Week 12 Judges
I’ve noticed a couple of things about the Spirit of the Lord in my reading.
For one thing, he hasn’t been mentioned very often so far. Maybe only a dozen times in 350 pages.
But now in Judges there’s a bit of a blip – half a dozen references to the Spirit (about once every six pages).
I noticed something else. The Spirit of the Lord does surprising things. It’s no big surprise if the Spirit prompted, say a law-abiding guy to present a good sacrifice, or be an honest neighbour – you know, be a good religious guy. But I’m remembering that weird example of Balaam: the Spirit put words into the seer’s mouth that he didn’t want to say. Kind of ventriloquized him.
And now here in Judges the Spirit is ‘coming upon’ several people – Othniel, Gideon, Jephthah, Samson – overwhelming them with power.
The Spirit is going to get something done, and so uses a person to do it. He chooses Othniel (who seems to be a pretty good guy), he chooses Gideon, and Jephthah (who don’t seem to be pretty good guys), and bafflingly chooses Samson (who strenuously devoted his life to awful decision-making). Good guy? Bad guy? That doesn’t seem to be the issue.
What qualifies someone is that the Spirit just makes a decision – no character-reference needed.
Notes: 1. number estimates are mhj-counts, so are ball-park-accurate only. 2. See Numbers 24-27 on Balaam. 3. See the four judges in Judges 3:10, 6:34, 11:29, and multiple times for Samson in 13:25, 14:6, 14:19 & 15:14.