Tag Archives: Judges

Reflections After Walking Through the Book of Judges

Cracked pots, Picture taken by Enric from the Monestary of Sanahin, Armenia shared under creative commons 4.0

The scriptures that both Christians and our Jewish ancestors have inherited are a deeply varied collection of works that attempt to make sense of the encounter between the people of God, the world around them, and the God who has called them. The reality that our scriptures include this violent, colorful, and disturbing book with a tragic ending is pretty exceptional because many people would attempt to hide a book that paints the tribes of Israel in an unflattering light, that contains several texts of terror, that presents Israel’s loss of identity so completely and its Judges as such flawed characters. This was a difficult book to look deeply at, not due to technical issues but because of its dark portrayal of the lawless world of this time between Joshua and the first kings of Israel.

The stories that are compiled in the book of Judges are ancient and their world is alien to us. It is hard not to impose modern ideas about civilization onto these stories, but in both technology and worldview this takes us to a very primitive place. The law as we see it outlined in the books of Exodus through Deuteronomy is absent and reading closely we see the patterns of worship often are indistinguishable from those of other communities like the Canaanites. I would agree with many modern scholars that the law probably reaches its final form much later than the events narrated in Judges, but I also am suspicious that there has been much lost from the time of Moses and Joshua where a common leader was able to unite the tribes. In a pre-literate society without a common set of leaders and where even the Levites fail to hand on the worship and the law of God we end up with a collection of tribes whose life and practices reflect the land of Canaan they live within.

The book of Judges is part of a larger pattern within the scriptures including 1&2 Samuel and 1&2 Kings which attempts to view history through a theological lens and make sense of the collapse of Israel and Judah. Many of the stories that make up Judges were probably well known and told for generations around campfires. They are stories that may point to a ‘heroic culture’ and ‘heroic individuals’ within a broader time of oppression. The narrator of Judges attempts to bring these stories in all their strangeness together into a common narrative which can point to a broader cultural disintegration among the tribes of Israel and prepare the people for the next stage in the history of the people, the time of kings. Samson, for example, struggles with his identity as a person set aside from birth for a particular calling and he does everything he can to deny this identity. Yet, Samson is reflective of Israel as a whole turning aside from their calling (in the narrator’s view) and the seemingly godforsaken world at the end of the book is reflective of Israel’s lack of faithfulness to the covenant.

I do think that the way our Jewish ancestors organized the Bible which includes Joshua through Kings as a part of the prophets (Nevi’im) rather than the writing (Ketuvim) is insightful to the purpose of this book. Instead of being a book of history which narrates the events, this is a theological telling of history to illustrate the consequence of covenant unfaithfulness for the people. The dark topics covered with the book are uncomfortable, but they have provoked some interesting and deep discussions both within the confines of these reflections and within my community. As distasteful as they may be, the texts of terror contained within the book demand a telling and my experience is that if we are unwilling to talk about them when others stumble upon them they will seek answers and not all those who talk about scripture among the broader church do it in a helpful manner.

I am glad to complete this journey. The book of Judges will probably never be one of my favorites, but I do feel like I have learned from this journey through the book. I have attempted to be sympathetic to the narrative and to as much as possible understand the stories in their context. I know my narration of this book is far less triumphal than some, and even the book of Hebrews (the one New Testament reference I’m aware of to the book) interprets it in a triumphal tone:

And what more should I say? For time would fail me to tell of Gideon, Barak, Samson, Jephthah, of David and Samuel and the prophets—who through faith conquered kingdoms, administered justice, obtained promises, and shut the mouth of lions, quenched raging fire, escaped the edge of the sword, won strength out of weakness, became mighty in war, put foreign armies to flight. (Hebrews 11: 32-34)

The book of Judges instead ends with the cry of abducted and traumatized women, the aftermath of tribes going to war with one another, and an Israel who looks more like Sodom than any vision of Zion. Just as dystopic literature can highlight the things that are wrong in our modern society, this theological exploration of this lawless and disunified time in Israel’s story helps to illuminate the dangers of the people losing their identity and conforming to the practices of the surrounding world. It may not be comfortable reading, but it can be enlightening.

Resources on the Book of Judges

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This is a list of the major sources I used in this six-month excursion through the book of Judges. I picked each resource for a reason and below is a brief evaluation of each source. It is not a comprehensive evaluation of the literature on the book of Judges.

Hattin, Michael. Judges: The Peril of Possession. Jerusalem: Maggid Books, 2020.

When looking at books from the Hebrew Scriptures (Old Testament) I have tried to include a Jewish voice in the conversation, and I was introduced to the Maggid Studies in Tanakh when I was working on Jeremiah years ago. The Maggid Studies are a careful reading that are approachable without a background in Biblical Studies. Michael Hattin’s study of Judges has some keen insights from both his own readings and the Jewish history of interpretation into the reception of this unusual piece of scripture. The organization of the comments is more topical than textual and in combination with the other voices it was a valuable source.

Mobley, Gregory. The Empty Men: The Heroic Tradition of Ancient Israel. New York: Doubleday, 2005.

This is not a commentary but instead is a study into the stories of three individual judges (Ehud, Gideon, and Samson) from the perspective of ‘Heroic Culture’ and ‘Heroic Conventions.’ Looking more broadly at the literature of the ancient Middle East, Gregory Mobley attempts to provide a richer backdrop for hearing the narratives of the judges as hero stories. To me this is a useful resource to help place the book of Judges in a framework that is closer to its origins.

Olson, Dennis T. “The Book of Judges.” In New Interpreter’s Bible II: 721-888. 12 vols. Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1998.

The NIB (New Interpreter’s Bible) is a solid resource as a resource for preaching and teaching that covers the entire bible and goes into some textual issues, but it primarily is focused on giving a fuller context to the story. Dennis Olson’s contribution on Judges is very readable and much shorter than some of the other stand-alone resources on the book. It is not designed to be a textual commentary but does a good job in highlighting the structural linkages throughout the book.

Trible, Phyllis. Texts of Terror: Literary-Feminist Readings of Biblical Narratives. Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1984.

Even though this only covers the stories of Jephthah’s daughter and the Levite’s concubine this is a must-read resource for thinking about the book of Judges. Phyliss Trible is a phenomenal reader of texts and her ability to rhetorically craft a sentence for impact is powerful. She brings both the tools of feminist criticism and literary criticism together and her careful exegesis of the Hebrew of these two stories (and the additional two stories that make up the volume from Genesis and 2 Samuel) is stunning.

Webb, Barry G. The Book of Judges. Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdman’s Publishing Company, 2012.

Barry Webb’s mammoth commentary on Judges is a part of the New International Commentary on the Old Testament (NICOT) which is a rich historical and textual resource. This was probably the resource I used the most but at over five hundred pages it is probably more than most people want to read on the book of Judges. For those who are interested in diving deeply into the Hebrew translation this is a great text, and it also does a great job at identifying parallels in the text of Judges but also throughout the Hebrew Scriptures.

Judges 17 The Idol of Micah

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The altar of Micah. Located in the village of Givat Harel in Samaria.

Judges 17

There was a man in the hill country of Ephraim whose name was Micah. ² He said to his mother, “The eleven hundred pieces of silver that were taken from you, about which you uttered a curse, and even spoke it in my hearing, — that silver is in my possession; I took it; but now I will return it to you.” And his mother said, “May my son be blessed by the LORD!” ³ Then he returned the eleven hundred pieces of silver to his mother; and his mother said, “I consecrate the silver to the LORD from my hand for my son, to make an idol of cast metal.” ⁴ So when he returned the money to his mother, his mother took two hundred pieces of silver, and gave it to the silversmith, who made it into an idol of cast metal; and it was in the house of Micah. ⁵ This man Micah had a shrine, and he made an ephod and teraphim, and installed one of his sons, who became his priest. ⁶ In those days there was no king in Israel; all the people did what was right in their own eyes.

⁷ Now there was a young man of Bethlehem in Judah, of the clan of Judah. He was a Levite residing there. ⁸ This man left the town of Bethlehem in Judah, to live wherever he could find a place. He came to the house of Micah in the hill country of Ephraim to carry on his work. ⁹ Micah said to him, “From where do you come?” He replied, “I am a Levite of Bethlehem in Judah, and I am going to live wherever I can find a place.” ¹⁰ Then Micah said to him, “Stay with me, and be to me a father and a priest, and I will give you ten pieces of silver a year, a set of clothes, and your living.” ¹¹ The Levite agreed to stay with the man; and the young man became to him like one of his sons. ¹² So Micah installed the Levite, and the young man became his priest, and was in the house of Micah. ¹³ Then Micah said, “Now I know that the LORD will prosper me, because the Levite has become my priest.”

This begins a “collection of unhappy stories” (Mobley, 2005, p. 225) which illustrate the precarious position of the tribes and families of Israel during the ending of the narrative of Judges. The final two stories which make up the final five chapters of Judges demonstrate how far Israel has strayed from its identity as the people of God and how confused and chaotic this lawless time had become. In a time when, “They did it their way.” (Webb, 2012, p. 421) we see all of the Ten Commandments systematically broken (NIB II: 864) in these unhappy stories as Israel stands in danger of dissolving into the surrounding Canaanite and Philistine community. While it is possible that both stories happen chronologically after the death of Samson it is likely that the editor of Judges placed these two stories as a conclusion of the book to prepare the reader for the people’s desire for a king to unite this scattered people and to unite them in their identity.

The initial story shows how the worship of the LORD the God of Israel has been corrupted to where it becomes patterned after the worship of the Canaanites and other nations. Names are often important in Hebrew stories and the name Micah means “Who is like God?” It is a name that implies that no god or idol is a substitute for the LORD, and yet this man named Micah will capture God in a cast image and use the image as a focus of worship. He has taken an exceptionally large sum of money, eleven hundred pieces of silver-the same amount each Philistine lord promised to Delilah to betray Samson, from his mother but when his mother utters a curse he confesses his guilt and returns it. Micah’s mother attempts to turn the curse into a blessing and to consecrate the silver to the LORD but then we immediately see the corruption of this by consecrating it for an idol. Worship of the LORD has lost one of its essential elements, that they are not to create an image of God. The story becomes even more confounding when two hundred of the eleven hundred pieces are turned over to a silversmith and the remaining nine hundred are held back. In a shrine Micah places this idol alongside an ephod and teraphim (household gods). The idol is placed as one image among multiple images and his son is set up to preside over this corrupted version of worship of the LORD the God of Israel. In a time and place where everyone does what is right in their own eyes and the laws and the covenant seem to have been forgotten we end up with a parody of what the devotion to the LORD was intended to be.

When a Levite looking for a new place to reside comes to the house of Micah he is offered the position of being a priest in this shrine. Micah’s son recedes to the background as this Levite becomes priest and becomes like a father to Micah. The annual pay of the Levite, ten silver a year plus home and clothing, illustrates how rich Micah’s household is where eleven hundred pieces of silver can be ‘consecrated to the LORD.’ The creation of a shrine presided over by a Levite gave Micah’s household a great deal of status in the hill country of Ephraim and yet his desire that it will make him prosper is contrasted by the confused combination of the practices the LORD commanded with the Canaanite and other religious practices the LORD forbade the people to follow. This strange story of a household in Israel is reflective of the loss of distinctive practices and identity that we have seen throughout Judges. The religious practices of the people have been corrupted and despite Micah’s confidence that in his own eyes he is doing the right thing, it will not lead to his future prosperity.

Judges 6: The Calling of Gideon

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Gideon’s Call, 1860 woodcut by Julius Schnorr von Karolsfeld

Judges 6: 1-10

The Israelites did what was evil in the sight of the LORD, and the LORD gave them into the hand of Midian seven years. ² The hand of Midian prevailed over Israel; and because of Midian the Israelites provided for themselves hiding places in the mountains, caves and strongholds. ³ For whenever the Israelites put in seed, the Midianites and the Amalekites and the people of the east would come up against them. ⁴ They would encamp against them and destroy the produce of the land, as far as the neighborhood of Gaza, and leave no sustenance in Israel, and no sheep or ox or donkey. ⁵ For they and their livestock would come up, and they would even bring their tents, as thick as locusts; neither they nor their camels could be counted; so they wasted the land as they came in. ⁶ Thus Israel was greatly impoverished because of Midian; and the Israelites cried out to the LORD for help.

⁷ When the Israelites cried to the LORD on account of the Midianites, ⁸ the LORD sent a prophet to the Israelites; and he said to them, “Thus says the LORD, the God of Israel: I led you up from Egypt, and brought you out of the house of slavery; ⁹ and I delivered you from the hand of the Egyptians, and from the hand of all who oppressed you, and drove them out before you, and gave you their land; ¹⁰ and I said to you, ‘I am the LORD your God; you shall not pay reverence to the gods of the Amorites, in whose land you live.’ But you have not given heed to my voice.”

Once again the faithfulness of Israel is short lived in the absence of a leader to help them remain obedient to their covenant with the God of Israel. The pernicious cycle of disobedience continues with the return of the refrain, “The Israelites did what was evil in the sight of the LORD,” and once again another group oppresses the people. The Midianites and the Amalekites and the people of the east are a group of raiders that are coming out of the desert and making normal life impossible for the Israelites of this northern region. These groups are not interested in occupying or farming the land, they come and take the produce of the land and prevent the people from being able to reap the benefits of their agricultural work. These Midianites and Amalekites carry off the harvest, destroy the crops in the field and carry off the livestock of the people making normal life impossible. They are (poetically) as numerous and as destructive as a locust swarm to the farming life of the people and the only way the people can survive is by hiding their produce and even themselves in mountains, caves, and strongholds. After seven years the people finally call out to the LORD for assistance.

The Israelites have no unified military force to resist these marauding invaders whose camels and tents plant themselves in the middle of their livelihood. The stories captured in Judges are stories of individual tribes and families who are rescued by God’s intervention through a judge, but the narrative reinforces both Israel’s unfaithfulness and their defenselessness outside of the intervention by their God (or when their God delivers them into another group’s power). The prophet sent to the Israelites once again reminds them of their disobedience and gives no indication that the LORD will intervene on their behalf. The God of Israel is certainly capable of dealing with the Midianite threat: he brought them out of slavery in Egypt, the superpower of that time. Yet, the people have continued to adopt the worship of the gods of the people of Canaan in lieu of (or in addition to) the God of Israel who brought them from Egypt to this land. This scene is similar to the messenger from God/angel of God from Gilead’s declaration to the Israelites at Bochim (Judges 2: 1-5). The prophet’s presences sets the stage for God’s action through Gideon, but it also prepares us for the reality we will encounter in the town of Ophrah where Baal worship has displaced the worship of the LORD the God of Israel.

Judges 6: 11-24

¹¹ Now the angel of the LORD came and sat under the oak at Ophrah, which belonged to Joash the Abiezrite, as his son Gideon was beating out wheat in the wine press, to hide it from the Midianites. ¹² The angel of the LORD appeared to him and said to him, “The LORD is with you, you mighty warrior.” ¹³ Gideon answered him, “But sir, if the LORD is with us, why then has all this happened to us? And where are all his wonderful deeds that our ancestors recounted to us, saying, ‘Did not the LORD bring us up from Egypt?’ But now the LORD has cast us off, and given us into the hand of Midian.” ¹⁴ Then the LORD turned to him and said, “Go in this might of yours and deliver Israel from the hand of Midian; I hereby commission you.” ¹⁵ He responded, “But sir, how can I deliver Israel? My clan is the weakest in Manasseh, and I am the least in my family.” ¹⁶ The LORD said to him, “But I will be with you, and you shall strike down the Midianites, every one of them.” ¹⁷ Then he said to him, “If now I have found favor with you, then show me a sign that it is you who speak with me. ¹⁸ Do not depart from here until I come to you, and bring out my present, and set it before you.” And he said, “I will stay until you return.”

¹⁹ So Gideon went into his house and prepared a kid, and unleavened cakes from an ephah of flour; the meat he put in a basket, and the broth he put in a pot, and brought them to him under the oak and presented them. ²⁰ The angel of God said to him, “Take the meat and the unleavened cakes, and put them on this rock, and pour out the broth.” And he did so. ²¹ Then the angel of the LORD reached out the tip of the staff that was in his hand, and touched the meat and the unleavened cakes; and fire sprang up from the rock and consumed the meat and the unleavened cakes; and the angel of the LORD vanished from his sight. ²² Then Gideon perceived that it was the angel of the LORD; and Gideon said, “Help me, Lord GOD! For I have seen the angel of the LORD face to face.” ²³ But the LORD said to him, “Peace be to you; do not fear, you shall not die.” ²⁴ Then Gideon built an altar there to the LORD, and called it, The LORD is peace. To this day it still stands at Ophrah, which belongs to the Abiezrites.

Within the context of the disobedience of Israel and the oppression of the Midianites we now enter the specific experience of Gideon in the town of Ophrah. The angel of the LORD is now sent to Gideon the son of Joash the Abiezrite. Gideon is beating out wheat in the wine press to hide the harvest from the threat of the Midianites. Threshing is a task normally done outdoors where the stalks are spread on flat, open ground and an ox or other animal would drag a large sledge with sharp stones on the bottom to detach the ears from the stalk and break open the kernels. (Hattin 2020, 69) After crushing the grain would be separated by throwing it into the sky and allowing the wind to blow away the lighter stalks while the grain returned to the earth. A winepress was typically built in a depression in a sheltered area which provided greater cover, but also prevented the wind from being used in the normal threshing process. The Midianite raiders have disrupted life in Israel so that normal tasks required to sustain life have been interrupted.

This is the first time that the angel of the LORD speaks to one who is to be a judge, previously the angel/messenger spoke to all of Israel and stated they would no longer go out to fight for Israel. Now it is Gideon, the youngest son of Joash who is chosen to be the mighty warrior.[1] Gideon’s protest that ‘the LORD has cast us off’ speaks to the experience of God failing to protect them from the Midianites, but it also neglects the reality that his father has an altar to Baal and an Asherah pole that the surrounding community uses. Even if there is a memory of the name of the LORD and some of the actions attributed to this God there seems to be a cultural amnesia about the LORD’s requirement of not being one among the many gods that the people worship. Yet, the LORD is unwilling to remain unresponsive when the people of Israel cry out in their oppression and so the LORD provides a way through this youngest child of a family in the weakest clan of Manasseh.

Gideon, like the Israelites, perceive their weakness on their own. They are not well armed or trained to fend off these raiders that come from the desert and steal their harvest, destroy their crops, and rustle their livestock. The people of Israel on their own are not great fighters and are unable to see how they can resist their oppressors. They remain dependent on the LORD to be the mighty warrior who goes out to fight alongside them. Gideon needs a sign, some sort of indication that the calling he is receiving is true. This scene bears several similarities to the meeting between Abraham and the three divine messengers by the oaks of Mamre, and in both scenes the offer of hospitality is the invitation to be present for an extended period while a large amount of flour is turned into cakes and an animal is slaughtered, dressed, and cooked for consumption. An ephah of flour is almost six gallons of flour (roughly a bushel) and in a world before refrigeration the preparation of an animal was done in proximity to the animal’s consumption.

In addition to the echoes of Abraham’s story there are also similarities in the stories of Moses, Elijah, and Jacob. Like Moses, Gideon questions his selection as one through whom God will work and needs a sign to demonstrate this calling. The concerns about seeing God face to face also are resonant of the God’s passage before Moses in Exodus 33: 12-22 where God states that, “no one shall see me and live.” The close association between the LORD and the angel of the LORD is highlighted here when Gideon fears for his life after being in the presence of the angel of the LORD. The pouring of the broth over the rock with the cakes and meat is similar to Elijah’s actions when he confronts the prophets of Baal on Mt. Carmel. (1 Kings 18: 20-40) This similarity is heightened in the next section when Gideon ‘contends against Baal.’ Finally, like Jacob when he encounters God in a dream at Bethel, he sets up an altar at the spot of the epiphany. God encounters Gideon in ways that would be familiar to those who know the story and even though Elijah’s narrative comes later in the story of Israel they both contend against the continued threat of Baal worship.

Judges 6: 25-32

²⁵ That night the LORD said to him, “Take your father’s bull, the second bull seven years old, and pull down the altar of Baal that belongs to your father, and cut down the sacred pole that is beside it; ²⁶ and build an altar to the LORD your God on the top of the stronghold here, in proper order; then take the second bull, and offer it as a burnt offering with the wood of the sacred pole that you shall cut down.” ²⁷ So Gideon took ten of his servants, and did as the LORD had told him; but because he was too afraid of his family and the townspeople to do it by day, he did it by night.

²⁸ When the townspeople rose early in the morning, the altar of Baal was broken down, and the sacred pole beside it was cut down, and the second bull was offered on the altar that had been built. ²⁹ So they said to one another, “Who has done this?” After searching and inquiring, they were told, “Gideon son of Joash did it.” ³⁰ Then the townspeople said to Joash, “Bring out your son, so that he may die, for he has pulled down the altar of Baal and cut down the sacred pole beside it.” ³¹ But Joash said to all who were arrayed against him, “Will you contend for Baal? Or will you defend his cause? Whoever contends for him shall be put to death by morning. If he is a god, let him contend for himself, because his altar has been pulled down.” ³² Therefore on that day Gideon was called Jerubbaal, that is to say, “Let Baal contend against him,” because he pulled down his altar.

The reorientation of the people of Israel begins with Gideon’s own family and his hometown of Ophrah. Gideon is to take two bulls and tear down the altar to Baal and the Asherah pole that belong to his father, and Gideon fear the reaction of both his family and the people of the town. For his family it is not only the loss of the bull which Gideon sacrifices but also priestly function that his father presumably holds based on the altar being associated with him. Gideon’s assertation earlier that of his own lack of strength is contrasted to his father’s position of being the owner of the altar of Baal and the Asherah pole as well as Gideon’s ability to have ten servants work with him. Even with the ten servants he conducts the altar demolition and the sacrifice of the bull at night.

Gideon’s fears are well founded and as Michael Hattin can highlight,

The showdown at Ofra (Ophrah) is the first time in the Hebrew Bible that people of Israel pronounce their willingness to kill opponents of idolatry and the new development does not bode well. (Hattin 2020, 75)

The biblical mandate that idolaters are to be put to death (Deuteronomy 17: 2-7) is now reversed. The situation in this portion of Israel has degraded to the point where the people of Ophrah become champions of Baal and the LORD the God of Israel is either forgotten or included alongside Baal and Asherah. Joash chooses his son over Baal and Asherah and threatens violence against any who take the defense of Baal and Asherah into their own hands. Joash apparently is in a powerful enough position for his threat of violence to be taken seriously by the crowd and he frames the conflict as between Baal and Gideon.

The action of Gideon, on behalf of the LORD of Israel, begins the process of turning the people away from idolatry. Gideon becomes ‘one who contends with Baal’ and his new title reflects this. Ironically Gideon will later create an ephod which Israel will later bow down to, but for now he has begun the journey of returning the people to the LORD the God of Israel. Now that the altar of Baal has been removed now the focus can turn to the Midianite and Amalekite raiders which have interrupted the normal actions of life in Israel.

Judges 6: 33-40

³³ Then all the Midianites and the Amalekites and the people of the east came together, and crossing the Jordan they encamped in the Valley of Jezreel. ³⁴ But the spirit of the LORD took possession[2] of Gideon; and he sounded the trumpet, and the Abiezrites were called out to follow him. ³⁵ He sent messengers throughout all Manasseh, and they too were called out to follow him. He also sent messengers to Asher, Zebulun, and Naphtali, and they went up to meet them.

³⁶ Then Gideon said to God, “In order to see whether you will deliver Israel by my hand, as you have said, ³⁷ I am going to lay a fleece of wool on the threshing floor; if there is dew on the fleece alone, and it is dry on all the ground, then I shall know that you will deliver Israel by my hand, as you have said.” ³⁸ And it was so. When he rose early next morning and squeezed the fleece, he wrung enough dew from the fleece to fill a bowl with water. ³⁹ Then Gideon said to God, “Do not let your anger burn against me, let me speak one more time; let me, please, make trial with the fleece just once more; let it be dry only on the fleece, and on all the ground let there be dew.” ⁴⁰ And God did so that night. It was dry on the fleece only, and on all the ground there was dew.

Now that the conflict between God’s chosen warrior and Baal’s defenders has been resolved the threat of the Midianites and the Amalekites can be addressed. These raiders come from the east and settle in the Jezreel valley to continue their plundering of the clans and tribes of Israel, but now a chosen warrior has been called by the God of Israel. Gideon is clothed with the spirit of the LORD and rallies this own clan as well as sending messengers to the rest of his tribes and the other northern tribes nearest that valley. Yet, being clothed with the Spirit of the LORD does not change Gideon’s cautious personality he demonstrated earlier in the narrative.

Gideon seeks reassurance again before he engages the foreign invaders. Initially he asks for God to allow a piece of fleece to be wet while the ground is dry at the site of his first encounter with the angel of the LORD. Laying out fleece exposed overnight to gather water is practiced in dry areas as a way of obtaining the water necessary to live while the surrounding dew evaporated more quickly. This first request is for a lesser sign, but then in language similar to Abraham (Genesis 18:30) Gideon appeals to God for a second more difficult sign. Yet the LORD grants the delay of two days to provide these two signs to convince Gideon that God is with the people.

[1] Hebrew gibbor hehayil which can refer to physical strength or the economic strength to equip oneself and a group for combat. Ruth 4:11 uses this term for economic ability in reference to Boaz.

[2] Literally the Spirit clothed (labesa) Gideon

Deuteronomy 16: Celebrations, Remembrance and Justice

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Painted Sukkah with a view of Jerusalem, Late 19th Century, Austria or South Germany

Deuteronomy 16: 1-17: Passover, the Festival of Weeks, and the Festival of Booths

¹Observe the month of Abib by keeping the passover for the LORD your God, for in the month of Abib the LORD your God brought you out of Egypt by night. ² You shall offer the passover sacrifice for the LORD your God, from the flock and the herd, at the place that the LORD will choose as a dwelling for his name. ³ You must not eat with it anything leavened. For seven days you shall eat unleavened bread with it– the bread of affliction– because you came out of the land of Egypt in great haste, so that all the days of your life you may remember the day of your departure from the land of Egypt. ⁴ No leaven shall be seen with you in all your territory for seven days; and none of the meat of what you slaughter on the evening of the first day shall remain until morning. ⁵ You are not permitted to offer the passover sacrifice within any of your towns that the LORD your God is giving you. ⁶ But at the place that the LORD your God will choose as a dwelling for his name, only there shall you offer the passover sacrifice, in the evening at sunset, the time of day when you departed from Egypt. ⁷ You shall cook it and eat it at the place that the LORD your God will choose; the next morning you may go back to your tents. ⁸ For six days you shall continue to eat unleavened bread, and on the seventh day there shall be a solemn assembly for the LORD your God, when you shall do no work.

⁹ You shall count seven weeks; begin to count the seven weeks from the time the sickle is first put to the standing grain. ¹⁰ Then you shall keep the festival of weeks for the LORD your God, contributing a freewill offering in proportion to the blessing that you have received from the LORD your God. ¹¹ Rejoice before the LORD your God– you and your sons and your daughters, your male and female slaves, the Levites resident in your towns, as well as the strangers, the orphans, and the widows who are among you– at the place that the LORD your God will choose as a dwelling for his name. ¹² Remember that you were a slave in Egypt, and diligently observe these statutes.

¹³ You shall keep the festival of booths for seven days, when you have gathered in the produce from your threshing floor and your wine press. ¹⁴ Rejoice during your festival, you and your sons and your daughters, your male and female slaves, as well as the Levites, the strangers, the orphans, and the widows resident in your towns. ¹⁵ Seven days you shall keep the festival for the LORD your God at the place that the LORD will choose; for the LORD your God will bless you in all your produce and in all your undertakings, and you shall surely celebrate.

¹⁶ Three times a year all your males shall appear before the LORD your God at the place that he will choose: at the festival of unleavened bread, at the festival of weeks, and at the festival of booths. They shall not appear before the LORD empty-handed; ¹⁷ all shall give as they are able, according to the blessing of the LORD your God that he has given you.

One of the gifts of the congregation being located next to a Hindu temple is seeing the way their community orders their lives around the various festivals that come up throughout the year. Especially since we share some of our parking spaces with them we can see the way their community swells around festivals like Diwali. The festivals we celebrate as a Christian church may look very different from our neighbors but our community is also significantly larger around our high festivals of Christmas and Easter. The Jewish festivals of Passover, weeks and booths were intended to be ways in which the community gathered together to share their story, to share their prosperity and give thanks to their LORD for the bounty of the previous year and to pass on the faith from generation to generation. It is an extension of the sabbatical way of living where the people are not to work on the Sabbath day, to forgive debts in the Sabbath year and then also there are these three weeks within the year set apart from the working in the fields to celebrate their identity as the people of Israel.

The Passover celebration is originally outlined in Exodus 13 and it is a ritual enactment of the beginning of the exodus journey out of Egypt and into the wilderness, away from slavery and into the dangerous freedom of being the people of the LORD. The people are called to enter into the story themselves, and much as the emphasis throughout the book of Deuteronomy insists that it was not a previous generation that the LORD gave the law to or spoke to or performed wonders on behalf of, so now the people who celebrate the Passover become a part of the story with their ancestors who were once slaves in Egypt. They are a people redeemed by the action of the LORD, not by their own military muscle or economic might. They are to gather together around the tabernacle or temple of the LORD.

The festivals remind the people each year of who they are and where their abundance comes from. They in their ritual action hope to reduce the amnesia that will come when the people enter into the abundance of the Promised Land and forget the way the LORD was present with them in the journey. They are symbols of hope as Rabbi Mark Dov Shapiro states when he says:

Our story is instead a vision that promises something better can always happen…True there is much sadness in our Jewish experience and the overall human experience. That is why you can’t have a Seder without salt water and maror. But you also can’t have a Seder without sweet charoset and freedom bread matza, without four cups of wine, and without the ultimate punch line-L’shana ha-ba-a b’Yershalayim (next year in Jerusalem). (Thompson, 2014, p. 133)

The festival of weeks and the festival of booths are agricultural festivals which celebrate the harvest of the grain and the completion of the work of the harvest of the year. They are times to bring together the blessings of the year and an annual reminder that the harvest is a blessing of God rather than primarily a result of their own hard work or practices. Again they are to set aside a week of rest and celebration as they bring the harvest in and celebrate with those who are the vulnerable in their communities. The stranger, the orphan, the Levite and the widow are all to be included in the celebration of the landowners along with their children and their slaves. Everyone is to have a time of celebration and an ending of labor. Everyone is to share in the festival and the eating and drinking.

The early community of Israel did not come together every Sabbath to worship in the central place and while there was practices that probably did take place within the home these festivals were also intended to be a major part of the community’s act of passing on the traditions and faith. Amazingly the Hebrew Scriptures (or Old Testament as Christians sometimes refer to it) very rarely refer to the Passover, much less the other festivals. It seems probable that there were times where the celebrations were not widely practiced, and the narrative that runs from Judges through 2 Kings seems to be a narrative of amnesia with moments of remembrance. In the Christian calendar the festivals of Christmas, Easter and Pentecost also become festivals which enact central parts of the Christian story and serve as ritual reminders of the stories that Christians are a part of. Yet, as Christmas and Easter increasingly adopt a more secular tone in the United States there is the continued threat (and reality) of amnesia in the midst of our own prosperity.

Deuteronomy 16: 18-20: The Necessity of Justice

¹⁸ You shall appoint judges and officials throughout your tribes, in all your towns that the LORD your God is giving you, and they shall render just decisions for the people. ¹⁹ You must not distort justice; you must not show partiality; and you must not accept bribes, for a bribe blinds the eyes of the wise and subverts the cause of those who are in the right. ²⁰ Justice, and only justice, you shall pursue, so that you may live and occupy the land that the LORD your God is giving you.

²¹ You shall not plant any tree as a sacred pole beside the altar that you make for the LORD your God; ²² nor shall you set up a stone pillar– things that the LORD your God hates.

This is one of the places where the chapter break should be at a different place because verses twenty one and twenty two are more related to what comes at the beginning of chapter seventeen than what closes out chapter sixteen and I will address them in the next section.

From the very beginning of Deuteronomy (Deuteronomy 1: 9-18) there has been an emphasis on the need for a fair legal system to ensure that justice is done. One of the constant cries of the prophets is the way that justice is not being done for the people and particularly those who are vulnerable. Even today in our modern legal system it is difficult for people with limited economic means to receive the same type of treatment as those with the financial resources to ensure the best legal representation. Among the ancient world the people of Israel were to be a community of justice that did not favor the powerful over the powerless and ensured that the vulnerable communities, the orphans, widows, and the foreigners in their midst would receive justice as well. Even though bribes were common practice in the ancient world those entrusted with judging on behalf of Israel are not to accept them. The judges become an extension of God’s justice and the judges who are called upon to be a part of God’s law being lived out in community are to be unwilling to accept a bribe just as the God of Israel it.

Sign of the Rose

Searchings: Sacred and Secular