Judges

Invasion of Canaan

I think this time we'll skip the prologue and jump right into the book since we have a lot to cover.  So after Joshua died at one hundred and fricken ten years old, the Israelites decided to have the people from Judah and the Simeonites go into Canaan and take it over.  They took over many cities, including Jerusalem, killing everybody and burning them to the ground and inhabiting them afterward.  However, there were some they couldn't completely drive out.

The Lord was with the men of Judah. They took possession of the hill country, but they were unable to drive the people from the plains, because they had iron chariots. As Moses had promised, Hebron was given to Caleb, who drove from it the three sons of Anak. (1:19&20)

 First of all, I would gladly like to note that God couldn't drive out the people from the plains because they have iron chariots.  It seems God might have an irrational fear of iron chariots.  At least, that's the only conclusion I can come up with, seeing as he's the Almighty who can make the heavens and the earth, who can giveth and taketh away, yet he can't so much as smite a few iron chariots.  


Second of all, remember who the sons of Anak are?  If you can recall back in Deuteronomy, the sons of Anak (aka the Anakites) are the descendants of the Nephilim, who were supposedly killed back in Genesis by the Not-So-Great Flood.


So, all the people they couldn't drive out, they subjugated them to forced labor as well.  Then they divided the Hebrews into these cities and allotted them certain land and what have you.  Well, a generation or two goes by, and the parents of the new generation failed to teach their children about God.  So as this new generation grew up, they began worshiping Baal (you remember him from Joshua) and Ashtoreth.

Now, something interesting to note here about Ashtoreth.  The Hebrews had a way of distorting the gods' original names as a way of mocking the other religions.  Ashtoreth was actually known as Astarte, the goddess of sexuality and fertility.  She was known to the Greeks as Aphrodite.  The Israelites had combined her original name with the Hebrew term for "abomination".  (That would be "bosheth" in case anybody wanted to know.)  [1]

The Judges

Since this new generation was serving other gods, God got mad and destroyed them all by working with their enemies to defeat them.  (2:15)  A little while later, God brought up some judges to save the Israelites from their doom.  But whenever a judge died, they kept going back to other gods.  (As I've mentioned before in the last blog, could it have possibly been because other gods were better at taking care of their people than God was?)  So, instead of handing them over to their enemies, he just decided to not destroy their enemies.  These other people intermarried with them, and enslaved many others.  Eight years later, the Israelites began crying about their hardships, so God sent Caleb's younger Othniel brother to save them and he was considered "The Judge" of Israel.  (3:7-11)

This charade pretty much continued a bunch of times, and they went through Judge Ehud, and Judge Shamgar, and Judge Deborah... wait, a woman?  Yes, a woman!  Not just a woman judge (or "leader" if you glance at the cliffnotes) but a prophetess.  Not only did she bring the Israelites out of more slavery and worship of other gods, but she totally wrecked shop on a bunch of other cities - one of which, Sisera, was given to her by God.  Some men were a little pissed about it, but they couldn't argue with her.  Alright, so God's not a total chauvinist.

So then this happened again with a new judge named Gideon.  One day God (or the "angel of the Lord") came down and sat next to Gideon underneath an oak tree to have a little chat.  Here's the dialogue.

When the angel of the Lord appereared to Gideon, he said, "The Lord is with you, mighty warrior."
"But sir," Gideon replied, "if the Lord is with us, why has all this happened to us? Where are all his wonders that our fathers told us about when they said, 'Did not the Lord bring us up out of Egypt?' But now the Lord had abandoned us and put us into the hand of Midian."
The Lord turned to him and said, "Go in the strength you have and save Israel out of Midian's hand. Am I not sending you?" (6:12-14)
Gideon replied, "If now I have found favor in your eyes, give me a sign that it is really you talking to me..." (6:17)

 So Gideon went to fetch an offering to God and he placed it on a rock.  Then God did his little magic trick and set the meat aflame, and Gideon then believed it really was God.

But, did anybody notice when Gideon was asking how God could allow all this shit to happen to his people, God totally avoided the question and pulled the whole "Because I said so!" bit?  You'll notice these tactics get used a lot when you approach a Christian with a serious question.

Gideon asked God to do a couple more magic tricks, like keeping fleece dry in the morning when the grass is covered in dew.  Then Gideon went to kick some ass the way Deborah and all the other Judges did.  He heard a man telling a friend about a dream that he had about a loaf of bread tumbling down a hill and knocking down the Midianite camp.  Because of this dream, Gideon assumed it was a symbol for the Israelites destroying the Midianites, so they decided to invade and take down the Midianites.  (7:13-15)

This dream reminds me of a story I heard when I was in elementary school about the Native Americans back in the day.  One of them had a dream that these white men were going to attack them, but the bullets would just bounce off their bellies and they'd be able to defeat the white men without so much as a scrap of armor.  Well, guess what really happened?

In the midst of Gideon kicking ass and taking names, the troops were heading to conquer Zebah and Zalmunna and came across some people of Succoth.  Gideon asked them if they'd give his troops some bread, and they were like "Nah, you don't really need it."  So Gideon was like "Just for that, when the Lord has given Zebah and Zalmunna into my hand, I will tear your flesh with desert thorns and briers."  (8:7) Damn!


Then the same thing happened when Gideon died, so Abimelech was the next judge to lead the Israelites.  So he did some good things, but then it says that God sent an evil spirit between Abimelech and the citizens of some city that killed Gideon's brothers back in the day in order to avenge them.

Now, it doesn't specify exactly what an evil spirit is.  Although I've spoken of the creation of Hell and what have you, the Bible has yet to explain these things.  So this leaves you to either look into other religious/mythological texts, or to simply take a guess.  Since we've already covered the myth of the creation of Hell back when we covered Genesis by peering into the Book of Enoch and the Torah and so on, let's take the other route and assumed that we haven't so we can just take a stab in the dark.  So, according to the Bible, there has been no mention of Hell, or Satan, or demons, or any of that other nonsense.  So where does this "evil spirit" come from?  Well, it says that God sent it.  So do evil spirits reside in Heaven?  (Which, mind you, is still only considered to be the upward direction rather than a place.)  So, God is not all good but does rather participate in evil doings?  If you look at the dictionary in the back of your NIV Bible, the definition of "evil" is "wicked - doing things against God's will."  This leaves you going WTF?  

Anyway, so some time later, they went back to worshiping Baal and Ashtoreth (excuse me, I mean "Astarte") and after a few years the Israelites were being taken over by surrounding cities.  This time God said,

But you have forsaken me and served other gods, so I will no longer save you. Go and cry out to the gods you have chosen. Let them save you when you are in trouble! (10:13)

And that's basically the end of the appearance of judges.  (Although we're not quite at the end of the book yet.)

Bargaining with God

This guy Jephthah was having a dispute with the king of the Ammonites about who owns which land.  The king was irritated because the Israelites basically stole their land and he wanted Jephthah to tell them to give it back peaceably.  But Jephthah told him that they basically stole it fair and square because God told them to.

Now since the Lord, the God of Israel, has driven the Amorites out before his peope Israel, what right have you to take it over?   Will you not take what your god Chemosh gives you?   Likewise, whatever the Lord our God has given us, we will possess.   (11:23&24)

Hold on a minute.  Did Jephthah really just acknowledge the god Chemosh?  Like, did he just say that Chemosh gives land to the Ammonites the same way God gives land to the Israelites?  Hrm...

Well, understandably, the king wasn't too pleased with this speech, and this made Jephthah pissed.  So Jephthah made a vow to God that if he were to hand over the Ammonites to him, then he will sacrifice to God the very next thing that walks out of the door of his house when he returns in triumph.  So, God helped him destroy the Ammonites, and when Jephthah came home, his very own daughter came rushing out of the house singing and dancing with joy for her father's safe return.  And yup, he burned his very own daughter as an offering to God.  Sure, he gave her a couple of months to cry over it before he killed her, but he kept to his word.

Does anybody remember anything about God being strictly against the slaughter and sacrifice of your own children?  Well, to refresh anybody's memory, let's take a look at Deuteronomy 12:31.

You must not worship the Lord your God in their way, because in worshiping their gods, they do all kinds of detestable things the Lord hates. They even burn their sons and daughters in the fire as sacrifices to their gods.

It seems like God is willing to make an exception when you make a bargain with him.  I seem to remember my mother telling me that you shouldn't make deals with God.  Apparently this happens when you do.

Samson!

Here's one of my favorite characters in the Bible.  People say that he was a good man of God, which is kind of funny to me because he was the exact opposite.  But we'll count the ways when you hear the story.

So there was this couple who didn't have any children because the wife was sterile, until an angel of God came down and told her that around the same time next year she'll have a baby boy and name him Samson.  When he grew up, he wanted to intermarry with a girl from the "uncircumcised" Philistines - meaning they're ungodly.  No matter how much his parents protested, he married her anyway.  On their way to go get this said girl, a lion came flying out of the woodwork and Samson tore him apart with his bare hands (via strength of God I guess).  When he came back with the woman to marry her, he saw a swarm of bees and honey inside the lion carcass.  He took a scoop of honey out of the carcass and ate some, and then gave some to his parents without telling them exactly where it came from.

Gross, right?  Well, apparently God thinks so too.  Let's look back at Leviticus 11:27 for specification of unclean foods.

Of all the animals that walk on all fours, those that walk on their paws are unclean for you; whoever touches their carcasses will be unclean till evening.

 Well, Samson made a little joke out of this.  He told his friends at his wedding a little riddle:

Out of the eater, something to eat.
Out of the strong, something sweet.   (14:14)

When some of his friends figured out the riddle, Samson went out and killed a shit ton of people so that he could reward his friends with whatever he had pillaged from those that he killed.  But when he returned home, he discovered that one of his friends had taken Samson's wife for his own.  And Samson was so furious that he set out to torch the Philistines and their crops as vengeance for his wife cheating on him.

About three thousand men from Judah (remember, these are the good guys) came to take Samson prisoner because his little habit of slaughtering people was just unacceptable.  Well, Samson didn't like what they had to say about handing him over to the Philistines, so he took a jawbone from a donkey and killed them all with it.  When he was finished, he just tossed the jawbone aside like that ain't no shit.

Then he was like "Hey God!  I'm fuckin' thirsty man.  Why don't you make yourself useful and gimme some damn water!"  So he did.

Some time later, Samson was feeling a little randy, so he went into Gaza to get down with a prostitute.  Some of the Philistines heard that he was there, so they camped outside of the city gates and were going to wait until morning to kill him.  Well, Samson woke up in the middle of the night, tore the city gates out of the ground, and carried them up to the top of this hill.  I'm not exactly sure why he did that, but he did.

Later he fell in love with this bitch Delilah, who was working undercover for the Philistines to try and discover Samson's secret.  His "Achilles Heel" if you will.  So she spends some time getting busy with him to try and gain his trust, and then she asks him for the secret to his strength.  To test her, he tells her a couple of lies to see if she'd go running to the Philistines.  And she did.  And each time she did, they'd come and try to kill him, when instead he'd just kill them all and run off.  Eventually, the Bible says that Samson decided to tell her the truth because he was tired of hearing her nagging and prodding.  I think it might've been a little more romantic than that, but whatever.  He said that his hair has special powers, and it must never be cut or else he'll lose his super strength.  After he fell asleep on her lap, she called to this creepy guy that was lingering in a dark corner all night to shave off his seven braids.  Then she woke him up yelling "The Philistines are upon you!"  Samson jumped up and was sure he'd be able to take them on, but it says that he "didn't know the Lord had left him".  (16:20)

They captured him and tied his hands to the two pillars that were supporting this temple in front of three thousand Philistines, including all the Philistine rulers.  Just as they were getting ready to offer Samson as a sacrifice to their god, Dagan, Samson kindly asked God to give him enough strength to take these bitches down with him.  Just before he died, he screamed "Let me die with the Philistines!" and he pushed the pillars as hard as he could, and the temple collapsed and killed everybody inside, including Samson.

Right?  So Samson was a badass.  He didn't take shit from nobody.  He ran around and killed whoever he wanted and fucked whoever he wanted and ate whatever he wanted and pillaged whatever he wanted.  He defied his parents twice; once when he refused to listen to them when they protested against him marrying a Philistine, and again when he gave them the honey from the lions dead body without telling them.   Anybody remember back in Exodus 20:12 and also in Leviticus 19:3 when it says to honor and obey your parents?   I would say those were rather disobedient and dishonorable actions.   And don't forget the punishment for disobeying/dishonoring your parents... DEATH.   (Leviticus 20:9, Deuteronomy 21:18-21)   The only two times he spoke to God was when he was thirsty and right before he died.  So why do people say he was a good man of God?  Well, even though he intermarried with a woman that typically is frowned upon, the Bible says that it was all in God's plan to act through Samson to slaughter a bunch of Philistines.  (14:4)

But there is one particularly strange thing about Samson.  His mother was sterile until an angel said otherwise.  This isn't far off from a miraculous divine conception.  He has super human strength and his hair has super powers.  It kind of makes you wonder if there was any sexy time with that angel... so could Samson be a Nephilim too?  Ah... Now I'm just falling into the rabbit hole.  Case in point, Samson rocks.

Some Dude and his Concubine

Alright, so there was this dude and his concubine who were traveling from one place to another.  In the middle of their travels, they stopped at this city called Gibeah and they were going to spend the night in the town square.  Then this old man comes out and sees them sleeping there, and he was like "What are you two doing?"  They explained that they were travelers and they were just passing through.  The old man asked where they were going to, and they replied that they were on their way to Jebus.

No, it is actually supposed to be Jebus.  (That is, Jerusalem.)  Anyway, the old man was like, "Well, you should at least spend the night in my house."  So they did, and he gave them plenty to eat and drink that night.

Now let's see if this part of the story sounds familiar to you at all.   This time, instead of summarizing it for you, I think I'll just let the Holy Bible do the actual talking.

While they were enjoying themselves, some of the wicked men of the city surrounded the house.   Pounding on the door, they shouted to the old man who owned the house, "Bring out the man who came to your house so we can have sex with him."
The owner of the house went outside and said to them, "No, my friends, don't be so vile.   Since this man is my guest, don't do this disgraceful thing.   Look, here is my virgin daughter, and his concubine.   I will bring them out to you now, and you can use them and do to them whatever you wish.   But to this man, don't do such a disgraceful thing."
But the men would not listen to him.   So the man took his concubine and sent her outside to them, and they raped her and abused her throughout the night, and at dawn they let her go.   At daybreak the woman went back to the house where her master was staying, fell down at the door and lay there until daylight.
When her master got up in the morning and opened the door of the house and stepped out to continue on his way, there lay his concubine, fallen in the doorway of the house, with her hands on the threshold.   He said to her, "Get up; let's go."   But there was no answer.   Then the man put her on his donkey and set out for home.
When he reached home, he took a knife and cut up his concubine, limb by limb, into twelve parts and sent them into all the areas of Israel.   Everyone who saw it said, "Such a thing has never been seen or done, not since the day the Israelites came up out of Egypt."   (19:22-30)
Then the Israelites said, "Tell us how this awful thing happened."
So the Levite, the husband of the murdered woman, said, "I and my concubine came to Gibeah in Benjamin to spend the night.   During the night the men of Gibeah came after me and surrounded the house, intending to kill me.   They raped my concubine, and she died.   I took my concubine, cut her into pieces and sent one piece to each region of Israel's inheritance, because they committed this lewd and disgraceful act in Israel."   (20:3-6)

I think you all are smart enough to grasp the severity of this story, but I'll point out a couple of things to you.  One minute it's perfectly fine to rape a virgin and a concubine, but the next it isn't.  (Nevermind the hacking of limbs of your dead concubine.  Yeah, that's not disturbing at all.  By the way, did you notice that he didn't care too much at first when he found her on the floor?  He was just like *kick* "Hey you, get up!")  

But one of the more important things that effects us today could possibly be the idea of homosexuals.  Ever notice how, out of all the ridiculous Mosaic Laws, most Christians today still hold fast to the notion that being gay is an abominable sin?  This could possibly be where they get this idea from.  Aside from "Well the Bible says so", the Bible also gives a very detailed description of how terrible homosexuals are.  They gang-rape uncontrollably, they murder at will without remorse or a second thought, because that's just what they do.   No, of course you and I know that that's not what homosexuals do.  They're just like everyone else, except they simply swing in another direction.  But according to the Bible this is what they do.  I don't know about you, but this story, in all it's entirety, just makes me sick.

Well, then the Israelites fought some Benjamites, and a bunch of people died.  Then they held a festival to God in Shiloh, and there were a bunch of Benjamites lingering like little creepers watching the girls dance.

While the girls were dancing, each man caught one and carried her off to be his wife.   (21:23)

And everybody went home.  And that's literally the end of the book of Judges.  Good news for you is our next book is the book of Ruth, which is by far the shortest book in the Bible thus far.  So you'll get a nice little break from my long-winded blogs.  ^_^  Stay classy.


[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Astarte