Month: March 2024

Week 13  Judges

The stories of Gideon & Jephthah & Samson are all fairly long (Gideon 100-verses. Jephthah 47-verses. Samson 96-verses).
When it comes to grading them by their successful military victories I’d probably rank them: #1 Samson. #2 Gideon. #3 Jephthah.
The real point though – the glitch – is that the stories of Gideon & Jephthah & Samson don’t end with their spectacular wins.
Gideon vs. Midianites. Victory for Gideon! But then with some of the captured loot Gideon made a sacred ephod from the gold and put it in Ophrah, his hometown. But soon all the Israelites prostituted themselves by worshiping it, and it became a trap for Gideon and his family. What-in-the-world possessed him to do that is anybody’s guess. But it was an evil and negative turn in what had been a good-looking career.
Jephthah vs. Ammonites. Victory for Jephthah! But…prior to the fight Jephthah (idiotically) promised the Lord that if he beat the Ammonites he’d sacrifice whoever-or-whatever he first saw when he came home. And who did he see? His daughter! For gruesome asininity it’s hard to find a match for Jephthah. An astute-guy who goes evilly-stupid.
Samson vs. Philistines. Multiple victories for Samson! But along with his big successes Samson was a textbook example of Self-Destructive & Irrational & Intemperate Lunacy and a Total Lack of Self-Controls.
The First Three judges consistently navigated their way forward.
The two-step pattern with the Second Three was a) one good step forward and then b) a decision to head back toward square-one.

Note: quote from Judges 8:27 (NLT)

Week 13  Judges

Yesterday I thought that my idea about ranking the Six Majors was pretty good. I figured I’d rank them like I did with the fifteen kings last year.
Today when I thought about it more-and-more it started to look less-and-less like a workable plan.
Anyway one thing I did notice was that the Six Majors seemed to divide into two groups. The First Three & the Second Three.
The First Three – Othniel & Ehud & Deborah/Barak – were successful. Their stories are Success Stories.
The Second Three – Gideon & Jephthah & Samson – were successful. So their stories were Success Stories too. But not just success. Something more like Success with a taste of Failure added-in.
I checked out the First Three:
Othniel’s story is very short (not much longer than the Snippet Lives of the Six Minors). But the Lord promoted/elevated Othniel and gave Othniel victory. Then there was peace.
Ehud’s situation was a bit different but the Lord raised him up too. Ehud organized a successful rebellion against the Moabite overlords. Then there was peace.
The Deborah-Barak story is longer & more complicated. Barak is the warrior-chieftain – the boots-on-the-ground guy. Deborah is something more like a General / Executive Director (the brains-and-heart behind the operation). The result was the same…then there was peace.
I looked for any problems & errors & infractions that clouded the stories of the First Three:
Othniel? No.
Ehud? No.
Deborah/Barak? No.
But I know things are going to be a bit different with the Second Three.

Note: quote from Judges 3:10 (NLT)

Week 13  Judges

Of the Twelve Judges in the book of Judges six were in the Minor Category: Shamgar Tola Jair Ibzan Elon & Abdon.
So the others are the Six Majors: Othniel Ehud Deborah-Barak Gideon Jephthah & Samson.
One reason the Minors were minor was because their stories only averaged ~38-words. It’s like they were just entries in an Encyclopedia of Biography (Okay. I admit that length is not definitive – the Othniel story is very short too.)
Another reason Minors were minor was because their foreign opponents were not even named (but I admit that not having a Named Opponent isn’t definitive – I know Shamgar fought the Philistine group).
But one of the key – and definitive – differences is that each of the Six Majors has some kind of (stated) help from the Lord:
Othniel: the Lord raised up a man to rescue Israel…Othniel
Ehud: the Lord raised up a man to rescue Israel…Ehud
Deborah-Barak: Deborah the prophet gave Barak a message: this is what the Lord, the God of Israel, commands you…
Gideon: the angel of the Lord appeared to Gideon and said, “Mighty warrior, the Lord is with you!”
Jephthah: at that time the Spirit of the Lord came upon Jephthah
Samson: the Lord blessed Samson as he grew… The Spirit of the Lord began to take hold of him.
I was thinking that a good Exercise Idea would be to rank the Six Majors (like I did with the 15 kings-of-Judah last year).

Note: quotes from Judges 3:9 3:15 4:6 5:12 11:29 13:24-25 (NLT)

Week 13  Judges

I decided to look at the Six Minor Judges.
Shamgar appeared first (chapter-three). The others don’t come until later – clustered in Judges 10:1-5 (Tola & Jair) and then in Judges 12:8-15 (Ibzan Elon & Abdon).
I listed them and  filled-in whatever details I could find.
First: five of them had a geographic or tribal link (Issachar Gilead Bethlehem Zebulun Ephraim). Shamgar’s connection was uncertain.
Second: I can see how long five of them judged Israel (23 22 7 10 8 years). Shamgar is the odd-man-out.
Third: where were they buried? (Shamir Kamon Bethlehem Zebulun Pirathon). Where Shamgar was buried is anyone’s guess.
Fourth: the only official action that Tola Jair Ibzan Elon & Abdon took was to “judge” (whatever that involved). The exception is Shamgar who took the definite military action of killing 600 enemies.
Fifth: there’s no record of the opponents of Tola Jair Ibzan Elon & Abdon. Shamgar? It was the Philistines.
Sixth: one thing about all of them (Shamgar as well) is that none of them got any kind of specific direction or impetus from the Lord – at least none that was spelled out. (I took a quick look at Othniel Ehud Deborah-Barak Gideon & Samson. In one way or other each of them gets a definite prompt or boost or assist from the Lord.) Not getting a signal from the Lord  doesn’t mean that the Six Minors didn’t. But it doesn’t say so.
I end up being not much father ahead. But I wonder why Shamgar is such a Mystery Man.

Week 13  Judges

The person who wrote the book of the Judges left a couple of questions unanswered.
For one he identified Twelve Judges. Which means I tend to think that there were twelve judges – just twelve. But I guess there could have been more. Judges might be a selective history.
For two it’s pretty normal to think that the Twelve appeared one-after-the-other in the order I’m reading. But it’s possible that some of them could have overlapped. They look more like local-&-tribal judges dealing with local-&-tribal problems – not necessarily helping all of Israel.
Anyway the main thing I was thinking about was that there are two main groups of judges. There are Six Major Judges. And Six Minor Judges.
The Six Minor Judges are Shamgar Tola Jair Ibzan Elon & Abdon and the main reason they are Minor is because none of them gets more than three verses of text – maximum. (The average number of words that each of the Six Minors get is 38.3-words (Ibzan gets the most with 55-words)). I don’t think number-of-words is a hard-and-fast rule about importance. I don’t think the rule is: More Words = More Importance. For instance I was thinking about Enoch in Genesis. He only gets ~57-words of text…but he’s pretty important.
Anyway I think I’ll take some extra time to look at the Six Minors a bit more carefully.

Note: the Six Minors are Shamgar 3:31 Tola 10:1-2 Jair 10:3-5 Ibzan 12:8-10 Elon 12:11-12 Abdon 12:13-15. Enoch is in Genesis 5:21-24.

Week 12  Judges 3

This paragraph spells out what Israel did once they had been in the Promised Land for a while:
1. Israel lived among the Canaanites
2. They intermarried with them
3. They served their gods.
I checked a cross-reference back to Deuteronomy 7:1-5. Moses had told the people three specific things:
1. When the Lord your God hands these nations over to you…make no treaties with them
2. You must not intermarry with them
3. You must break down their pagan altars and shatter their sacred pillars. Cut down their Asherah poles and burn their idols.
On the face of it that’s pretty clear:
Don’t make treaties
Don’t intermarry
Don’t use the idols
(It would have been bad enough if Israel had – let’s say –
Stopped making animal sacrifices
Quit observing the annual festivals
Said that the Levites could have a big tribal land grant.
Even though those are misdemeanors at least they’re not specifically prohibited misdemeanors.)
The Lord told Moses three specific things Israel was not supposed to do in the Promised Land and so then Israel did exactly each one of those three not-to-do things. Point-for-point.
No treaties? Let’s make treaties
No intermarriage? Let’s intermarry
No idols? Let’s use these idols.
It’s a bit perplexing and concerning to see how it played out. I don’t necessarily think it was a deliberate thing (the Lord said Up so let’s do Down). But the fact is that the vote was Down (which shows some eerily accurate foresight-ability on Moses’ part).

Note: quotes from Judges 3:5-7 Deuteronomy 7:1-5 (NLT)

Week 12  Psalm 78

Yesterday in picking & choosing I tried comparing the official version of The Plagues of Egypt Story in Exodus with a condensed version in Psalm 78. So anyway just as my reading-time ran out I spotted a cross-reference to Psalm 105 in the margin of my bible.  I jotted it down and looked at it today and it turned out to be a pretty nice coincidence because Psalm 105 is another long History Psalm – just like 78 – and about halfway through it the writer started talking about…The Plagues of Egypt!
I’d already made a table comparing Exodus 7-11 and Psalm 78 – looking for similarities / differences in the list of plagues. So today I added a third column: “Plagues in Psalm 105”. Here’s the plagues I found there: Darkness Water-to-blood Frogs Flies Gnats Hail Locusts Death-of-firstborn. Eight of them.
Except for Darkness everything was roughly in the same order as 78.
In Psalm 78 Asaph skipped Gnats Animal-Plague Boils & Darkness.
The Psalm 105 writer also left out Boils & Animal-Plague – but included Gnats & Darkness
I can’t figure why some plagues were left off these lists. Can’t figure why Boils & Animal-Plagues were left off both lists. In the last couple of thousand years there’s likely been some creative guesses about why. But even good guesses are still in the guess category. So I wonder how much farther I’d be for guessing.

Note: It turns out that Psalm 106 is another long History Psalm too. I did a quick scan. I think it skipped the Ten Plagues completely.

Week 12  Psalm 78

Right off the top Asaph said: I will teach you hidden lessons from our past and the Lesson that caught my attention today was the plagues of Egypt story (what Asaph called the Lord’s miraculous signs in Egypt). Right away I thought something seemed a bit off. Asaph’s story looked short.
I decided to compare Asaph’s story of the plagues with the full-length Exodus account. I drew up a table with two columns:
Left-hand column (“Plagues in Exodus 7-11”)
Right-hand column (“Plagues in Psalm 78”).
Then I flipped back to scan through Exodus.
I wanted to line up the two accounts point-for-point side-by-side. But it didn’t work like that. There were anomalies. In the original story there were ten plagues. Exodus & Asaph both had six: Water-to-blood Flies Frogs Hail Grasshoppers/Locusts & the Death-of-the-Firstborns.
But Asaph didn’t have Gnats Animal-Plague Boils or Darkness.
Asaph also referred to a band of destroying angels – which wasn’t one of the plagues (even though angels might have been involved).
A couple of quick conclusions:
I figure Asaph knew there were ten plagues
I figure his psalm was a representative sample
I figure that he figured that his readers would get the point (the Lord had led his people)
I figure Asaph’s version was a shorthand literary digest of a longer (very well-known) story.

Note: quotes from Psalm 78:2 43 49 52. Right at the end I spotted a cross-reference to Psalm 105:28-36. A similar psalm. A similar list of plagues. But no time to compare it!

Week 11  Joshua 15

The last section of the chapter in my bible is titled “The Towns Judah Inherited”. It’s 43-verses long – name after name after name.
To give myself a mental focus I decided to look for Bethlehem. But I couldn’t find it! (I don’t think I missed it. I don’t think it’s there.)
Anyway the reason I was interested was because a couple of years ago I posted on a prophecy Micah made about the town: but you, Bethlehem Ephrathah, though you are small among the clans of Judah, out of you will come for me one who will be ruler over Israel, whose origins are from of old, from ancient times.
At that time I wondered what the odds were of Micah guessing correctly that the ‘Ruler’ would come from Bethlehem so I found a bible map and counted roughly 55 towns & villages in Judah (that meant Micah had 1-in-55 chances of guessing the correct town).
But looking at Joshua 15 today I count about 112 towns listed. So Micah’s odds of guessing correctly just got quite a bit worse. (I realize that in the interval between Joshua & Micah some towns might have disappeared and new ones might have developed. So 112 isn’t exact.) My only point is that my estimate a couple of years ago was likely wrong. Which made Micah’s odds of guessing wrong even bigger (I calculated his odds-probability. He had a 99% chance of guessing wrong).

Note: quote from Micah 5:2 (NIV). See post: ‘longshot’ September 3 2021

Week 11 Joshua 10-11

The section is filled with violence. It’s very unsettling to read.
I check a cross-ref in Genesis: after four generations your (Abraham’s) descendants will return here to this land, when the sin of the Amorites had run its course.
I draw two columns. The left column: Israel. Right column: Amorites.
Under Israel I write down what’s been happening all those hundreds-of-years. Abraham Isaac Jacob Twelve-sons Egyptian-slavery Exodus Mount-Sinai Wilderness Promised-Land. The Amorite column is pretty short and I write Accumulating Civilizational Evil. The one key thing that was happening was that Amorite criminality was running-its-course (another version: the sin of the Amorites has not reached its full measure. Another: the iniquity of the Amorite is not yet complete.)
In the Amorite column I add: ‘evil is getting stacked higher and higher’. I also add a bunch of undesignated plus-signs as place-holders.
I wish I knew what-all and how-all the pieces fitted together. But basically it looks like the Lord hung-around for centuries. Waiting… Waiting… Waiting while either a) evil kept piling up or b) the Amorites turned around. Waiting until an (unspecified) tipping-point was reached.
I’m glad to be past Joshua 10-11. About a dozen-and-a-half times (in 11:10-23 alone) the text says that everyone was destroyed. That’s hard reading to start out my day. I look at my two (useless) columns and try to reason things out clinically but I’m not too successful.
Mostly I’m just glad to get past it.

Note: quote from Genesis 15:16 (NLT NIV NASB)