Bible in A Year: Episode 10

Welcome to Read the Bible in a Year with Matt and Hannah, a weekly podcast from Fairfax Bible Church where we explore scripture together, uncovering his themes and design patterns. We’re glad you’re here. Now, here are your hosts, Matt and Hannah. All righty, episode 10, Read the Bible in a Year with Matt and Hannah. This is Matt. And I’m Hannah. Hi, Hannah. How are you? I’m good. How are you? I know your life is a little chaotic these days. I’m glad we found the time to podcast. Yeah, yeah. You know, I didn’t tell you this. My car is in the shop to add a new chaotic factor. Oh, no. Yeah. I got in a little bit of a fight with a cement pillar. So that was kind of dumb. Was it aggressive? Did it come at you and you had to defend yourself? Is that what happened? Yeah, I would like to say that’s what happened. yeah i had car issues last week yes okay screw screw reading the bible this is gonna be car troubles with matt and hannah no no no no no okay question for you did you have a um like favorite after school cartoon or saturday morning cartoon when you were a kid you know i wasn’t really a cartoon person necessarily but we watched a lot of disney channel and nickelodeon okay those kind of things like hannah montana oh yeah i mean i as hannah need to watch hannah montana that’s true you know i didn’t make that connection until just now uh wizards of waverly place that was a fun one okay yeah yeah so i’m a little old for all of these what’s like another one oh uh i don’t know a little bit like older was like lizzie mcguire okay that was a fun one okay yeah these things are all retro now right these these people are all like having their adult reunion shows yeah probably man uh yeah so when i was a kid uh i think the pattern was a little different so you come home from school and we had some after school cartoons thundercats was a big one that was one of my favorites i don’t think i know i’ve never heard of that oh i think episodes are on YouTube. They’re tough to watch now, but of course I’m 53 years old. So that’s kind of how these things work. But He-Man and the Masters of the Universe was one. And then one that was really popular. I didn’t watch it that much, but it was definitely popular and there were toys like G.I. Joe. Surely you know this one. Yeah. Well, I mostly know the toy. Right. Yeah. Well, these were all just thinly veiled commercials for toys. That’s essentially what was happening but the other feature about these is you know they’re they’re kids things too but like it’s there’s a hero and a bad guy and a story and everything sort of clearly resolves in like 30 minutes yeah uh and you know gi joe would always finish with like a moral you know they’d catch the bad guy doing whatever and then they’d have like a little lesson and then the gi Joe would say, and now you know, and knowing is half the battle. Oh, and he’d just drop it. And then that was the end of the show. Very clean, uh, half hour and they would solve all the world’s problems. Now I bring this up because, uh, we are in a book of the Bible that is the anti GI Joe, as it were, or Thundercats or afternoon cartoon or wizards of Waverly place. This is not a situation, this is not a storytelling something where it’s nice and clean, ends in 30 minutes. There’s a clear moral. The heroes are absolutely beyond repute. And it’s just a nice clean. These are not after school specials. No. The stories that we see in the book of Judges. Yeah. Yeah, there are more questions than answers in this book. And it’s a big old spiral. Yeah, it’s sad. It’s maybe the single toughest book of the Bible for me to read. Yeah, probably me too. Yeah. Yeah, it’s tough. Well, before we get into it, though, let’s catch up a little bit. Where are we in the story so far? Okay, so we’re going to cover the book of Judges this week. We technically started it last week, and technically this week we also read Ruth, but we’re going to save some time for Ruth. We like Ruth, so we want to give her some love. Yeah. So in the book of Judges, this is after Joshua’s death, and Israel is settling into the promised land, but right from the beginning of the book, we see that they have failed to fully drive out the surrounding nations. And so this book as a whole is a tragic repeating cycle of Israel becoming more and more like their neighbors, like the Canaanites and less and less like God’s chosen people that are supposed to be set apart for him to serve him and worship him alone. And so Israel turns away from God and they start worshiping their neighbor’s gods and making idols. And so God allows them to fall under the oppression of their neighboring nations. And in their suffering, they cry out for help. And in his mercy, God raises up a judge to deliver them. But once that judge dies, the people fall right back into sin and the cycle begins again. So that’s a cycle that we see over and over and over again throughout this book. And the judges themselves even become increasingly flawed as we move through the book. So we start with some relatively decent leaders, deliverers, and then we end with figures like Samson, who just fails over and over again. But God still works through these deeply flawed characters. And it says several times that he even fills them with his spirit, which I think is really interesting. And then the book culminates in these really disturbing last three chapters that reveal just how far the nation of Israel has fallen into violence and corruption. And overall, we see the breakdown of their community and their worship and their service to Yahweh alone. And the book closes with the sobering line that we see repeated throughout the whole book, which is, in those days, Israel had no king. Everyone did what was good in their own eyes. So that’s clearly a link to Genesis 3 and the pattern that we’ve been seeing where people see what is good in their own eyes instead of trusting God’s wisdom and listening to his voice. And so this is pointing us forward into the king that Israel really needs, that we all need. So a little bit of a messianic hope at the very end of the book. Yeah. I mean, let’s just put it out there right up front. It’s It’s actually a tricky book in some ways because certainly as a Sunday school kid, you and I are both Sunday school kids. I certainly learned about Gideon and Samson. I learned these stories when I was a kid and they were presented to me as heroes. You know, hey, here’s a cool story about Gideon. Look at this great battle that he did. What’s your takeaway? What’s the moral of the story? We should trust God and put a fleece out or we should not get haircuts because that’s a problem. Um, you know, these are, but the, when you get a look at the design of the book, that’s not what the takeaways really are in the book. It’s funny that they, you know, I’m hating all my Sunday school teachers. I love all my Sunday school teachers. Love you. Thank you so much for serving Jesus and teaching me the Bible. But there are some things because the Bible, the book of Judges like tells you right up front, this is a disaster story. Here’s what’s going to happen. Here’s the pattern you’re going to see. Israel’s going to, you know, be doing something they’re going to get distracted they’re going to start following other gods it’s going to spiral they’re going to call out to yahweh for help because they remember that they have a god that this idol’s not going to save them they have a god god’s going to rescue them he’ll send them a judge and then the judge is going to pass off the scene and then we’re going to do the whole thing over again like it tells you in chapter two here’s what’s going to happen and then it happens again and again and again and again and even before it gets into that maybe the saddest verse in the whole Bible to me. Judges 2:10, somebody actually called this out in the chat this week. All that generation that were gathered to their fathers and there arose another generation after them who did not know the Lord or the work that he had done for Israel. Oh, brutal. Brutal. I’m so sad. This is what happened. We talked about this a little bit on the last episode. When we don’t remember when we don’t have monuments and when we don’t mark things. And we talked about the pattern of feasts and times. These are meant for us to remember. So when we don’t mark these things and we forget, this is the pattern we find ourselves in. Yeah. And it’s sad because right at the end of Joshua, we saw that Israel did serve the Lord all of the days of Joshua. So this flip is really dramatic and tragic of a change. Yeah. Well, let’s move into it a little bit. So there’s a couple. So the pattern starts with a couple judges whose names probably don’t jump out to you, but Othniel is one, and then Ehud is another, and then Shamgar. I think Shamgar was a point guard for the Providence basketball team in the late 90s. No, that was Shamgar. sorry god she and god uh sorry anyway uh and then we get to deborah deborah this is an interesting story and i know you found a pattern that you want us to keep our eyes open for so i want to hear more about this oh yeah okay so the story of deborah these are chapters four and five so let’s see we see that israel was oppressed by king jabin of canaan and he has this commander named sisera And so Deborah the prophetess was judging Israel at that time, and she summoned a guy named Barak to lead the armies to defeat Jabin and Sisera. And so in the midst of this battle, the Lord throws Sisera’s army into confusion, but Sisera himself is able to flee. And so he flees to the tent of a woman named Jael. And all we know about Jael is that she is the wife of Heber, the Kenite, and that they moved far away from the other Kenites. And then verse 11 of chapter five, I think, also mentions that the Kenites are from the same line as Moses’s father-in-law. One thing that isn’t super clear in the English translation is that the Kenites are the descendants of Cain. That’s Cain. It doesn’t transliterate it the same for some reason. Maybe because if it was Cainites, that would be confusing with Canaanites. Interesting. Okay. Yeah. Yeah, I would not have picked up on that. Yeah. So I don’t really know what that contributes to this story specifically. but something to note. I mean, kind of going back to the old sibling rivalry. Yes, absolutely. Kind of as we talked about a few episodes ago. So a little hint of that. Yeah. Yeah. So Jael lets Sisera into her tent and hides him under a blanket. And then he’s like, if anyone comes to the door, don’t tell them that I’m here. But then while he’s sleeping, she drives this tent peg through his head. Yikes. And kills him. Yeah. Ugh. So more explicitly in the next chapter, okay, so I think we’re in chapter five now. There’s, oh, this is the song of Deborah where she sings about this whole battle. And she mentions JL chapter five, verse 26, specifically says that JL crushed the head of Sisera. Oh, I think I see where you’re going with this. Okay. Okay. Keep going. Well, that’s where I’m going next. Do you want to say it? No, I want you to say it. Okay, so I think that makes a connection really explicit. To crush the head is from Genesis 3.15, when the seed from the line of the woman is going to crush the head of the offspring of the snake. Yeah. So in the Hebrew, maybe there’s nothing going on here, but certainly in English, sisera kind of sounds snake-like. No, it is, and it sounds like that in the Hebrew too. Sisera, yeah. Okay, I get it. Sisera, right. I think it’s supposed to sound snake-like. Okay, so even in Hebrew, we would see something going on here. Yeah, probably even more than in the English. And Sisera is telling JL to deceive people on his behalf. You know, if they come to the door, tell them I’m not here. So he’s trying to get people into his snake-like deception ways in order to deceive God’s people on his behalf. So definitely some snake-like behavior here. Yes, Sisera. Yeah. Okay. And then while we’re talking about this theme, I might just jump ahead a few chapters to mention one more occasion of a head crusher. Oh, yeah. Okay. So this is in chapter nine. Abimelech comes along. And the way that he is defeated is that a woman drops a millstone on his head. And it says that his head was crushed with this millstone. Oh, okay. So another interesting connection to crushing the head of the serpent. Love it. And if I can wrap this whole theme up, one of the Psalms that we read this week was Psalm 74, which talks about Leviathan. So Leviathan is this, in the ancient Near Eastern imagination, was this great sea monster. And Leviathan became a symbol of this snake-like evil from Genesis 3. And then ultimately in Revelation, we see this dragon that is also Leviathan. So this whole connection. And so in this psalm, it says, you broke the heads of the sea monsters on the waters. You crushed the heads of Leviathan. So this is all connected to this. It’s happening. Really interesting theme. If anyone’s interested in this theme of the snake, the serpent, crushing the head, Bible Project does a theme. I think it’s called the Chaos Dragon or something like that. Yeah, there’s a whole podcast series and a really cool video. I will definitely check out the video. I don’t think I’ve seen that. I’m actually surprised it’s not been used in the plan so far. Maybe it’s coming and I just haven’t landed on it yet. Yeah. Yeah. Maybe it’s more of a revelation kind of thing. Could be. Because it actually is the word dragon rather than like a snake. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I love it. So, yeah. So Deborah is the judge and then Barack. So they have their moment. There’s a victory. And then just like the book told us what’s going to happen, things spiral. They go back into the habits of chasing after idols. They’re occupied by another group. And then we meet a young man named Gideon. Now, I learned about Gideon in Sunday school, as I mentioned. And I was always told, like, Gideon, well, he’s like a hero, Matt. Like, he’s, you know, he had like this small army, but he like took this great one on. So, Matt, you want to go be like Gideon? Maybe I don’t want to be so much like Gideon. I don’t know. What do you think? No, he really struggled to trust the Lord. Yeah, it seems like it. He tested God so many times. He really needed him to prove that he was going to take care of him. Yeah. So the fleece story, it’s really interesting. I may get the sequence out of here, and I won’t belabor it and check the text. But so the first time it’s, if I put out the fleece and the fleece stays dry while the ground is wet, I’ll know that you’re calling me to do this. And then God honors that. Doesn’t have to. It’s got a little bit of don’t put the Lord your God to the test. Does it not? Right. So it would seem that Gideon is pushing Yahweh’s patience here a little bit. But God is, he’s patient. He’s slow to anger. He meets him in that. And then Gideon’s like, okay, that was cute. But let’s try it again. This time, if the ground is dry and the fleece is wet, then I will know that you are calling me. And God and his patience honors that. Yeah. And then, you know, they have this victory, the famous one where he’s got a very small army and he kind of whittles it down a couple times. And they go and they break the pots open and the Midianites panic and end up slaughtering each other. He’s presented as this hero to us, but it doesn’t actually go very well. Yeah. Yeah. There’s even one more time before the fleece that he tests the Lord. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. when the angel of the Lord appears to him. So he asks for a sign. So maybe, you know, I think that’s similar. He asks for a sign and the angel of the Lord causes a fire to come consume the meat and the unleavened bread that he brought. Hard man to impress, Kideon. Yeah, right. You would think, yeah, if fire came down from the skies, I think I would be like, oh, okay, yeah. That checks out. We’re good. Yeah. What do you need? I’m here to serve. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And then in chapter eight, verse one, we see a phrase from Genesis three. Okay. Did you see that one? Let’s see here. Okay. So chapter eight, verse one. Yeah. Let’s see. Okay. So let me read this. So the men of Ephraim said to him, and this is Gideon, right? What is this you have done to us not to call us when you went to fight against Midian? Oh, is this what have you have done? Yeah, what is this you have done? Yeah, Genesis 3.13. Okay. Yeah. That’s a subtle kind of implicit commentary about Gideon’s actions. Oh, so what you’re in this framework, what you’re trying to point out to us is this is similar to this is God call in the Genesis 3. It’s God calling Adam and Eve to account. And this one, same kind of flavor. the tribe of Aruban is saying to Gideon, hey, what have you done? Yeah. Okay. Yeah, I mean, even though Gideon is like pretty successful in some of his, you know, attacks, and he has some success, right, against the Midianites. But so the biblical authors give us some implicit commentary instead of directly saying like, Gideon has poor moral character. They give us a lot of this Genesis 3 language kind of sprinkled in there. And then you pointed out this to me, kind of a connection back to the Achan story as well from the Battle of Ai. Yeah. Where he plunders. Yeah. And then forms an idol with it. Yeah. Right. Draw that out for me a little bit. Yeah, well, there’s an interesting contrast because this is like verse 22 of chapter 8. The Israelites ask Gideon to rule over them as like a king or some kind of leader or ruler. And then verse 23, Gideon says, I will not rule over you. The Lord will rule over you, which seems good. We’re like, oh, okay, he gets it. Let’s see what’s happening here. He knows who’s in charge. And then the next verse, he says, everyone give me earrings from your plunder because they’re gold earrings. And then he makes these idols out of them. And it says that all of Israel, maybe it doesn’t say all of Israel, but Israel starts to worship these false gods. Yeah, it does say all of Israel. Does it? Okay. Yeah, verse 27. Yeah. so he clearly influenced everyone very poorly yeah i mean it’s a little bit uh erin at uh at mount sinai so with the the the plunder and the um you know they form it into the the idols that’s a problem yeah so it’s it gets another one where we’ve had this moment of victory and instead of responding in worship and gratitude we’re going to build an idol yeah it’s a strange to me it’s a strange pattern. Yeah. Yeah. There’s also, and I didn’t see this until you pointed out, but this moment, because one of the themes of the book is we’re going to need a king. We need a king. There needs to be a king. They’ve dropped that on us a little bit before, but here explicitly the nation’s calling for a king. Gideon’s like, no, I’m not going to be king. The Lord is your king. But that’s kind of one of the hints that we get that where the story is going to go. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. All right. So Gideon has his time and then we’re going to move past the situation with Abimelech. But it’s a very dramatic transition in the text because he has 70 sons from his various wives and concubines. One of them arises and ends up killing all the others and sort of turns himself into a king for a period of time. And then that goes south on him. So we won’t belabor that, but yeah, sort of the second generation there from Gideon’s faith, you see some of that show up in his son of Bimelech. And then, oh, you know what? We didn’t even talk about this in our prep, so I run the risk of springing this on you, but Jephthah. How could we forget Jephthah? Oh, what a sad story. Yeah, right. All right, so let me do the basics here for the people, and then you can riff a little bit. So Jephthah is a bit of an outcast in Israel. He’s not from a princely line. I guess he’s the illegitimate offspring of someone. Gilead. Gilead, thank you. But he ends up kind of making a name for himself. And I think the story tells us that a group of people orient themselves around. So like a gang leader or something like that. Kind of people are drawn to him. He’s kind of hanging out there. He’s not a tribal chief or anything like that, but the time comes when the nation of Israel needs defenses and needs defending. And so they call Jephthah and they’re like, hey, can you help us? And Jephthah is like, well, okay, yeah, you’ve ignored me my whole life and outcast me, but now you want my help, but I’m going to do this. And then he makes this incredibly rash vow where he says, Lord, if you give me victory here, whatever the first thing to come out of my house is, I will sacrifice for you. So he goes and he has this victory. And as he’s coming home, the first thing out of his house is his virgin daughter. Oh, yeah. Crusher. I don’t know what he thought would happen because if anyone was going to walk out of his house, it’s going to be a family member, right? One would think. Or maybe if they, I don’t know if they have servants, like someone that he knows. One would think, yeah. So why would he do that? And it’s really sad because it shows how little he knows about the Lord’s character. Because the Canaanites are known for child sacrifice. Yeah. And God does not like that at all. No. So for him to sacrifice his own daughter to the Lord is completely opposite of what the Lord actually wants. Yeah. And it’s a hint of what we’re going to see in the very end of the book. where kind of this disregard for human life, especially the disregard of life of young women, it’s tragic and sad. So this poignant last part of chapter 11 where the daughter says, hey, can you at least give me two months to spend with my friends and to mourn? And she’s not even mourning her life. She’s mourning that she won’t be married. And I guess for a time that becomes a celebration that the people of Israel do. yes such a sad story yeah judges you it’s just such a bummer there’s sad story after sad story uh but i don’t want to belabor that too much because we do want to talk about samson samson here’s another one lots of bible stories lots of sunday school lessons about samson long hair really strong comic book guy kind of in some ways yeah has anybody done a comic book on samson i should look this up he seems like a natural for it probably yeah uh and samson uh Gold star to Kyleen, by the way. And gold star to Kyleen anyway, because she’s the one who actually posts this podcast every week. So Kyleen, thank you so much for everything that you do. And impressive Bible scholar. And she’s the one who pointed out kind of the story of Samson has a nice little map to the ark of Israel as a nation, singularly called out by God, set apart for him, And yet disrespectful, you know, mourn, you know, moves against him, won’t follow, does what’s right in his own eyes, only to sort of turn back in a moment of need and ends up offering himself for the nation. So that is a nice little arc. Gold star, Kylene. I see what you did there. That’s impressive. Yeah. So, yeah, but it starts with, so his parents are, you know, they want a child. They’re not able to have one, which sort of goes back to the blessing and curse from Deuteronomy. One of the signs that Israel is not being obedient is that there will be barrenness in the land and barrenness in the people. So a little hint about that here. But his parents get a visit from the angel of the Lord. They say, you’re going to have this kid. You’re going to make him a Nazarite, which if you remember back in Numbers, they had a little bit of a separate kind of deal. They were not supposed to cut their hair. They were not supposed to have alcohol. They had a couple of things about that. So Samson’s going to be one of these people. So it sets us up to think, okay, we might have an action hero here. We might have something going on. It does not work out that way. Yeah. He breaks all of the rules. Like brazenly. Yeah. Yeah. The like primary Nazarite rules. He breaks all of them. Yeah. Yeah. And the one you didn’t list was touching dead bodies. So that includes the corpse of the animal that he touches. And he not only touches it, but he makes a game out of it. Turns it into a sport to tease people with. Yeah. Yeah, he’s a weird dude. Yeah. And the story about tying foxes’ tails together. Yeah, I don’t know. Judges. I don’t know what’s going on. Good times. Yeah, I don’t know. So yeah, he blows off his Nazarite vow. And kind of similar to what we talked about with Aiken last week, Samson would know. He would clearly know. He’s been trained. He knows what his responsibilities are, but he blows off the Nazarite vow by taking alcohol or at least touching grapes, which is he was not supposed to be around. He’s not supposed to deal with dead bodies, kills a lion, makes honey, kind of turns that into support. He’s not supposed to marry a foreign woman. But and then the text, as if there’s any doubt left, it says he saw that she was right in his eyes. Yeah. And so he says, go get me that foreign woman. And his parents were even like, you know, there’s attractive women here in Israel. We could find you a wife pretty easy. And he’s like, nope, nope, don’t want that. And yeah, it doesn’t go well for him. Yeah. Yeah, it even says, this is chapter 14, verse 3, take her for me. So he sees that she is good and wants to take her. That’s clear Genesis 3 language. Yeah, but even that, like he’s not such a great bridegroom. He gets in a fight with his father-in-law on like the first day, like abandons his wife, basically. And the father-in-law gives the wife to the best man. And then when he comes back around, it says like four months later, he’s upset that she’s married to another. Like Samson, what did you think was going to happen here? Yeah, right. Yeah, dork. What are you doing here? Anyway, so then he starts taking up with a woman named Delilah. and I don’t know Delilah sounds like a sassy woman even today it sounds like a sassy woman Delilah I’m not trying to throw too much shade on you if your name is Delilah but I mean come on yeah I don’t know how Samson doesn’t see through what she’s trying to do okay because she asks him, you know, how can you be bound? And he makes up like, oh, a cord that’s never been cut or whatever it is. And then she does it to him. Oh, yeah. But he breaks free. But then you would think, oh, she just tried to use this thing against me. I’m never going to tell her what actually is going to work. But after the third time, he’s like, well, I guess I’ll just tell her. Like she’s tried to pull one over your eyes three times in a row yeah yeah why samson this is not very smart no yeah because he kind of he fought like it’s pretty obvious like she’s trying to manipulate him yeah well and it’s not even just that like she tries to think like people break into the room and are like trying to attack yeah right i don’t understand it is very comic book it’s very gi joe Yeah. Yeah. So, and then finally, maybe the most famous haircut of all time, certainly the most famous haircut in the Bible. And he loses his strength. Yeah. And then he gets his eyes gouged out. So, the moral of that story could be don’t get a haircut, but we won’t. Don’t. Yeah. That’s one way to read the Bible. Yeah. Just maybe not. Anyway, so, and then, so he has this moment. He’s in prison. His eyes are gouged out. He’s the object of scorn to the Philistines. But then he has this last minute where he’s like, he offers himself. He says, hey, God, basically I know I screwed up, but avenge me and avenge my people with one last moment of strength. And he’s able to use that strength to basically destroy the temple that he’s in and offering himself for that, but bringing justice to his enemies. So a little bit of a maybe a Messiah moment right there, kind of offering himself for the people. Yeah. Yeah, like the way that he defeats a lot of the Philistines is by allowing himself to be killed along with them. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It’s hard to compare such morally flawed characters with Jesus. Yes, yes. To be like, oh, Samson is a type of Christ. It’s like, ooh, are we sure? He’s a pretty flawed guy. But yeah, there is that moment at the end where he does offer his life to try to defeat his enemies. Yeah, and I think none of them, of course, compare to Jesus, and not just in the Sunday school way that nobody compares to Jesus. But Barak is a little bit flawed because he doesn’t want to go, and Deborah even says, okay, well, God’s going to give the glory that he would have given you. He’s going to give that to a woman. But Barak goes. Gideon, he’s a pain in the neck about the thing, But he does go and he trusts in the Lord. God gives him a victory. Samson, oh my gosh, he just can’t get his act together. He should know better, but he doesn’t. And all of these things. And we’re looking at these people and be like, what in the world? And yet I go back to Hebrews 11, that famous passage. Sometimes it’s called the Hall of Faith. By faith Abraham did this awesome thing. By faith Moses did this thing. Did you know that these three people, Barak, Gideon, Samson, they’re all listed in Hebrews 11? Really? I hadn’t thought about that when I was reading this. Yeah. In fact, it’s a little bit of a footnote moment where the writer there says, I don’t have time to tell you about Barak and about Gideon and about Samson. But it goes on to kind of include them that they fought against depression, that they suffered injustice. And then it concludes and says the world was not worthy of them. So for all the shade that we throw at these people, and they deserve it, absolutely. And the writers want us to. The writers want us to see these patterns. There’s something there where God receives that as faith and includes them in the list of people whose faith mattered to him, who he saw and recognized. Yeah. And I wonder if that’s not even a little bit of a moment for us, people like us in the 21st century. We can get very sophisticated. We can get very self-righteous about Bible knowledge, church attendance, moral codes, all of these things. And you and I both, again, we are both Sunday school kids and youth group kids. So we’re good at it, right? You and I are pretty good at this going to church thing, right? And yet, I mean, even that’s not, I mean, those things are all wonderful and helpful. But gosh, just a little bit of faith. Look at what God will do with it. Yeah. So it’s sobering. Yeah. And we do like to give these Bible characters a hard time, but they’re intended to be a mirror for us to see our own moral failures through their stories too. So, yeah. Yeah. So when we run into Samson in heaven and we say we used you in a podcast, so be nice to us. We used you as a terrible example, but be kind to us. Right. Yeah. All right. So let’s go to the last three chapters. So the story turns a little bit in the last three chapters. We go from looking at sort of an individual judge and the story that revolves around him or her. And the story shifts a little bit. And gosh, it’s hard to even kind of take up the plot here. But essentially, there’s an issue among the tribe of Benjamin. where there’s a little priest story where there’s a young man, he gets pulled into a household and basically turned into a priest for hire. And then that is kind of a weird story that goes on. But then there’s a certain Levite who is in Ephraim, but he goes to Bethlehem. And then on his way back to his town, he has this situation where a wife or a concubine, don’t delineate that, he has to go get her from a place where she had tried to run away. And then on his way home, he stops in this random town. He is not shown hospitality. He’s treated very poorly. He actually puts his wife or concubine out there. They are knocking on his door trying to get him to come out so that they can abuse him. He throws his wife out there instead. And she is just horrible. Terrible things happen. And then essentially just all chaos breaks out at that point. And a civil war ensues. which we’ll tie that up here in a second. But it’s a creepy, weird, disturbing story. I totally don’t blame you if you read that and you’re like, I’m never reading that again. I’m skipping over that next time I do that. It’s hard to even understand what it’s doing there in the Bible. Right. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, this whole downward spiral that we’ve been tracing through Judges, this is for sure, you know, the lowest of the low. And I thought it was interesting that this, you know, Levite man makes a point to say that he doesn’t want to stay in a Canaanite town. And he’s like, let’s go on to an Israelite town because it’ll be, you know, better. Maybe he thinks it’ll be safer to stay there. But it’s just as bad, maybe worse in this Israelite town, this Benjaminite city. And so I think it’s trying to point out how Israel has become just like the nations, just like Canaan, and not God’s chosen set-apart people. Yeah. You know, the setup of it is very, very much like Sodom and Gomorrah. Yes. And I think that’s intentional. Totally. Yeah. So as bad as Saddam and Gomorrah were, and that’s sort of like the signature God has seen evil that is so drastic, he’s going to rain down his justice in the form of fire. Like that’s who Israel is right now. Yeah. That’s brutal. Yeah. Yeah, there’s a lot of Genesis 3 language in chapter 19 as well. So if it wasn’t obvious enough to you that this is not a good moral explanation of how far Israel has gone, the biblical author puts in that Genesis 3 language. Yeah, so verse 24 says, do what you see is good in your eyes to the concubine. Oh, yeah. That’s a Genesis 3 phrase. And then the other thing, a little bit more subtle, not easy to see in the English, is in verse 29. It says, when he entered his house, he took the knife. And do you remember when we talked about the near sacrifice of Isaac, how there’s a word for knife in Hebrew? That’s not the traditional word for knife, but it actually means eater. Yes. So that’s this word here. Oh. Yeah. So to take and eat is what this knife is doing. And that is Genesis 3 for sure. Well, so I’m just looking at the context here. So she’s already dead by this point. Yeah. And so to take and eat her? Well, the knife is eating. The knife is devouring. You know, that’s what a knife will devour flesh. That’s where the word comes from. Oh, it’s still creepy. Yeah, it is. And like, what a weird thing to do. I don’t know. he’s trying to show he because he sends these pieces of her to the 12 tribes yeah to show the nations that are the uh the tribes how how bad this city of benjamin was but i don’t know like this guy was not um innocent either right is he is he the one that handed her it’s not 100 clear if it’s him who handed the concubine or if it’s the person whose house he was standing. Okay. Yeah. So in chapter 19, it’s the host who says, here are my virgin daughter and his concubine. Let me bring them out, violate them and do what seems good to you. But against this man, do not do this outrageous thing. So the text that we get doesn’t say that he initiated, but he certainly doesn’t pull her back. He certainly doesn’t say, no, don’t do that. He seems okay with it. Right. Yeah. Yeah. So I don’t know. It’s such a weird, disturbing story. Yeah. And so the aftermath, the plot line itself gets a little bit tricky to follow, but there’s a couple different battles. And essentially, the tribe of Benjamin is blamed as a whole for this. And they are not quite wiped out, but decimate. Their population is greatly reduced by a series of battles. And even in the aftermath, the nation of Israel is very sad about this, and they want there to be restoration. They’re essentially saying, gosh, we don’t want to eliminate a whole tribe of Benjamin. So they mourn for that, and they make allowance. They had sworn this oath, maybe a little bit like our friend from the earlier chapters, a little bit of a rash oath that none of us are going to have our people marry Benjamin and our daughters. But then they’re like, well, if we don’t do that, then the tribe will die out. So they concoct this theme that makes it okay. When the daughters of Benjamin are having a dancing festival, they’re allowed to just run out of the hills and grab them. Yeah. Yeah. It’s very strange. Not sure I understand that. There’s some Genesis 3 language there too, so it’s definitely bad. Yeah. Well, I was thinking, you know, my daughters are young adults. They’re 22 and 21. So if some young man just wanted to come along, just grab my daughter and say, I’m going to take her and marry her. No, no, no. That’s not good. We’re not doing that. Yeah. Well, even in this very different cultural way of how men and women got married, this is still portrayed as not a good thing. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And look, I wish we could redeem this. I wish we could put a silver lining on this. I wish we could GI Joe this and be like, well, here’s what you need to know and understand. But we can’t. It’s tragic. It’s a big old open loop. this is the result of Israel’s idolatry, disobedience, turning away, insisting on defining good and evil for themselves, insisting on following the gods of the other nations instead of trusting in the God that delivered them. This is exactly what he told them was going to happen in Deuteronomy and exactly what Joshua told them was going to happen. We gave a gold star out to Kylene earlier. I’m going to give another gold star out here to Keras. Keras summed up, hey, this is what happens. This is what life looks like without Jesus. And we know that being on the other side of the story here, but the people of Israel, they don’t necessarily know that at the time, which is kind of that last little verse there. To the extent that there is kind of a little shoot of hope, it’s in that last little verse there. In those days, there was no king in Israel. Everybody did what was right in his own eyes. So right in his own eyes, we know that. But that thing about like, okay, there’s no king. That’s giving us a little bit of a hint of maybe the next phase of the story. We’ve seen what this chaos looks like. Maybe if we had a king who’s going to bring some order and justice and kind of keep this thing organized a little bit, maybe that will help out the people. And so that’s the next phase of the story that we’re going to move into. Yeah, that’s continuing to drive that story forward, pushing us towards a greater need for a Messiah who is the ultimate king. Yeah. Yeah. So the king story is actually going to pick up, well, actually we get a little hint of it in the next book that we’re going to read, which is Ruth. So we’ll talk more about that. And then it really picks up steam as we get into the books in 1 and 2 Samuel. And we meet the person of David and the family of David. So we’ll learn more about the king and what’s involved with that. So that’s a brief hint, but maybe tell the people a little bit more about what we have to look forward to next week. Well, I didn’t look forward too much. I just know that we will talk about Ruth in the next episode, which I’m excited about. And then we’ll start for Samuel. So we’re introduced to the character of Samuel. We’ll see my namesake, Hannah. Samuel’s mother. yeah I don’t know how far we actually get next week I didn’t look ahead that’s okay well so as much of a bummer as Judges is I’m glad we read it I’d say this time is less painful for me than times that I’ve read it before part of that is I think because I know I was going to get to talk about it with you and then part of it is kind of seeing more of the patterns about how this is opening my eyes to the person of Jesus and our desperate need for Jesus so less painful but Ruth is a beautiful story and if Judges is a story of all the things that can go wrong when we don’t follow the law Ruth is a beautiful picture of what can go right when we do follow the law we’ll talk about that more in the next episode so in the meantime yes we finish Judges yes all the more reason to worship Jesus because he spares us from living a reality like this well let me pray for us and then we’ll get out of here, sound good? Yeah. Yeah. Heavenly Father, you are a great God. You’re so patient and gentle with us. And Lord, we get a hint here. What life would be like had you not shown us mercy and come to our rescue? Lord, it would be chaos and disorder and destruction and decreation. And Lord, despite the best efforts of people like Barak and Gideon and Samson, oh Lord, they can’t do what you do. They can’t rescue. They can’t save. They’re fallible and fallen. Lord, we need you so much. We need you so bad. Thank you so much for Jesus who has rescued us. And Lord, if it wasn’t them, it would be me. I am not that much more together than any of these people, Lord. So if it wasn’t them, it’d be me. So thank you, Lord. Lord, we’re looking forward to turning the page to read about Ruth and get into Samuel, read more about people who do follow you, maybe imperfectly, but do follow you, Lord. We’re looking forward to learning from their example. Lord, your word is harsh. It’s brutal sometimes, but Lord, that’s what our sin is. And Lord, we need to see it sometimes to understand what a wonderful Savior you are. So thank you even for judges and the chaos and disorder and the mess. You show us what a great God you are and we praise you. So we ask all these things in Jesus’ name. Amen. Amen. Amen. Well, thank you, Hannah. Yeah, thank you, Matt. All right. See you guys next week.