THE BEGINNING OF THE LORD’S REBUKE
CRITICAL NOTES.—
Judges 2:1. An angel of the Lord.] Not merely “a messenger,” but the “angel of Jehovah.” “The phrase is used nearly sixty times to designate the angel of God’s presence.” [Speaker’s Commentary.] “Not a prophet, or some other earthly messenger of Jehovah, either Phinehas or Joshua, as the Targums, the Rabbins, Berthean, and others assume, but the angel of the Lord, who is of one essence with God. In the simple historical narrative a prophet is never called Malach Jehovah. The prophets are always called either נָבִיא or אִישׁ נָבִיא, as in Judges 6:8, or else ‘man of God,’ as in 1 Kings 12:22; 1 Kings 13:1, &c.; and Haggai 1:13, and Malachi 3:1, cannot be adduced as proofs to the contrary, because in both these passages the purely appellative meaning of the word Malach is established beyond all question by the context itself. Moreover, no prophet ever identifies himself so entirely with God as the angel of Jehovah does here. The prophets always distinguish between themselves and Jehovah by introducing their words with the declaration ‘Thus saith Jehovah,’ as the prophet mentioned in Judges 6:8 is said to have done.” [Keil.] The language itself proclaims the presence of the Angel of the Covenant; it cannot be thought of as the utterance of a merely human messenger. Came up from Gilgal.] The situation of Bochim is unknown. As the people were assembled in congregation (Judges 2:4), probably the gathering was in the usual locality, i.e., at or near to Shiloh (cf. Joshua 18:1; Joshua 18:10; Joshua 19:51; Joshua 21:2; Joshua 22:9; Joshua 22:12). Then the angel coming up “from Gilgal” would probably come from the Gilgal near to Shiloh, where the Israelites had so long encamped during the war under Joshua (cf. Preacher’s Commentary, pp. 170, 172, 199). It would be sufficiently appropriate that the angel should be seen to come with Jehovah’s rebuke from the very place from which the “Angel of His Presence” had gone up with them to mighty and repeated victories (Isaiah 63:9; Joshua 10:6-9; Joshua 10:43; Joshua 11:7). The moral significance of the angel being seen to come from Gilgal—thus associated with past help—would be very great. What could be more full of tender historic reproof than that the angel who had, as it were, waited at the warrior’s camp to help the faithful, should come from such ground to rebuke the unbelieving and slothful? To Bochim.] That this is seen to be on higher ground than Gilgal, is no proof that the Gilgal was that near Jericho. All the time the site of Bochim is unknown, there is nothing to suggest that this was other than the Gilgal of Deuteronomy 11:30, and 2 Kings 2:1, from which Elijah and Elisha went “down to Bethel” (וַיֵּרְדוּ בֵּית־אֵל). The LXX. place Bochim near to Bethel, saying that the angel “went up from Galgal to the (place of) weeping, and to Bæthel, and to the house of Israel.” Even if this were accepted, Bochim may have been on “the mountain east of Bethel” from whence Abraham obtained so wide an outlook in all directions (Genesis 13:14-15); in which case it might be quite correct, at least of the latter part of the distance, to speak of the angel as going “up to Bochim.” Keil, however, points out that this reading of the LXX. “gives no clue whatever.”
Judges 2:2. Why have ye done this?] Lit., “What is this which ye have done?” Not so much an inquiry as a remonstrance and a chiding.
Judges 2:3. But they shall be as thorns in your sides.] = “But they shall be to you for adversaries.” צַד, “a side,” pl. צִדִּים, is from the root צָדַד, “to turn oneself,” “to oppose oneself,” to any one. Hence Chald. מִצַּד, “on the side of,” “the part of.” (Daniel 6:5); and לְצַד, “against the side of” (Daniel 7:25). Therefore צִדִּים here should be rendered “adversaries”; otherwise, the expression would stand, “they shall be to you for sides.” This makes the various conjectures on this expression unnecessary. Cf. Gesen. and Buxtorf, jun., who both refer to this verse, and both render צַד, as found here, “an adversary.”
Judges 2:5. They sacrificed there unto the Lord.] “This indicates the close proximity of Bochim to Shechem, where the tabernacle was at this time (Joshua 24:25-26).” [Speaker’s Commentary.] Keil, however, thinks that “it does not follow from this sacrifice that the tabernacle or the ark of the covenant was to be found at Bochim. In any place where the Lord appeared to the people, sacrifices might be offered to Him (Judges 6:20; Judges 6:26; Judges 6:28; Judges 13:16 sqq.; 2 Samuel 24:25). “On the other hand,” it is added, “it does follow from the sacrifice at Bochim, where there was no sanctuary of Jehovah, that the person who appeared to the people was not a prophet, nor even an ordinary angel, but the angel of the Lord, who is essentially one with Jehovah.”
MAIN HOMILETICS OF THE PARAGRAPH.— Judges 2:1-5
THE INEVITABLE CONSEQUENCES OF SIN.—Judges 2:1-4
The latter half of the previous chapter is a necessary introduction to the opening verses of this. God’s messenger of chastisement never appears till our sins have preceded him. The pleasures of sin are the evening twilight which ever comes before the night of Divine punishment. The lurid light of the evening sunset may have its fascinations; for all that, it does but precede the darkness.
This messenger of punishment is none other than “The Messenger of the Covenant” (Malachi 3:1). This angel is none other than He of whom it has presently to be written, “The Angel of His presence saved them” (Isaiah 63:9: cf. also, Exodus 13:21; Exodus 14:19; Exodus 23:20; Exodus 23:23; Exodus 32:34; Exodus 33:14; Numbers 20:16). How passing sad that the messenger who heralds the dark night of human suffering should be He who ever loves to come to us as the Sun of Righteousness! In these five verses we see—
I. The Lord determinately following His people. He who in after years said through Hosea, “How shall I give thee up, Ephraim? how shall I deliver thee, Israel?” here shews us that the feeling, expressed seven centuries later, was cherished long before it was expressed. Even though the tribes had all turned to sin, He would “hedge up their way with thorns” (Hosea 2:6), and for this very purpose the Lord Himself, speaking in His own person, now appeared to them (Judges 2:3).
1. His purpose at the first was too firmly taken to suffer Him to forsake them now. The promises to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob had in them no hesitation. The language to Moses, when the work of redemption was beginning, left no place for failure (Exodus 6:2-8). The Divine miracles against Pharaoh had in them no appearance of faltering. Thus, God is seen following His people, even when they turn almost universally to sin.
2. He had done too much for them to give them up lightly. The price of their deliverance from Egypt had been too great to suffer it to be lost. From Goshen right up to Joshua’s tomb at Timnath-serah, the way had been lined with miracles and paved with mercy. The price of our redemption has been still more precious. We may look on the “unspeakable gift,” and find in that the Divine Amen to the Divine promise, “I will never leave thee, nor forsake thee.”
3. The glory of His name was involved in their failure. Moses had contemplated the overthrow in the wilderness, and, overcome with horror, he had turned as mediator in strong cryings to his God, saying, “What wilt Thou do unto Thy great name?” So, keeping His name as “the name which is above every name,” Jesus Christ is here seen as the angel of reproof at Bochim. Every one of the western tribes, except Issachar, whom Gideon found no better than the rest, is actually named as having departed from the Lord; yet the Lord says here, “My kindness shall not depart from thee.”
4. The love of His heart, had there been nothing else, was sufficient to constrain Him to follow them. The Divine purpose, the miracles, and the committing of His glorious name in some measure to men, had all proceeded from the Divine love. These things were but the streams; the love of Jehovah was the fountain from which all of them had flowed forth unto men. The purpose of God to save, and His unfailing covenant; miracles like those of the manna, the flowing water, the divided sea and river, the falling walls of Jericho, and the victory at Beth-horon: all these, and many similar mercies, are fit themes for glad and holy song. Yet he thinks most wisely, and is likely to sing most continuously and sweetly, who finds in all spoken promises and visible favours so many evidences of the changeless love of the living God. His mercies are precious, but His priceless love which can repeat them all again, and multiply them to meet our utmost need, is more precious still. It was in the living love of Jehovah that the cause was to be found of this gracious visit to Bochim.
II. Rebuke emphatically attending on sin. The words of the Angel are all words of rebuke (Judges 2:1-3). Yet how calm is the rebuke. It has in it no haste, and no passion. Every word is terrible with truth and gentleness. We have here:—
1. Rebuke set in the overpowering light of past mercies. (a) The Angel reminded them of deliverance from bondage. “I made you go up out of Egypt.” The hole of the pit whence they were digged was brought before them. The rugged quarry whence they were hewn was recalled to thought. (b) The Angel reminded them of mercies on the way. “And have brought you unto the land.” These mercies are not enumerated in this record. They may have been alluded to in detail, but even this general reference to them contributed to tears. He thinks but poorly of sin who does not contemplate it in view of what God has done to deliver him from its power and sorrow. (c) The Angel reminded them of the unalterable covenant. “The land which I sware unto your fathers.” Their fathers had been encouraged by the unfailing promises of God, which had been solemnly given to three successive generations through Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. The covenant with the fathers had been renewed unto the children: “I said I will never break my covenant with you.” This covenant, however, from the first, included the condition of Israel’s obedience (Genesis 17:7-14). God never did break that covenant, even when Israel was carried away to Babylon, or when the Romans overthrew Jerusalem. (d) The Angel “came up from Gilgal.” He laid emphasis upon all the mercy of the past by coming visibly from the place of the old encampment, from which He had so often gone forth with Joshua and the host to mighty victories. Probably Bochim was near to Shiloh, or Bethel (Judges 21:19), and the site of the camp at Gilgal lay between them, so that the Angel might have been actually seen by the festive host coming from the very place from which they had so often been led out to ever successful war. What rebuke could possibly be more keen? Here were men both pleading their inability to cope with iron chariots, and yet putting their enemies under tribute. The tribute itself was answer enough to the plea about the chariots. But, as if it were not enough, the Angel of Jehovah comes up from the place from which Israel had never obediently gone forth to a single lost battle. The present wicked unbelief was exposed in a light which might well make the place a place of shame and tears. God was saying with dramatic and irresistible force, “I have been thy helper, but under the shadow of My wings thou will not rejoice.” The reproofs of the Lord are ever overwhelming. When He undertakes to rebuke, the name of the place where He so appears to us must needs henceforth be Bochim. “Will He plead against me with His great power?”
2. Rebuke sustained by the proof of direct disobedience. “Why have ye done this?” or, “What is this which ye have done?” Evidences of the league were visible all through the land. The enemies of God and truth were living in peace among the people of God. It may have been that some of them were even now present with the multitude. The altars of the idolaters were not thrown down. There they still stood, visibly, in the midst of the people of every tribe. “Why have ye done this?” When Christ, the Mediator, pleads against us, who shall answer?
3. Rebuke pointing to coming sorrow. “They shall be adversaries to you (cf. Crit. Notes), and their gods shall be a snare unto you.” The Lord’s rebuke is not vain and empty. It ever brings forth bitter fruit. “What is this that thou hast done?” when spoken to Eve, is followed by, “I will greatly multiply thy sorrow.” “What hast thou done?” when asked of Cain, does but precede the terrible words, “And now thou art cursed from the earth.” To Moses and Aaron the Lord said, “Ye believed me not, to sanctify me in the eyes of the children of Israel;” and the Lord also added, “Therefore ye shall not bring this congregation into the land which I have given them.” David heard Nathan say, “Thou art the man,” and forthwith the sentence followed, “The sword shall never depart from thine house” … “The child also that is born unto thee shall surely die.” Similarly, sentence follows rebuke all through the Scriptures. Yet are we encouraged to say, “There is forgiveness with Thee, that Thou mayest be feared.”
III. Tears, from the first, accompanying rebuke. “All the people lifted up their voice and wept.”
1. Weeping, for the most part, has to do with sin. The sources of the Nile may have to be sought many a year; the place where the river of tears takes its rise may generally be found at once, and without mistakes. The well-head of human sorrow is seldom far removed from the mountain-foot of human guilt. “By one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin.” When the tribes of humanity gather at some Bochim, there is ever something wrong as to their respective inheritances.
2. It is a mercy when the sinful can weep. Our truest tears are the venting of our guilt. Without tears for sin, sin would petrify in our nature; it would assimilate every holier emotion to itself, and then turn all to stone. It was of men who had experienced this that Paul wrote as “being past feeling.” Many about us now would be thus hardened, but for the tender power of Divine grace. The Angel of the Covenant appears, and forthwith the place of sin and formal religious festivity becomes a Bochim. “God is able of these stones to raise up children unto Abraham.” Thanks be unto God who is able, that He is also willing! Rowland Hill used to say, “Repentance is so sweet a companion, that my only regret in going to heaven is, that I shall leave her behind and know her no more.” This is hardly a wise lament. As long as sin is with us, tears are a sweet because a necessary relief; but “no more sin” must be far better than sin and tears. We may be devoutly thankful that it is written of the saints in heaven, “God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes;” we ought to be no less thankful that no hand ever altogether wipes away the tears from the sinful eyes of earth. There, tears would be an unmeaning pain; here, they are a necessity. An old poet, more than two centuries ago, wrote tenderly and beautifully on the tears of Mary Magdalene at the tomb:
“Not in the Evening’s eyes,
When they red with weeping are
For the Sun that dies;
Sits Sorrow with a face so fair.
Nowhere but here did ever meet
Sweetness so sad, sadness so sweet.
“Sadness, all the while
She sits on such a throne as this,
Can do nought but smile,
Nor believes she Sadness is:
Gladness itself would be more glad,
(Thus) to be made so sweetly sad.”
[Richard Crashaw, 1646.]
Sadness which mourns the loss of Christ’s presence, or of His Spirit, must needs be among the keenest sorrows of earth; but the sadness which has suffered this loss, and has not mourned it, must presently be the bitterest sorrow of all.
3. Weeping is of small use to the sinful, if they only weep. Bochim is of no avail unless it leads to the breaking of all leagues with idolaters, and to the throwing down of all forbidden altars. Tears must be followed by a reformation; otherwise, they are a useless pain.
IV. Punishment inevitably succeeding the tears in which there is no amendment of life. This whole book of the Judges is God’s comment on the folly of weeping without truly repenting. Emerson has written: “Crime and punishment grow out of one stem. Punishment is a fruit that, unsuspected, ripens within the flower of the pleasure which concealed it. Cause and effect, means and ends, seed and fruit, cannot be severed; for the effect already blooms in the cause, the end pre-exists in the means, the fruit in the seed.” There is no separating between sin and its natural punishment; unless there be true repentance, there is no separating between sin and its Divine punishment. Nineveh is spared; the thief enters Paradise; Saul “obtains mercy;” but the weepers of Bochim have their history, for centuries, written in bitter chastisements. As that Cornish proverb, so sentient of a rock-bound shore, puts the matter: “He who will not be ruled by the rudder must be ruled by the rock.” So he who will not be led to serve Jehovah by “the Angel of the Lord,” must be driven to seek God indeed by the chastening hand of Canaanites and Philistines.
OUTLINES AND COMMENTS ON THE VERSES
GOD’S REPROOF OF SIN.—Judges 2:1-5
I. Sin confronted by the Lord in person. The Angel of the Lord was none other than the Lord Himself (cf. above).
1. God confronts the guilty in mercy. If He did not come to trouble the sinful, they might well despair. God came through His messengers to guilty Saul, to David, to Nebuchadnezzar. When the Lord answered Saul no more, the end was nigh. When the Saviour said to Judas, “What thou doest do quickly,” the bitterness of death was not distant. God’s silence should be interpreted by the guilty as the noise of coming judgment. “I kept silence,” is immediately followed by “I will reprove thee (Psalms 50:21).
2. When God so confronts the guilty, none can answer. Throughout this brief narrative the only voice that is heard is the voice of the Lord. The sinful, like guilty children, can only answer by their tears. Job cried, “Oh that I knew where I might find Him.… I would order my cause before Him, and fill my mouth with arguments;” yet even Job in that awful Presence could only say, “Now mine eye seeth Thee: wherefore I abhor myself, and repent in dust and ashes.”
II. Sin manifested by the greatness of Divine mercy.
1. Mercies of deliverance from bondage. “I made you to go up out of Egypt.”
2. Mercies of promised help. “The land which I sware unto your fathers.” “I said I will never break My covenant with you.”
3. Mercies of actual inheritance. “I have brought you unto the land.”
III. Sin exposed, and the proofs visible on every hand. The league had been made with the inhabitants. The altars still stood throughout the land. “Ye have not obeyed My voice.” The law was even then engraven on the stones at Ebal; the book of the law was already written (Joshua 8:31-32). There was no disputing either what the Lord’s voice had been, or that it had been disobeyed. Who can answer when God contends with him on account of sin? If God be against us, who can be for us?
IV. Sin the shadow of coming sorrow. “They shall be adversaries to you,” &c. Our departures from the way of the Lord ever originate in the heart. The actual commission of sin is the point of contact in the beginning of the eclipse which hides from us the Sun of Righteousness, and the hiding of His face is ever the beginning of darkness. “Thou hidest Thy face, they are troubled.”
V. Sin lamented, but not forsaken. “The people lifted up their voice, and wept.” They also offered sacrifice unto the Lord, but they did not put away the transgression. God cannot be reconciled to men who do not forsake iniquity. “Blessed is he whose sin is covered;” but no tears and no amount of sacrifice can cover the sin which is still persisted in. The Hebrew word כּפר “to cover,” “to expiate” sin, is also used in the Old Testament for a village. A village was so called because it afforded shelter, or a cover, for the inhabitants. Sacrifice can afford no dwelling-place and no covering to the man who continues in his sin. Even Calvary leaves the soul in all its wickedness, “Naked and open to the eyes of Him with whom we have to do,” so long as sin is not forsaken. He who comes to the sacrifice of Christ with such tears as lead him to turn from iniquity, will find that his sin is covered, and that Christ is as a City of Refuge.
DIVINE VISITATIONS.—Judges 2:1-5
I. The time of the Lord’s visitation. When disobedience was at its height.
II. The method of the Lord’s visitation. He was seen to come “from Gilgal,” the place of much past help.
III. The spirit of the Lord’s visitation. He came in tender and loving reproof.
IV. The influence of the Lord’s visitation. The Israelites shed tears, called the name of that place ‘The Weepers,’ and offered sacrifice; yet, with all this, they “knew not the day of their visitation” as they should have done.
THE TIME OF GOD’S MANIFESTED HELP.—Judges 2:1
I. God comes to men in the sorrow of that bondage wherein they were born. “I made you go up out of Egypt.”
II. God manifests Himself freely to His delivered children so long as they are faithful. The Pillar of Cloud; the Red Sea, &c.
III. God is nigh at hand in all hours of weakness and need. The passage of the Jordan; Jericho, Beth-horon; the waters of Merom.
IV. God is full of long-suffering, even when His people sin. The alternating plagues and miracles in the wilderness. The gracious manifestation at Bochim.
THE ANGEL OF THE COVENANT.—Judges 2:1
I. The Angel of the Divine Presence (Exodus 13:21; Exodus 14:19).
II. The Angel of gracious promise (Exodus 23:20-25; Exodus 32:34; Exodus 33:2).
III. The Angel of previous help (Exodus 14:24-30; Numbers 20:16; Joshua 5:14).
IV. The Angel of severe rebuke (Exodus 23:21; and Judges 2:1-3).
V. The Angel of deliverances yet to come (Judges 6:11-23; Judges 13:9-20).
VI. The Angel of perpetuated song (Psalms 34:7; Isaiah 63:9).
DIVINE REMEMBRANCES.—Judges 2:1
I. God’s remembrance of what we were. He knew Israel as having come up “out of Egypt.” “He found him in a desert land,” and the land had not been forgotten. God always remembers where He found us, and what we were.
II. God’s remembrance of the deliverances which He has wrought for us. “I made you to go up out of Egypt.” The Lord has daily in view all the help He has ever given to us. He knows where He helped us unsought. He sees, no less, where we have reached forth a secret hand to touch the hem of His garment; and knows all the virtue which has come forth to us. How great must our sin appear in the eyes of Him who sees all His mercy and our guilt at one glance!
III. God’s remembrance of His promises after they are fulfilled. He who had sworn to the fathers, and fulfilled His words to the children, forgat neither the one nor the other. God knows every promise that has ever been fulfilled to us each. He knows some promises as having been fulfilled to us many times. He who makes His promises all “Yea and Amen in Christ Jesus,” knows also how many times we have found them thus abiding and helpful.
IV. God’s remembrance of the relation between our past and our present. God who remembered the bondage of Egypt, and saw His people now in possession of Canaan, had every step from the one to the other perfectly under His gaze. He had made them to “go up out of Egypt;” He also had “brought them into the land” which they now had for an inheritance.
V. God’s remembrance of His covenant. “I said, I will never break my covenant with you.” Many a broken promise of our fellows puts the best of them to shame: God can always look upon His word in holy satisfaction that not one jot or tittle of it has ever passed away. It is not a little imposing to find our attention challenged as to God’s faithfulness at the very place where God was about to depart from the people who had already departed from Him. We cry, “Stablish Thy word unto Thy servant, upon which Thou hast caused him to hope;” but God’s unestablished words are ever because we have got where they can no longer be fulfilled. We break the covenant, and then wonder at the fragments; but the fragments are of our making, not of our Heavenly Father’s.
“FROM GILGAL TO BOCHIM.”
If Bochim was at Shiloh, or near Bethel, as is probable, it would be utterly inappropriate to anything which the assembled Israelites could observe, to speak of the Angel as coming from Gilgal, in the Arabah, near Jericho, to Bochim, near Shiloh. The historian evidently means to convey the impression that the Angel came from Gilgal, or from the direction of Gilgal, in the sight of all Israel. If the Gilgal near Jericho were meant, it would be altogether irrelevant thus to speak of a place more than twenty miles distant.
In a volume very recently published, Dr. Edersheim makes the following remarks on this question:—“From this solemn transaction (at Mount Ebal), the Israelites moved, as we gather from Joshua 9:6, to Gilgal, where they seem to have formed a permanent camp. The mention of this place in Deuteronomy 11:30, where it is described as ‘beside the oaks of Moreh,’ that is, near the spot of Abraham’s first altar (Genesis 12:7), implies a locality well known at the time, and, as we might almost conjecture from its after-history, a sort of traditional sanctuary. This alone would suffice to distinguish this Gilgal from the first encampment of Israel as east of Jericho, which only obtained its name from the event which there occurred. Besides, it is impossible to suppose that Joshua marched to the banks of the Jordan (Joshua 9:6; Joshua 10:6-7; Joshua 10:9; Joshua 10:15; Joshua 10:43); and, again, that he did so a second time, after the battles in Galilee, to make appointment of the land among the people by the banks of the Jordan (Joshua 14:6). Further, the localisation of Gilgal near the banks of the Jordan would be entirely incompatible with what we know of the after-history of that place. Gilgal was one of the three cities where Samuel judged the people (1 Samuel 7:16; here, also, he offered sacrifices when the Ark was no longer in the tabernacle at Shiloh (1 Samuel 10:8; 1 Samuel 13:7-9; 1 Samuel 15:21), and there, as in a central sanctuary, did all Israel gather to renew their allegiance to Saul (1 Samuel 11:14). Later on, Gilgal was the great scene of Elisha’s ministry (2 Kings 2:1), and still later it became a centre of idolatrous worship (Hosea 4:15; Hosea 9:15; Hosea 12:11; Amos 4:4; Amos 5:5). All these considerations lead to the conclusion that the Gilgal which formed the site of Joshua’s encampment is the modern Jiljilieh, a few miles from Shiloh, and about the same distance from Bethel—nearly equidistant from Shechem and from Jerusalem.” [“Israel in Canaan,” pp. 75, 76.]
This entirely agrees with the view advocated in our treatment of the respective passages in Joshua. The great importance of the point in question, not only geographically, but as it affects far more serious considerations, will probably be deemed sufficient to justify this insertion of Dr. Edersheim’s valuable corroborative notice.
LIMITATIONS OF LIBERTY BEFORE GOD AND MEN.—Judges 2:2-3
If, as some have contended, this and the preceding chapter belonged “to the early part of Joshua’s government,” then these two verses would be utterly at variance with all that we are told of Joshua’s faithfulness, and would stand in direct contradiction to Joshua 24:31, and to Judges 2:7. The verses confront us with the fact that no man has liberty to disobey God, or to practise or tolerate in others such wickedness as is in violation of the rights of others, even though this wickedness be taught in the name of religion.
I. Fellowship with the wicked is enmity with God. “Ye shall make no league with the inhabitants of this land.” God claims the right to say with whom His children shall associate. We claim such authority over our children. We are not our own. We have been redeemed from bondage by God. The very conditions of our redemption required that we should form no league with the enemies of Him who gave us freedom. To ally ourselves with God’s enemies is to become enemies ourselves.
II. The tolerance of some forms of so-called religion is an infringement of human liberty. “Ye shall throw down their altars.” A great many altars in this world have been thrown down by a persecuting despotism. There are some altars which even the God of all liberty demands that we utterly abolish. The Canaanites were religious teachers of fornication and murder (cf. Deuteronomy 12:31; 1 Kings 11:7; 1 Kings 11:33; 2 Kings 3:27; 2 Kings 16:3; Psalms 106:37-38; Isaiah 57:5, &c). Their religion was an overt and shameful attack on the most sacred and inherent rights of the whole human race. In such a case, toleration is out of the question. Reckless advocates of liberty might far more consistently plead for the toleration of a poisonous factory which gave off fatal vapours in the midst of a populous community. America has long hesitated as to tolerating in her midst systematic adultery under the sheltering name of Mormonism. Probably the public conscience in the United States will ere long demand that the evil be swept away. But suppose Mormonism should add to adultery the wholesale offering of human sacrifices. In that case, every true man must feel that the evil creed of sin and blood must at once be wiped out in blood. The personal faith of every man should be tolerated so long as his faith does no gross wrong to the faith and liberty of others; but when vice and murder are labelled religion, no real lover of liberty will submit to be duped by a mere name. The rights and liberties of sufferers must also be respected. There was nothing to be done but that God should command the overthrow of altars which were set apart to vice like this. For men who had begun to enter into the liberty wherewith God makes free, the only possible course was that they should be instructed to kill off from the face of the earth organised religious teachers and doers of wholesale murder and incessant fornication. “Free and independent thought,” in which partial men of a certain bias love to indulge, has seldom perpetrated any anti-climax more ridiculous than the hundreds which, in modern days, it has pronounced against this painful but necessary destruction of the Canaanites. He who contends for a liberty which has to be nurtured daily in the blood and purity of multitudes of helpless children, is either a terrible despot towards the children, or beyond the reach of all ordinary argument. Of what matter is it that the worshippers of Molech should call the screams of his burning child “acceptable to his god,” or the corpse of his murdered son or daughter “a religious sacrifice.” Should any congregation of such worshippers be found in England to-morrow, every citizen worthy of the name would demand that they be exterminated, or made to abjure their horrible faith.
III. To disregard the voice of God is to incur the reproof and correction both of God and men.
1. God calls the disobedient to account. “Ye have not obeyed my voice. Why have ye done this?”
2. Victory ceases with fidelity. “I will not drive them out from before you.” The triumphs at Jericho, and Gibeon, and over the host of Jabin, were all won when the Israelites were little used to war. Sihon and Og were conquered when the army had little discipline and almost no military experience. In the day of Canaan’s might and Israel’s weakness, the latter was everywhere triumphant. When the people were weak then were they strong. In the day of Israel’s strength and Canaan’s feebleness, Israel could win no more battles. He who fails to obey God, must not wonder if he fails everywhere.
3. God’s enmity takes form in the enmity of men. “They shall be to you for adversaries.” God has many instruments of correction, and He not seldom uses our fellow-creatures for this purpose. Many instances of this are found in the Old Testament. May not this form of Divine correction be common now? Said a popular teacher of the past generation, when vexed with disturbances in the church over which he presided, “My sins are reappearing to me in the form of men.”
IV. Disobedience to God is a seed of temptation to yet more disobedience. “Their gods shall be a snare unto you.” It may be said of all sin as it was said of vegetable life on the morning of creation—“Whose seed is in itself.” The man who transgresses sows sin in his own heart, and, alas! the seed is naturally fruitful, and the ground naturally fertile. He who has lived long in sin need not wonder that the way of holiness is difficult. By grace we are saved. The gods whom she formerly served would ensnare the Church to her ruin now, were it not that the God of gods still graciously says, “Behold, I will allure her!” He who has been lifted up from the earth, was lifted up to draw us from the sin which many previous sins had made too fascinating for us to forsake alone. “No man can come to Me, except the Father which has sent Me draw him.” Whatever occult doctrinal meanings may or may not be concealed in these emphatic words of the Son of God, the natural enslaving power of sin needs the full weight of that awful utterance to rightly depict the weakness in which sin leaves us all. Every sinful man re-writes in his own history the ancient word of Jehovah—“Thou hast destroyed thyself; in Me is thine help.” The gods of our old idolatries have surrounded us by too many snares for us ever to be able to escape them alone.
BROKEN COMMANDMENTS.—Judges 2:2
God’s commandments are written so plainly upon the tables of Scripture, and man’s violation of them appears so clearly upon the tables of life, that when the Lord begins to expose sin, conviction must certainly and immediately follow.
The dangers of adversity may be great, but so also are the dangers of prosperity. When the Israelites were without any experience of either war or victory, they overthrew Sihon and Og, and went on to victories yet greater: when they had won the land, then they began to lose it, through love of ease and fear of iron chariots.
Mighty works of God may fail to make His servants believe, and successive years of mercy may find them increasingly ungrateful; but when the goodness of the Lord is no longer sufficient, then rebuke and chastisement at once become necessary.
Many victories often lead God’s people to think lightly of winning more. The vast importance of the divine commandments becomes obscured by the illusive light of unbroken triumphs, and a rich earthly inheritance.
The light which comes to us through adversity is often the clearest and purest that we get. So it was with the Israelites. The proof of this is again and again set before us in their history under the judges. To use the magnificent image of Edmund Burke, on a political occasion,—The light broke in upon them, “not through well-contrived and well-disposed windows, but through flaws and breaches; through the yawning chasms of their national ruin.”
THE INEXCUSABLENESS OF SIN.—Judges 2:2, last clause
I. The sin which is done in duties which are left undone. “Why have ye done this?” Only one of these three charges has to do with sins of commission; the other two speak of sins of omission. The league with the idolaters was a transgression actual and positive; for the rest of the accusation, the altars had not been thrown down, and the Divine voice had not been obeyed. Yet the Angel says of all these things alike, “Why have ye done this?” The duties which we do not are sins which we do. Our very sins of omission are full of commission. Every altar which the Israelites suffered to stand would be a wrong actually done to the land generally, and to every child in each family. We should remember that our very neglect to obey God becomes an actual and positive wrong to men.
II. The silence of the sinner in the presence of his Divine Judge. “Why have ye done this?” No answer is given. Not a word of excuse seems to have been uttered. How awful and significant is this silence! What emphasis it lays on the righteousness of the Judge’s accusation! How clearly it manifests the guilt of the accused! Here is a nation of transgressors, and not one man can make reply. It will be so with many at the last judgment. “Friend, how camest thou in hither, not having a wedding garment? And he was speechless.” There is nothing to be said for sin. It is put to silence by Divine majesty; for who shall answer God. It is put to silence by Divine mercies; common gratitude ought to have led to obedience. It is put to silence by Divine willingness to help; all the idolatrous altars which men are too weak to throw down alone, may be thrown down by the ever-willing arm of God.
III. The poor answer which the sinner must make if he were to answer truthfully. “Why have ye done this?”
1. For ease, and been disappointed. Their unwrest was even now beginning in these tears.
2. For fear, and had to fear more. The undestroyed iron chariots were the commencement of an iron yoke.
3. For gain, and have to suffer loss. The men who were spared under tribute to cultivate the fat lands which the tribes were too idle to tend themselves, would soon take the produce of the lands, and in their turn exact tribute from the Israelites.
4. For peace, and have found ourselves at war with man, with God, and even with our own consciences. All these things were beginning, and would soon be fully felt. “The way of transgressors is hard.” He who seeks to spare himself or please himself by disobeying God, inherits all he would avoid, and loses all he would obtain.
SINS OF OMISSION.—Judges 2:2
I. Their great magnitude. We are apt to think that great sins are only those which we actually commit. This is a mistake. We see here the following serious forms of transgression:
1. Disobedience to God’s will.
2. Disbelief in God’s Word.
3. Man’s judgment preferred before God’s unerring wisdom.
II. Their fearful consequences.
1. A troubled conscience.
2. An encumbered inheritance.
3. An open door made for temptation.
4. A fruitful source of conflict. “From henceforth thou shalt have wars” (2 Chronicles 16:9).
5. Ultimate overthrow and captivity. This is seen in the repeated subjection of Israel under the judges, and in the great captivity at Babylon. All began here, nor did it end there.
6. The removal of the privileges of worship. Shiloh was associated with Ichabod (Judges 18:30-31; 1 Samuel 4:21-22); the ark was taken to Philistia; the temple, later on, was utterly destroyed.
III. Their tremendous warnings. All this Old Testament narrative is not given merely for information. God seeks something higher than the satisfaction of our curiosity. Nor is the record only or principally for interest. The Holy Spirit meant to give us something more than an exciting history. “All these things happened unto them for ensamples; and they are written for our admonition, upon whom the ends of the world are come.”
“The accusation against them at Bochim was negative rather than positive. There are degrees of guilt in the rebellions of the Church against her Head; and as yet the Israelites were not charged, like Ahab afterwards, with doing very abominably in following idols: still less had they reached the villainy of Manasseh at a yet later period, who even ‘overpassed the deeds of the heathen,’ for he ‘did wickedly above all the Amorites did, which were before him, and shed innocent blood till he had filled Jerusalem from one end to another.’ It is true that their downward course, after they had once placed themselves on the smooth deceitful gradient, soon became rapid and headlong; but as yet they are expostulated with chiefly for sins of omission.
“When the Church has begun to habitually neglect any one of her Lord’s known commands—still more when she begins to ‘break one of these least commandments, and teach men so’—the day is not far distant when, unless arrested in her career by the mercy or judgments of God, she will be found openly consorting with the mammon-worshippers by whom she is surrounded.… From sparing the lives of the enemies of the Church, it was an easy step to make comfortable agreements with them.
“The evening twilight soon fades into total darkness; so their negative evil soon degenerated into positive revolt: ‘they did evil in the sight of the Lord, and served Baalim.’ ” [Luke H. Wiseman, M.A.]
“Sins of commission are usual punishments for sins of omission. He that leaves a duty may fear to be left to commit a crime.” [Gurnall.]
“We may lose heaven by neutrality as well as by hostility, by wanting oil as well as by drinking poison. An unprofitable servant shall as much be punished as a prodigal son. Undone duty will undo souls. The last words of the industrious Archbishop Usher were, ‘Lord, in special, forgive me my sins of omission.’ ”
“Love puts not off the pursuit of duty till it attains the possession of glory. There is no rocking this babe to sleep but in the cradle of the grave.” [Wm. Secker.]
NO LEAGUE TO BE MADE WITH GOD’S ENEMIES.—Judges 2:2
“It is perilous work when men begin to decide who are believers and who are not, if they decide by party badges.… Nevertheless, there is an irreligion which he who runs may read. For the atheist is not merely he who professes unbelief, but, strictly speaking, every one who lives without God in the world. And the heretic is not merely he who has mistaken some Christian doctrine, but rather he who causes divisions among the brethren. And the idolater is not merely he who worships images, but he who gives his heart to something which is less than God; for a man’s god is that which has his whole soul and worship, that which he obeys and reverences as his highest. Now there are innumerable doubtful cases where charity is bound to hope the best; but there is also an abundance of plain cases: for where a man’s god is money, or position in society, or rank, there the rule holds, ‘Come ye apart.’ ” [F. W. Robertson, M.A., Lectures on Corinthians, p. 358.]
“In every age the Church of God has to drive out her spiritual Amorites—Unbelief, Ungodliness, Heresy, Idolatry, the setting up of man’s inventions and forms in place of the pure truth of God; and unless she is diligent and bold these enemies will beleaguer her and infest her, and will at length drive her out of her inheritance. These are the enemies who will dispute with the heirs of promise every foot of their expected heritage. With these it is no child’s play at arms, but a veritable struggle for life; for as the spies reported of the sons of Anak, which come of the giants, ‘We were in our own sight as grasshoppers, and so we were in their sight’—so these bold gigantic foes are not afraid of the utmost efforts the believer can put forth by the mere force of his own will.” [L. H. Wiseman, M.A.]
THE PUNISHMENT OF SIN A PUNISHMENT IN KIND.—Judges 2:3
I. Men neglecting God, and having to hear that God will neglect them. The “Ye have not” of the people, is met by the “I will not” of God. Men omit duties, and the Lord omits help. God does not threaten the Israelites with His enmity; He simply declares that He will leave those who have so sinfully left Him. Forsaking is punished by forsaking.
II. Men making a league with the wicked, and finding that their chosen confederates are to become their direst foes. “They shall be to you for adversaries” (cf. Critical Notes). The point of departure becomes the place of chastisement. Those for whom God had been cast off, should be God’s instruments to turn that unhallowed choice into the chief cause of mourning. It is ever thus: Delilah is generally chosen to shear Samson; Gehazi lies to the healed leper, and buys the cast-off leprosy; Judas covenants with the priests, and has to hear them say in his anguish, “See thou to that;” Saul of Tarsus allies himself with the Jews to persecute Christians, and forthwith his future history is one of continued perils by his “own countrymen,” and “perils among false brethren.”
III. Men preserving idolatrous altars, and ensnared by idol gods. “Their gods shall be a snare unto you.” The altars which they spared, contrary to the command of God, became the future place of their own sacrifice. No man can afford to keep what God would have him to destroy. All our forbidden possessions, so far from being assets in the account of our individual happiness, had better at once be entered as debts which will certainly have to be paid. To strike them off the account as items which cannot be realised, is only half the loss; they must be put on the other side. The gods that we spare are not only helpless and useless; they are a snare. The altars that we leave standing not only bring us none of the joy of worship; they require us as a sacrifice.
CAUSES OF SPIRITUAL WEAKNESS
“The history illustrates the causes of the weakness of the Church and people of God.
“
I. One of these causes was indolence.… Patient labour there must be, if we would win the prize of our high calling. The athlete cannot retain his strength without daily exercise; the vocalist cannot retain his power and command of voice without incessant practice; and the child of God cannot go on to perfection without a daily spiritual gymnastic ‘exercising himself with a view to godliness’ (1 Timothy 4:7 Gr.), as an athlete with a view to the games. Faith and love, correcting the indolence of our nature, will make this holy toil delightful. In the second century it passed into a proverb, when men would express the impossibility of a thing, to say, ‘You may as well take off a Christian from Christ;’ and our blessed Master, whose example is the most perfect rebuke of slothfulness, declared that it was His meat and drink, not merely to begin, not merely to carry on, but to finish His Father’s work.
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II. Another cause of spiritual weakness is a secret love of sin. The Israelites found in the habits of the men of Canaan much that was congenial to their own corrupt inclinations.… In religious families there are sons and daughters who, although outwardly restrained by the circumstances of their position, cherish a bitter hatred of religion, and a secret love for a dissipated life. And even in the hearts of the faithful, what strange occasional lingerings there are towards evil! What treacherous trifling with things forbidden! What hovering about the devil’s ground! What secret inclinations to taste the poisoned cup! What strange revival, at times, of the power of old habits which we had imagined subdued for ever! What infatuated dancing on the brink of hell, like the moth fluttering round the candle to its destruction! Who can explain the depth of that hidden treason? Who can disclose the inner sources of that secret alienation from the adorable God, that lusting of the flesh against the spirit, which so many of the faithful mourn? ‘Never,’ says Calvin, ‘does the love of piety sufficiently flourish in our hearts unless it begets in us a hatred of sin.’
“
III. Another cause of spiritual weakness is unbelief, if indeed this one cause does not sum up and exhaust the whole subject. Unbelief is vitally connected with that alienation of heart and affections from God, in which the deepest ruin of man consists.… Here is the great secret of unbelief—it is ‘the evil heart departing from the living God.’ ” [Luke H. Wiseman, M.A.]
THE POWER OF THE LORD’S WORD.—Judges 2:4-5
From the fact that “all the children of Israel” are here spoken of, Bishop Patrick says, “By this it appears they were all met at some solemn festival, as they were bound to do three times every year, for otherwise it cannot be conceived what should occasion such an assembly of the whole congregation, and consequently the place where these words were spoken to them was Shiloh.” Probably this was so (cf. Exodus 23:14-17; Deuteronomy 12:10-14). If so, we see in the very circumstances of this gathering these three things:
1. The formal services of religion carefully observed notwithstanding gross sin. With heathen altars all around them, with a league recently made with idolaters, and with the broken words of God coming between the Most High and their service, the Israelites met to worship Him whose will they had so utterly ignored. What a picture it presents of many a subsequent religious service!
2. God refusing to accept service spoiled by disobedience, and wanting the worship of the heart. That the service was not accepted, follows from the words of the Angel. And yet, while God rejects the worship He does not at once forsake the worshipper. Just as at the beginning Divine mercy gently reasons with Cain as to his rejected offering, so does that mercy here tenderly remonstrate with the formal worshippers at Bochim. Here, also, we see a Father who “knoweth our frame, and remembereth that we are dust.”
3. A festive gathering of the Lord’s people turned into an assembly of “weepers.” God loves to make His people joyful in His house of prayer, but there is much that is more important than our gladness. As has been said of the children of Dan, even “in Aijalon, the place where Joshua had commanded the sun to stand still; so far from being animated by the memory of their leader’s faith, they were actually driven back by the heathen and forced to take shelter in the mountains (Judges 1:34-35), thus turning the noblest battle-field of the Church of God into a scene of defeat and shame.” Similar evidences of unfaithfulness were apparent all through the land. The worship of the congregation might well be turned into weeping. When the heavens are brass, and our prayer will not pass through, it is meet that we make search for idol altars, and break away from sinful leagues.
This assembly at Bochim dissolved into tears by the message of the Angel, may suggest to us the following considerations:—
I. The power of the word of the Lord to work conviction. “The people lifted up their voice and wept.” As was written to the Hebrews of a later generation, “The Word of God is quick and powerful, and sharper than any two-edged sword,” Hebrews 4:12). As heard on this occasion, this word—
1. Reveals the love of God. It tells of His loving acts in the past. It declares, no less, His tender concern in the present, and His care for His people’s future.
2. It makes manifest the sins of men. It spares no one. The leaders of the people are exposed even more than the mass. It is the glory of the Bible that it has no respect to persons. The sins of Noah, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Moses, Aaron, David, and Peter, are as fully revealed as are the sins of Amnon, Absalom, Gehazi, or Ananias and Sapphira. King or peasant, child of God or openly wicked, the word of the Lord declares and judges sin wherever it is found.
3. It displays the sinner’s base ingratitude. It throws the strong light of God’s past love and goodness on the dark evidences of man’s idolatrous sympathies. It “discerneth the thoughts and intents of the heart,” which after being made glad by God, wickedly turns against God. How many has it thus judged and condemned! What multitudes it is so condemning even to this day!
4. It proclaims coming punishment. Men argue against its penalties as being unlike the God whom it declares, but the Bible still goes on speaking in its awful calmness about the “worm that dieth not, and the fire that is not quenched.” Blessed be God for the faithful word! It shows that God has not given up as hopeless the sinful men to whom, through it, He still comes with words of rebuke and exhortation. Let the hands that so often hang down be lifted up to preach it, well assured that “it is the power of God unto salvation.” People still weep when they hear the words of the law of the Lord (cf. Nehemiah 8:9).
II. Conviction expressing itself through tears. “The people lifted up their voice and wept.” The weeping seems to have been very general. Unless very many had been in tears, we should not have been told that the people wept, nor would the place have been named “The Weepers.”
1. Tears must ever follow sin. They may come as tears of genuine grief for sin. They may be delayed till sin brings punishment. In one way or the other they must certainly succeed the transgression of God’s righteous laws. Every sinner is a debtor to grief, and sooner or later the bill must be met. The longer payment is deferred, the worse for the debtor, for the interest charged on overdue tears for sin is always both high and compound. Emerson says: “The ingenuity of man has always been dedicated to the solution of one problem,—how to detach the sensual sweet, the sensual strong, the sensual bright, &c., from the moral sweet, the moral deep, the moral fair; that is, again, to contrive to cut clean off this upper surface so thin as to leave it bottomless; to get a one end without an other end.… This dividing and detaching is steadily counteracted. Up to this day, it must be owned, no projector has had the smallest success. The parted water reunites behind our hand. We can no more halve things and get the sensual good by itself, than we can get an inside that shall have no outside, or a light without a shadow. ‘Drive out Nature with a fork, she comes running back.’ ” Natural law alone exacts, unfailingly, the due penalties of sin; and behind Nature, and working through Nature, stands God, “Who will by no means clear the guilty.” He who chooses the pleasures of sin for a season will also in due season have to take its pains. It is well that this is so. If sin could be committed without tears, to use a paradox, it would be more full of tears than ever. The sorrow that multiplies upon itself and cannot weep, has need to weep indeed.
2. Tears are necessary till sin is put away. Sir Walter Scott wrote of the comparatively innocent tears of children,—
“The tear down childhood’s cheek that flows,
Is like the dewdrop on the rose:
When next the summer breeze comes by,
And waves the bush, the flower is dry.”
God has mercifully ordered it that the tears that flow for iniquity shall not be dried so quickly. In heaven, where there is no more sin, God wipes away all tears with His own hand. He will love us there no more than He loves us here. He leaves us in tears here, simply because we have too much sin to do without them.
3. Tears for sin, nevertheless, are often only temporary. Men dry their own eyes, and harden their own hearts, when God would see them still weeping. “Bochim” is not mentioned again throughout the Scriptures. The tears of these transgressors were of short duration. The tears, and the name of the place where they shed them, were alike soon forgotten. The forgiven man rejoices that tears are put away, and exclaims,—“Sing psalms to Jehovah, ye His saints, and give thanks at the remembrance of His holiness. Because His anger is for a moment, His favour for a life-time; weeping may tarry in the evening, but at morning there is joy” (cf. Heb. Psalms 30:5-6).—The unforgiven man has need to weep again that his tears are dried all too soon.
4. Tears are most hopeful when most hidden. “They called the name of that place Bochim.” They named it after their weeping. They made a display of their penitence. Their tears were so poor that they must needs advertise them. It can hardly be a matter for wonder that neither name nor tears lasted long. He fasts best who “appears not unto men to fast.” He weeps best whose tears for sin have in them enough of shame to make him seek to hide them. Our Heavenly Father would no more have us cry at the corners of the streets than He would have us pray there.
III. Tears promptly followed by sacrifice. “And they sacrificed there unto the Lord.” Probably they offered special sin-offerings, on account of the message of the Angel, in addition to the festive offerings in connection with this particular gathering of the congregation.
1. Tears for sin are nothing without sacrifice. Personal offences between man and man are to be forgiven freely, even “unto seventy times seven.” Every man is commanded, without any reparation whatever, to forgive his fellows, as he hopes to be forgiven. But no ruler of a community can forgive offences thus freely. In this case, forgiveness of the one would be a wrong to all others. At the public bar the requirements of justice are simply absolute. Whatever other reasons may or may not exist with God, this alone is imperative. The law must be magnified, and made honourable. Tears can never suffice without sacrifice.
2. Tears should lead us to the sacrifice of Christ. In Him “righteousness and peace have kissed each other.”
3. Gratitude for tears wiped away should lead us to personal sacrifice. He can know little of the sacrifice of the Cross who does not believe with some self-sacrifice of his own.
IV. Conviction, tears, and sacrifice, all fruitless for want of true repentance. “The curse causeless shall not come” (Proverbs 26:2), but the curse foretold by the Angel did come, and come speedily. There can be only one conclusion; the repentance was too unreal for the conviction to be worth anything, for the tears to be grateful to God, or for the sacrifice to be acceptable in His sight. The final punishment of those who never repent must be dreadful; but the final punishment of those who all their life long are convicted without conversion, who weep without penitence, and who come to Christ without really giving themselves to Christ, must be terrible indeed. To all the woe of the impenitent lost, their woe must have added the awful vexation of a disappointment which must seem as though hell were added to hell. It is an apostolic conclusion, that those who in this life only have hope, “are of all men most miserable.” Unreal religion in this life is a factor by which, in the life to come, the Divine punishment of sin will be self-multiplied by the sinner to his own aggravation of the ordinary woe of the lost.
THE WAY TO AND FROM TRANSGRESSION.—Judges 2:4-5
I. The easy way to disobedience against God. Weeds need no cultivating, but a good harvest comes of much labour. Transgression seems indigenous even to the best of human hearts. “Ill weeds grow apace;” we cannot see why they grow so readily, but the process through which they come can be traced with tolerable distinctness. The disobedience of these Israelites may be traced through the following stages:—
1. Decreasing prayer. A while back they asked, “Who shall go up for us against the Canaanites” (Judges 1:1)? When Judah failed in faith, we hear of no fresh inquiry. When the rest of the tribes were discouraged, we are told of no further supplication to God. Had the prayer of Psalms 80 been upon the hearts and lips of the tribes now, we had heard of no such rebuke as this at Bochim. Had Israel cried, “Before Ephraim and Benjamin and Manasseh stir up Thy strength, and come and save us,” there could have been no such record as that in the last part of Judges 1. The failure of prayer is the beginning of failure “all along the line.”
2. Love of ease. Incessant conflict was probably getting more and more disagreeable. He who prefers rest in his own way to obedient rest in the word and will of God is fast nearing the place of tears.
3. Increased desires for gain. The tribes “could not drive out” their enemies, yet they “put them to tribute,” and thus betrayed the “would not” which underlay their “could not.” Tribute and no conflict, seemed easier than conflict and no tribute. That, too, led to Bochim. They were seeking to make a profit out of God’s enemies. Like Achan, they too were taking of God’s devoted things, and they also were seeking to conceal them: Achan hid his spoil in his tent, and they attempted to hide theirs under the idea of lawful tribute.
4. Growing self-assurance. When the tribes were weak, then were they so strong that they never lost a battle; when they grew strong enough to put their enemies to tribute, then they never won another victory, till out of their distress and renewed weakness they cried again unto the Lord (Judges 3:9-10).
II. The difficulty of escaping from sin when once it has been committed. The way of escape is
(1) through tears;
(2) through sacrifice;
(3) through obedience, without which both tears and sacrifice are in vain. The real difficulty of escaping from a life of sin is thus seen to lie in the difficulty of true repentance. God is ever “ready to forgive” when we are ready to be forgiven. Esau might have found mercy as readily as Jacob, could he have found a heart to seek and wrestle with God; the difficulty was here,—Esau “found no place of repentance, though he too came to Bochim, and “sought it carefully with tears.” Pardon is ever offered to the penitent; but if they who have known God’s goodness turn from it, the difficulty is “to renew them again unto repentance” (Hebrews 6:4-6). The dying penitent is ever on the borders of paradise, but the dying are often very far from penitence (Luke 23:39-43).
III. The great grace of God through Jesus Christ the Saviour.
1. God sent many warnings. Repeated warnings of these very sins were given through Moses. Many more were given through Joshua. Victory was always afforded to them when faithful. Yet they sinned.
2. God came with personal remonstrance. The Angel of the Covenant Himself enters into controversy with the disobedient at Bochim. “Last of all He sent unto them His Son.” Neither did this avail. The league was still maintained. The altars were still spared.
3. God manifested gracious patience. The evil foretold in Judges 2:3 did not come to pass at once. The Lord waited, that He might be gracious. It is not till we read that “Israel served Baalim” that we are told “the anger of the Lord was hot against Israel” (Judges 2:11-14). The Lord tried them, and proved them.
4. God showed great readiness to hear their cries of distress. At the very first signs of penitence He raised them up judges to deliver them (Judges 2:11; Judges 3:9). For all that, yet did they not truly seek Him (Judges 2:17-19). Thus, though Divine grace is so exalted, “the way of transgressors is hard;” it is hard while they pursue it, and hard for them to turn back from it into the paths of righteousness and peace.
THE TEARS OF EARTH AND THE TEARLESS HEAVEN.—Judges 2:5 (a)
It is said that there shall be “neither sorrow nor crying” among the redeemed in heaven, but that “God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes.” The place where there is no more sin is to be a place where there shall be no more tears.
I. God, who will presently wipe all tears away, here causes them to flow abundantly. It is the angel of His presence who here constrains the people to weep.
II. God, who wipes tears away only where there is no more sin, here makes them to flow for sin. Did sin bring no tears, the sinful would know little enough of penitence. This Book of Judges is the Lord’s own commentary on the necessity for our tears. Nowhere more than here is it seen that “through much tribulation we must enter into the kingdom.”
III. God, who waits to wipe all tears from off all faces, has no pleasure in causing them. Weeping is not an arbitrary arrangement, but is born in us of Divine pity and love. “Whom the Lord loveth, He chasteneth.”
IV. God, who while we are here moves us to tears Himself, will when we are there Himself wipe them away. As at Bochim, so often; He comes to us on earth to make us weep. In heaven, it shall be as it was at the crossing of the Jordan into the land of Canaan, about which the bards of Israel presently sang: “The waters saw Thee, O God, the waters saw Thee; they were afraid:” “What ailed thee, O Thou sea, that thou fleddest? thou Jordan, that thou wast driven back?” So at our entrance to the Promised Land on high, the river of tears shall be driven back at the very sight of the God of love. We “shall see His face;” and from the everlasting joy of His countenance shall be born the tearless and immortal gladness of our own.
BOCHIM
Our tears are of small account when, moved by penitence and love, we voluntarily come into our Lord’s presence and shed them at His feet. Tears have even much sweetness in their pain then. When Peter went out from Christ to cry, he “went out and wept bitterly;” when the sinful woman came into Christ’s presence and washed His feet with her tears, who does not feel that her tears were tears of gladness? The tears, too, of Mary Magdalene, shed at the empty tomb, presently got all the pain taken out of them when she was able to exclaim, Rabboni. He who sheds his tears at the feet of Jesus will always find that he is the happier for them. When our tears for sin fall on His feet, they turn to diamonds of the first water, and as we recall how He said, “Thy sins which be many are all forgiven thee,” memory does but pick them up as jewels for our soul’s future enrichment.
Pain is God’s great teacher. No one can learn well without it. Take two boys of equal gifts and equal industry. Let one grow up with almost no crosses and suffering, and the other with trials many and deep, yet borne with patient fortitude. How shallow will the one life be when compared with the richness and depth of tone in the other!
Pain must always be interpreted relatively. You cannot look on a wounded child, on a strongman crippled suddenly for life, or on a young mother taken from several young children, and read the meaning there. These are but “parts of His ways.” You can make nothing of the Cross on Calvary if you look at that alone. You may, in spirit, join those of whom it is said that “sitting down they watched Him there,” but, like them, you also will fail to understand it thus. You will have to keep them company in yet that further experience, when they “smote their breasts, and returned.” But look out on Pentecost; look at the records of the apostles’ labours, as given in the Acts and in the Epistles; look at the eighteen centuries during which the Crucified One has been drawing all men to Himself: read the Cross in the light of all that, and it will be beautifully different from the same Cross when you look at it merely through the terrible gloom of the three hours’ darkness, or try to make out its rich and far-reaching meanings through the agonised utterances of the suffering Son of God. Even so our smaller crosses can seldom be made out amid the gloom of their own darkness. “Blessed are all they that wait patiently for Him,” to make the vision of suffering and tears plain upon the tables of life.
“They wept, but we do not find that they reformed,—that they went home and destroyed all the remains of idolatry and idolaters among them. Many are melted under the Word that harden again before they are cast into a new mould.” [Matt. Henry.]
“From Gilgal to Bochim” is a path much shorter and much easier than that from Bochim to Mount Zion. The history of the one is in a few brief pages, which record no conflict; that of the other is a history of many struggles, extending to the time of David (2 Samuel 5:6-10).
“If transgressors cannot endure the rebukes of God’s Word and the convictions of their own consciences, how will they be able to stand before the tribunal of the holy heart-searching Judge?” [Scott.]
“The Israelites called the place Bochim; they named it from their own tears. They laid the principal stress on their own feelings, and on their own demonstrations of sorrow. But they did not speak of God’s mercies, and they were not careful to bring forth fruits of repentance; they were a barren fig-tree, having only leaves. Theirs was a religion, such as is too common, of sentiment and emotions, not of faith and obedience.
“Reproofs which produce only tears—religious feelings without religious acts—emotions without effects, leave the heart worse than before. If God’s rebukes are trifled with, His grace is withdrawn.” [Wordsworth.]
“Repentance and temptation are the two purgatories that a Christian in his way to heaven must pass through. The first is of water, the other of fire. We can no sooner come out of the one, but we must look to enter into the other. No sooner have we bathed and washed our souls in the waters of repentance, but we must presently expect the fiery darts of Satan’s temptations to be driving at us.” [Dyke.]
“Like Janus Bifrons, the Roman god looking two ways, a true repentance not only bemoans the past but takes heed to the future. Repentance, like the lights of a ship at her bow and her stern, not only looks to the track she has made, but to the path before her. A godly sorrow moves the Christian to weep over the failure of the past, but his eyes are not so blurred with tears but that he can look watchfully into the future, and, profiting by the experience of former failures, make straight paths for his feet.” [J. G. Pilkington.]
When men are in the wilderness of sin, even the heart of rock must be made to give forth water, lest the thirsty spirit perish outright. There are times when tears are a relief. There are places where oppressed manhood cries, “Oh, that my head were waters, and mine eyes a fountain of tears, that I might weep.” Whether God Himself speak to the rocky heart, or whether “the rod of God” be used, tears, in this desert, may well be an occasion of joy and thankfulness.