Page 4 - July 2025 - Truth & Tidings

he book of Judges is a strange and permeated Israel to its core, both geograph-
sometimes disturbing portion of ically and in the operation of the nation,
TScripture. Our Sunday school ex- religiously, legally and politically. Judah,
posure to its more thrilling narratives, our who, in chapter 1, had gone first against
excitement at Gideon’s victories, or our the Canaanites, now goes first against the
wonder at Samson’s feats of strength can tribe of Benjamin, and a book that opened
cause us to lose sight of this and dull our with one of the exemplary marriages of
apprehension of just how confounding a Scripture ends with the forced marriage
book it is. In place of heroes and villains, of the daughters of Shiloh, a shabby and
it gives us deeply flawed characters who distressing end to a shabby and distressing
achieve great things and do terrible things. story. Human failure is writ large on the
In place of clear statements of right or pages of Judges.
wrong, it leaves us to navigate murky In his recounting of these events, the
moral ambiguities, with little or no guid- narrator of Judges is not just interested in
ance from the narrator. description; he is concerned with diagno-
The book begins brightly. The first half of sis too. And there is little room for doubt
chapter one lulls us with a sense that all will about what that diagnosis is. Four times
be well and deepens the tragedy of the fol- over, in the closing chapters of the book,
lowing chapters by demonstrating that all it is stated with stark clarity: “no king in
could have been well. But all too soon, the Israel.” Those words crystalise the problem
signs of incipient failure begin to appear: at the root of the nation’s condition. They
“could not drive them out” is followed by also crystalise the canonical purpose of
“did not drive them out,” and “did not the Book of Judges. This, surely, is why
drive them out” by “put them to tribute.” the Holy Spirit has placed all of the failure
All too soon, we hear the Angel of the Lord and the fighting, the egotism and ambition
denounce the disobedience of the people in the record of Holy Scripture. As we read
and we are introduced to the sickening through Judges and realise more and more
downward spiral of disobedience, depar- the pathology of the nation, we long more
ture and despair, followed by deliverance, and more for something – or someone – to
followed by yet more disobedience. deliver God’s people from their downward
The narrator is anxious to convey not just spiral of departure. And, just at the darkest
the breadth but also the depth of Israel’s point, a glimmer of light breaks through.
failure. This is the message of the four final “No king in Israel,” “no king in Israel,”
chapters of the book. Among the darkest but the king is coming and things will not
and most distressing portions of God’s always be like this. As we, in our English
Word, they bear witness to the rot that has Bibles, move from Judges to Ruth, we inch

196 TRUTH kTidings July 2025