Law of Moses — Judges 2

The balance of the Book of Joshua relates the destruction of the most significant temple cities. Then, when God told Joshua to pass the torch, for the duration of that generation of people, Israel continued subduing the people of the Promised Land. Things went well until that generation aged and died off. Then the tribes began to weaken in their warfare, and great many pagan nations were left in the land.

Our focal passage explains why that happened. First, we need to understand that the Hebrew term translated as “Angel of the Lord” is a title, but it refers to several different angelic characters in the Old Testament, so it’s not a permanent assignment. Without a specific name name, it signals more the nature of the assigned mission: This angel was sent with a message directly from God’s throne. It will be the words of God in the mouth of another, speaking on His behalf.

In typical Hebrew fashion, we are given an image of this angel marching up the long wadi from Gilgal, where at least the leadership of Israel still camped. The Hebrew scribes were notorious for drifting back and forth in chronology, so this event with the angel was sometime before Joshua’s final retirement ceremony, to set the stage for the rest of this book.

God rescued them from slavery in Egypt and, keeping His promise to the Patriarchs, brought the nation to the inheritance land. He empowered them to defeat all enemies, but they were obliged to cleanse the land and ensure Jehovah alone was worshiped there. They didn’t do that. As Joshua and his retainers aged, the newer generations became less zealous, and began to compromise. They allowed too many nations to remain as feudal vassals.

So God decided to let them have their way. He would not drive them out, either. Rather, He would let them stay and serve Satan as minions of temptation. They would be a perpetual test, drawing Israel off into idolatry if they could. The image was thorny bushes pulling at you as you pass, and snares that kept catching your feet. The implication dawned on the people and they wept in sorrow. The Hebrew name for the place was Bochim (“weeping”). We can’t be sure where this is, but it would almost have to be a place where an open assembly could be held. And it seems to be in the vicinity of ancient Bethel, probably at the highest end of the wadi everyone used to travel upland from Gilgal.

The passage goes on to explain that once Joshua retired and eventually passed away, and all the leaders who served under him, a new generation arose that had no memory of the mighty miracles God had done. For some reason, we get the feeling their parents failed to teach them in any organized fashion. So the people had lost their sense of identity; the Exodus and all the trials where God showed His sovereignty were forgotten. Since the rituals of the pagans worshiping Baal and Astarte in the land looked about the same as those they grew up with in Tabernacle worship, the Israeli people started drifted off into idolatry.

Things went from bad to worse. Having been handed a situation where their nation was the ruling class over the everyone else in the land, they started losing their edge and the tables turned on them. As they mourned their situation to Jehovah, albeit doing so only as their national deity, He sent a half-measure of relief: judges. There is no Western equivalent for what these leaders did, so the word “judges” is probably a bad translation: someone who pronounced sentence, to either vindicate or punish. They exercised authority in terms of Covenant holiness. They understood the demands of the Covenant and vindicated God’s demand for obedience. These people would demonstrate that obedience in sufficient measure to gain attention and start performing the miracles promised under the Covenant. Far from perfect, these people were simply a whole lot closer to strict obedience than anyone else around.

So these “judges” were appointed to serve for life, and were granted Covenant authority to execute God’s wrath on the idolaters who weren’t under the Covenant. We know that there were national judges and tribal judges, and some whose range of moral dominion isn’t obvious. So long as they lived, they executed God’s wrath on the folks Israel should have driven out long ago.

So the deliverance was always partial and conditional. Over the long haul, some of those infesting tribes and nations were killed off or driven out, but it was a very slow process during the time of the Judges. The text tells us God saw this coming, which is why He didn’t allow Joshua to conquer every last vestige of the Canaanites.