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CHAPTER 13 : Summary of the Book of Judges - Judah's and Simeon's
Campaign -Spiritual and national Decay of Israel - "From Gilgal to
Bochin."
(JUDGES 1-3:4)
IF evidence were required that each period of Old Testament history points for its
completion to one still future, it would be found in the Book of Judges. The history of
the three and a half centuries which it records brings not anything new to light, either in
the life or history of Israel; it only continues what is already found in the Book of
Joshua, carrying it forward to the Books of Samuel, and thence through Kings, till it
points in the dim distance to the King, of Israel, the Lord Jesus Christ, Who gives
perfect rest in the perfect kingdom. In the Book of Joshua we see two grand outstanding
facts, one explaining the outer, the other the inner history of Israel. As for the latter, we
learn that ever since the sin of Peor, if not before, idolatry had its hold upon the people.
Not that the service of the Lord was discarded, but that it was combined with the
heathen rites of the nations around. But as true religion was really the principle of
Israel's national life and unity, "unfaithfulness" towards Jehovah was also closely
connected with tribal disintegration, which, as we have seen, threatened even in the time
of Joshua. Then, as for the outer history of Israel, we learn that the completion of their
possession of Canaan was made dependent on their faithfulness to Jehovah. Just as the
Christian can only continue to stand by the same faith in which, in his conversion to
God, he first had access to Him (Romans 5:2), so Israel could only retain the land and
complete its conquest by the same faith in which they had at first entered it. For faith is
never a thing of the past. And for this reason God allowed a remnant of those nations to
continue in the land "to prove Israel by them"^171 (Judges 3:1), so that, as Joshua had
forewarned them (Joshua 23:10-16, comp. Judges 2:3), "faithfulness" on their part
would lead to sure and easy victory, while the opposite would end in terrible national
disaster.
Side by side with these two facts, there is yet a third, and that the most important: the
unchanging faithfulness of the Lord, His unfailing pity and lovingkindness, according
to which, when Israel was brought low and again turned to Him, He "raised them up
judges,... and delivered them out of the hand of their enemies all the days of the judge"
(Judges 2:18).
The exhibition of these three facts forms the subject-matter of Israel's history under the
Judges, as clearly indicated in Judges 2:21, 3:4. Accordingly, we must not expect in the
Book of Judges a complete or successive history of Israel during these three and half
centuries, but rather the exhibition and development of those three grand facts. For Holy
Scripture furnishes not - like ordinary biography or history - a chronicle of the lives of
individuals, or even of the successive history of a period, save in so far as these are
(^)