Jehovah was, meant no doubt inquisition into the religious and moral state, condemnation of the idolatry of the tribes, and a restoration to some extent of the worship of God. In no other way could the strength of Israel be revived. The people had to be healed before they could fight, and the needed cure was spiritual. Hopeless invariably have been the efforts of oppressed peoples to deliver themselves unless some trust in a Divine power has given them heart for the struggle. When we see an army bow in prayer as one man before joining battle, as the Swiss did at Morat and the Scots at Bannockburn, we have faith in their spirit and courage, for they are feeling their dependence in the Supernatural. Othniels first care was to suppress idolatry, to teach Israelites anew the forgotten name and law of God and their destiny as a nation. Well did he know that this alone would prepare the way for success. Then, having gathered an army fit for his purpose, he was not long in sweeping the garrisons of Cushan out of the land.
Judgment and then deliverance; judgment of the mistakes and sins men have committed, thereby bringing themselves into trouble; conviction of sin and righteousness; thereafter guidance and help that their feet may be set on a rock and their goings established-this is the right sequence. That God should help the proud, the self-sufficient out of their troubles in order that they may go on in pride and vainglory, or that He should save the vicious from the consequences of their vice and leave them to persist in their iniquity, would be no Divine work. The new mind and the right spirit must be put in men, they must hear their condemnation, lay it to heart and repent, there must be a revival of holy purpose and aspiration first. Then the oppressors will be driven from the land, the weight of trouble lifted from the soul.
Othniel, the first of the judges, seems one of the best. He is not a man of mere rude strength and dashing enterprise. Nor is he one who runs the risk of sudden elevation to power, which few can stand. A person of acknowledged honour and sagacity, he sees the problem of the time and does his best to solve it. He is almost unique in this, that he appears without offence, without shame. And his judgeship is honourable to Israel. It points to a higher level of thought and greater seriousness among the tribes than in the century when Jephthah and Samson were the acknowledged heroes. The nation had not lost its reverence for the great names and hopes of the exodus when it obeyed Othniel and followed him to battle.
In modern times there would seem to be scarcely any understanding of the fact that no man can do real service as a political leader unless he is a fearer of God, one who loves righteousness more than country, and serves the Eternal before any constituency. Sometimes a nation low enough in morality has been so far awake to its need and danger as to give the helm, at least for a time, to a servant of truth and righteousness and to follow where he leads. But more commonly is it the case that political leaders are chosen anywhere rather than from the ranks of the spiritually earnest. It is oratorical dash now, and now the cleverness of the intriguer, or the power of rank and wealth, that catches popular favour and exalts a man in the state. Members of parliament, cabinet ministers, high officials need have no devoutness, no spiritual seriousness or insight. A nation generally seeks no such character in its legislators and is often content with less than decent morality. Is it then any wonder that politics are arid and government a series of errors? We need men who have the true idea of liberty and will set nations nominally Christian on the way of fulfilling their mission to the world. When the people want a spiritual leader he will appear; when they are ready to follow one of high and pure temper he will arise and show the way. But the plain truth is that our chiefs in the state, in society and business must be the men who represent the general opinion, the general aim.
While we are in the main a worldly people, the best guides, those of spiritual mind, will never be allowed to carry their plans. And so we come back to the main lesson of the whole history, that only as each citizen is thoughtful of God and of duty, redeemed from selfishness and the world, can there be a true commonwealth, honourable government, beneficent civilisation.
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 GOD’S MEANS OF TESTING CHARACTER AND CHASTISING FOR SIN.—Jdg_3:1-4
GOD’S MEANS OF TESTING CHARACTER AND CHASTISING FOR SIN.—Jdg_3:1-4
CRITICAL NOTES.—
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Jdg_3:1. Which the Lord left.] Allowed to remain, i.e., spared from doom; not—did not mark out for destruction. For all the Canaanites were doomed to be exterminated, including the Philistines, the Phœnicians and Sidonians; also the Hivites, as far north as the Gate of Hamath, which was about one hundred miles farther north than the conquests of Joshua reached (Num_34:7-9; Gen_15:18). God Himself was to do the work; His people were to be the instruments employed (Deu_7:2; Deu_7:23-24; Deu_11:23-24; Deu_20:16-17). But His engagement to aid them was conditioned on their obedience and trust. When they failed in fidelity to Him, their conquests were arrested, and the tide began to flow the other way (Jos_23:12-13). When from unbelief or indolence they held back from attacking the Canaanites, God spared those whom they spared. Hence, what is called “breach of promise”—apparent, not real (Num_14:34). To prove Israel by them לְנַסּוֹת (Greek ὲπείρασειν). Some regard this phrase as having a different meaning here from what it has in Jdg_3:4, and in Jdg_2:22, where it is used of moral probation, or testing faith and obedience. Here, they say it means to exercise, or train for war—to give them practice in fighting with the view of keeping up the warlike spirit among them. [Pulp. Com. and others.] This alteration in the interpretation of the word, in one and the same paragraph, is purely arbitrary, and could scarcely have been thought of but for the necessities of a certain theory, as we shall see under Jdg_3:2. Here, it means to test character, as in Deu_13:3; and the point to be tested is stated in Jdg_3:4 to be, whether they had the spirit of true allegiance to their Covenant God. As many of Israel as] those who came to man’s estate after the close of the wars of Canaan (Jdg_2:10). The survivors of the wars of Canaan did not need this discipline. Had not known all the war of Canaan] i.e., by personal eyesight and experience. They had not passed through them, seen with their own eyes the formidable dangers, and met them boldly, through strong faith in the promise of their God.
Jdg_3:2. Only that the generations, etc.] Here we have a statement of the moral purpose served by the wars. It was to prove what the younger generations would do when they had personal experience of those wars. Would they show the same fidelity and courage as the fathers, or not? The construction of this verse is peculiar, arising partly from a difference in the idiom of the languages. Bertheau makes Jehovah the subject of the verb to know, and makes Israel the object—the sense being “that He (Jehovah) might know Israel (by putting them to the proof) in teaching them war (giving them the opportunity of fighting against these nations in dependence on His promise).” This gives a good sense, though it seems more natural to regard “the generations of Israel” as the proper subject of the verb. We prefer to render it thus: “Only for the purpose (רַק לְמַעַן) that the generations of the children of Israel might have the knowledge (דַּעַת) of war, through a personal experience of it (לְלַמְּדָס) (not all the generations of Israel, but) those only (רַק) who before had not known it.” The important question here is, what is meant by “teaching them war.” Many understand it to mean, knowledge of the art of war—to cultivate in them a martial spirit, skill in handling their weapons, and true valour in the field. This, it is said, would be a check on effeminacy, and keep them up to the mark of being always able to defend their country when peril should arise. Trapp has it, that Israel might not rust through long rest … “them slay not lest my folk forget.” “Scipio,” he says, “persuaded the Romans not to ruin Carthage lest their youth should want exercise, and grow wanton with too much ease.” If this be the correct view, it is singular that they should be required to fight with their enemies, in order to be able to fight with their enemies. But passing this, it is significant, that none of the many critics who adopt this meaning quote any parallel passages in its justification. There are no such passages. The whole teaching of Scripture is to the opposite effect, viz., that the people of the covenant must rely, in all conflicts with their enemies, solely on the promised help of their God. (Psa_20:7-9; Psa_44:3; Psa_44:5-8; Hos_14:1-3; Psa_147:10-11.) The use of natural means had its place, but the people are never taught to rely at any time on that prop, for the defence of their country. On the contrary, the manner in which they acquired possession of the land, is ever represented as the rule according to which they might hope securely to occupy it, namely, by faithfully obeying the commandments of their God. To learn war after the manner of the “wars of Canaan” we understand to be, to look for victory, not through personal bravery, but through the omnipotent help of Jehovah, given in fulfilment of His promise, in answer to faith and prayer.
Jdg_3:3. Five lords of the Philistines. Three of these lordships had been formerly subdued by Judah (Jdg_1:18), but seem afterwards to have been lost through the sloth and unbelief of that tribe in failing to follow up their advantage. Where sin is not extirpated, it will, like a noxious weed, take root again—“lords,” or satrapies (Sept.). The original sarnaim, or “princes” literally signifies axles. The chief is so called because the people and public affairs alike revolved around him as the parts of a wheel upon its axis. [Bush.] Jos_13:3; Jdg_16:5; Jdg_16:8; 1Sa_6:4; 1Sa_6:12; 1Sa_6:16, etc., 1Sa_29:2; 1Sa_29:6—(סַרְנֵי) lordships, or principalities. And all the Canaanites.] This list is not quite the same with that given in Jos_13:3, etc. Changes had occurred; conquests had been won and defeats suffered. But the difference lies chiefly in the fact, that the paragraph in Joshua gives an account of the allotment to the different tribes of the land occupied by the nations, that are here said to be spared to serve as scourges for Israel’s sins. The phrase “all the Canaanites” does not refer to all the nations called by that name who originally occupied the country, for very many of these had been slain; but partly, it refers to those that were still found within the territory conquered by the tribes (both the uplands and valleys having towns that were either wholly or partially filled with Canaanites), and chiefly to that large and formidable nation of the Canaanites outside the conquered territory to the north-west, whom the Israelites had not yet met in arms—the Phœnicians. This people, who are generally identified with the Sidonians, occupied a narrow strip of land of only two miles in breadth, but extending along the coast for a distance almost equal to the entire length of Palestine from Dan to Beersheba. In this strip were the cities of Tyre and Sidon; it was densely populated, and the people were among the most intelligent, enterprising, and powerful nations of ancient times. It began near the point where the territory occupied by the tribe terminated, and extended northward, shut in between the Lebanon range and the sea. It was all within the original limits of the land of promise, and ought to have been occupied by the Israelites, as part of their inheritance, though it never was really subdued by them. Sidon was the firstborn of Canaan, and his descendants were the very worst among races where all were so bad. Take Jezebel for an example (1Ki_16:31; 1Ki_21:25). The Canaanites who dwelt among the Israelites were most numerous in the northern tribes, and it was these especially that were “snares and traps to them, scourges in their sides, and thorns in their eyes.” The Philistines.] The plain of Philistia, with a breadth of about twenty miles, ran along the entire seaboard of the Mediterranean from the desert, in a line parallel with Judah, to a point near the middle of Palestine. In the central section of the coast, the plain becomes narrower, being only two miles in breadth, and is shut in by the mountains of Manasseh and Ephraim. This is called the plain of Sharon. And the Hivites that dwelt in Mount Lebanon.] The derivation of “Hivites” is interesting. First comes תָוָה to live, and חָוָּה including the idea of roundness. ὼόν ovum an egg (Sept.), which is both round and the source of life. Hence חַיָה and חַוָּה came to signify encampment (2Sa_23:11), and village (Num_32:41), from the circular form in which camps and villages were disposed. The people called “the Hivites” are those who reside in round villages. Even down to the present day, the villages are so built that the conically-shaped houses form a circular street, enclosing an open space in the centre for the flocks and the herds. This habit of building distinguished the Hivites from the other nations. [Cassel.] Baalhermon.] from אֲרָס height, or highlands. Hermon is the loftiest peak in the Anti-Libanus range. It is the southern spur, and towers far above all its surroundings. This district and all northward among the hills and valleys of the Lebanon range, for a distance of nearly 100 miles beyond the point of Joshua’s conquests, was occupied by the Hivites (Jos_11:17; Jos_12:7). Baal-gad is the same with Baal-hermon. All this district was originally marked out for inheritance by the tribes, but in fact was never subdued by them. The entering in of Hamath. The narrow pass which opens out on Hamath—the most northern point in the land of promise [Eadie.] This is the gate to Canaan on the north.
Note on the “Wars of Canaan.”—These did not belong to the common category of human wars. They were specially made at God’s command for a high moral purpose—to vindicate Jehovah’s character in the punishment of flagrant transgressors. In doing this, solemn displays of the Divine Perfections were made, both before the heathen nations and before the chosen people. They were therefore sacred wars, and on sacred principles were they fought. As compared with other wars, the differentiating element in them was, that God Himself was the chief actor, who always determined the issue, and the principle on which He gave success or permitted defeat, was the possession, or the want of trust in His name, and fidelity in keeping His commandments. These wars were indeed both a test of spiritual obedience and also a discipline to correct and refine. To know them implied a great deal more than to know the art of fighting bravely as warriors. Brave as Joshua and his followers were, there was no proportion between their small resources and weak arms on the one side, and the chariots of iron, with the hosts numerous as the sand on the sea shore, which these nations mustered, on the other. It was a war of children against giants—of sheep against wolves. Never were armies more unequally matched, and never was faith of victory through God’s promised help more thoroughly tried. The fathers knew that the conquest of Canaan was not a thing of easy achievement. And now the children must be trained on the same lines, that they may learn how hard a thing it is, as a condition of their retaining possession of the inheritance, to be firm and loyal to their God in the actual presence of enemies, so superior in all the equipments of war, to themselves.
MAIN HOMILETICS OF THE PARAGRAPH
The genius of the history of Israel, as distinct from every other history, lies in the fact, that they were the people of the Messiah. They were His brethren, being, together with Him, Abraham’s seed and members of one family circle. They were His ancestry, for “of them Christ came who is God over all,” etc. They were His people, and represented Him on earth till the times of His personal appearance. Being the people of the Messiah, the Messiah’s God becomes their God. God unites them to Himself in the bonds of an everlasting covenant, engaging with great condescension to make Himself over to them as their God, and adopting them to Himself to become His people. In them and in their history, we see a practical embodiment of the blessings which the Messiah procures for men. In them we see an illustration of what God, for the Messiah’s sake, can do in following sinful men through all their course of disobedience and rebellion, and not only preserve them from utter ruin, but lift them up at last, through faith and repentance, to the full enjoyment of everlasting life.
This is the picture which is set before us in this, and in all the historical books of the Old Testament. The Covenant is the backbone of all the Divine dealings with this people, as set forth in these books. We see there, in the position which God takes up, and from which he never withdraws—I will be your God—the vast resources of love which may be drawn upon, in support of all the demands made on the patient forbearance and forgiving tender mercy of God, by the terrible depravity and highhanded rebellion of a perverse people. We see why it is they are not “consumed in a moment”—why not utterly cast off at any time, not even under the Babylonish captivity—why they are so often forgiven, and such astonishing proofs of the Divine favour are shown on their behalf. From the beginning, Jehovah became their God. That position once taken, their history throughout becomes the medium for a glorious display of all the Divine perfections, in pardoning and blessing men for the Messiah’s sake.
Hence we uniformly find them greatly beloved of God. We see God in close contact with them every moment of their existence; they are never out of His sight, and no hand is allowed to touch them but His own. They are to Him a “peculiar treasure,” and He keeps them in the hollow of His hand (Deu_33:3; Psalms 121). He takes the entire direction of their history, and all its issues are to him. This we shall now endeavour to trace.
TESTS AND CHASTISEMENT.—Jdg_3:1-4
I. The work to be done.—The trial and chastisement of an unfaithful people.
1. Chastisement as well as trial. The people had already shown symptoms of apostasy, and there was more than reason to suspect their fidelity. The plague-spot had appeared, and there was need to cauterise. When symptoms of “fretting leprosy” show themselves, an examination must be made. The mere presence of such neighbours as these Canaanites, and the having to dwell among them, was itself a chastisement. The presence of bears and wolves in the family circle, even if they should be muzzled, would be a great affliction to the children, though the object might only be to ascertain whether they would put their trust under the parental wing. But it would be chastisement in terrible earnest, were the muzzle removed. So with Israel, when these wicked were first allowed to dwell among them, and when, afterwards, the reins were let loose, and they were permitted to exercise their savage passions at will.
2. A special mark is put on the reason for this course of dealing. God had already explained with great distinctness the ground of His procedure (Jdg_2:20-23). Yet He now repeats it, to put emphasis on the necessity of such a course of dealing with a people who had been the recipients of unbounded mercy, and yet were beginning to show the extreme of ingratitude. “He speaks once, yea, twice.” He calls aloud that men may mark His jealousy for His own honour as a Holy God, while yet so full of compassion for His adopted people. Thus at the outset of this checkered history, He explains—“line upon line”—the ground of his procedure, that it may stand clear to every eye. On this trial and chastisement these things are to be noted:—
I. It was God’s own thought to put them to the proof. “The Lord left these nations.” He kept the guidance of their history in His own hand. He directed it this way, not that way. He put the machinery in motion. It did not fall out in the ordinary course of events. Neither did the nations themselves entertain any such thought.
1. Far otherwise were the thoughts of the nations. “Israel was a speckled bird among the nations—the birds round about were against her.” There was a something about that people which excited the hostility of the other nations. It was the old “enmity between the woman’s seed and the serpent’s seed.” This hatred was not due merely to the successful war which Israel had waged against their cities and armies, though that had its share of the reason. But it was due mainly to the character of Israel’s God and His ways. He was too holy and righteous in Himself—too severe in His condemnation of men’s sins—for a world lying in wickedness to do other than hate His image wherever seen. Their thoughts were—
(a) when Israel was strong, to seek alliance with them—only for their own advantage; to gain the profits of commerce, or obtain security against future possible exterminating wars. When true religion is in power, the world will be obsequious, and multiply honeyed words; but when the opportunity is given, it will stab to the heart, and not pity. So—
(b) when Israel became weak, their thoughts were of conquest and revenge. They gnashed their teeth when they thought how terribly these upstarts among the nations had decimated their armies, destroyed their cities, and robbed them of their soil. Feelings of retaliation, or of self-interest, were their only motives. Depraved human nature, without the grace of God, cannot rise higher. The last thing they would have thought of would have been to serve any purpose of the God of Israel in the matter. But “there be higher than they.” While they thought they were serving only purposes of their own, He was overruling all that they did to accomplish His own holy and benignant ends.
2. The nations could do nothing without God’s permission. God “sets a hedge round about” His people that none may touch them till permission is granted. Even Satan admits this (Job_1:10). The lapidary allows no one to cut or grind his jewels but himself, or if another comes in, it is by express appointment, and the work is done under his own direct supervision. Jehovah would not allow these nations to look Israel in the face, to tempt, chastise, or intermeddle with them, until they were needed as instruments to execute some gracious purpose of His own. Had he not judged it necessary to sift Israel’s character, and put it to the proof, we should not have read a line of the raids of Chushan-rishathaim, or of Eglon, and other marauders, whose tragic deeds constitute so large a part of the story of this book. These rough hammers would never have been employed on God’s precious stones, had he not seen good reason for it, and permitted it to happen. But as soon as the hammer has done its work, it is flung aside, and not another stroke is allowed. The nations did nothing till God gave them a charge; and when Israel became penitent, He applied the bridle to their wrath. “Their wrath He made to praise Him, and the remainder He restrained.”
3. This proving of character was done out of respect to His covenant. It was His own doing, and it was done according to a fixed rule of dealing.
(a) God acted by principle, and not by temporary impulse. He never acts otherwise. He is never in haste, and never under the influence of excitement as man is. Were it so, He would be weak like man. But He acts by fixed covenant arrangement. Covenant implies system—a definitely arranged course for all time to come. It is beneath the majesty of the King Eternal to act by temporary impulse, or to make any real change in His rules to meet what mortals regard as peculiar contingencies. He comprehends from the first all that may happen, and provides against every emergency.
(b) He acted according to His established manner of dealing with His people’s sins. It was foreseen that sin—its existence, its inveteracy, its continual breaking out among the people, notwithstanding all the precautions taken to prevent its prevalence—would constitute, to human wisdom, a perplexing, hopeless difficulty in the way of carrying out the provisions of the covenant. God’s character, as a “consuming fire” against the workers of iniquity, was not changed by His entering into covenant with this people. On the other hand, “His people were bent to backsliding from Him,” and there was an extreme necessity for vindicating the Divine character, in order to the righteous bestowment of covenant blessings.
(c) Provision made for this through the intervention of the coming Messiah, the real Mediator of the covenant. Of His appearance and work in “the fulness of time,” intimation was daily given by fresh victims evermore laid upon the altar, throughout their entire history as a people. Meanwhile some course must be taken to carry home to the hearts of the people a conviction of the flagrant character of their sin, in presuming to break their solemn pledge to the Most High, and to prefer the unhallowed service of heathen gods to the pure worship of Israel’s God. Afflictions serve this purpose. God will not break His promise, for it is an “everlasting covenant.” Neither can He look upon sin. But He will chastise. He will cast into the furnace to “purely purge away their dross, and take away all their tin.” So He leads them back to Himself, in the exercise of unwearying forbearance, “for His mercy endureth for ever.” (Psa_89:31-34.)
4. God puts His people under discipline to serve wise and holy ends. If enemies are used, they are but the rod in His hand, employed to do a necessary work. They do nothing merely at their own discretion. Any commission given to an earthly power is limited by the charge, “Thus far, but no farther.”
(a) No real injury is ever intended. They are more sacred to Him than any other property. He watches over them as the mother bird fluttering over her young; and, as that mother placeth her own body between her young and the arrow that is aimed at their heart, so he who would smite a child of the covenant must first fight with Him that made it.
(b) Never is the rod without some gracious instruction. “Hear ye the rod, and Him who appointeth it.” “All his works are done in truth and uprightness.” (Psa_25:10.) This gives confidence to the pious heart, and stills all apprehension as to the issue. How many “Fear nots” are in Scripture. Instances in David’s history. Before Shimei he “accepts the punishment of his iniquity.” “Let him curse, for the Lord hath hidden him!” God put him to the test, and he stood it. (See also Psa_39:9; 2Sa_24:14.
5. God Himself determines the time, manner, and severity of the trial.
(a) The time—not too soon—lest He should seem to be suspicious of His people, and take pleasure in hastening to chastise. His language rather is, “Surely they are My people, children that will not lie” (Isa_63:8.) Nor too long—lest the malady should get too deeply-rooted, and require a far more severe operation to eradicate it at a future period. In the one case, the tendency would be to foster a spirit of bondage; in the other, to make light of sin, and presumptuously to cast off the fear of God.
(b) The manner—in such form as to instruct the mind in the evil nature of the sin which has brought down the chastisement. The bitter streams of which God causes them to drink, spring from the very sins on account of which God chastises them. “Thine own wickedness correcteth thee, and thy backslidings reprove thee.”
(c) The severity—not destructive, as if He found pleasure in taking vengeance. “To crush under His feet the prisoners of the earth … the Lord approveth not” (Lam_3:34; Lam_3:36). “I will not contend for ever,” etc. (Isa_57:16). A ruthless enemy may be employed as the instrument, yet he cannot go a step beyond the limit prescribed, nor durst he inflict a single pang to gratify malice or revenge, except in so far as that may be a means of carrying out the purpose of the real actor. “I am jealous for Jerusalem with a great jealousy; I am very sore displeased with the heathen, for I was but a little displeased (with my people), and they helped forward the affliction” (Zec_1:14-15). Sometimes His hand is very heavy. He goes the length of “barking our fig tree,” and “laying our vine waste” (Joe_1:7). That which is proverbially fruitful He makes conspicuously desolate. But He has always “a bottle for the tears,” and a balm for the wounds. He may use the “scourge,” but never the “sword.” He “afflicts not willingly.” He “chastens for our profit.”
COMMENTS AND SUGGESTIONS
THE LORD’S THOUGHTS ABOUT HIS PEOPLE.—Jdg_3:1-4
I. God has many thoughts about His people. “Many are thy thoughts to us-ward; they cannot be reckoned up in order.” He concerns Himself much with them and their history. “I know the thoughts that I think toward you—thoughts of peace and not of evil, to give you an expected end.” They are the children He has nourished and brought up. They are called by His sacred name. He has once taken them by the hand, and His love is unchangeable. He has removed mountains for them, and dried up seas—rolled back rivers in their course, and made the hard rocks gush forth streams of water, and the heavens send down angels’ food. How should He not have many and loving thoughts about His people!
II. God’s thoughts about His people are often anxious thoughts. He has chosen them to show forth His praise; but how can a disobedient and rebellious people serve a purpose like this? He appoints them to illustrate the righteousness of His law, and the tenderness of His dealings; but how can they do this when they are daily sinning before Him, and there is no end of their murmurings? He has engaged to see them all safely through the dangers of the wilderness, and settled in the enjoyment of the spiritual inheritance above; but how can this be accomplished when there is so much unbelief and hardness of heart shown at every step of the Divine leadings? “O, Judah, what shall I do unto thee? How shall I put thee among the children, and give thee a pleasant land and goodly heritage?” “Have I been a wilderness unto Israel—a land of darkness? Wherefore say my people, We will come no more unto thee?”
III. Behind all His thoughts are gracious intentions. They all spring from love at bottom. Not one is dictated by enmity, or even indifference. They are all only different forms of loving-kindness and tender mercy, corresponding with the different or changing circumstances in which they are placed. “How precious are Thy thoughts to me, O God! How great is the sum of them!” Sitting on the throne of the Gospel, God’s thoughts to His people are only of pardon, reconciliation, peace, and the hope of eternal life. The Father’s will is that nothing of “the bundle of life” be lost, but “raised up again at the last day.” And even now His several chastisements are sent to serve the ends of love.
IV. God’s thoughts of what true love is are very different from ours. “As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my thoughts higher than your thoughts.” He can forgive without difficulty to any extent, where there is true penitence, and trust in the blood. “He abundantly pardons.” But He often withholds that for which flesh and blood ardently crave. He applies crucial tests to bring out the whole heart, and covers us with shame and humiliation. In place of allowing us to sit down at ease, and enjoy the good things of this life without stint or annoyance, He makes us go through the briers and thorns, and learn to “scorn delights and live laborious days.” “As many as I love I rebuke and chasten.” The permanent rooting out of sin from the heart, though requiring sharp present suffering, is regarded as true love in the end in the estimation of our God.
THE CHASTENING OF THE LORD
“God not only appoints all our chastisements, but they are under His special direction and management as to their nature, degree, continuance and effects. What a comforting reflection this! To have every circumstance of our distress in the management of such a hand! He is most intimately acquainted with our frame and feelings. He is possessed of unerring wisdom and infinite goodness, so that our affairs cannot miscarry in His hand. Not a sparrow falls to the ground without His permission. So minute and tender is His care over us, that He ‘makes all our bed in our sickness.’ ” [McLean.]
“The raising of our troubles, the keeping them upon us, and the removing of them, is all of the Lord. It is His wise disposal, and not an ill chance (Amo_3:2). Do not, therefore, rest in second causes, nor vex yourselves as if spurning against the Lord, but patiently bear them. Whoever may be the instrument, the Lord is the overruling cause.
“When by God’s kindness and many comforts we cannot be brought to cleave to Him with all our hearts, He will take another course to bring us thereto. He will acquaint us with wants, trouble, and sorrow. And yet such is His love, that if they prevail with us, and work kindly upon us, to bring us to repent, He will return to us again graciously and continue His former bounty. Our first parents when they sinned began to know what good and evil meant. Children, while tenderly dealt with by their parents, have all things with ease provided for them; but when they grow up and are put to shifts, they come to know what hardness means, through the rough handling of strangers.” [Rogers.]
“Chastenings from the Lord oftenact as a touchstone of human character. They are an Ithuriel’s spear to reveal every man as he is. When Pliable and Christian came to the Slough of Despond, they both fell in and wallowed for a time in the mire. Pliable was instantly unmasked. He angrily asked his companion, Is this the happiness you have been telling me of all this while? After a desperate struggle he got out of the mire on that side which lay next his own house, and Christian saw him no more. But Christian got out on the side next the wicket gate.
But sharp tests while they sift, also strengthen religious characters. When the wind shakes a young tree, and bends it to the earth, it seems to be retarding its growth, yet it is really furthering it. It makes it strike its roots deeper into the soil, that its stem may rise higher and stronger, till it can struggle with tempests and spread its green leaves to a thousand summers. The winds and storms are the educators of the tree, no less than the sunbeams and the dew. In the intellectual world a strong mind thrives on difficulties. There is no falser method of education than to make all smooth and easy, and remove every stone before the foot touches it. God has ordained that where there is to be progression there must be struggle. Specially is this the case where the alloy of sin has entered, and needs to be smelted out by the hot furnace.” [Ker].
“The country of the Israelites was rich, and abounded in dainties of all sorts, so that they were in danger of sinking into the utmost degree of luxury and effeminacy. They must, therefore, sometimes wade in blood, and not always in milk and honey.”
[Henry.]
GOD’S CHANGE OF DEALING
Here we have the first step taken in a new course of the Divine dealings. The change is very marked—similar to that of the attitude of the Lord God towards our first parents in the garden of Eden, when man had sinned. At first his voice was heard in loving intercourse with man at the cool of the day; but soon came the frown, and “He drove out the man.” All the days of Joshua were as a bright morning in the history of the young nation whom the Lord had brought out of Egypt. “He couched, he lay down as a lion; he did eat up the nations his enemies; he brake their bones, and pierced them through with his arrows.” Prosperity flowed “as the waves of the sea.” These were the “lights” of Israel’s history; but alas! the “shadows” followed. In the first chapter of Judges, the atmosphere becomes electrical; in the second, specks begin to appear on the horizon, and the first mutterings of the approaching thunder are heard. Now in this chapter, we see the dark clouds getting settled in the sky, and the elements of destruction being prepared. What could have happened that that same God, who had given up these Canaanites to Israel to be trodden down as the mire, should now permit them to rise up and become Israel’s masters, and even sweep over the land as an over-running flood? The change is too marked to escape notice:—
1. It is rendered necessary by sin. Israel had an “evil heart of unbelief in departing from the living God.” This apostacy in the heart was now showing itself in the life. “God who seeth all things, taketh notice of, and is much displeased with the sin of having any other god.”
2. There is no real change in the Divine love. An altered conduct on the part of the people leads to an altered tone on the part of their God. When the child forsakes the father, that does not imply that the father forsakes the child. God did not depart from His purpose, but other means now became necessary to carry it out. If God now speaks in notes of thunder in place of whispers, it is still Love that speaks.
3. A change in the Divine attitude is required from the danger of leaving sin unchecked. When the stone has begun to roll down the hill, it must be stopped at once, if stopped at all, for soon, otherwise, it will become unmanageable. As soon as the heart shows that it has decided to have another god, true love will hasten to take measures to show the folly and ruin in which such a course must end.
4. Apathy in the worship of God led to this change. We note a strange silence in this book on the subject of the observance of Divine ordinances. We hear nothing of the solemn feasts, of the services of the priesthood, and the performance of duties in the sanctuary. The altars and their sacrifices, the sprinklings, washings, and ceremonial requirements of the law, are as if they were not. The few glimpses given of the religious life of the people, show how mournfully they fail in forming the most elementary conceptions of the meaning of the Divine ordinances. Micah had a superstitious parody of the Mosaic rites. The Danites followed his example. Gideon worshipped a visible god. Jephthah had but a slight knowledge of the law of vows. While Samson and his parents had but a very crude knowledge of the Mosaic institutions.
This is instructive. The mind must be filled. If it does not accept the true God, that which is no god, or the things of this world, must occupy His place. If it is not led by the Spirit of God, it must be under the dominion of “ungodliness and worldly lusts.” To “walk in the Spirit” is the appointed means of gaining the victory. (Gal_5:16.) To neglect to do so leaves the door open, and the danger is imminent.
The very mention of these nations looks like the wolves prowling round the sheepfold. It is the appearance of a dark cloud, ominous of stormy times. It is the first visible frown on the countenance of Him, who bore His people through so many dangers for two generations as on eagles’ wings. There was a change in God’s attitude, but not in God’s purpose.
MAIN HOMILETICS.—Jdg_3:1-4
II. It was necessary to put Israel to the proof.
1. Their allegiance to their God must be ascertained. This was indispensable.
(1.) God’s jealousy required it. In this character He reveals Himself in the covenant. “I the Lord thy God am a jealous God—thou shalt have no other gods before me.” The smoke and the thunders of Sinai were a visible confirmation of that character of jealousy. Both the attitude of the Speaker, and what He said, showed that He was intently watchful of the measure of respect that was paid to His character, by those whom He addressed.
(2). Without allegiance the people were not in a fit state to receive Divine blessings. Every promise was conditioned on this. It was no secondary question. The good of the creature cannot be advanced by sacrificing the glory of the Creator. It would have been derogatory to God’s holy name, to have lavished His favours on a rebellious people. Those whom He shall bless must have a fitness of character to receive the blessing. If they are to be a mark toward which His love is to go out, He will see to it that they be worthy of His love. He loves all men with a love of compassion, but He regards those only with a love of complacency, who bear His image and keep His commandments. “He taketh pleasure in them that fear Him.”
(3.) Ways and means were easy where there was allegiance. A consistently religious character on the part of the people being given, all difficulty was at an end for bestowing any needed blessings upon them. As regards deliverance from dangers, however great, it was easy for God to “drive asunder the nations,” to make “one man chase a thousand,” or to make a mighty host melt away in absolute weakness, before a mere handful of men. Nay, even iron chariots, solid walls of masonry, and armies of giants, were as the small dust of the balance before Omnipotence. These things were small in God’s estimation; what was great was—trust in His character, and obedience to His voice. This trust was uniformly required ere He put forth an atom of his power. The refrain of every chapter seems to be, “O that my people had hearkened—I would soon have subdued” (Psa_81:13-14). Men’s sins block the way to the outgoings of God’s loving kindness (Isa_59:1-2). Even the power of working miracles was a greatly smaller possession, than a good title for admission to the heavenly world. A similar principle in Mat_12:50. Where Jesus found faith, He had no difficulty in working cures. In one short hour He could with ease heal the whole sick list, in any of the towns through which He passed. But when there was no faith He paused. “He could there do no mighty works because of their unbelief.”
2. Human protestations of obedience are little to be trusted. “He that trusteth to his own heart is a fool.” Every page of human life confirms the sentiment—the history of this people pre-eminently. Take two illustrations—
(a) When they first received the law from their God. Awe-struck with the majesty of Him whose terrible voice was echoed by the thunders and the earthquake, and which made even Moses exceedingly fear and quake, never did people pledge themselves more solemnly to keep His law with all care, in all the duties of life (Exo_24:7). Yet, behind the scene, what is the verdict of the Searcher of hearts? “O that there were such an heart in them!” etc. (Deu_5:29). Within six weeks, this same people were gathered on the same spot to demand of Aaron, “Up, make us gods to go before us, for as for this Moses … we wot not what is become of him” (Exo_32:1).
(b) When they were newly settled in their promised home. The human heart was here tried under totally altered circumstances. Formerly, there was indeed the great deliverance from bondage as an accomplished fact before them, but as yet there was nothing possessed. All was wilderness around them. They were in complete destitution, and had nothing to look to but promise, while that seemed to be of impossible accomplishment. Now the thing promised has been accomplished in all its length and breadth. The people are assembled in their thousands to receive the farewell counsel of the venerable captain, who had led them to an unbroken series of victories over mighty armies all over the land, with scarcely the loss of a man. Their hearts within them swelling with gratitude for “the great goodness of their God to the house of Israel,” they are called upon to say, in sight of the thrilling history they had passed through, would they, in all candour and sincerity, resolve from this time and henceforth to fear Jehovah and serve Him as their God, or would they prefer to join with the Amorites around them in the worship of their gods? Instantly and vehemently, they protest against the possibility of their forsaking Jehovah and worshipping other gods (Jos_24:16). They are warned against a loose decision in so important a matter, and solemnly asked to make it on a broad and well-considered basis. They feel hurt that their sincerity should be doubted for a moment—“Nay! but we will serve the Lord.” The decision was unanimous, unhesitating, firm. Alas! for human protestations! At that very moment there were already strange gods among them, though the welkin rang with the cry of undying allegiance to Jehovah, and not a single dissentient voice was raised throughout the vast multitude, that were assembled on that solemn day. Now the “root of bitterness” has begun to bear fruit.
CAUSES OF FAILURE IN FIDELITY TO THE COVENANT
(1.) Their avowal was made in self-confidence. They did not rely on the promised grace of God, as alone able to make them stand. They trusted to the present warm emotions of their own breasts, when their feelings were raised to flood-mark at the retrospect of their marvellous history, and they supposed they would always feel as they felt then. But good resolutions are not indigenous to the human heart. They do not grow all the year round, nor all the week through. They are not like the stone pillars on which the rough blasts beat in vain, and stand unshaken in all weathers. Rather, they are like the gourd which comes up in a night, and perishes in a night. Our safety lies not in the warmth of present feeling, but in offering up the prayer, “Teach me the way of Thy commandments, and I shall keep it unto the end. Incline my heart unto Thy testimonies.” (Psa_17:5.) Peter was sincere, though not wise, in what he said, as the result showed. (Mat_26:33; Mat_26:35; Mat_26:72; Mat_26:74.) His real security lay in the fact, that he was in the hands of a mighty Advocate, who had beforehand prayed for him that his faith should not fail. Good moods, even high moods, may be occasionally reached, but they afford no security for to-morrow. “If God withdraw His grace and leave us to ourselves, we are like a city without gates and walls—a prey to the first enemy that appears, however contemptible.”
(2.) It was made in self-ignorance. Every man is disposed to “think more highly of himself than he ought to think.” This is the besetting sin of our fallen nature. Trying themselves by man’s standard, many think themselves to be something before God when they are absolutely nothing, and so deceive their own hearts. The people that stood before Joshua thought, that the strength of their convictions was so great, they could stand any amount of temptation to turn them aside from their allegiance. The spectacle of all that God had done for them in the wilderness, and in the land of their inheritance, was now fresh before them, and they reckoned that it would always be thus vivid. But it is little that any man knows of “the plague of his own heart.” There is more latent wickedness in the hearts of even the best of men than is ever suspected to exist. It is only when the seemingly clear pool is stirred to the bottom, that a discovery is made of the large sediment of evil that is deposited in it. The heart is not a fountain whose goodness is in itself, and that has power to purify itself, but it is a springhead naturally impure, that has to import from without all its cleansing influence. “Let him that thinketh he standeth, take heed lest he fall.”
(3.) It was made in ignorance of the evil influences around them. Satan is ever desiring to have the Jobs, the Davids, and the Peters, to sift them as wheat. The wolf does not more thirst for the blood of the lamb, than does the Wicked One show himself ravenous for the ruin of souls. “He goeth about as a roaring lion,” etc. Woe to those that are off their watch, and are unprepared for the spring of the terrible enemy! He ever prowls around the fold of the Good Shepherd, hoping yet one day to be able to seize something out of His hands. Yet there is the precious assurance; “I give unto my sheep eternal life—and they shall never perish.” The world too, both by its smiles and by its frowns, proves a formidable enemy. It has long been an enchanted ground to Zion’s pilgrims. Yet through faith we “overcome the world.”
(4.) It was made without counting the cost. God’s service ever has a cross of some kind, and every man who enters it must have some idea of the weight of that cross. If this is not done beforehand, he will soon come to “take offence at that cross,” for he will find that what he supposed to be a mere pleasure-walk, has turned out to be a steep, rugged, and dangerous course. The rule is—“Crucify the flesh with the affections and lusts”—“cut off a right hand” when that is required—“hate father and mother” rather than lose Christ. We must appreciate the strength of Christ’s claims upon us, and know beforehand the lions we shall have to fight with, if we are to enter His service, and so calculate whether we shall accept it with all its risks, or whether reckoning the cost to be too great, we shall go over and join the standard on the other side.
3. Their responsibility was now greatly increased. God had done great things for them, and the rule now applied—“To whom much is given, of them much shall be required.” For upwards of eighty years they had had a remarkable history of privilege. No nation since the beginning of Time had seen such a sublime series of Divine interpositions on their behalf. It was a unique history, and now the climax was reached. They were in actual possession of the land flowing with milk and honey. God was now saying, “What more could I have done for my vineyard?” The time of a great expectation was come. The fruit of so much nurturing and caretaking, for two generations or more, was at last to be reaped. Settled in the land after so much cost, and with Jehovah himself as their God, it was a reasonable expectation that they should be a pattern of loyalty and allegiance to all the other nations—an oasis in the otherwise wide desert of heathenism—a solitary garden bringing forth the fruits of righteousness, while all around rose up nothing save briers and thorns. No people were more sacredly bound by obligations, and if their devotedness were at all to correspond with the measure of their privilege, it must amount to a “cleaving to the Lord with full purpose of heart.”
4. Their temptations to indolence were increased. Flesh and blood love to be at ease. The “wars of Canaan” were practically over. They were “sitting comfortably under their vine and their fig-tree.” They had long been wanderers; now had reached home at last, and such a home!—The glory of all lands!—“A land of brooks,” etc. (Deu_8:7-9). Their heads laid on the lap of ease, sweet odours filling the air, and a table of luxury daily spread before them, it was a hard battle to keep in subjection the cravings of sense, and live according to the dictates of a pure and spiritual faith. Some sharp stimulus was needed to prevent a people so situated from “settling down on their lees.” They must be “emptied from vessel to vessel.” By some suitable ordeal they must be prevented from indulging in “the lust of the eye, and the lust of the flesh.” It was wise, it was needful to set them on great searchings of heart”—to cultivate self-denial and watchfulness on the one hand, and on the other to institute such external tests in the course of Divine Providence, as would infallibly indicate how the needle of the heart was pointing from time to time.
COMMENTS AND SUGGESTIONS.—Jdg_3:1
GOD OFTEN PROVES BUT NEVER TEMPTS
He never puts any object before the mind with the intention of drawing it into sin, but He oftentimes applies touchstones to a man’s character to ascertain what he really is. When the magnet is presented, immediately it draws the steel filings to it; but if there were no affinity in these filings with the magnet, they would not be drawn. Were evil neighbours brought round a man, if there were nothing in him in common with the characters and ways of these neighbours, he would not be attracted by their society but rather repelled, and induced to make a resolute stand against their errors and wickedness. But if, with a profession of righteousness, he is yet really ungodly in heart, and has no true love to God, then the presence of the wicked around him is certain to disclose the fact, that he is an alien to God. When God tries a man’s character, He only brings to light the character which already exists. He never puts any evil into him which he had not before, nor does He ever stir up a man to commit sin, merely for the sake of committing it.
“Light might as soon become the cause of darkness, as holiness itself become the cause of unholiness. ’Tis a contradiction, that He who is the Fountain of good should become also the fountain of evil. Sweet waters and salt cannot come from the same spring. Men are said to be ‘fitted to destruction,’ but it is not said that God fits them. [The Greek verb is in the middle voice; it therefore must be read self-fitted.] They by their sins fit themselves for ruin, and He by His long suffering keeps it from them for a while. God cannot excite to that, which, when it is done, He will be sure to condemn. Sin would deserve no reproof from Him, if He were in some sense the author of it. If God were the author of it, why should our own consciences accuse us of it? It is God’s deputy, and cannot accuse us of what the Sovereign Power itself inclines us to. Having laid down such severe laws to restrain men from sin, and having crucified His own Son, when acting as our sin-bearer, it cannot be, under any circumstances, that He should stir up or excite us to sin. A pure flame cannot engender cold, neither can darkness be the offspring of a sunbeam.” [Charnock.]
“God neither deceives any man’s judgment, nor perverts his will, nor seduces his affections, nor does anything else that can subject him to the blame of men’s sins. Temptation, in the bad sense, always proceeds from the malice of Satan working on the corruptions of our own hearts. God may, however, consistently with all His perfections, by His providence bring His creatures into circumstances of special probation, not for the purpose of His receiving information, but in order to manifest to themselves and others the prevailing dispositions of their hearts. In this sense of putting to the proof—bringing to the test—the term is used in many other instances. In Deu_13:3 it is said, ‘The Lord your God proveth you, to know whether ye love Him with all your heart and soul.’ Of Hezekiah it is said, ‘In the business of the ambassadors, God left him to try him (le-nas-soth-o) that He might know all that was in his heart.’ Indeed, we find this kind of trial is sometimes made a subject of petition, on the part of good men, as if they regarded it as an act of special favour (Psa_26:2). ‘Examine me, O God, and prove me (nassani), try my reins and my heart.’ Also (in Psa_139:23-24), ‘Search me, O God, and know my heart; try me, and know my thoughts; and see if there be any wicked way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting.’ Also (2Co_13:5), ‘Examine (πειραζετε)—try yourselves whether ye be in the faith—prove your own selves; know ye not your own selves,’ etc.”
[Bush.]
MAIN HOMILETICS.—Jdg_3:1-4
III. This testing of character was made in love, not in anger. It was the doing of a wise and loving Father, not of an offended Lawgiver. For—
(1.) All God’s dealings with His covenant-people are necessarily in love. This is the very spirit of His covenant: “Your God”—“God is for you”—always on your side. This is His fixed attitude. His love may assume many different forms, corresponding with the different phases presented of their character and conduct, but it is always love. When He chastens them for their sins, even going the length of scourging, it is still love that leads Him so to act by them. (Heb_12:6; invariable as in Jdg_3:7.) His threatenings are the hoarse notes of His love. The hidings of His face in dark, providential dispensations are so, as in bereavement, adversity, or a sense of desolation, so that they cry out, “All these things are against me!” All tests of character, in like manner, are still but different forms which the covenant love assumes, working mysteriously, but not less sincerely or fervently. It is the love of an unchangeable God. “He loves to the end.” “He rests in His love.” The whole tone of His dealings is, “I have loved with an everlasting love.”
(2.) It was love to prevent a breach of the covenant. Though the covenant is everlasting, it is expressly on the condition that His law is observed and His name glorified. Most of the Divine promises are conditional; few of them absolute. Were no change of circumstances to take place from those under which they were made, they would remain without change. But where such an alteration of circumstance occurs, the very unchangeableness of the Divine character requires that there be some alteration in the promise itself, or that it be not carried out, for it was made only as applicable to certain circumstances, and where these no longer exist the promise cannot apply. God promised to bless His people with blessings, but it was only as a holy and obedient people that He could possibly do so, in consistency with His character as a holy God. On their ceasing to manifest this character, God’s blessings towards them would cease to flow, yet not because of any change in His desire to love them, or fulfil His promises, but simply from the want of the necessary condition. The same character, however, always continuing, the promise would also always continue. There never was a promise made to carry a disobedient people into the land marked out for inheritance. For only loyal subjects of the God of Israel was it intended from the beginning. When, therefore, God dealt sharply with the sins of His people, He was really taking the direct course to prevent a direct breach of the covenant, and so was acting in the purest love.
(3.) It was love to teach the heart the bitterness of sin. That, in the first instance, is learned from the bitterness of its fruits. “The end of these things is death.” The chain becomes heavier at every step, for “the way of transgressors is hard.”
(a) God hides His countenance when His people sin against Him. “I will go and return to My place till they acknowledge their offence,” etc. (Hos_5:15.) That is usually the case when they prove stubborn, and “will not frame their doings to turn unto their God.” (Hos_5:4.) Sin in any form is unspeakably abhorrent to His holy nature. Intercourse with Him, therefore, cannot be granted to His children till they come to view their sins as He does. He would impress on them, that it is an exceeding evil and bitter thing to forsake Him as their chief good, and “cast off His fear from before their eyes.” (Psa_25:14; Mat_5:8; Heb_12:14.)
(b) An evil conscience troubles the soul. Conscience is either the best friend or the most terrible enemy the soul has. It is the echo of God’s voice in the inner man. The trouble which it can raise in the soul is like a spiritual earthquake, so profoundly are all things unsettled by it. The pleasures of sin are felt to have been purchased at a terrible price. “Thou art the man!” is rung in the ear with threatening emphasis, and the soul is glad at any price to buy back its former quietude. The sinner feels that his way is “hedged up with thorns,” while “trouble and anguish make him afraid” on every side. “A dreadful sound is in his ears. He is scared with dreams and terrified with visions.” He cries out in the bitterness of his soul—
“The fire that on my bosom preys
Is lone as some volcanic isle;
No torch is lighted at the blaze,
A funeral pile!”
At last, feeling the hopelessness of carrying on a war with God, and remembering that His mercies are great, he thinks of confessing his sin and returning to Him from whom he has deeply revolted. He takes up the language of the penitent spouse, and says, “I will go and return unto my first husband, for then it was better with me than now.”
(c) The mere cherishing of sinful thoughts in the soul causes misery. They pollute and degrade. The feelings that necessarily accompany them are shame, dread, and self-reproach. The soul is conscious of being deeply dishonoured, as was Cain when banished from the presence of the Lord. Sin is felt to be a great humiliation. It is like a bird of paradise dropping to the ground from mid-heaven, and trailing its wings in the mire. It is felt to be something abnormal, as if the wheels of life were moving backward. It is something strangely unnatural for the creature to rise in rebellion against the author of its being; and when conscience is awake, the instinctive experience of the heart is a thrill of horror, or a feeling of disquiet that is prophetic of a danger we cannot measure. Sin means the giving over of man’s nature to a vile use. It is the profanation of God’s holy image, and the rendering of the great gift of an immortal life not only practically worthless, but converting it into a boundless and intolerable misery. It implies the perversion of every faculty of our rational nature, and a total eclipse of its spiritual loveliness. It darkens the understanding, deflects the will, deadens the conscience, corrupts the affections, and subjects the reason and the moral instincts to the service of the appetites and the passions. Sin is in all respects the bane of the soul, of which it must absolutely get rid, if life and happinesss are to be enjoyed. Hence it is truest love to teach the bitterness of sin.
(4.) It is love to teach self-knowledge and humility.
(a) Self-knowledge. God’s people knew little of the real state of their own hearts—what a small foundation of goodness there was in them, and how even that was entirely owing to the grace of God. Hence the innumerable mistakes they were ever falling into when giving promises for the future. It was true love to discover the foundation of all these mistakes; and the proof that was made of Israel by the discipline to which it was subjected, was for the instruction of Israel itself, quite as much as for any other reason. To know one’s self is indispensable to make every other kind of knowledge valuable. The knowlege of ourselves as we stand before God is necessary in order to realise our guilt, and need of an Advocate—our vileness and need of cleansing. Heart-searching trials give this knowledge. Then our destitution of good, and natural corruption are made to appear. The man feels he must be speechless when the demand is made for a righteousness such as God can accept. A glance at that standard leads him to cry out, “Woe is me! for I am undone!”—“in me dwelleth no good thing.” The Laodicean Church imagined itself “rich,” etc. until put to the test by the Searcher of hearts; then it was found to be “wretched,” etc. (Rev_3:17).
(b) Humility goes with self-knowledge. “God led thee these forty years in the wilderness, to humble thee and prove thee, to know what was in thine heart,” etc. (Deu_8:2). It is humbling to feel that we are dependent for everything on the will of another. But it is crushing to our pride to be told, at the place of judgment, that, “from the sole of the foot even unto the head, there is no soundness in us, but all is wounds and bruises, and putrefying sores,” etc. The natural man’s natural plea should be, “God be merciful to me—the sinner!” And when the natural man becomes the spiritual man, his natural language will be, “By the grace of God I am what I am!” Poverty of all native goodness, with alienation from God, and a tendency to evil thoughts and desires, will be found to be more or less the state of every heart when discovered to itself.
(5.) It is love where a false character exists to have the discovery of it made in good time. God’s Israel was now beginning to prove “an empty vine bringing forth fruit only to himself.” Had this been allowed to go on, justice must ere long have required that the tree be “cut down as a cumberer of the ground.” Faithfulness to his interests prompted to the use of such means, as would seriously awaken his attention to the fact. Hence the trials which were now brought upon Israel. It is kind to “stony-ground” hearers to impress them with the fact that they have “no root” to their religion while going forward to meet the day of trial. For those who are “building on the sand,” it is truest kindness to have it thundered in their ears, that they may not lose a moment in quitting their ground, and placing all that is precious on the solid rock. Tests of the very strictest will be applied when the day of reckoning comes. As travellers are searched for contraband goods on crossing the frontier, so when the soul passes the boundary line between time and eternity will it be searched, lest it should have about it such forbidden things as unbelief, deceit, pride, lusts and passions, covetousness, and the like. For “they that cherish such things shall not inherit the kingdom of God.” It is true kindness to have all the chaff winnowed out of our character on this side of time, that we may enter the solemn world beyond with the true wheat alone. Trials put us through this preliminary winnowing process.
SUGGESTIONS AND COMMENTS.—Jdg_3:1-4
THE IMPORTANCE OF HAVING THE REAL CHARACTER REVEALED
I. Religious character is the most important thing about man before God. He is more important as a creature of intellect or imagination, of judgment or reasoning, than he is as an organism of flesh and blood. And in like manner he is greatly more important as an intelligence gifted with will, conscience, affections, and moral faculties, generally, than simply as a possessor of intellectual powers. Hence it is a spectacle of deeper interest to the Searcher of hearts, to behold the powers with which man worships and knows God, going out in proper exercise to their legitimate object, than to look on the exercise of the faculties which are either merely intellectual or physical.
God loves to see man’s heart going out to Himself as its chief good, and its affections clinging to Him as the highest and best of all objects. He loves to see the will, amid all the oscillations in the stormy sea of life, always deciding according to God’s will, as the needle follows the direction of the pole. He loves to see the conscience in man responding in perfect harmony to the teachings of the Divine law. He delights to see the whole soul bowing habitually in reverence before him. To his Creator, this is the most pleasing aspect which a creature made after His image can present.
And since man has lost this excellent disposition of his faculties, what God now delights in is, to see his disordered nature beginning, through His grace, to get back somewhat of its original exquisite balance. Hence He loves to try them, especially His own children, that He may see whether the heart will come back to Him in new obedience.
II. The foundation of God’s dealings with men must be made clear. It seems singular that God should apply tests to bring out men’s characters, though He already absolutely knows them. But in ruling over a world of men, God deals with things as they appear at men’s point of view. For Himself, He “knows what is in man,” without any use of means. His eye reads character with equal clearness, as it exists in embryo in the heart, as when it comes to full developement in the life. It reads the first emotion, or purpose of the heart, with equal distinctness, as it does the lines of the countenance, or the doing of the hand. To him “the darkness and the light are both alike.”
But that God may be glorified in the estimation of man, it is necessary that the grounds of His proceedure be to some extent made known to him. That of which He approves or disapproves must be made visible that man may understand the meaning of His providential rule; also men’s characters must appear in their actual conduct, that it may be known why He chastises on the one hand and blesses on the other. The grounds of His moral government with men, are either, what is brought out in their conduct, or what in their hearts they know themselves to be.
III. Men do not know even their own hearts till they are tried. Tests are often used to bring to light unsuspected evils. Peter little thought he was capable, when put under the pressure of a strong trial, of denying his Lord. David little supposed that, when left to himself, he could have gone so far in presumptuous sin, as he did in the matter of Uriah the Hittite. Hezekiah, when he was sick, little dreamt that he could have acted so vainglorious a part, as he did in parading his wealth before the deputies of the king of Babylon. His friends never supposed that in the heart of so meek a man, vanity of so rank a growth should be found.
In like manner, the people who had been called by Jehovah’s name, who had experienced numberless proofs of His fatherly care and love, and had had the most marvellous history the world ever saw, of Omnipotence itself interposing in their behalf, might have been expected to have been the most loyal of all people to their God, and the most unswerving in keeping His commandments. Yet at the very moment they were protesting fidelity, idolatry was appearing among them in the background, and ere long the mass of the people began to show an inveterate tendency to apostatize from the God of the covenant. It was fit that means should be used to bring out their real character, that they might know themselves.
THE DECEPTIVE CHARACTER OF SIN
“Sin deceives with appearing to be so little before it is committed. It seems so shallow, that I might wade through it dry-shod from any guiltiness; but when committed, it seems so deep, that I cannot escape without drowning. Thus I am always in extremities. Either my sins are so small, that they need not my repentance, or so great that they cannot obtain thy pardon.” [Thos. Fuller.]
“Some children, when they first put on new shoes, are very careful to keep them clean. They will hardly touch the ground with their feet, lest they should dirty the soles of their shoes. Yet, perhaps, next day they will trample with the same shoes in the mire up to their ankles. Children’s play is our earnest. On the day of vowing we are overscrupulous in our professions, yet, soon after, we wade in sin up to the ankles—nay; they go over our heads.”
[Thos. Fuller.]
THE USES OF DISCIPLINE
“The stones from the wall said, We come from the mountains far away—from the sides of the craggy hills. Fire and water worked on us for ages, but only made us crags. Human hands have made us into a dwelling, where the children of an immortal race are born, suffer, and rejoice; act their part during the morning of their existence, and perform the duties which belong to their earthly state of existence. But we have passed through much to fit us for this. Gunpowder has rent our very heart; pickaxes have cleaved and broken us; to us it seemed without meaning, as we lay misshapen stones in the quarry. Gradually we were cut into blocks, and some of us were chiselled with finer instruments to a sharper edge. But we are complete now—are in our places, and are of service. You are in the quarry still, not complete, and much seems inexplicable. But you are destined for a higher building; and one day you will be put in it by hands not human—a living stone in a living Temple.” [Parables in Household Things.]
Self-searching is an imperative duty in the first instance, “Examine yourselves—prove your own selves.” Much unsuspected sin exists in the hearts of the best of men which trial brings to light. The pond is often clear on the surface, but when it is stirred much foul sediment is found to have been lying at the bottom.
“ ‘Whose fan is in His hand.’ Well it fits Him, and He it. Could Satan’s clutches snatch the fan, what work he would make! He would winnow in a tempest and throw the best away. Had man the fan, out goes for chaff all that are opposed to the opinions of his party. But the fan is in a wise and faithful hand. Only He who knows the heart is fit to hold it.” [Thos. Fuller.]
MAIN HOMILETICS.—Jdg_3:4
IV. Obedience is with God the all-important requirement.
“To keep the commandments of the Lord” was the people’s term in the sacred covenant. To bless was God’s term; to obey was reasonably that of the people. “Fear God and keep His commandments; this is the whole duty of man.” To find the fruits of righteousness in the life, was the revenue of glory, which the Creator looked for in bringing His creature into existence. Never was the duty of obedience to the laws and statutes of the great Jehovah, more solemnly and affectingly impressed on men’s hearts and consciences, than in the illustration which we find in the book of Deuteronomy, from Judges 4 and onward. This, too, is the burden of every exhortation addressed by the servants of the Lord to the people. It is the natural condition laid down on which eternal life may be enjoyed. “If thou wilt enter into life, keep the commandments.”
1. Obedience is the index which shows that the heart is right with God. Not more certainly do the movements of the hands on the dial-plate indicate that the machinery is working correctly within, than does a regular walking in the way of God’s commandments prove, that the heart is faithful in its allegiance to its God. As the exercise of walking calls into play all the parts and faculties of the body, so does obedience call into exercise all the faculties, feelings, and principles of the soul, so that it becomes the offering of the whole man to God. It is the complement and the crown of devotion, meditation, and experimental feeling, and is the forthcoming of inward principle and inward purpose.
2. Obedience springs naturally from the fear and the love of God. The fear of God implies reverence for His authority, and shows itself by keeping His commandments. These two are always conjoined together in Scripture, as root and flower. But love must go with fear, for fear without love would be cold; but love produces the enthusiasm of fear.
3. In the Gospel obedience must spring from love. There man is dealt with as guilty, and so as having lost the true fear of God. This can only be got back through love. Love in the form of “love to Christ” becomes the spring of new obedience. “The great God, before whom man has fallen, restores him to obedience by leaving the throne of judgment, and coming down to him as a Friend and a Saviour. He descends, step by step, into closer relations of alliance, and binds men to Himself by personal ties until He reaches the lowest step, which is also the highest, for lowest condescension is highest love. He becomes one with men in all respects, especially in becoming sin that He might fully establish the claim of love, and so create obedience by attraction rather than command it by law. The Christian character of obedience is not built up like a cold and lifeless column, stone by stone—it grows like a tree from within, and its root is love to Christ.” [Ker.]
4. Obedience in the Gospel is the obedience of children. Those who continue to live ungodly after being dealt with by gospel motives, are called “sons of disobedience,” while those who yield to the gospel call are regarded as “obedient children” (see Eph_2:2 and 1Pe_1:14). The love and the honour which are implied in making them “sons of God,” are mighty motives to inspire them with an obedience that “runs in the way of God’s commandments.” “Of all children, the children of God are most obliged to obedience, for He is both the wisest, and the most loving of Fathers. The sum of all His commands is, that they endeavour to resemble Him (Mat_5:48; Lev_11:44). The imitation of this highest pattern—this primitive goodness—is the top of excellency. It is well said, ‘summa religionis est imitari quem colis.’ Children that resemble their fathers, as they grow in years grow the liker to them; so the children of God increase in resemblance, and are daily more and more renewed in His image. [Leighton.]
“All obedient believers are of near kin to Jesus Christ. They wear His name, bear His image, have His nature, are of His family. He loves them, and converses with them as His relations. He bids them welcome to His table, takes care of them, provides for them, and sees that they want for nothing. When He died, He left them rich legacies; now that He is in heaven, He keeps up a correspondence with them, and will in nothing fail to do the kinsman’s part.
[Henry.]
5. Obedience must be shown in the face of opposition. To show that it is not propped up merely, but has a root of its own. It must be of a robust, and not a sickly nature—able to withstand the force of a thousand breezes, and be only all the more firmly rooted in the soil. Steadfastness of obedience is very gloryfying to God. “Caleb had another spirit in him, and followed the Lord fully. He had no apprehensions when he looked at the dangers. He offered no objections and raised no difficulties. He had entire confidence in his God. The chariots of iron, the cities with walls up to heaven, the giant sons of Anak—all were nothing. With the eye of faith, he saw the Lord of Hosts going forth to battle before him, and treading down all enemies under His feet. ‘Only rebel not ye against the Lord,’ were his noble words. Consequences he left to omnipotence; his concern simply was to do his duty. Similarly did Nehemiah act. When all around him were giving way before the formidable dangers that were ever rising up, his uniform language was, ‘So did not I, because of the fear of God.’ ” [Gisborne.]
THE KIND OF OBEDIENCE DUE TO GOD
1. It must have respect to the authority of God. It does this or that from the motive, “Thus saith the Lord.”
2. It ought to be the best, and the most exact. The best of the flock was laid on the altar. “Hath the Lord as great delight in burnt offerings as in obeying the voice of the Lord?”
3. It must be sincere, and inward.
4. It must be sole obedience (Mat_4:10; Act_4:18-19).
5. It must be universal.
6. It must be indisputable. Readiness in the subject is of the essence of true obedience. This the centurion had from his soldiers, and God ought to have from all His servants. “Speak, Lord, thy servant heareth.” Thus did Abraham (Gen_22:3).
7. It ought to be joyful. “Meat and drink to do the will of our Father in heaven.” “I delight to do thy will, O, my God.
8. It ought to be perpetual. As man is a subject as soon as he is a creature, so he is a subject as long as he is a creature. God’s sovereignty is of perpetual duration as long as He is God. And as God cannot part with His sovereignty, neither can man be exempted from his subjection. Obedience is continued in heaven.
[Charnock.]
It should also be:—
1. Childlike and implicit.
2. Single-intentioned.
3. Unconstrained.
4. Eager and hearty.
5. All round the circle of duty.
6. Pure in motive and aim.
7. Faithful and true.
8. Unfaltering and firm.
MAIN HOMILETICS.—Jdg_3:1; Jdg_3:3; Jdg_3:5
II. God’s choice of instruments.
Scripture does not give us history from man’s point of view. It sees God as “King of all the earth,” reigning over the heathen and them that know Him not. So here, when describing the pivot on which the whole history turns, we do not read that the Canaanites, having recovered from the prostration caused them by the desolating sweep of the sword of Joshua, gathered up their strength anew to expel the presumptuous invaders of their territories, or try to crush them with a grinding servitude. But what is brought before us is, what the hand of the Lord did, and the instruments whom He employed to do His work. We are taught:—
1. God designates His own agency to do His work. “The Lord left these nations to prove Israel,” etc. It did not come about through the chances of war, through the turning of the wheel of fortune, or through the changes of time, which are always bringing up results that surprise us. The God who helped His people for the destruction of these nations for their sins, now, because of the apostasy of His people, strengthens these nations against them and employs them as fit instruments for doing His chastening work. He not only permits them to do what they did, but He gives them a Divine commission for doing it. As if He had said, “Go and scourge my people because of their grievous sins.” It is not any agencies at random that are so chosen, but certain specific nations whom the Divine wisdom selects. Besides the glory accruing to the Divine name from the doing of any work, there is the additional glory arising from the manner of doing it, God designates the instruments that He reckons the fittest—those, by whose doing it, most instruction will be conveyed. He puts His finger on the agencies He means to employ, and calls over their names at length in the hearing of all. He gives them in charge the particular work they have to do, and they are told off for the doing of it,—though all the while they know Him not, and do the work in reality from quite other motives, than that of a desire to serve and honour Him. Yet He puts His mark upon them beforehand, that it may be known that they are in His employment, so that what is done by them, may be understood to be really done by Him through their agency.
2. God selects His instruments from the camp of His enemies equally with His friends. His enemies do not cease to be His subjects, and His creatures though they have become rebels. He has not lost His right to command, though they have lost their will to obey. They are equally at His disposal with any of the loyal races, that people His dominions. Nor does He need to put any constraint on their free wills, to make them serve His purposes. He is so superior to them in the conduct of His moral government, as to lead them, all unconsciously, to carry out special designs and purposes of His own, while they have no other thought than to gratify their malicious purposes and cruel intentions.
(1.) God makes use of the enemies of His people as a rod to chastise them. They had ends of their own to serve. They wished to have some severe retaliation inflicted on these intruders from the wilderness, for having the best part of their country, taken from them, also their corn, their wine and their oil, and indeed for a complete spoliation made of their whole stock-in-trade, so that they were left with only fragments of territory, now in their possession. These Moabites, Canaanites, Philistines, Midianites and others, thought they were only favoured with excellent opportunities of taking revenge. Yet God was merely for a time—a time determined by His wisdom and love—delivering over His people to chastisement for their backslidings, that He might ere long convince them of the wisdom and necessity of returning unto Himself.
(2.) God has a place in His plans for the wicked to praise Him. “The Lord hath made all things for Himself, even the wicked for the day of evil.” Even some of the plagues of Egypt, it is said, were inflicted by God’s “sending evil angels among them.” Balaam God made use of to bless His people, when Balak would have cursed them altogether. Satan was made use of as an instrument to bring out, by his wicked devices, the utter spotlessness of the Saviour’s character. The efforts made by principalities and powers against man’s substitute, while they were allowed to do their worst as He hung on the cross, to get Him to mar His great work of silent uncomplaining suffering under the curse—by murmuring against God for the bitterness of the cup He was called on to drink, or by throwing up the cause of guilty men on account of their extreme ingratitude and wickedness—these, from their entire failure to gain their purpose, were overruled by God to bring out the perfect character of the offering made, on which men might build their hopes for the eternal future. Not only was the redeeming work not stopped—till the Sufferer could say, “It is finished”—but the gloriously excellent character of the work is brought out by the very efforts that were made to stop it.
3. A sinning people often supply the means of their own correction. The whole of these Canaanites were marked out for destruction. Their cup was full, the sentence against them was gone forth, and the people of Israel were appointed to execute it. So long as the firm hand of Joshua was at the helm, all went well, but when that hand withered in death, there was no other to strike in, and finish what was so well begun. It became irksome to put to death every idolater, young and old. Forgetful of the sins, of these Canaanites, and forgetful of the sacred charge laid upon them by their God to exterminate them, the people gradually shrunk back from their fulfilment of the duty, partly through sloth, and still more through the risks they ran in measuring swords with these stalwart natives of the soil. They did their work by halves, and came to the best terms they could with these enemies of their God. They lived with them as neighbours, and did business with them as traders. The demand made was virtually, to “cut off the right hand;” they chose instead to disobey their God; and, in righteous wisdom, God made their sin become the means of their punishment.
Did they spare the Canaanites? He also spared them, and allowed them to increase, and become strong in the land—the result being, that they became enemies always lying in ambush, and waiting their opportunity for slaking their thirst for revenge. Too truly did they prove “snares,” “traps,” and “scourges.” Had they been entirely rooted out, how many halcyon days of peace and true happiness would Israel have enjoyed, in a land which seemed little less than Paradise regained! How differently would their story have run! But their “own wickedness did correct them, their backslidings did reprove them.” Had Lot not sat down among the Sodomites, though well aware of the danger of moral contact with them, he would never have had such a fiery trial to go through in the end—with property lost and himself saved only “as by fire.” If David had not put his trust in the Philistines, instead of going forward in the path of duty, with his confidence solely in his God, he would have escaped the dire experience of that miserable morning, when he came upon the smoking ruins of Ziklag, and suddenly found the world turned into a desert before him!
“The sinners’ hands do make the snares
Wherewith themselves are caught.”
4. God can turn the most unlikely persons into fit instruments for doing His work.
(1.) These nations were unlikely instruments for doing God’s work. What purpose can be served by brambles, or upas trees growing in the garden of the Lord? What benefit to God’s church could ever be rendered by a people, that had sold themselves “to do evil, only evil, and that continually.” and who were now regarded as “reprobate”? How could it ever consist with propriety, that animals of the wolf species should lie down in the same fold with God’s sheep? Infallibly the wolf nature must quickly show itself, and deadly mischief be done. Yet the circumstances being abnormal, God uses an abnormal method of meeting them, and a valuable end is gained.
(2.) They served as tests of Israel’s character. As it was of their own choosing, God left His people to live side by side with the Canaanite, looking daily at the spectacle of idolatrous practices set before their eyes, so that it might be seen whether they would be allured by the objects and the ways of sin, and whether the needle of the heart pointed to the pole of allegiance, or that of apostasy. Had they been decided to “cleave to the Lord,” they would have rejected all the overtures used to turn them aside, but if secretly inclined to idol worship, they must certainly show it by the manner of associating with their sinful neighbours. The presence of these ungodly transgressors had the same influence on the ungodly heart, as the magnet has on the steel filings. Israel cannot be passive. If so, they were certain to be carried down the stream; if conscientious in their opposition to every feature and form of the prevailing sin, they must rouse themselves from their apathy, and resolutely take their stand on the side of Jehovah. The presence of these idol-worshippers was a touch-stone of character for the professing people of God.
(3.) Such a presence was a loud call to the exercise of prayer and faith. The Israelites, as a rule, were but children in the hands of strong men before these giant races. It was not by sword or spear they could hope to succeed in war, but only by earnest wrestling prayer, and the pleading of Divine promises specially given. Thus only could they hope that omnipotence would interpose on their behalf, and faith must ever enter into prayer. “Whatsoever ye shall ask in prayer, believing, ye shall receive.” Great faith in God’s word, and deep dependence on Him for hourly and daily protection, were specially called for. To believe that, in ways known only to Himself, He would deliver His people out of the hands of their enemies in due time, if they but proved true to Him—not to trust in human strength, skill, training, resources, or any thing of that kind, as the origin of the deliverance; but to trust that God Himself would be with them, and find the means of fighting their battles successfully in answer to believing prayer and righteous living before Him—that was to fight the “wars of Canaan” in the old spirit.
COMMENTS AND SUGGESTIONS.—Jdg_3:1; Jdg_3:3; Jdg_3:5
GOD GLORIFIED BY THE INSTRUMENTALITY HE EMPLOYS TO EXECUTE HIS WILL
I. By the variety of instruments He employs. We seldom find that the same nation twice over is employed to oppress Israel. As a rule, in each new case it is a different nation, and different kind of nation from the last that is employed.
(1.) God would have transgressors to learn how full His quiver is of arrows, so that it is impossible to contend with him in battle. He could in a moment make all things become our enemies. It is “as if a man did flee from a lion and a bear met him, or he went into the house and leaned his hand on the wall, and a serpent bit him.”
(2.) He would show how many unsuspected instruments of death are all around the wicked, but for His preventing their action. How easily could all the nations have been turned against Israel together, instead of one at a time! and how many were there of them! But for Divine protection, they were in constant peril. The Egyptians never suspected it was such a terrible thing to contend with the God of the nation they held in captivity, till they found the vast variety and terrible character of the weapons which He could bring against them—in turning their waters into blood, filling their houses with frogs, making the dust of the land become lice, filling the air with swarms of flies, and again with swarms of locusts, smiting down all herbs and trees of the land by destructive hail mingled with fire, sending a murrain on the beasts, and severe boils on the men and women, not to speak of the terrible doom of all the firstborn. “Thou, even Thou, art to be feared, and who may stand in Thy sight, when once Thou art angry?” He does not need to go to a distance for troops to fight His battles. He can raise them up at hand at a moment’s notice when the occasion requires. Happy are the people that are protected by the God of Jacob as their God.
(3.) It suggests the thought that the universe itself is but a vast armoury, full of instruments at the disposal of Jehovah, to carry out His will. (Psa_103:19.) The armies that are in heaven are His armies—“His hosts,” that do His pleasure. The place of supreme power is also the home of the good, and by all such His will is done. That world is a model of obedience. His will is done naturally, freely, implicitly, universally. It is done joyfully, swiftly, enthusiastically. There “His servants do serve Him, resting not day nor night in His service.” “Their plume never droops, their fervour never sleeps.” The swift-winged seraphim, with outstretched wing, stand ready, at a moment’s notice, to fly through the heavens, to execute the behests that issue from the throne before which they stand. In the kingdom of Providence, He who rules is attended by multitudes of spirits that are in the midst of the wheels, that are “full of eyes,” by whom the wheels are turned, and all of whom “go straight forward.” In fulfilling the instructions given them, these agents “run and return like a flash of lightning,” to show the extreme alacrity of their obedience. The very lightnings of heaven, when they hear His voice, report themselves and say, “Here we are!”
“He has all the creatures at His beck, and can commission any of them to be a dreadful scourge. Strong winds and tempests fulfil His word. He can make an army of locusts become as mischievous as an army of lions; can forge the meanest creatures into swords and arrows, and commission the most despicable to be His executioners. He can never want weapons who is Sovereign over the thunders of heaven, and the stones of the earth, and can, by a single word, turn our comforts into curses. He calls the caterpillar and the palmer-worm His “great army,” that climb walls without opposition, and march without breaking their ranks. He can restrain men from carrying out evil designs against His people. He kept back Saul, who, like a hawk, was pursuing David as a partridge among the mountains, when a special message came, that the Philistines had invaded the land, so that the persecutor was obliged to go elsewhere. He also put a check on the wicked men, who had gone so far in their malice as to crucify the Lord of glory, so that at first they did not absolutely oppose the preaching of the cross by the apostles. He that restrained the roaring lion of hell himself, also restrained his whelps on earth. The lions out of the den, as well as those in the den, are bridled by Him in favour of His Daniels.” [Charnock.]
II. By the liberty of action He allows to those who are held as instruments in His hands. God never restrains the free action of the human will. If He did so, it would destroy the foundation of human responsibility. That rests on the fact, that man is free to decide according to his pleasure. Were he not free so to decide, the decision would not be his, but that of another by whom his will was coerced. We say nothing at present about the depravity of the will, and of its constant inclination to evil. Every man is conscious that, notwithstanding his depravity of nature, his will is still free; he is not compelled either by God to do a good act, or by Satan to do an evil one. However much he may be influenced by others, he yet feels that every act which he does is his own act.
Men’s freedom of action consistent with God’s control over them as instruments. When God employed any of these kings, such as Eglon or Chushanrishathaim, to test the character of Israel and to chastise them, He was not known to either of those kings, nor did He begin by making Himself known to them. Their hearts were already entirely in His hands, and He could turn them as he pleased, though He should remain entirely unknown to them. He has Himself laid down the laws by which the movements of every heart are regulated, and in all His dealings with men, He shows respect to the laws which He has laid down. He has made it a rule of our nature, that the will should be influenced by motives, and of these motives, however numerous they may be, He has such an absolute knowledge—both of actual and possible motives—and also such an absolute control of these motives, in adjusting them in any manner he pleases, in the case of every individual heart, that he can foretell, and even fix beforehand with infallible exactness, what the decision of that will shall be, in regard to any one matter, without in the slightest degree interfering with its freedom of action.
Practical Illustration. The motives present to the minds of these two heathen kings, which induced them to go against Israel to oppress them, were as far as possible, away from any idea of causing Israel to pass through a salutary discipline, and this by the command of Israel’s God. They were altogether the reverse of what could be pleasing to that holy God. Yet He, of set design, allowed them to go forward with their own evil intentions in view, just in so far as it suited His own purpose, but not a moment longer. Then the current was changed, or was entirely stopped. Their motives were a desire for revenge, thirst for conquest, exaction of tribute, an extension of territory, and especially a boasting of the superiority of their gods. The incentives to their action were thus entirely wrong, but the action itself was exactly in the direction of the Divine purposes, and God was pleased to use them as His instruments accordingly. In acting from such motives, or with a view to such ends, they deeply incurred the wrath of Jehovah, more especially for these two things—their maltreatment of a nation that was now sacred in God’s estimation. “He that toucheth you, toucheth the apple of mine eye.” Also, for their daring to slight the authority, and despise the name of Israel’s God. On these two accounts mainly, great wrath went forth from Jehovah against them, which ended in their destruction.
Assyria and Babylon were long employed as God’s instruments in punishing the nations for their sins. But to punish them for their sins against Jehovah, was not their meaning in doing what they did (Isa_10:6-7). When therefore the work was done, the manner in which the rod had dared to shake itself against Him who wielded it came before God in judgment, and it was flung out of His hand as fuel into the fire (Isa_10:12-15). Babylon also was wielded by the Ruler among the nations as His battle-axe and hammer, and a whole list of nations was marked out for him to destroy (Jeremiah 25), and another list was made out to be put in servitude (Jeremiah 27). But the executioner of God’s designs in these cases had wicked motives in his heart, and wicked aims before his eyes, and his time of reckoning also came. Babylon was “rolled down from the rocks,” and broken in pieces, because of all the “evil it had done in Zion,” and of the contempt with which it had treated the sacred name of Jehovah (Jeremiah 50, 51)
MAIN HOMILETICS.—Jdg_3:1-2; Jdg_3:4
III. The tendency of the covenant people to apostatise from their God.
This is always the most visible thing in the page of Israel’s history. Other things may be traced only in faint and indistinct lines; but this is always broadly marked.
1. It is what might have been least expected. Situated as they were, they were the most favourable specimen of the human race to show the spirit of true allegiance. None were so highly privileged; none so well trained; none had such an excellent parentage; none had been the children of so many prayers; none were the heirs of so many promises; none had had set before them such force of motive in the noble obedience of a remarkably pious ancestry; none had had such striking patterns of fidelity to God set before them in the case of their national leaders; none had seen such a series of gracious interpositions of the hand of Omnipotence on their behalf;—in short, nothing but the firmest attachment to the God of their fathers, might have been expected of these children of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob—Abraham, the “friend of God;” Isaac, the man of devout meditation and readiness to sacrifice his life at the call of his God; Jacob, the man who, as a prince above other men, had power even with God in prayer, and prevailed. What a force of holy example did such men leave behind them for the good of their descendants!” What specimens of faith, of self-denial, and true fear of God did they exhibit!” Under what a hallowed roof-tree were their children cradled! Could a richer or fatter soil be found in which to plant the young shoots of a coming generation? Did ever richer dews or warmer breezes come from the Lord to foster any flowers that were put into His garden, than in the case of that generation which “entered into the rest” of the lion-hearted Joshua? And yet if anything is clear about them, it is that they showed a tendency to apostatise from their God!
2. The root-cause lies in the depravity of the human heart. There is within men an “evil heart of unbelief departing from the living God.” The character of the fountain is seen in the muddy nature of the stream. The disposition of the heart to go away from God, is not occasional or changeable, but it is in the very constitution, and is abiding. “The carnal mind is enmity against God.” The current flows uniformly in one and the same direction. Its tendency is fixed. After the miserable exhibition made by the descendants of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, what shall be said for the children of any other class of parents? We fear nothing can come out of it but the old conclusion, which we must write down once more—“there is none that doeth good, no not one!”
3. Remissness of parental training one of the immediate causes. The generation that formed the Israel of the day in this third chapter, were not those who had seen the Divine wonders of power and grace that distinguished the golden age of the immediate past, but those who followed after, and had only heard of such mighty acts. But no duty was more imperative on those who had seen and taken part in them, than to imprint the whole record diligently on the minds and memories of the rising generation. This was the fixed rule with regard to the whole history of this people from age to age—that one generation should instruct the one that followed it, and that again those that followed after, in regular succession. This was a binding duty (Psa_78:3-8; Deu_6:2; Deu_6:7-9; Deu_6:20-25).
Parental training had a very important place among God’s people, for, first—
(a) God meant the lessons imparted to one age to be learned equally by all succeeding ages. He deals with all the generations of Israel as but one people. He appeals to any one generation by arguments drawn from what He had done to previous generations, or from obligations undertaken by these previous generations, as if they were identical with the generation immediately addressed. And this bond of intimate union of the different generations in one people, could only be sustained by a very full, faithful, and persevering course of instruction and pious example, such as is implied in the exercise of parental training.
(b) The children were taken into the covenant equally with the parents. Hence parental training became a sacred duty. The children are expressly mentioned as being present, along with their fathers and mothers, at the first great convocation, held when they were being devoted to the Lord as a whole people, in view of their being about to enter the land of their inheritance. (Deu_29:10-13). The charge of obedience is laid on the children equally with the parents (Deu_30:2).
(c) A special command for instructing the children in God’s law was given in perpetuity. Once every seven years was the great law of the covenant to be read aloud in the hearing of all Israel, and the children were then to be specially instructed (Deu_31:9-13).
(d) The young people of the early ages of Israel’s history were specially dependant on parental training. In times when writing was rare, reading as an art must have been very imperfect. Thus the young received all their knowledge in the form of oral instruction from the old. Besides, this dependance was all the greater, that the instructions which the young Israelites received from their God, were so widely different from those required of the children whose parents worshipped other gods, and required much greater self-denial.
(e) Difficulties of parental training under the circumstances. This training was conducted with fewer facilities, and amid more discouraging circumstances, than it is with us, so that less good fruit might reasonably be looked for than we are accustomed to do. From the severity of the trial of character, to which the whole people were subjected in so strongly idolatrous an atmosphere, those who were false in profession would quickly become supine in the discharge of duties for which they had no heart, while among the steadfast few there would be many a David, who never said to his Adonijah, “What doest thou?” or many an Eli, who “heard of his sons making themselves vile,” through idolatrous practices, and “he restrained them not.” And there might be few Abrahams, of whom God said as to parental training, “I know Abraham, that he will command his children, and household after him, and they shall keep the way of the Lord.” Thus may we account, in considerable part, for the subsidence into idolatrous practices, which quickly became general over the land.
IV. Each new generation requires in some degree to be taught by an experience of its own.
Parental training is not enough. It seems strange that both a history, and a law, which were so repeatedly impressed on the minds of the whole people, first under Moses, and then under Joshua, should not have so penetrated into the very heart of the nation, as to have been engraven with an iron pen, to last for many generations, if not for ever. And yet those laws which were proclaimed literally in notes of thunder from heaven, and those facts of extraordinary strength, which make up the stirring history of Joshua’s days, seem not to have got so deep into the minds of the Israelitish nation, but that in the very next generation, there was need for farther instruction in the same lessons. Those who had not actually seen the doing of the Lord, and witnessed the operations of His hand, required to be put through, on a small scale, the experience of the fathers. This teaches the following lessons:—
1. The strange incapacity of the human heart for receiving Divine lessons.
(a) Scripture—makes it the cardinal error of our fallen race, that “there is none that have understanding to seek after God.” as the first thing a creature should do (Rom_3:11). The people that were of all others the best instructed in the knowledge of God, who were taught it all their life, through “precept on precept, line on line,” are yet continually charged with being “a nation void of counsel, neither having any understanding”—“fools and blind”—even “sottish children,” “who have eyes and see not, ears and hear not, whose hearts have waxed gross, and their ears are dull of hearing,”—who know less of their God in the spiritual world, than “the stork in the heaven, the turtle, the crane, and the swallow” know of the laws which affect them in the natural world. Even the knowledge of “the ox,” and “the ass,” for practical purposes, is said to be superior to that of God’s own people. Well may the account be wound up with the statement, “my people are destroyed for lack of knowledge. And they are suitably addressed in such lines as these:—
“Ye brutish people understand,
Fools! when wise will ye grow?”
(b) Experience. As regards practical proof, we might say, it would take a less force to make water and oil mix together, than to induce the human heart to take an everlasting embrace of God’s holy truth.
(c) The names given to man in his natural state. Take one as a specimen—the name “Fool,” so often applied to those who know not God. This word not only indicates that man is ignorant, and without discretion, but also that he is unimprovable, under a spell, or infatuated. And the difficulty of teaching a fool any lesson of practical wisdom, is that he has no natural receptivity for it. “Reproof entereth more into a wise man than a hundred stripes into a fool.” Yea, “though thou shouldest bray a fool in a mortar, yet will not his foolishness depart from him” (Pro_17:10; Pro_27:22). Those who cannot catch God’s meaning at once, by a slight indication, or a significant movement of the eye, must be treated like the dull horse or mule who understand nothing save the bridle, or the lash (Psa_32:8-9). What stubbornness characterises the human heart in receiving God’s holy truth!
2. Personal experience is the most effective method of teaching. The persons now to be instructed are those, who “had not known the wars of Canaan” by personal experience. God was now to put them through some of the experience, which the fathers had to go through. No knowledge is so effectually gained, as that which comes in this manner. Teaching by testimony, or report, exercises but a slight influence, compared with that which is gained by personally passing through all the circumstances of any particular scene.
(a) A more vivid impression is made. It is when knowledge passes in direct, through the five gates of the senses, that it gets the best hearing from the understanding, and makes the deepest impression on the heart. Everything is distinctly realised, and felt to be an actual fact. All passes before the eye and is no dream. There is no comparison, as to vividness of impression made by things known through personal experience, and things known only by hearsay.
(b) Personal interests are more deeply touched. It was one thing for this people to believe it as a tale that was told them, that through the Divine promise given, it was possible to fight all the giants and subdue mighty armies, for that had now become matter of history. But to see the lions at hand, to witness with their own eyes the ferocious Canaanites mustering their forces to battle, with a weight of armour, strength of bone and muscle, and equipment for the field far superior to their own, while yet they were successful in the conflict—this was to give the knowledge of experience, and teach what mighty things prayer could do, when it had Divine promises to plead—what trust in the character of the covenant God could do—and what good issue could arise from obedience to the Divine commandments in the practical duties of life.
Examples.—It was said of the good Richard Cecil, when leaving a sick bed, where he had been confined for upwards of six weeks, a friend remarked to him he had lost much precious time lying on that couch. “No,” he replied, “the time has not been lost. I have learned more within these curtains during these weeks, than I learned during all my academical course at the university.” Joseph, too, learned the lessons which served him so well in after life, more effectually in the pit of Dothan, and the dungeons of Egypt, amid cruelty, injustice, and desertion of friends, than he ever could have done under the wing of parental indulgence in his natural home. Suffering is the most effective of teachers.
3. Each generation must have a character of its own, and answer for itself. The parent cannot believe for the child, neither can the child inherit the faith, the prayerful spirit, and the religious worth of the parent merely from the fact that he is a child. However valuable the inheritance of piety, of faith, and godliness, left by those who had gone before, it was still imperative on the young generations after Joshua’s days, to know for themselves the sacred principles, by observing which they gained possession of their inheritance, and still retained it in possession. God dealt with each generation according to its own character, sending evil and dark days, or days of bright sunshine and prosperity, as their conduct was pleasing or displeasing to His Holy eye.
COMMENTS AND SUGGESTIONS.—Jdg_3:1-2; Jdg_3:4
THE DIFFICULTY OF GETTING DIVINE TRUTH INTO THE HEART
1. How much care and many arguments are used in vain. Why so much pains taken to instruct the coming generations. If the heart had been ordinarily willing to receive such precious truths, and to be taught such impressive lessons, no argument would have been necessary, and the only difficulty would have been to have rejected them. Yet arguments need to be employed for a whole lifetime, and kept up from generation to generation, to keep the people at the exercise of faith and obedience—sad proof that the “natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God,” etc.
2. The facility with which the heart lets slip the Divine teachings. It is like “the morning cloud and the early dew.” What earnest effort and intense anxiety are needed to retain truth which is already imparted! “Give earnest heed to the things you have heard, lest you should drift away from them.” (see Heb_2:1, revised version). “Take fast hold—keep—let not go” (Pro_4:13). As oil runs off water without uniting with its drops, so do God’s most impressive teachings pass off without mixing with the deep convictions of the heart. The young Israelites of the next generation, doubtless, heard a great deal about the glorious transactions of their national history, which made them the envy and the wonder of every land. The mere tale of such deeds should have sufficed, to rivet in their hearts for ever a sense of their obligations to the covenant God. Yet how faint the impression made! At the first rough blast of trial, it was found they had such a slender hold of religious principle that they gave up the services of Jehovah and accepted those of Baal.
3. When milder means do not suffice to educate men in religious duty, sterner measures are held in reserve. When these young Israelites would not listen to the quiet teachings of faithful parents, they had ere long to go forth and meet the Canaanite in the open field, and learn, in the stern work of actual war, those lessons which they were so slow to acquire around the domestic hearth. What an illustration of the inveterate tendency of the heart to reject and push aside spiritual appeals! It remains,
“Though woo’d and aw’d,
A flagrant rebel still.”
When the father’s kindly hand and the mother’s soft touch had no effect, God’s people must be given up to the handling of the rugged nurse—Adversity, that through her more rigorous discipline they might, by any means, come to learn practical wisdom.
PIOUS PARENTS MAY HAVE ERRING CHILDREN
1. Religious character does not depend on natural birth.
“That which is born of the flesh is flesh.” The corrupt nature which is common to our race is transmitted by natural law. Proofs of this are unfailingly given in every life. “There is not a just man upon earth that doeth good and sinneth not.” The undoubtedly pious son of the God-fearing Jesse tells us, he did not get his piety from his parentage. He says, “Behold, I was shapen in iniquity, and in sin did my mother conceive me.” And the Saviour affirms that every man, to be fit for His kingdom, must be “born again.” Thus, no generation, however pious, can give security that their children will be the same that they have been. The result is, that none are pious by birth. “Grace does not run in the blood,” as Eli, Aaron, Noah, David, and even Samuel (1Sa_8:3; 1Sa_8:5), knew to their cost.
2. Yet the children of godly parents are often pious. Though grace does not run in the blood, it does often run in the line. The line of Seth seems to have been the line of the godly, and it continued for centuries. The line of Eleazar’s priesthood appears to have gone on from the day that the people took possession of their inheritance, until the day when they were driven out of it into captivity, with only a few breaks (from Eli to the expulsion of Abiathar, 1Ki_2:27)—or more than a thousand years—most of whom, if not all, appear to have been men worthy of their office. The line of Abraham is also a strong case.
3. Special advantages belong to the seed of the godly. There is—
(1). The standing special promise which God makes to all believing parents. “I will be a God to thee and thy seed after thee.” It is indeed conditional; but when the condition is fulfilled, or in the degree in which it is fulfilled, the promise is sure.
(2). They are usually the children of many prayers. Where parents neglect this duty it is cruelty to the children. Every parent should not only pray, but “travail in birth” again, till Christ is born in every child that God has given them. Look at the mothers of Augustine and John Newton.
(3). They have commonly the benefit of a good example set before them. This, though not alone sufficient, has in it all the teaching force which the silent presentation of religious realities can give. Example is often more effectual than precept.
(4). They are usually the subjects of a pious training. Parents who fear God themselves are required to “bring up their children in the nurture and admonition of the Lord.” They also have the promise, “Train up a child in the way that he should go, and when he is old, he will not depart from it.”
(5). For the most part they are in the company of the righteous. They are led “in the footsteps of the flock.” The natural principle of imitation—so strong in the young mind—is thus utilised to lead them to do as the righteous do.
4. Illustration of a degenerate seed springing from godly parents. The generation that entered Canaan under Joshua, are supposed to have been more pious than almost any other through the whole history of that people. Of this we have proof in the great outstanding fact, that “by faith they Subdued kingdoms,” over the whole length and breadth of the land (Joshua 2-11). Another proof of fidelity to principle we have in Joshua 22. Yet a large number of their children, and nearly all their grandchildren, became idolaters, and required dealing of the severest kind to bring them back to God.
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.
F. W. Grant 1903 · Public Domain Subdivision 1. (Jdg 3:5-11.)
Subdivision 1. (Jdg 3:5-11.)
The first step toward ruin -independence of God.
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The first of these captivities gives us the root-principle of all, which is indeed but sin, and sin has but one definition in Scripture -"lawlessness" (1Jn 3:4): rightly so given in the Revised Version, where the common one has "the transgression of the law." This the word does not mean; and the real thought is a much deeper one. Where law is, sin manifests itself in the transgression of it: of that there is, of course, no question; nay, it was the purpose of the law to manifest it, and "by the law is the knowledge of sin." (Rom 3:20.) "I had not known sin," says the apostle, "except the law had said, Thou shalt not covet" -"lust;" "but sin, taking occasion by the commandment, wrought in me all manner of lust" (Rom 7:7-8). Sin therefore is deeper and more radical than even the "lust" which it works. Sin is the parent; lust is the child. "Lawlessness" is the unsubject spirit of self-will, which in the creature away from God shows itself as want, in cravings which find no satisfaction, and thus rule the man. "Their god is their belly," says the apostle, of such. (Php 3:19.) This is the misery of the creature out of the creature’s place, of independence on the part of one who is necessarily dependent.
This is what is seen in the people here. They forget Jehovah their God, form alliances with the people round them after their own will, and end in bondage to false gods -the Baals and the Asherahs, or images of Ashtoreth. Jehovah sells them therefore into the hand of Cushan-rishathaim, king of Mesopotamia, and they serve him for eight years.
This king of Mesopotamia, what does he represent? If it be indeed the chain of our own sins that holds us, then he should in some way be the reflection of the people’s condition. His name is a remarkable one, meaning "blackness of double wickedness;" and the dual form here one can hardly avoid connecting with that of the country over which he rules, which is literally "Aram of the two rivers." Aram means "exalted," and is taken generally to refer to the "high land" of Syria, as contrasted with the Canaanitish "lowland;" but, whatever truth there may be in this, we may be sure it does not exclude that spiritual application for which we are in search all through, and which as such is necessarily of so much higher importance.
Aram was the fifth son of Shem, whose children taken together, and with his own, present a group of names of remarkable significance. Shem means "name," and his blessing is in his connection with Jehovah his God, who reveals Himself to him, makes him, that is, to know His Name. Shem is thus marked out as the vessel of divine revelation.
His sons’ names seem to carry on this thought, the numerical order certifying it throughout. Here we have —
1. Elam, which, as a form of olam, is the ordinary Hebrew word for "everlasting." This is the first and simplest thought of God, the first word of revelation as to Him.
2. Asshur, "step," speaks of it as progressive. Only little by little has God, in fact, been able to declare Himself (Heb 1:1); hindered, as is plain, by the needs of man himself; who had to be prepared to receive the revelation. Nay, when the dispensations were ready, man was not; and He in whom at length God spake to man face to face was taken by wicked hands, crucified, and slain. Yet this also was in the counsels of God for the meeting of man’s deepest need, as we well know; and thus alone was accomplished the full manifestation of Himself.
3. Three is the number of manifestation, and if the names here speak as we credit them with doing, Arphaxad (properly Arphachshad) should give voice to this. It is confessedly a difficult word to interpret, and the meaning assigned by Ewald, "stronghold of the Chaldees," spite of its acceptance by some authorities, seems everyway strained and fanciful. "One that heals," or "releases," has been suggested with much more probability; but this in fact only accounts for the first two syllables of the name, to which the last would add the thought of pouring out, our own word "shed" being probably derived from it, and certainly its equivalent. But how clearly and appropriately would "remitting by shedding forth" speak of the great mystery of the Cross, the mystery in which God is truly manifest! How can it be accounted for, that every thing so perfectly fits together but by the truth of what is so consistently shown forth?
4. Then, in the fourth place, which we know to be that of the creature, we have what as fully agrees with it, yet how strangely in the revelation of God -Lud, "born"! Yet so must He be, who, being God, becomes the Saviour of men, to remit by shedding forth: and "without shedding of blood is no remission." Coming down, then, to man’s estate, and as man dying for us, He rises up into the place of power -power acquired by suffering; and of this —
5. Aram, "exalted," under the number which speaks of reward, fittingly and finally speaks. Thus the series is evidently complete.
That we may adopt every safeguard against deception, however, let us, from the same genealogy in Genesis, consider in the same way the sons of Aram, who ought, one would say, to continue this line of thought, and speak of the fruits of this exaltation of the man Christ Jesus to the place where now we know Him. The sons of Aram are four: "Uz and Hul and Gether and Mash;" and this is as far as his line is continued in Scripture.
(1) Uz, from atzah, "made firm." This is numerically plain, and plain also in its application to the risen and glorified Saviour. The abiding place He has taken as Man, He has taken also for men, His people. Our position is the fruit of His position: we are one with Him -identified with Him -"accepted in the Beloved;" and this is evidently the fundamental blessing for us in connection with His exaltation. That is, Uz is, in spiritual order, as well as in the genealogical table, the first son of Aram.
(2) Hul is the second son. And Hui (chul), from chalal, would mean "opened, penetrated, entered into." This under the number of association, fellowship, and in the connection in which we find it here, cannot be for a moment doubtful as to its meaning. Christ exalted has entered the sanctuary for us the veil is rent, and God is in the light: our fellowship is with the Father and the Son. This too is in perfect spiritual order: Hul follows Uz at once, but could not precede him.
(3) We have Gether -a very difficult word. Gesenius, collating with the Syriac, gives it the meaning of "dregs, sediment" -every way an unlikely and unsuitable one. If Hebrew, it would seem to be a contraction from two words, which may be gahah and jether. The first of these means to "heal, restore"; the second we have had in its intensive form in Jattir (page 110, n), and means "excellence," or "exceedingly more." If Gether might thus speak of a restoration going beyond the original condition, it would suit the number, which is that of revival, recovery, and the line of thought as well. Yet this interpretation is, of course, conjectural only, to be held only as long as there is nothing better.
(4) Mash, from mush, is to "feel" -to "know by feeling"; and, in the fourth place, shows what the Lord as man has taken up with Him to His place of exaltation. Its appositeness in this series of names of the ascended Lord, none will deny. And thus the meaning of Aram, as we have taken it, seems confirmed on all sides.
Beautiful, however, as are these names thus joined together, we easily understand how in a world like this, and as connected with the human generations for which they staid, they soon scatter and fall away from one another, and thus lose their meaning and their beauty as united. The sentences become but broken words, capable of very different, even of opposite, suggestion. The Shemite families, as they scattered and multiplied into nations, lost almost entirely the promise of their origin. Their primitive worship became corrupted into a dark and debasing idolatry; and the Aram-naharaim of the book of Judges is ruled over by the ominous king whom we find now tyrannizing over Israel.
The resemblance of Mesopotamia to Egypt is striking enough. They are alike oases which interrupt a broad belt of desert land which stretches from West to East across Africa and Asia, "reaching from the Atlantic on the one hand nearly to the Yellow Sea on the other." It is a low level plain as far as the country we are speaking of, afterwards rising in high plateaus "having from 3,000 to near 10,000 feet of elevation." "Where the belt of sand is intersected by the valley of the Nile, no marked change of elevation occurs; and the continuous low desert is merely interrupted by a few miles of green and cultivable land, the whole of which is just as smooth and flat as the waste on either side of it." Egypt, as we know, is the product of its great river; and so also with the country with which we have now to do. "Known to the Jews as Aram-naharaim, or Syria of the two rivers; ’to the Greeks and Romans as Mesopotamia, or the between-river country’; to the Arabs as Al-Jezireh, or ’the island,’ this district has always taken its name from the streams which constitute its most striking feature, and to which, in fact, it owes its existence. If it were not for the two great rivers -the Tigris and Euphrates -with their tributaries, the more northern part of the Mesopotamian lowland would in no respect differ from the Syro-Arabian desert on which it adjoins, and which in latitude, elevation, and general geological character, it exactly resembles. Toward the south the importance of the rivers is still greater; for of lower Mesopotamia it may be said, with more truth than of Egypt, that it is ’an acquired land,’ the actual ’gift’ of the two streams which wash it on either side; being, as it is, entirely a recent formation -a deposit which the streams have made in the shallow waters of a gulf, into which they have flowed for many ages."
(Rawlinson.) Thus both Lower and Upper Egypt are represented in what is indeed Aram of the two rivers.
And to this we may add the name of the king as a further link. Chushan and Cush are radically the same, and the Cushite kingdom of Nimrod had long before been established on the Euphrates. But Cush was the brother of Mizraim, the founder of Egypt, and the Cushites derived from Egypt their religion. One branch of them were the Ethiopians of history, whose name with those of Cush and Ham speaks of their dark complexion.
This Hamite kingdom among the Shemites is itself an evidence of degradation, which the emphatic title of "doubly wicked" for the king confirms and intensifies. As already said, one can hardly help connecting it with the "double river" of the land over which he reigns, and this would be strictly according to the similitude of Egypt, whose river became their dependence, sustaining them in their independence of heaven. Man’s blessings lead him thus (how often!) away from the Giver of them; and the greater the blessing, the farther from God: the greater the goodness He has shown, the worse the corruption of it. Now Aram, as we have seen, speaks of humanity exalted in Christ, man in the fullest blessing he can know, and thus in the typical application the intensity of evil connected with it here may be accounted for. Even the apostle, after being taken up to Paradise, needed a thorn in the flesh to prevent self-exaltation. And the professing Church, how soon did it become lifted up with pride, to fall into depths of unimaginable wickedness! Babylon stood in lower Mesopotamia, and thus we may see how consistent are the surroundings of the picture put before us here.
In its fruits, however multiform, evil is, in its essential principle, absolutely one. The creature leaving the creature place -setting itself up in independence of God: -this is its character at bottom ever. Thus the light is darkened with us, and the terrible slavery to a depraved will results. We need not, therefore, be at a loss as to what Chushan-rishathaim represents. The first step on the downward path to ruin is always the same.
Othniel is here the suited deliverer. No details of the warfare are recorded at all; our eyes are kept fixed upon the man himself. It is repeated for us that he is in close relation with Caleb, the "whole-hearted," and the son of Kenaz, "recipient of strength." His own name is more doubtful: from the Arabic it has been taken to be "lion of God"; Jerome gave it as "my time is of God"; others again give "God is power." In any case the consciousness of dependence is emphasized, and its relation to single-eyed obedience; and thus we have what is the key-note of victory over the king of A ram. Let us remember, although we shall not have the mere repetition of this in after-deliverances, that this is really fundamental to them all. Not till we get back to this is the path of departure retraced to its beginning, and the restoration of the soul effected. Notice the order here: "and he judged Israel, and went out to war." Thus he prevails.
Subdivision 2. (Jdg 3:12-31.)
The Moabite and Philistine inroads: profession.
1. In the second captivity it is Moab into whose hands they fall; and now we begin to see the definite forms of evil that have afflicted the church. Moab, if we have interpreted rightly, stands for mere profession (Deu 2:8 sq. n.); and it was not long before this condition, in fact, arose. The first parable of the kingdom (Mat 3:1-17) prepares us for it. The epistles show us the increase of the false disciples, for which the epistle of John provides tests. The book of Revelation shows us the church at Sardis already dead, and others in various not far removed conditions. Church-history, outside of Scripture, too sadly confirms what such things imply: the church proper soon becomes what is sorrowfully known as the church invisible.
Eglon is king of Moab at this time. His name we have seen as that of one of the cities of Canaan taken by Joshua, and it should have the same significance. There we saw it as reminding us of the perpetual revolution of earthly things, like that of the earth itself, swinging in its yearly orbit. So with the changing seasons all things change and pass -everything fair in its season, and only for its season. Now the church, becoming characteristically profession merely, comes under this law of change and decay, under which the world is. Earthly conditions influence and give it shape. Providences -"bit and bridle" -rule it, and not Scripture. It becomes the creature of circumstances, exalted by the favor of man, depressed if this is withdrawn. The world, under its law of change and decay, was no such mystery to the wise man in Israel as the phases of the church are to the man who has been taught of God its principles and privileges. And the fundamental reason for this condition, next to and proceeding from the root of independence which we have already looked at, is to be found in a Moabite conquest -such as here the history of Israel so vividly depicts.
With the Moabite, Ammon and Amalek come into the land; and this is perfectly simple and intelligible. An unconverted profession gathers to itself all heresies and makes room for all the lusts of the flesh. Then they take the "city of palms" (Jericho, without the name -Deu 34:3), and the world revives there under Moabite protection and the cover of practical righteousness, which the palm-tree, as we know, represents. This is always the strong point for the professor: "He can’t be wrong whose life is in the right."
Moab’s limit, however, as we find presently, is at Gilgal.* The memorials of death passed through and a resurrection standing will necessarily be outside of Moab’s possession. All this is of quite simple interpretation to any who have learned the lessons of the book of Joshua.
{*The pesilim, which I have translated "[boundary] stones", are mostly translated either "quarries" or "graven images;" but Dr. Cassel, in Lange’s Commentary, says: —
"Boundary-stones" "is evidently the sense in which pesilim is to be taken. Pesil is always a carved image, glupton. The entire number of instances in which this word is used by Scripture writers fails to suggest any reason for thinking here of ’stone-quarries,’ a definition which, moreover, does not appear to harmonize with the locality. But as the connection implies that the borders of Eglon’s territory, which he had wrenched from Israel, were at the pesilim, we must understand by them the posts, stelai, stones, Lapides sacri, which marked the line. In consequence of the honors everywhere paid them, these were considered pesilim, idol-images. This border-line was in the vicinity of Gilgal, which had not fallen into the hands of Moab. Ewald has rightly insisted that Gilgal must have lain north-east of Jericho."}
As to the deliverer, he is Ehud, the son of Gera, a Benjamite and it is Benjamin’s territory upon which Eglon has obtained lodgment. This, again, is simple for a spiritual mind. For Benjamin, standing for Christ in us, it is here that we find what most of all the life of mere profession denies and sets aside. Thus, too, it must be with Benjamin that deliverance lies. Then he is Ehud, from the same root as Judah, which, as we have seen, speaks literally of confession, the opposite of mere profession. Ehud is the "confessor," and the son of Gera -that is, as it would seem, "rumination," that heart-meditation by which the things of Christ are appropriated and become the possession of the soul. Ehud is, then, the God-prepared deliverer for Israel in their present emergency.
The details of the deliverance, however, are less easy to understand. The dagger or sword (according to the root-idea, the "implement of destruction") would stand, according to Eph 6:1-24 for the "word of God." Ehud, like many other Benjamites of his day, was "bound of his right hand," and uses it with his left. Does this speak of the infirmity in which the man in Christ glories, that the power of Christ may rest upon him? From Gilgal, with its inspiriting memories, Ehud turns back to Eglon, and escapes beyond it again to Seirah, "the rugged." Then he sounds a trumpet in Mount Ephraim, out of which the children of Israel hasten in response, and Jordan, which, by the power of God, Israel had passed over dry-shod, becomes the effectual doom of Moab, not a man of whom escapes their enemies’ swords.
So much we may in some measure apprehend; but it is a meagre enough account of a great deliverance.
2. Next we hear of Shamgar, and a victory at great odds over the Philistines. Whether the Moabite inroad had encouraged their attack or not, it is given as something contemporaneous with or following upon it. And the spiritual connection is quite evident, if the Philistines represent the Judaistic development of the world-church, perfected in Rome. To this the Moabite condition of unconverted membership -impossible, of course, in the body of Christ -is a necessary preliminary. The Philistines, however, do but show themselves as yet: the time of the captivity to them is later, and ends the series. At present Shamgar’s bold deed is decisive as deliverance.
Shamgar’s name seems but the inversion of Gershom, and to have the same meaning -of a stranger (or sojourner) there. He is the son of Anath, which means "answer": here speaking, as it seems, of the response of heart to that deliverance call which invites us forth to pilgrimage. Such an one is surely the fit deliverer from the world-church, and for the present Shamgar’s ox-goad avails.
F. W. Grant, The Numerical Bible (4th ed., 1903) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
J. R. Dummelow 1909 · Public Domain The Story of the Judges. Othniel. Ehud. Shamgar
The Story of the Judges. Othniel. Ehud. Shamgar
1-6. Israel's actual relations with the Canaanites.
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1. Wars of Canaan] i.e. those waged by Joshua, after whose death (Jdg_2:21) the career of victory was made to cease by Jehovah.
2. A third reason for the survival of the heathen in Canaan, in addition to those given in Jdg_2:1; and in. Jdg_2:22; Jdg_3:1.
3. Philistines] see Intro. § 5. The Philistines occupied the lowland in the SW. Their five cities formed a confederacy: see Jdg_16:5, etc., and 1Sa_6:16. At the death of Samuel their power extends far into central Palestine (1Sa_31:10). All the Canaanites] in the more restricted sense, the lowlanders of the SW. bordering on the Philistines. Hivites] read 'Hittites': see on Gen_10:15-19. Baal-hermon] In the similar passage in Joshua we read 'Baal-Gad under Hermon' (Jdg_13:5), a place on the W. side of Hermon. The entering in of Hamath] Hamath was a powerful city of the Hittites on the Orontes (modern Hama). The 'entrance' to it is the hollow country between Lebanon and anti-Lebanon, on the plain at the N. end of Lebanon: cp. 2Sa_8:9; 1Ki_8:65; Amo_6:14, where it is regarded as the true northern frontier of Israel.
5. See on Jdg_1:1-4; Jdg_3:3. To these six 'nations' of Canaan the Girgashites are often added.
6. Cp. Exo_34:16; Neh_13:25.
J. R. Dummelow, A Commentary on the Holy Bible (Macmillan, 1909) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Paul E. Kretzmann 1924 · Public Domain The Nations Which Remained
The Nations Which Remained
v. 1. Now these are the nations which the Lord left to prove Israel by them, to test their faithfulness to Him, even as many of Israel as had not known all the wars of Canaan, the younger generation which enjoyed the fruits of conquest, but did not estimate aright the greatness of the dangers endured by the fathers, and therefore did not sufficiently value the help of God;
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v. 2. only that the generations of the children of Israel might know, to teach them war, give them an idea, make them realize the great cost of the boon of freedom and material wealth which they were enjoying, at the least such as before knew nothing thereof, the final object being that they might learn humility and submission to the Law;
v. 3. namely, five lords of the Philistines, those of the five city-states Gaza, Ashdod, Ashkelon, Gath, and Ekron, Jos 13:3, and all the Canaanites, chiefly along the coast of the Mediterranean Sea and in the Jordan Valley, and the Sidonians, the Phenicians, and the Hivites that dwelt in mount Lebanon, from mount Baal-hermon, in the southern Anti-Lebanon, west of Damascus, unto the entering in of Hamath, in the valley of the Orontes.
v. 4. And they, these heathen nations, were to prove Israel by them, to know whether they would hearken unto the commandments of the Lord which He commanded their fathers by the hand of Moses. By being oppressed by their enemies and thereupon delivered by the Lord through the medium of wars, Israel was both to be tested and strengthened in obedience to the Lord.
v. 5. And the children of Israel dwelt among the Canaanites, Hittites, and Amorites, and Perizzites, and Hivites, and Jebusites, all of whom they permitted to live in their midst, making no serious effort to drive them out.
v. 6. And they took their daughters to be their wives, and gave their daughters to their sons, thus entering into the most intimate social relationship with them, and served their gods, the natural consequence of breaking down the barriers which the Lord had erected by His prohibition, Exo 34:16-23; Deu 7:3-4. That is almost invariably the progress of apostasy: friendship with the world, marriages with infidels, rejection of the Lord.
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 Now Yahweh
Now Yahweh
Here "Now" begins a new section of the story.
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these nations
This refers to the people groups that the narrator will list in Jdg 3:3.
who had not experienced any of the wars fought in Canaan
This can be stated in active form. AT: "who had not fought in any of the wars in Canaan" (See: Active or Passive)
He did this to teach warfare to the new generation of the Israelites who had not known it before
This breaks from the main story line. The narrator gives background information about why Yahweh left some of the people groups in Canaan. AT: "Yahweh left nations among the Israelites to teach the young men who had not fought in battle before how to fight" (See: Background Information)
the five kings
These five kings represent themselves and their people. AT: "the five kings and their people" (See: Synecdoche)
Mount Baal Hermon
This is the highest mountain in Israel. (See: How to Translate Names)
Hamath Pass
This is the name of an area at the northern boundary of Canaan. (See: How to Translate Names)
translationWords
Yahweh
nation
test
Israel
Canaan
generation
know
king
Philistines
Sidon
Hivite
Lebanon
unfoldingWord translationNotes — © Distant Shores Media and the Door43 World Missions Community, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Source: git.door43.org/Door43/en_tn.