Category Archives: Judges

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Sinful Leaders: Why do some people with powerful gifts live sinful lives?

We hear about lots of (happily not most) ministers falling. This is not surprising, because ministers are human, and the Bible tells us that humans know how to sin. But sometimes we are particularly surprised because someone seems particularly gifted or “anointed” by God; God is using them in people’s lives, and then we discover that they have been living in serious, secret sin the entire time.

Jesus did not say, “You’ll know prophets by their gifts.” He says, “You’ll know them by their fruits” (Matthew 7:20). Some false prophets (Matthew 7:15) even convince themselves that they prophesy and do miracles in Christ’s name, but if they live lives of disobedience, they are not in a relationship with Christ (Matthew 7:21-23).

Then there are those who start well but don’t finish well. God called Samson, and the Spirit empowered Samson. But Samson was playing around with sin. In Judges 16, even though he has just been sleeping with a prostitute, the Spirit of God still empowers him and gets him out of the situation. As the chapter progresses, God’s Spirit is still working in him while he is sleeping with Delilah. But eventually, his sin catches up with him. God is merciful, but he won’t be mocked. Samson “loses his anointing,” though he did not lose it as quickly as some of us might have expected. Ultimately, Samson does end up finishing well, but finishing much earlier than he would have finished he not wallowed in sin (Judges 16:28-31)

Then there are those who manifest the power of the Spirit not because they are people of the Spirit but because the Spirit is strong in that place. In 1 Samuel 16:13-14, the Spirit of the Lord departs from Saul and rests on David, and an evil spirit from the Lord (or a spirit of judgment) rests on Saul. In 1 Samuel 18:10, Saul is even prophesying by this harmful spirit. But in 1 Samuel 19:20-24, he sends messengers to kill David. Overwhelmed by the Spirit of God, these messengers fall down and start prophesying. When the first messengers fail, he sends more, and the same thing happens. After two such failed attempts to kill David, Saul goes to kill David himself. Yet he too falls down and starts prophesying by God’s Spirit, while David escapes.

Saul was no longer a man of God’s Spirit, but because he was in a setting that was full of God’s Spirit (because of Samuel and the prophets he was mentoring), the Spirit worked even through him. Sometimes people are gifted because others are praying. Gifts are not given to us in any case because of our virtue: then they would be earned rather than gifts. Gifts are given to us for Christ’s service, so we dare not boast in them. (Cf. 1 Corinthians 4:7: “What do you have that you didn’t receive [from God]? And if you received it [from God], why do you boast as if you didn’t receive it [from God]?”)

Do not assume that someone is walking with God simply because God seems to be using them. Do not be surprised when some people who seem anointed by God fall. (In some cases, it is partly the fault of followers who put God’s servants on a pedestal instead of supporting them in prayer as brothers and sisters in Christ.) Likewise, do not assume that someone whose ministry may not look big to you is less faithful. Indeed, we don’t know people’s hearts, where they’ve come from or what they’ve been through. Since we don’t know other people’s hearts, we can’t compare ourselves with them as better or worse. Thus Paul says, “I don’t even judge my own self. I don’t know of anything against me, but that doesn’t make me right. It’s the Lord who judges” (1 Corinthians 4:3b-4).

The Corinthians were trying to evaluate whether Paul or Apollos was a better Christian celebrity to follow. Paul warns them: don’t judge before the time (1 Corinthians 4:5). God alone knows the heart, and there will be many surprises on the day of judgment.

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Independence, individualism and loyalties—Judges 17:6, 21:25

Some cultures understand loyalty better than others do.

Some cultures identify strongly with their leaders. In some cultures, people are prepared to die for the king, the queen, or (more often) their nation. Sometimes such loyalty may be blind or misinformed, but it gives these loyalists a sense of belonging to something greater than themselves.

More relevant to the point here: by providing a sense of what it is like to be loyal, it makes it natural for believers in those cultures to express loyalty to our king Jesus in a similar way.

There are serious strengths in individualistic cultures, including appreciation for independent, critical thinking (though most people even in such cultures still fall in line with majority views, which can function as a sort of massive peer pressure). But in our individualistic cultures we often downplay loyalty. We are not loyal to kings and sometimes not even loyal to families. My own country from the start has prided itself on its hard-won independence (celebrated every July 4, which is also my birthday). “Loyalist” was not considered a positive title.

With that independent streak in our culture comes both the strengths and weaknesses of our individualism, which can also influence us as Christians. On the positive side, we should be able to stand up against peer pressure that would make us at all disloyal to Jesus; we should be willing to stand even alone for the sake of truth and what’s right. On the negative side, sometimes we tend to stand too alone, as if we don’t need the rest of the body of Christ.

When taken to its extreme conclusion, the danger in such a culture is that everyone can end up doing what is right in our own eyes—a sort of moral anarchy (Deut 12:8; Judg 17:6, 21:25). This can also make it more difficult for Christians in our culture to envision what loyalty should look like.

We need to think of elements of loyalty (to friends, ideals, family, nation, work, or whatever else) that help us understand what loyalty should look like. Also we often admire our heroes and root for them, and this can give us at least a faint appreciation for what our admiration for our Lord should be like.

But even if we cannot envision it in any other way, we need to overcome this cultural blind spot.

Loyalty to Jesus recognizes that he is our king and lord, and we should live wholly for him. He is also our hero who at great cost overcame and won salvation for us. We rejoice when he is honored, and feel pain personally when people dishonor him. We live and die for him, because our lives are wrapped up in him.

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Slaughtering the Benjamites II: merciless anarchy—Judges 20:29—21:25

(Continued from Part I, http://www.craigkeener.org/slaughtering-the-benjamites-i-benjamins-depravity-judges-191-2028/)
Judges goes on to narrate the Israelites’ unbridled vengeance against the Benjamites and the continuing, sinful consequences of their overkill. Because Benjamin refused to hand over those who gang-raped a woman to death, the other tribes of Israel make war on the Benjamites. Up till this point, the Benjamites, equipped with long-distance weapons, have been winning the battles. They have consistently repelled the larger forces arrayed against them. Now, however, Israel has a divine promise of victory from the Lord (Judg 20:28).

Total war against Benjamin

In Judges 20:29, 33, 36-38, the Israelite allies set an ambush against the Benjamites. They borrow this strategy most clearly from Joshua’s earlier destruction of the nearby hostile Canaanite town of Ai (Josh 8:2-21), applying this strategy against Benjamin. This time they succeed, putting the Benjamites to flight. Throughout history, cutting down retreating warriors from behind proves much easier than having to face their weapons. Thus in 20:45 the Israelite warriors “caught” and killed five thousand fleeing Benjamite warriors on the road; the verb for violent catching here appears only one other time in the Book of Judges, where the Benjamite rapists forced themselves on the Levite’s concubine (19:25).

To forestall future conflicts, the law earlier prescribed herem—the utter destruction of total war—against enemy Canaanites (Deut 7:2). Israel carried out little of this in the Book of Judges, yet the vengeful Israelites now get so carried away with their victory that they practice herem against Benjamites! The law did prescribe this fate for apostate cities that followed other gods (Deut 13:12-18). But what about for an entire tribe that simply came to the aid of such a city because of clan allegiances? Common as it was in antiquity to kill all males who might grow up to avenge their fathers, the law prohibited killing children for their fathers’ crimes (Deut 24:16). Further, wiping out women and children was herem, not normal punishment.

In the heat of the moment, many hardened warriors, some of whose compatriots have been killed, now slaughter everyone in sight. Only six hundred Benjamite men escape, taking refuge for the next four months (20:47). After these months pass, however, Israelite tempers cool (cf. 20:47). Now many of the Israelites, whose warriors had earlier slaughtered the Benjamites, lament that God has destroyed one of the tribes of Israel (21:3, 15)! (Blaming God for human acts of depravity is not a new invention.) Granted, God is sovereign, but again his involvement here is at a more distant remove, not a direct action. In this narrative, God has ultimately delivered the Benjamite warriors into the other Israelites’ hands (Judg 20:28, 35); but the narrator never says that he commands or approves of this mass slaughter.

Much of Israel, in fact, themselves regretted their actions, as the narrator twice mentions (21:6, 15, two of the only three uses of this term in Judges). Israel’s leaders now need a way to replenish the tribe of Benjamin, but the six hundred surviving Benjamite men cannot reproduce without women. Israel has slaughtered all the Benjamite women, as well as taken an impulsive oath before God not to let Benjamites intermarry with them (21:1).

Seizing more innocent women

The leaders, however, reach a solution that prevents them from breaking their oaths. Now they will execute herem against another Israelite town, Jabesh Gilead! Judges 21:11 is in fact one of only two uses of the Hebrew verb related to herem in the Book of Judges. (Later Saul, who fails to execute herem against Amalekites in 1 Sam 15:3-23, essentially executes it against God’s priests in 22:19!)

Again Israel keeps their word: they had promised to kill anyone who did not come to help them with the battle (21:5). These oaths were may not have been a good idea; they certainly cannot justify the wholesale action that now follows. The virgin daughters of Jabesh Gilead are now seized, just as the Levite’s concubine was seized. Meanwhile, wives and concubines are slaughtered—just as the Levite’s concubine was killed. (Probably Benjamites later repopulated their maternal ancestor’s town. Later Saul as a Benjamite has natural ties with Jabesh Gilead, evident in 1 Sam 11:5-9 and 31:11-12.)

Thus Israelites again slaughter their own people. The intensity of lethal and sexual violence here readily reminds us of the sorts of atrocities that some Islamic extremists have committed in the Middle East or northern Nigeria, or genocidal actions elsewhere. The spirit of violence in the world is not new, even if modern technologies have provided increasingly efficient means of killing.

The decimation of Jabesh Gilead, however, did not supply enough young women for the Benjamites: just four hundred young wives for six hundred men. (Given the average likely age of marriage, most of these women were probably sixteen or younger—perhaps many in their early teens.) So what did the Israelites do? They went and kidnapped some other Israelite girls. They chose a convenient location that did not require much travel—their host town, Shiloh, just a day’s march from devastated Gibeah (21:12). (They had earlier gathered at another centrally located site, Mizpah, fewer than five miles from Gibeah; Judg 20:1, 3; 21:1, 5, 8.) At some point (perhaps later) Shiloh became the place of the tabernacle (18:31).

So—at a feast for the Lord (Judg 21:19)—the Israelites invited the two hundred Benjamites who were still single to capture two hundred single young women from Shiloh. The Hebrew text of 21:20 suggests that they “ambushed” them, the same terminology used for the recent attack against the Benjamites (20:29, 33, 36-38). (An attentive reader of Judges in Hebrew might recall that, in this book, apart from that recent attack only the wicked “ambush” or “lie in wait”; Judg 9:25, 32, 34, 43; 16:2, 9, 12.)

Although the strategy of ambush made sense against the opposing army, here it is carried out against unarmed, young teenage girls; the law prohibited ambushing or lying in wait (the same Hebrew term) for a neighbor to harm them (Deut 19:11). Each one “catches” a wife for himself (Judg 21:21), a Hebrew term elsewhere applied to violence (Ps 10:9). The other Israelites explain to the girls’ fathers in Shiloh that since they did not give their daughters in marriage to the Benjamites, they have not violated Israel’s oath. How much would this consolation have reduced the horror for the families now rent apart?

The Israelite actions began as a quest for justice, a call for vengeance on behalf of an unnamed women who was mercilessly gang-raped to death. Yet the quest ended up as the slaughter of men, women and boys, along with the seizure of preadolescent girls and unmarried teenage women.

Everyone did what was right in their own eyes

Recounting the acts without inserting moral comment so far, the narrator lets the horror of the story strike with its own graphic force. Only the book’s concluding comment sheds light on its perspective: there was no king in Israel, and everyone did what they personally viewed as right (21:25). This horrible story is a story of moral anarchy, the kind of violent lawlessness we sometimes might associate with the old frontier in the western United States, war-torn Somalia, or other unstable regions. It could well be the story of unbridled human hearts anywhere that lacks means of civil restraint, where the strong are free to prey on those socially or physically weaker than themselves.

Why do the final chapters of Judges begin and end with a refrain about moral anarchy associated with lack of kingship (17:6; 19:1; 21:25)? Although in this book God periodically raises up judges, Israel as a whole has no stable government here, no provision for continuing moral leadership.

As the subsequent story of Israel in Samuel through Kings illustrates, however, a continuing government without obedience to God was ultimately no less liable to fail. The first part of that story elaborates Saul’s failure and David’s success, quickly followed by David’s failure and its consequences for his kingdom. Within a generation, we witness the fraying of the delicate tribal unity often achieved under David and particularly achieved in the early part of Solomon’s reign. When there was a king in Israel who did only what was right in his own eyes (or in the eyes of others not obeying God), the nation was also led astray.

It fell to prophets to repeatedly call God’s people back to his Word. True prophets (as opposed to the corrupted ones) provided a conscience for Israel, some moral leadership. But prophets can influence only those willing to heed them.

Ultimately neither judges nor kings could provide more than stopgap measures (though stopgaps are safer than anarchy). Through the prophets, God ultimate promised Israel a more permanent solution: the coming of his own kingdom, when he would reign through his appointed vizier, the promised descendant of David. Yet what would a kingdom of righteousness mean for a sinful people, the sort of people we encounter in Judges? Fortunately for us, the promised kingdom has already made its first entrance into more gently our world; the king came first not to avenge, but to offer justice and righteousness a different way. Jesus’ way was not to kill sinners but to transform them. As followers of Jesus, we must work for the peace and justice that our king requires, even in this world of incredible tragedy and pain, until he returns to consummate his promise of that new era.

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Slaughtering the Benjamites I: Benjamin’s depravity—Judges 19:1—20:28

If biblical texts about slaughtering the Canaanites rightly make us uncomfortable (see http://www.craigkeener.org/slaughtering-the-canaanites-part-i-limiting-factors/; http://www.craigkeener.org/slaughtering-the-canaanites-part-ii-switching-sides/; http://www.craigkeener.org/slaughtering-the-canaanites-part-iii-gods-ideal/), biblical texts about Israel’s wholesale slaughter of fellow Israelites (Judg 20:48; 21:10-12) may with good reason make us sick.

Judges 19—21 is a tale of horror, and no one should try to understand it otherwise. After narrating the exploits (and failures) of many of Israel’s judges, Judges frames its closing chapters with an ominous refrain: “In those days there was no king in Israel; each person did what was right in their own eyes” (Judg 17:6; 21:25). The accounts between these two bookends illustrate the horror of that moral anarchy even more hideously than most earlier events in the Book of Judges. Half the refrain also appears in Judg 19:1, at the beginning of the book’s closing story, signalling the special unity of the single story in chs. 19—21. It is this story, and especially the climax of its broadest violence, that I survey here.

A fatal gang rape

A Levite seeking to regain his concubine experiences excessive hospitality in Bethlehem (Judg 19:4-9) but the epitome of inhospitality in Gibeah of Benjamin (Judg 19:15, 22). (The one hospitable person there was a sojourner, a fellow Ephraimite, not a local; 19:16.) This story may thus have been of special interest early in David’s reign, since David was from Bethlehem, whereas Saul, his rival predecessor, was from Gibeah!

What highlights all the more starkly the contrast between hospitable Bethlehem and murderous Gibeah is the reason that the travelers chose to rest in Gibeah to begin with, rather than a somewhat nearer town. The Levite chose to trust the hospitality of Gibeah more than that of Jebus—the future Jerusalem—because Gibeah was an Israelite town and Jebus wasn’t (Judg 19:11-12). Yet Gibeah soon acted like a pagan town—like Sodom, in fact. (Israel’s prophets often later compared Israel’s wickedness to Sodom more explicitly—e.g., Isa 3:9; Jer 23:14; Lam 4:6; Ezek 16:46-56.)

Local thugs want to gang-rape the Levite visitor just as Sodom’s thugs wanted to violate the angelic visitors in Genesis 19. Likewise, the Levite’s host in Gibeah offers two women instead of his male guest, just as Lot in Sodom offered his daughters. (Like Lot, the Levite’s host was not from, and had not fully absorbed the attitude toward strangers in, the wicked town. But both Lot and the Levite’s host reflected some of their cultures’ values in other ways.)

Yet here, in contrast to the story of Lot and Sodom in Genesis 19, there is no divine intervention; God seems silent, and events follow their natural course with no deliverance. The Levite saves himself, his servant and his host’s household by forcing his concubine outside to the insistent criminals in the street. But God does not intervene in this tragedy, in contrast to his intervention in Sodom (just as Jephthah’s daughter is not delivered in Judg 11:34-40, in contrast to Abraham’s son in Gen 22:10-14).

Whereas in Genesis the angels “seized” Lot’s family to rescue them (Gen 19:16), here the Levite “seizes” his concubine to substitute her for himself (Judg 19:25, a matter perhaps conveniently omitted in the Levite’s retelling of the events in 20:5). He later seizes her violated body to cut it apart (19:29). (That the term used for “cutting” here often refers to cleaving meat or sacrifices may drive home the horror even more harshly.)

A war to avenge injustice

Many Israelites rightly took rape seriously, especially when someone violated their sister (Gen 34:27; 2 Sam 13:32), though the counterviolence sometimes killed the innocent alongside the guilty (cf. Gen 49:6-7). Gang-raping the concubine to death, however—an atrocity perhaps underlined all the more graphically by her subsequent dismemberment—stunned Israel’s sensitivities even in this anarchic period (Judg 19:30). Thus the rest of the tribes of Israel gather to demand justice, perhaps determined to prevent further atrocities caused by the continued disintegration of public morality.

The Benjamites, however, refuse to hand over the perpetrators (Judg 20:13). Were they simply unable to locate them and unwilling to admit it? The language of Judges probably instead suggests more deliberate refusal. Most likely, ethnic and family ties prove stronger here than ethical ones, as in the case of the Shechemites’ earlier murder of Abimelech’s brothers (9:1-6). Nepotism, racism, nationalism and other self-centered systems of group loyalties can blind us to moral truth. Not only the other men of Gibeah, but the other Benjamites join them, preemptively preparing for Israel’s attack (20:14).

By refusing to punish those responsible, the Benjamites embrace corporate responsibility for the murder (cf. Deut 21:1-9). Israel, which in the Book of Judges was often notably unable to unite against foreign aggressors without a divinely-empowered judge, now unites to battle the Israelite tribe of Benjamin (Judg 20:8-11, a paragraph that begins and concludes by noting Israel’s unity “as one”).

The Israelites heavily outnumbered the Benjamites (20:15-17), though the terrain probably prevented them from deploying their numbers all at once and the Benjamites had the advantage of distance “artillery” (20:16). Like all ancient peoples, Israel consulted its god before battle; yet God allows Israel to suffer heavily in it (20:21). Again the Lord remains largely silent in the background, the first few times apparently speaking only through the casting of lots that decides which tribe will go to battle (Judg 20:18) or whether they should keep engaging the battle (20:23, 28). Only after many losses does God promise victory (20:28), and unlike the stories in Joshua when God was with his people, this victory still comes at a cost of many Israelite warriors’ lives (20:31; cf. Josh 7:5, 11-12).

The suffering of many individuals before a common objective is achieved fits much of our present existence in this world; both in Scripture and today, suffering comes to both the righteous and the unrighteous. Still, there may also be another reason for God’s relative silence in this narrative, a silence that allows even more innocent people to suffer. Benjamin is not the only tribe in Israel that is sinning. God knows the rest of Israel’s moral state, as becomes clear later in the narrative, the part treated in Part II (to keep any one post from running too long), to be posted tomorrow (http://www.craigkeener.org/slaughtering-the-benjamites-ii-merciless-anarchy-judges-2029-2125/).