CRITICAL NOTES.—
Judges 1:8. Now the children of Judah had fought, &c.] Heb. = “fought,” the pluperfect form not being given in the original. Still, the sense is, “they formerly fought,” “they had fought.” A similar use of the past for the pluperfect has been noticed under Joshua 8:12. For the time when Judah had fought against Jerusalem we may refer to Joshua 12:8; Joshua 12:10, when, though the king was slain, the strongholds of the city were not fully possessed (Joshua 15:63). As Mr. Groser observes, “It is inconsistent to suppose that Adoni-bezek was carried into a city which his captors had just taken and set on fire.” This eighth verse begins a parenthesis which extends to the close of Judges 1:16. The main object of the parenthesis is to show the conspicuous valour and fidelity which Judah, whom the Lord had just chosen (Judges 1:2), had already displayed in previous conflicts. The reference to Jerusalem in the close of Judges 1:7, naturally suggests the beginning of the parenthesis as in Judges 1:8. After the parenthetic account of Judah’s faithful courage at Jerusalem and Hebron, and after the author’s record that the children of the Kenite had settled in the wilderness of Judah, the history of the expedition of Judah and Simeon is resumed. This explanation gives a perfect sense, and in no way disturbs the record in the book of Joshua. Peter Martyr and Richard Rogers long since contended for this parenthesis as the correct exposition of the local value of the several verses.
Judges 1:9-15. And afterward, &c.] Cf. on Joshua 15:14-19.
Judges 1:16. The children of the Kenite.] The Kenites are first mentioned in Genesis 15:19. They were either a tribe of Midianites, or a people who, having long before the Exodus settled in the land of Midian, had established themselves there in some strength. Exodus 2:16 may mean that Reuel, or Jethro, was only a prince or priest of Kenites who had settled in the land of Midian; or he and his people may have been descendants of Abraham by Keturah, and thus a branch of the Midianites themselves. Numbers 10:29 favours the latter conjecture, Reuel being distinctly called “the Midianite.” In the time of Barak, a branch of these Kenites are found as settlers near Kedesh-Naphtali, by the Lake of Merom, or el Hûleh.
MAIN HOMILETICS OF THE PARAGRAPH.— Judges 1:5-7
THE RECOMPENCE OF WICKEDNESS
This lord of Bezek had grown into a very formidable tyrant. The seventy victims whom he had overcome and so cruelly mutilated were doubtless only petty princes, or chieftains, of small cities and their surrounding districts. The number seventy seems to make it certain that the depredations of this monster were committed in the surrounding neighbourhood, and among tribes of his own people, the Canaanites, as well as among more distant enemies. Adoni-bezek cut off the thumbs and toes of the kings he had vanquished. This was no doubt done to render them unfit for war, and thus in an age when men reigned by personal prowess, to prevent them from again coming to the power of government. The mutilation practised by this tyrant upon the captive kings, became afterwards very common in Roman history, when men cut off their own thumbs to escape military service. On this Kitto remarks: “A trace of this practice exists in the word poltron, which we and the French have adopted from the Italian, which, while it immediately denotes a dastardly soldier who shrinks from his duty, etymologically signifies ‘cut-thumb,’ being formed from póllice ‘thumb,’ and trónco, ‘cut off, maimed.’ ”
I. The sin of Adoni-bezek.
1. He was guilty of great cruelty. No “custom of the times” could excuse this barbarity. The man himself felt that he had been remorselessly wicked, when a like judgment was inflicted on him by the men of Judah. By his own verdict he stands condemned. Cruelty is one of the most heartless forms of wickedness. It brings nothing to him who practises it. It is indulged in simply from brutal tastes, unless it be employed for purposes of extortion. It is a low delight in the sufferings of others. Cruelty is one of the most degrading forms of wickedness. Nothing so rapidly takes away a man’s manhood. It is at the very antipodes of the cross. The Cross of Christ is an exhibition of voluntary suffering that others might be spared pain; cruelty is a selfish and coarse delight in others’ pain. Nothing so enriches manhood as the spirit that sacrifices itself to save others; nothing so rapidly debases manhood as the spirit which delights in the pain of others. Reckless cruelty is the suicide of the moral nature. Cruelty is perhaps the most rapidly increasing and incurable form of wickedness. Some have given the palm to covetousness, but while covetousness seems ever fatal, the disease is of slower growth than cruelty. It takes but little time, after they have begun, beast-like, to taste blood, to make a Herod or a Nero; and from this vice, too, men never recover. Covetousness is a passion for self, heedless of others; cruelty is a passion against others, without even the motive of enriching self. There can be no place, even in hell, below where the cruel have their abode. This is the lowest discernible deep of the pit that is bottomless.
2. Adoni-bezek was guilty of haughty pride. It was not enough for him that the seventy kings should be mutilated; he made his poor maimed captives humble themselves daily in his presence, feeding them, like dogs, under his table upon the odds and ends which he chose to throw them. To the littleness of inflicting pain by a barbarous outrage, this tyrant added the further meanness of daily gloating over those whom he made to suffer. In this case it was true indeed, that “the haughty spirit goeth before a fall.”
II. The punishment of this man’s sin. The men of Judah “caught him, and cut off his thumbs and his great toes.” They used him as he had used others. They carried out the law of retaliation—“Eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot,” as they had been taught by Moses (Exodus 21:24; Leviticus 24:20, &c.). With a fine adaptation of the words of Isaiah touching the fallen king of Babylon, Kitto says concerning the mutilated Adoni-bezek, “Nor can there be any doubt that when the seventy discrowned princes beheld their old oppressor thus brought low, they rose from the dust to greet him, crying, Art thou also become like unto us, thou that didst weaken the nations, thou that madest the land to tremble?” We see in the judgment which overtook this man—
1. Sin punished during the sinner’s lifetime.
2. Sin punished tardily, but no less certainly.
3. Sin so punished that the sinner is led to trace the connection between his own guilt and its consequences. “As I have done, so God hath requited me.” The punishment came in kind. The judgment was a mirror in which the criminal started as he beheld the features of his own manifold transgressions. God would not only have the guilty suffer; He would have them see clearly why they suffer.
III. The man’s acknowledgment of God’s justice. The narrative here throws into prominence the following points:—
1. An idolater’s knowledge of the true God. “God hath requited me.” This man must have frequently heard of the God of the Israelites during the miracles of the wilderness and the triumphs of Joshua. It was only in the hour of judgment that he acknowledged God. The most wicked will confess their faith in the Lord presently. In such faith we can trace no true repentance. It is the way of fallen spirits only to “believe” when they are made to “tremble.”
2. The activity of an idolater’s conscience. Adoni-bezek felt that this was a requital. Conscience may sleep long, but it wakes eventually in a power proportioned to the efforts which have been made to force it into quietude.
3. An idolater acknowledging the justice of God’s recompence of sin. “As I have done, so hath God requited me.” As the guilt, so was its reward. Long years of guilt, even in remorseless cruelty, cannot remove from the conscience its power of perceiving the justice of Divine punishment. It is only when men turn to speculating on the Bible theory of punishment that they get dissatisfied with what the Bible seems to reveal of the way of God in chastisement; those who suffer under God’s hand are ever seen acquiescing in the fairness of sin’s penalties. The penitent thief says, “The due reward of our deeds;” and the impenitent thief says not one word to suggest that he thinks contrariwise. Even Dives in torments does but speak of being tormented, and breathes no single word about injustice; nay, he even fears that his brothers must become as he is also. No sufferer under the hand of God, who speaks to us from the Bible, ever complains that the penalty is beyond the desert. Yet the Bible is very frank in its record of man’s rebellious words. This silence from murmuring, and this acquiescence in the fairness of Divine chastisements, are also significant. The debates on God’s justice in punishment will probably all be confined to time.
OUTLINES AND COMMENTS ON THE VERSES
GOD’S MINISTERS OF JUDGMENT.—Judges 1:5-6
“And they found Adoni-bezek,” &c. God has many ways of finding the transgressor. Sometimes He finds him with the messenger of disease; sometimes by losses or accidents; sometimes, as here, by the chastisements of avenging men; sometimes by the working of the sin itself. Thus Moses said to the tribes on the east of Jordan, “Be sure your sin will find you out.” God, eventually, always finds the sinner out by some instrument or other. Thus Samuel finds Agag (1 Samuel 15:33), and becomes the minister of Divine retribution; Saul finds and destroys the Amalekites four hundred years after they had fallen upon the Israelites (cf. 1 Samuel 15:1-7); Mordecai and Esther find and expose Haman; Daniel’s enemies are found by Darius and the lions. He who sins against his fellow-men should always be prepared to see his sin come back with a scourge in its hand. Jacob may deceive; he will presently be deceived. The Egyptians may murder the male children of Israel; the angel will avenge them in the death of the firstborn. David may sin against Bathsheba, and murder Uriah; his first sin shall be repaid to him in Absalom, and his second in Amnon. The retribution which overtakes Adoni-bezek is but a common issue of those transgressions in which one man does wilful harm to his fellows. It is noteworthy that all these prominent instances of retribution in the Scriptures are not punishments of sin in general, but the punishment of sins against men. It is as though God said, He who is guilty against men shall be requited during this life, even in the presence of men.
THE RELATION OF GOD’S CHASTISEMENTS TO MAN’S OFFENCES.—Judges 1:6-7
“God has not relinquished the government of the earth: He orders and overrules everything now as much as ever; and in His former dispensations we behold a perfect exhibition of the government which He still administers. Still, as formerly, does He requite the wickedness of men; sometimes on the offenders themselves, as when He smote Uzziah with leprosy; and sometimes on others upon their account, as when He slew seventy thousand of the people to punish the sin which David had committed in numbering his subjects. Sometimes He inflicts the judgment immediately, as on Herod, who was eaten up with worms; and sometimes after a long season, as on the sons of Saul for their father’s cruelty to the Gibeonites many years before. Sometimes His judgments are sent as preliminary to those heavier judgments that shall be inflicted in the eternal world, … and sometimes after the offenders themselves have been forgiven, as was experienced by David in his family (2 Samuel 12:13-14), and by Manasseh, whose iniquities were visited upon Israel after he himself had been received up to glory (2 Kings 24:2-4). Sometimes His chastisements had no particular affinity with the offence committed; and sometimes the offence was clearly marked in the punishment, as in the case of Joram (2 Chronicles 21:4-17), and as with David (2 Samuel 12:10-12; 2 Samuel 16:21-22). So minutely is this correspondence marked in the Scriptures, that even the time and the place are noticed as designed to manifest the very offence which God designed to punish; as Israel’s wandering in the wilderness forty years on account of their murmuring at the reports which were brought them by the spies who had searched out the land forty days (Numbers 14:33-34); and as Ahab’s blood was licked up by dogs on the very spot where dogs had licked up the blood of Naboth, whom he had murdered.
“We might further notice the correspondence between the spiritual judgments which God sometimes inflicts for spiritual transgressions. Those who will not hearken to His voice He gives up to their own counsels (Psalms 81:11-12); those who abandon themselves to all manner of wickedness, He gives up to vile affections and a reprobate mind (Romans 1:26-28); and those who will not receive His truth in order to salvation, He gives up to their own delusions that they may be damned.…
“If any imagine that this conduct of God was confined to the nation whose temporal Governor He was, we must remind them that He dealt precisely in the same way with the heathen nations (Isaiah 33:1), and has taught us to expect that He will do so to the end of time …
“From hence we may learn—
I. To investigate the reasons of God’s dealings with us. Every dispensation of Providence has a voice to which we should give diligent attention. I would say unto you therefore, ‘Hear the rod and Him that hath appointed it.’ If you see not the reason of it, go unto your God, and say, ‘Show me wherefore Thou contendest with me;’ and let no cross be suffered to escape from you, without having first paid to you that tribute of good which by the order of Providence you are entitled to exact.
II. To repent of particular sins.… God has borne with us indeed; but we must not consider His longsuffering as any proof of His approbation: He is recording everything in the book of His remembrance, and will call us into judgment for it, whether it be good or evil. Let us then search and try our ways; let us pray that He will not ‘remember against us the sins and transgressions of our youth.’
III. To abound in every work of good. The godly, no less than the sinner, shall be recompensed in the earth’ (Proverbs 11:31; Proverbs 13:21). Visit and relieve your sick neighbour, and ‘God will be with you in trouble, and make all your bed in sickness (Psalms 41:1-3).” [Charles Simeon, M.A.]
THE ACCUSING CONSCIENCE QUICKENED BY DIVINE JUDGMENTS.—Judges 1:7
By the recent discovery and invention of Professor Hughes, sounds that have never before been audible to men may now be heard distinctly. Through the wonderful powers of the microphone, much in nature which once appeared silent is now vocal; and, as years go on, we may expect these still small voices not only to be heard but understood. Just as the microscope has revealed a new world to the eye, so will the microphone discover a new world to the ear. Similarly, God has a microphonic way in the moral world of making that audible which many have long since ceased to hear. Paul speaks of men “past feeling” whose consciences are “seared as with a hot iron.” Such are not only past feeling the reproaches of conscience, but even past hearing them. Scripture history shows us very plainly, in not a few instances, that God has a method of making men hear again, who have long been deaf to the very feeble utterances of the conscience which they appear quite to have silenced. There are microphones in this moral world also, by which conscience not only becomes audible, but even over-whelming in the energy and terribleness of its tones. The following are a few of the forms in which the Bible shows us how the consciences of men may again speak so as to be heard in irresistible power:—
I. Conscience speaking through the pain of suffering in the present. Adoni-bezek can hear well enough through the pain of his own mutilation. “As I have done, so hath God requited me.” In similar circumstances, Pharaoh heard the reproofs of his conscience through the medium of the ten plagues (cf. Exodus 9:27-28; Exodus 10:16-17).
II. Conscience speaking through fear of suffering to come (1 Kings 21:20). The blood of Naboth cried out in the ears of Ahab at the very sight of Elijah. Hastening down to the vineyard, to take possession of the spoil of his murdered foe, he saw there, at the very gateway to the new estate, the terrible Elijah; and ere ever a word was said by the prophet, and in view of the judgment so surely casting its shadow before in the form of that stern Tishbite, conscience, silent in that dull bosom for many a year, made the poor guilty being cry in unmistakable alarm, “Hast thou found me, O mine enemy?” Men who are sinning in peace, should now and then listen for the sounds of conscience through the judgment to come. In view of this, men have sometimes found conscience overmastering creeds. Thus Herod, the Sadducee, who believed in no resurrection, said when he heard of Jesus, “It is John, whom I beheaded; he is risen from the dead.” Thus Volney prayed in the storm. Thus Byron struggled with himself to “be a man to the last.”
III. Conscience speaking through the sufferings of the innocent. Judas sold his Lord for thirty pieces of silver, but the thought of the guilt in which he had given Christ over to condemnation was too much to be endured. “When he saw that Jesus was condemned, he brought again the thirty pieces of silver to the chief priests and elders, saying, I have sinned in that I have betrayed the innocent blood.… And he cast down the pieces of silver in the temple, and departed, and went and hanged himself.” Conscience becomes audible also through the medium of the sufferings and blood of the innocent. What may not the Herods, and Nero, and Domitian, and Marius, and other tyrants, have heard of the thunders of conscience, when, in their more reflective moods, they found the moral atmosphere about them clarified and made resonant by thoughts of their innocent victims! While an oppressor is always a coward, there must come a time when he had need be among the bravest of the brave.
IV. Conscience speaking through severely chastened piety (cf. 2 Samuel 16:10.) In the punishment which waits on sin, not only the deliberately wicked, but the fallen righteous, hear the rebukes of conscience as they have seldom heard them before. Even the cursing tones of Shimei sound in the ears of transgressing David as the voice of a messenger of his God.
V. Conscience speaking unto salvation through gratitude for deliverance and mercy (Acts 16:24-30; Luke 15:21). The jailor who had made the feet of Paul and Silas fast in the stocks, probably in antipathy towards them for the truth which they preached, heard conscience proclaiming his sin through the joy which he felt in the security of his prisoners and the consequent safety of his own life. He who in one moment “would have killed himself,” is made to ask in the next, “What must I do to be saved?” It is in the hour of mercy that conscience forces the heart to such tears for sin as make sin seem most loathsome. As Whittier has truthfully written it—
“Thy healing pains; a keen distress
Thy tender light shines in;
Thy sweetness is the bitterness,
Thy grace the pang of sin.”
Or, in the measure of an older and more familiar utterance, we have often expressed the feeling thus:—
“When beneath the Cross adoring,
Sin doth like itself appear.”
The true microphone for making the voice of conscience at once audible and helpful is the Cross of Jesus Christ.
VI. Conscience heard speaking after a silence of many years (Genesis 42:21-22). This was probably so in the case of Adoni-bezek; it was emphatically so with Joseph’s brethren. More than twenty years after their inhuman guilt they are made to say, “We are verily guilty concerning our brother.” That conscience has long been silent is no sign that it will not presently be heard in power. God knows how to awaken both what we call the sleeping and the dead.
VII. Conscience speaking in the presence of death (Joshua 7:20). Achan, who was deaf to all self-rebuke during the despoiling of Jericho, heard conscience speaking with awful plainness when he knew that he must die. The death-sayings of the wicked have been showing, through many generations, that the vaulted cavern of a visibly open tomb has ever been a kind of intensified whispering-gallery, back from which the once unheard reproofs of conscience have rolled with a terrible energy through the departing soul. When conscience is silenced here, it seems to take on a distinct tongue for every forgotten sin, and to become a very Babel there. Happy is that man who learns to say, “I acknowledged my sin unto Thee, and mine iniquity have I not hid.”
“THE LAW OF REQUITAL.”—Judges 1:7
“This narrative is an illustration of a severe yet most holy law. ‘The Lord of recompences shall surely requite.’ ‘With what measure ye mete, it shall be measured to you again.’ This is the law under which we are now living. Let us study some of its bearings, that we may live with religious wisdom.
“ ‘As I have done, so God hath requited me.’ ”
I. “Then the life of man cannot escape the judgment of God. ‘Be not deceived; God is not mocked;’ man may deny it: may theoretically disregard it; but cannot escape it. At the heart of things is the spirit of judgment. Human life appears to be confused, but before the Almighty it has shape, and plan, and purpose.
II. “Then let no man take the law into his own hands. ‘Vengeance is Mine, I will repay, saith the Lord.’ … Why have we suffered loss in business? May it not be that we have oppressed the poor and needy? Why are our schemes delayed and thwarted? Probably because we have been obstinate and unfriendly towards the schemes of others. Why are we held in disesteem or neglect? Probably because of the contempt in which we have held our brethren.…
III. “Then every good deed will be honoured with appropriate reward. The law is equally effective on both sides. ‘God is not unrighteous to forget your work of faith and labour of love,’ &c. ‘Whosoever shall give a cup of cold water only,’ &c. ‘The liberal soul shall be made fat.’ Remember:
1. Good deeds are their own reward;
2. Deeds done merely for the sake of reward cannot be good.
IV. “Then, though justice be long delayed, yet it will be vindicated eventually. Adoni-bezek had run a long course of wickedness.… Yet see him in the grip of the law, and learn that the time of punishment is with the Lord and not with man. Do you think that you have outwitted the law of retribution? God’s hour is coming; a stormy and terrible hour.…
“But what of those who, having done evil, hate both themselves and their wickedness? There is a Gospel for such—‘Repentance towards God, and faith in our Lord Jesus Christ,’ will destroy the evil of the past, and satisfy the otherwise inexorable law of retribution.” [Dr. Parker.]
NOTE.—For homiletic outlines and remarks on the paragraph that follows— Judges 1:8-16, see on the corresponding passages in the Book of Joshua, as treated in “The Preacher’s Commentary.”