24 March

Bible in 365 Days                               

Judges 16-18

Judges 16

Here we have the sad and awful account of Samson's relapse and final fall. He went to Gaza. It is easy to imagine how much there must have been in Gaza which should have appealed to one acting for the fulfillment of the divine purpose. There were idolatries and evil things against which he should have flung himself in force. But he did not. He was still swayed by the strength of his animal nature, and the tragic sentence is written "...Samson went to Gaza, and saw there a harlot."

In the midst of his sin, his enemies attempted to imprison him. He broke through by plucking up the gates of the city and carrying them to the top of an adjacent mountain. Even then, however, he did not learn his lesson and we see him in the toils of Delilah. At last she triumphed, and the man who had long since ceased to be in any deep sense a Nazarite was at last shorn of even the outward symbols of his vow.

There is nothing perhaps in the sacred writings at once more pathetically tragic than the vision of Samson with his eyes put out, grinding in the prison house of the Philistines. It is a picture and a parable needing no enforcement of exposition to make it powerful.

At last, out of the depths of his degradation, he cried to God, and in his death struck the heaviest blow at the people from whose oppression he ought to have delivered his people.

At this point ends the history of this Book. It is taken up again in the first Book of Samuel. The remaining chapters of the Book and the Book of Ruth have their chronological place in the period already surveyed.

Judges 17

Here begins the final section of the Book of Judges which is of the nature of an appendix. The events here recorded must have taken place closely following the death of Joshua. They give us a picture of the internal condition of the people, and it is probable that they were added with that intention by the historian.

Micah's act was a violation of the second commandment. He made to himself and for his household certain images. In doing so he was not adopting the idolatries of the heathen. His mother's language reveals her recognition of Jehovah as she said, "Blessed be my son of Jehovah." Moreover, Micah's own words, when persuading a Levite to act as his priest, show the same thing, "Now know I that Jehovah will do me good. . . ." The images were intended to aid him in the worship of Jehovah but were distinctly forbidden, as we have said, in the second commandment.

The whole story is a (revelation of a degenerate condition. Micah had robbed his mother. On making restitution he accompanied the act, at her instigation, with what she supposed to be a religious movement. The consent of the Levite to become a priest in the house of Micah for the sake of a living is a further revelation of degeneracy. Micah was attempting to maintain his relationship with God by violating the commands of God. The Levite degenerated into an attempt to secure his own material comfort by compromise.

Judges 18

The account of the backsliding of individuals is followed by an illustration of its widespread existence among the people. While seeking new territory the Danites found Micah and the condition of things established in his house.

When presently they moved forward to success, they did not hesitate to size Micah's images and capture his priest. The terrible decadence of the religious ideal is startlingly revealed in this whole story.

Deeply embedded in the character of the people was the consciousness of the importance of religion. Micah must worship and the Danites felt the necessity of their enterprise for maintaining some kind of relationship with God. Yet in each case there was the most violent prostitution of religion to purposes of personal prosperity.

Micah hoped by the maintenance of some form of worship and the presence of a Levite that Jehovah would be his God, by which he evidently meant that material prosperity would come to him. The Danites, searching for new territory, were anxious to maintain religion.

Wherever religion is acknowledged and adopted merely in order to ensure material prosperity, it suffers degradation. In these stories we have a revelation of the beginnings of those terrible conditions which eventually issued in the ruin of the people.