CRITICAL NOTES.—
Judges 2:18. For it repented the Lord because of their groanings.] “Because the Lord had compassion upon their sighing.” [Keil.] “ ‘The Lord was moved with compassion,’ or ‘was grieved,’ ‘because of their groanings,’ as Judges 21:15. So, too, Psalms 106:45. The sense of repenting which the word (נחם) bears, Jonah 3:9, and elsewhere, is secondary” [Speaker’s Com.]
Judges 2:19. And it came to pass.] “But it came,” &c., the vau being taken adversatively. They ceased not.] Cf. Marg., “they let nothing fall of their doings,” i.e., of their wicked doings. LXX., “They abandoned not their devices.”
Judges 2:20. And the anger of the Lord.] This resumes the statement from Judges 2:14, the intervening passage being a general description of details presently to be mentioned in the main narrative.
Judges 2:21. I also will not henceforth, &c.] Lit., “I also will not continue to drive out a man from before them.” This cessation of Jehovah’s working is placed over against the want of cessation from evil doings spoken of in Judges 2:19.
Judges 2:23. Therefore the Lord left.] That is to say, “Therefore the Lord had left,”&c. He had foreseen this backsliding of Israel (Deuteronomy 31:16-18), and had suffered the Canaanites to rally from the apparently overwhelming defeats of Joshua, in order that they might remain to prove Israel. Thus, as Prof. Steenstra remarks, “the ‘not speedily’ of Joshua’s time had by Israel’s faithless apostasy been changed into ‘never.’ ” The impression left by this verse in the A.V. as to not “driving them out hastily,” is certainly not in harmony with the emphatic statement in Judges 2:21, that Jehovah would not go on, or add, “to drive out a man” in the future.
MAIN HOMILETICS OF THE PARAGRAPH.— Judges 2:16-23
THE CONFLICT OF GOD’S MERCY WITH MAN’S SIN
The Book of Judges, of which these verses give a summary, is a “book of the wars of the Lord.” We see here God contending with sin in the hearts of His people. He who reads the Books of Joshua and Judges merely as accounts of battles between the Israelites and their enemies, will overlook by far the larger half of the conflicts set down in the narratives. As was observed in treating of the siege of Jericho, God’s great battle there was with sin and unbelief in the hearts of the Israelites. Such, too, was the strife at Ai, at Beth-horon, and in the subsequent conflicts. Such, even more manifestly, is the great underlying purpose of all the struggles between man and man recorded in the history before us. In every battle, whether won by Israel or lost, the God of love is seen contending with the unbelief and idolatry of the people whom He had redeemed from the bondage of Egypt. The Divine word, through Hosea, might stand, indeed, for the text of this whole book: “I taught Ephraim also to go, taking them by their arms; but they knew not that I healed them.”
I. Great sin followed by still more abundant mercy. “Where sin abounded, grace did much more abound.”
1. God’s mercy was in excess of His promises. The “thorns in their sides” had been repeatedly foretold to these Israelites. The punishments that would follow unfaithfulness had been reiterated again and again. These great deliverances under the judges had not been so foretold. While God’s judgments are ever equal to His threatenings, His mercies are often largely in excess of His promises. The evils which would follow disobedience were foretold in much detail, and they came, even “as the Lord had said” (Judges 2:15); little, if anything, was said about the deliverances, but they came no less than the judgments. The wicked have every reason to believe that the threatened woes of the last day will also be even “as the Lord hath said;” the truly penitent will find in the way to heaven, and still more when there, that the half has not been told them of God’s wondrous goodness.
2. The mercy was through one man, because of the unfitness of the multitude. Each judge was made the great instrument of deliverance. This was emphatically the case in the instances of Ehud and Shamgar, Gideon and Samson. It seemed as if the Lord purposely took away all opportunities from the people to glory in their own might. They were too wicked for success, and even in their deepest penitence fit only for mercy. Hence God gave them deliverance through the personal prowess of a few men. The multitude was not fit to win favours; it was hardly prepared to receive them. The measure of a Church’s spiritual success is probably often according to its ability to bear success. The manner in which success comes may also furnish some indication as to our preparedness, in the sight of God, to receive the blessings of prosperity.
II. Rejected mercy followed by reckless sin (Judges 2:17; Judges 2:19). The Lord raised up judges, and delivered the people out of their great distress; the people prayed for deliverance, and gladly accepted it when it came; then, when their distress was removed, they rejected the Lord who had showed mercy upon them, and thus rejected all the high meanings with which the mercy was laden. It is not to be wondered at that we read, after that, “They returned, and corrupted themselves more than their fathers, in following other gods to serve them, and to bow down unto them; they ceased not from their evil doings, nor from their stubborn way.” To ignore great kindness and mercy is one of the most sure and terrible ways of hardening the heart in wickedness. Take the case of Judas. How tenderly our Lord’s kindness must have pleaded with that man in the upper room! Think of the Saviour washing the feet of the man who was already committed to the sale of his Master! After the washing of the feet, Christ let Judas see that He fully knew the dark purposes of his wicked heart, and yet had washed his feet, notwithstanding. Think of the kind sad tones of the voice that said, “One of you shall betray Me!” Think of the inquiry of the twelve, “Is it I?” and of the miserable creature who, not to betray himself by being unlike the rest, was forced in his turn to ask that question also! Think of the words to John, and of the gift of the sop which followed them! Why did not Judas drop the sop, and burst into tears, and openly acknowledge what His Lord, and through Him the eleven, so evidently knew? How hard the heart of Judas must have been after he had taken that sop, and managed to swallow it without crying! The tears must have all petrified within the man—a heart full of tears, turned into the severe hardness of diamonds, but having none of their purity. The tenderness of Christ’s deeds and words was not only making evident Christ’s former saying—“One of you is a devil;” for Judas to reject such love was to diabolise himself more than ever. Think of the opportunity for spontaneous confession which the Lord gave to the man in the words, uttered probably with infinite tenderness: “What thou doest, do quickly!” Why did not Judas answer back: “Lord, I cannot do it at all; much less can I do it quickly, against love like Thine?” But the man had no spontaneity in him. Poor Peter would have broken down half a dozen times through that supper; but Judas had no good impulses. So, “he then having received the sop went immediately out.” And he went out fully prepared to do his dreadful work. After being able to resist all the tenderness of the Saviour at the supper, it was easy work to go for the band of men and officers, and comparatively easy even to betray Christ with his kiss. The act of spurning the Lord’s tender mercy had turned his poor heart to very stone. Take the case of a young man, rejecting a good mother’s love and tears. Suppose a wicked son bent on doing some wicked deed. Think of a Christian and ever-gentle mother pleading with him on her knees, her eyes streaming with tears, not to do the evil thing in his heart. Imagine such a son striking that mother a brutal blow to the earth, and then fleeing from her presence while she was yet insensible. Who does not see how so wicked an act, against such love, would harden the heart almost beyond redemption. The man would be capable of anything after that. So it ever is with any who resist, and overcome, and put away from them tender pleadings of the love of Christ in their own consciences. So it was with these Israelites when they resisted the pleading of God’s great mercy with them in their distress, and turned again to sin. Isaiah saw the glory of Jehovah as He sat upon the throne high and lifted up, and the prophet cried, “I am a man of unclean lips!” To others of the Jews, God had showed the glory of much mercy and gentleness and love. But the Jews resisted that mercy. Therefore Isaiah said of Jehovah in His splendour of goodness, “He hath blinded their eyes, and hardened their heart, that they should not see with their eyes, nor understand with their heart, and be converted, and I should heal them. These things said Esaias, when he saw His glory, and spake of Him.” The resisted light of God ever turns to darkness. The heart that turns from His glory, must needs rush very deeply into sin, to forget itself. The glory makes a man feel with Peter: “Depart from me, O Lord, for I am a sinful man;” it makes him who sees it cry with Isaiah, “Woe is me! for I am a man of unclean lips:” or it drives him who beholds it more recklessly into wickedness than ever. Thus was it with the Israelites. When they turned again to sin after God’s very marvellous and gracious deliverances, there was nothing for it but that they should give themselves up to idolatry without restraint. To sin against great light and tender love, is to sin with utter recklessness.
III. Reckless sin followed by still severer chastisements (Judges 2:20-21). “The anger of the Lord was hot against Israel.” He said, “I also will not henceforth drive out any from before them of the nations which Joshua left when he died.” On one occasion, we see how, for a time, the Lord absolutely refused to hear their prayer. He answered them in their distress: “Wherefore I will deliver you no more. Go and cry unto the gods which ye have chosen; let them deliver you in the time of your tribulation” (Judges 10:9-14).
1. God’s punishment of sin is too just to be given up without repentance. It is not grounded on the anger of impulse, but on the calm anger which has its foundation in a sense of wrong—wrong to Himself, wrong to men generally, and wrong to the souls of the evildoers. Man’s anger is a fire, burning with impulsive and selfish passion; God’s anger is a consuming fire, unless it be met by repentance, for it is kindled by eternal principles of righteousness and benevolence
2. God punishes sin too deliberately to forego His chastisements without reason. He does not begin to build His towers without counting the cost. The steady and increasing pressure upon Pharaoh can only end in Pharaoh’s destruction unless he repents. Israel itself must presently be carried even to Babylon, if Israel will persist in idolatry.
3. God’s punishments are too full of love to be given up lightly. Not only is the anger calm, but the love is very deep. The anger of God against sin has no hatred of the guilty—
“He hates the sin with all His heart,
And yet the sinner loves.”
“Having loved His own which are in the world, He loves them unto the end.” Hence we are prepared to see, as indicated in these closing verses,
IV. Chastisement, in its severest form, still made the vehicle of God’s merciful purposes (Judges 2:22-23). God would “prove Israel” to see whether or not they would keep His way. The spirit of this patient purpose runs all through the book. It was not a sudden purpose, formed only when the Israelites began to depart from God. God had cherished that purpose even in the time of Joshua, and forborne to deliver the Canaanites entirely into Joshua’s hand. Notwithstanding this dark history under the several judges, the Divine purpose did not fall to the ground. Through steady and stern chastisements, the Israelites gradually grew into the feeling that the way of sin was a way of sorrow. God made Bye Path Meadow rougher than the King’s highway. There were times when Giant Despair fastened the people in his terrible stronghold. They were often glad to return again by the way in which they had departed. The result was that during Samuel’s time the nation was found, probably, nearer God than at any period between the death of “the elders who outlived Joshua,” and that of Samson in the house of Dagon, at Gaza. Mr. L. H. Wiseman has well expressed the real progress of the nation in the following remarks: “I am inclined to think that the period of the judges was, upon the whole, a period of national advancement. The prevailing idea is, no doubt, opposed to this view. It contemplates the period of the judges as an unbroken series of idolatries and crimes and miseries, relieved only by the occasional appearance of a Barak or a Gideon, like a momentary gleam of sunshine on a dark tempestuous day. But a deeper study of the times tends to modify and correct this idea. The rule of the judges secured long periods of tranquillity. Of history in general, it may be justly said that it brings into bold relief a nation’s wars and discontents, while epochs of peace and prosperity are either thrown into the background, or left unnoticed. The exceptions, rather than the rule, are recorded; just as a voyager, narrating the story of his crossing the ocean, dwells chiefly on a storm or two which befell him, and passes lightly over many a week of smooth and pleasant sailing.… It is thus with the Book of Judges. The period of which it treats was not a period of incessant warfare; but it was marked by long and frequent intervals of repose. War and disgrace were, after all, the exception; peace and tranquillity were the rule. Thus, after the victory achieved by the first judge, Othniel, ‘the land had rest forty years;’ after Ehud’s victory, ‘the land had rest fourscore years;’ a little later, ‘the country was in quietness forty years in the days of Gideon;’ the twenty-three years of Tola, the twenty-two years of Jair, the twenty-five years following the death of Jephtha, all passed without any recorded national struggle; and the forty years of Eli’s official life were free from war till its melancholy close. And although the people’s lapses into idolatry were frequent, they were so far checked and restrained, that of 450 years, according to the computation of a learned writer (Graves on the Pentateuch), there were not less than 377 years during which the worship of God was generally maintained. Gloomy and fearful as are some of the details furnished in the Book of Judges, the Hebrew nation was nevertheless in a better state during that period, morally, politically, and spiritually, than it became afterwards during the reigns of the later kings. For these long intervals of tranquillity and of rest from the enemy—during which many a family, no doubt, followed the Lord in quietness and faith, according to that lovely picture of domestic piety given us in the Book of Ruth—the Church of those days was indebted, under God, to the judges, who, through faith, ‘wrought righteousness, and obtained promises.’ … On the whole, during this period, the Hebrew nation increased in importance and strength. After Joshua’s death there had been a rapid decline; but if we take as the commencement of the period the state of things in the time of Othniel, the first judge, and compare it with the state of things in the time of Samuel, who was the last, the advancement is too manifest to be disputed. The Jewish state went on from that time increasing in glory till it reached its culminating point a century later in the reign of Solomon: after which commenced its long and unretrieved decline. In the period of the judges, notwithstanding the defections from God, the rebellions, the outrages, the confusion, the bloody civil strifes which the historian records, so that at the close of the book we seem to behold, as a learned writer (Bishop Wordsworth) observes, ‘An overclouded sunset, almost a dark eclipse, of the glory of Israel,’ yet idolatry was neither so frequent, so open, so obstinately continued, nor so shamelessly immoral, as it became in the later period of the monarchy. The rulers of the people, instead of being hereditary tyrants, and sensualists who taught their people to sin, were special messengers of God, men of faith and power, capable of checking public disorder, and of restoring religion and faith. Notwithstanding frightful interruptions, like the deep rents and yawning chasms which meet the traveller ascending their own Lebanon, the general tendency and direction of the period of the judges was not downward, but upward toward the heights beyond.” So far as progression under the judges is concerned, little exception can be taken to this careful and eloquent estimate, which well accords with the view taken by Dr. Kitto. As to the subsequent decay under the later kings, perhaps the verdict is somewhat too emphatic. Notwithstanding the guilt of Jeroboam, Ahab, Manasseh, and other monarchs, and the dire results of their apostasy among the people, it should not be forgotten that even in Ahab’s days there were seven thousand who had not “bowed the knee to Baal,” and probably many more who bowed reluctantly. There seems even some ground for Dean Stanley’s remark, lying wholly in another direction: “The age of the psalmists and prophets was an immense advance upon the age of the judges.” Of the progress of the people from Othniel to Samuel, however, there can be little doubt. God’s chastisements were not in vain. The purpose of the Lord was full of mercy, and the mercy did not fail. In the language of one of the last of the judges, “Out of the eater came forth meat.” The Lord’s chastisements are no less full of merciful purpose in these latter days.
OUTLINES AND COMMENTS ON THE VERSES
A NATION’S GREAT AND GOOD MEN.—Judges 2:16
I. The relation of a nation’s great men to God.
1. The Lord raises them up. They are of His providing. After all allowances for evolution and natural development, He is at the back of both.
2. The Lord chooses the time for raising them up. He raises them up when they are wanted. Carlyle says: “Show our critics a great man, a Luther for example, they begin to what they call ‘account’ for him; not to worship him, but to take the dimensions of him, and bring him out to be a little kind of man. He was the ‘creature of the time,’ they say; the time called him forth, the time did everything, he nothing—but what we the little critic could have done too? This seems to me but melancholy work. The time call forth? Alas, we have known the times call loudly enough for their great man; but not find him when they called! He was not there; Providence had not sent him; the time, calling its loudest, had to go down to confusion and wreck because he would not come when called.” All this is true enough. Still, when Providence does not answer the call of a critical time, it is because there is something in the men of the time which forbids this answer. When the man for the time does not come, it is not because God is short of men, but because the men of the time have got where “confusion and wreck” are better for that time, or after times, than any amount of prosperity.
II. The relation of great and good men to a nation’s social and religious condition.
1. True, leaders are not always given because of a nation’s merit, but often in spite of its unworthiness. The great sin of Israel made these judges necessary, yet the judges were not given till distress had wrought penitence. When the people were penitent, then God sent them a helper. Periods of national calamity on account of sin, like those which we find in this book, account for the spirit of much of Solomon’s prayer at the dedication of the temple; still more is their influence to be marked in the profound sense of national humiliation pervading the prayer of holy Daniel (Daniel 9:3-20).
2. Such leaders are not raised up by God after the thought and manner of men. They may be lefthanded, like Ehud. They may be women like Deborah. They may be of such a class as Gideon, who cried, “O my Lord, where with shall I save Israel? behold my family is poor in Manasseh, and I am the least in my father’s house.” The Lord never needs to prop up His greatness with any of the so-called greatness of men. Shamgar, the man of the ox goad, or Jephtha, “the son of a strange woman;” either can do the Lord’s work so long as the Lord is with them. “The Lord seeth not as man seeth.”
3. Some leaders are raised up, even from their birth, to give deliverance to their nation. They are the subjects of God’s forethought, and training, and careful provision. Such was Samuel. He whom the Lord would raise to conspicuous greatness and usefulness is generally nurtured amid the influences of pure religion. We do not hear much of the mothers of the judges, in general; nor was the influence of the ordinary judges very abiding (Judges 2:19): Samuel whose influence was to last through all the nation’s history was the child of a mother who both knew how to pray, and how to give her much-loved child to her more-loved God. A nation’s real leaders must needs be scarce when there are no real mothers.
III. The relation of men whom God raises up to a nation’s deliverances.
1. All victory is of the Lord; leaders are but the instruments through whom He works. (a) None of the deliverances are wrought to any considerable extent by the people. In this Book, it is the man by whom God works, not the multitude. (b) No leader is too weak so long as God strengthens him. Ehud, the left-handed man triumphs when God is with him; yet even mighty Samson fails when the Lord has “departed from him.” Shamgar’s ox goad, or the jaw bone of an ass, or the ardour of the woman Deborah; nothing is too rude, no one is too weak and unskilled, if the Lord does but bless the instrument. (c) All these features of victory were meant to teach Israel that “the battle is the Lord’s.” “Without Me ye can do nothing;” that is one side of the Book of Judges: “I can do all things through Him which strengtheneth me”; that is the other side.
2. The Lord works most enduringly with those leaders who walk most with the Lord. Set the work of the sensual and mighty Samson over against that of the pure and unselfish Gideon, whose humility led him to claim the lowest place in the poor house of his father, and see whose life brings most of blessing to his nation. Even the rude strength of Jephtha—a man of ready resources, quick movements, and a born commander, but tainted with the spirit of the surrounding idolatry—compares feebly indeed with the enduring mercy that comes to Israel though the calm gentle strength of holy Samuel. Israel’s great song in this Book is the outcome of the ardent piety of a woman, and the best perpetuated mercies of the nation spring from the labours of Gideon and Samuel who walk very near to God. Even here, Gideon’s influence becomes sorely weakened by the Ephod, which became a snare to his nation, his household, and himself (Judges 8:27). Great leaders are a great gift of God, but when greatness and true piety go together, the Lord’s favour is rich indeed.
THE INFLUENCES OF GOOD LIVES.—Judges 2:16
“What an umpire Nature is; what a greatness, composure of depth and tolerance there is in her. You take wheat to cast into the earth’s bosom: your wheat may be mixed with chaff, chopped straw, barn-sweepings, dust and all imaginable rubbish; no matter: you cast it into the kind just earth; she grows the wheat,—the whole rubbish she silently absorbs, shrouds it in, says nothing of the rubbish. The yellow wheat is growing there; the good earth is silent about all the rest,—has silently turned all the rest to some benefit too, and makes no complaint about it.” [Carlyle.]
This is so, and not so in the sowings that come of our human lives. The good seed of a good life grows. God suffers not that to lack a harvest. But the bad seed of our lives grows also. Our moral and spiritual rubbish is full of life-germs, and the soil around us is still more favourable to get a heavy crop out of them. “Whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap;” alas! others around him will reap a good deal of it also.
A good life is light from heaven; it is a revelation of God; it is God’s image, wherein man was originally made, set up before surrounding lives. The holier of these judges not only showed the people what a human life should be; every approach to holiness which they made in their work was in that measure a revelation of the Divine character to their fellows. Every true worker now, in proportion as his work is true indeed, reveals his Father which is in heaven before the eyes of his fellows. In this sense, there is much beauty in the lines of Goethe, as translated by Carlyle:—
“In Being’s floods, in Action’s storm,
I walk and work, above, beneath,
Work and weave in endless motion
Birth and Death,
An infinite ocean;
A seizing and giving
The fire of living:
’Tis thus at the roaring loom of time I ply,
And weave for God the garment thou seest HIM by.”
GOD’S UNAPPRECIATED MERCIES.—Judges 2:17-19
I. Man’s insusceptibility to mercy (Judges 2:17):—
1. Through blindness to what was good in man. “They would not hearken unto their judges.”
2. Through love of what was evil in things. Their gods represented so much self-indulgence in wickedness.
3. Through ingratitude for all that was gracious in God. They did not care to remember His great goodness. La Rochefoucauld said, “We seldom find people ungrateful as long as we are in a condition to render them services.” Yet these Israelites show us how possible it is to take the Lord’s services and, at the same time, to ignore Him.
II. God’s persistence in mercy (Judges 2:18). I. In raising up judges. It must have needed much encouragement for the judges to have come out from the multitude: God gave them sufficient encouragement to do even that.
2. In being present with the judges. Some of them were very faulty, but for all that the Lord would not forsake them for His people’s sake.
3. In giving the people actual deliverance from oppression. He who had put them into the hand of their enemies, when affliction had done its work, also took them out again.
4. Because of His great pity. “It repented the Lord because of their groanings.”
III. Man’s rejection of mercy. Even after they had again and again “tasted and handled and felt” the grace of God, sometimes bestowed in answer to their own earnest prayers, they turned again to evil. Well might they be spoken of as men of a “stubborn way.” Yet unto us also God’s mercies are “new every morning.” Are we more grateful than these, whose faults we can so easily perceive?
ISRAEL’S APOSTASY
“Apostacy is followed by ruin; the loss of character by that of courage. Heroes become cowards; conquerors take to flight. Shame and scorn came upon the name of Israel. The nation could no longer protect its cities, nor individuals their homes.
“In distress the people returned to the altars which in presumptuous pride they had left. Old Israel wept when it heard the preaching of repentance; new Israel weeps only when it feels the sword of the enemy.
“
1. Israel must contend with sin, and with enemies.
2. Israel experiences the discipline of judgment and of compassion.
3. That which approves itself is the victory of repentance and the obedience of faith.
“A recent philosopher (Fischer) defines philosophy to be, not so much universal science as self-knowledge. If this be correct, repentance is the true philosophy; for in repentance man learns to know himself in all the various conditions of apostacy and ruin, reflection and return, pride and penitence, heart-quickening and longing after Divine compassion.” [Cassel.]
“God’s judgment on Israel is the non-destruction of the heathen.”
[Lisco.]
“From the fact that the whole history does at the same time, through scattered hints, point to the flourishing period of Israel under the Kings, we learn that these constantly-recurring events do not constitute a fruitless circle, ever returning whence it started, but that through them all God’s providence conducted His people by a road, wonderfully involved, to a glorious goal.” [Gerlach.]
THE LOVE THAT LINGERS IN DIVINE ANGER.—Judges 2:20-23
I. The anger of the Lord is not without due cause (Judges 2:20). The covenant with the fathers was transgressed. The voice of the Lord was not hearkened to by the people themselves. God’s words to the fathers is binding on the children. God’s messengers, and mercies, and judgments, are His “voice” to the men to whom they are sent.
II. The Lord’s anger is not without painful results. The nations which had been left, under Joshua, to prove the people, were to be left still. This is but a sentence, as it stands written here, but it presently expands into a history of woe. No word of God’s warning must be neglected, otherwise it may resolve itself into terrible suffering, it may spread to a whole nation, and require a volume for the history of its consequences.
III. The Lord’s anger is not without loving designs. This is true, so far as it applies to His anger in time. He would still “prove Israel,” and still watch to see if they should “keep the way of the Lord.” Love waited to be gracious wherever gracious manifestations would work no harm. He who led His people forth by a right way that He might bring them to a city of habitation, no less determined to keep them in a right way. In the end, our salvation must all be seen to be of Divine goodness.