To The Reader

The story of Samson. Ok, we need to get one major problem cleared up first. Thanks to Sunday School, most of us think that Samson looked something like this: Or maybe this version that looks like a still shot from an ancient soap opera… The superhero physique is appealing, but there’s only one problem. There…

We left Israel last week with more bad guys on the doorstep. The Anmonites are the descendants of Ammon. Remember how Lot (Lowt) fled from Sodom & Gomorrah and his 2 daughters got him drunk and they each had a child by their father? One of those boys was Moab. The other was Ammon. Somehow…

This is gonna be a short entry. Here’s where we are on the list of Judges so far: TOLA We know nothing of Tola’s deeds. He’s not even mentioned by Josephus. But the family names… rather interesting. We have already encountered the word tola WAY back in Exodus when we talked about how the scarlet…

This is quite a chapter. Gideon has died and his son Abimelech makes his move. The name Ab/Melek is a combination of: Ab = father and Melek = king Put em together and you get Father of the king or King’s Father. Pretty fancy handle for a guy who is the son of Gideon’s slave…

Most of us only know Gideon for the trumpets and torches. What followed that battle is less familiar. The camp of Midian is in utter confusion with Gideon and his men blowing their trumpets and shouting. 😲🥷⛺️🎺🔥😬😱⚔️🫣🗡️😡🥷😵‍💫🎺🫨😧 Some of the enemy soldiers flee. Some turn and fight one another. There were, after all, 3 different…

If you grew up going to Sunday School and VBS, I guarantee you’ve made some kind of trumpets, torches, and pitchers craft. Here are some particularly fun ones I found online. 🤓 Anyhoos… My point is – we all know the WHAT of this story VERY well. We know that God pared down the army.…

Deborah and Barak have now died. 🪦🥀🪦 And Israel has forgotten that Yahweh is their God. They’ve taken up Baal and Asherah worship and the Lord has allowed them to be overrun by the cruel Midianites. There is a fascinating thing that happens in this setting. Yahweh sends an unnamed prophet to remind Israel that…

I’m going to vary from the reading schedule just a wee bit. The schedule had just chapter 4 today, but since chapter 5 is the Song of Deborah and chapter 6 starts the Gideon narrative, I’m going to cover 4-5 together. The Jewish Historian, Josephus, gives us one little tidbit of backstory that helps. He…

These 2 chapters cover roughly the first 120 years of Israel settled in the land. And it’s not going well. As long as Joshua and the men who fought in hand-to-hand combat with the giant clans were alive – the men who had seen God provide manna and miracles – Israel stayed faithful to Yahweh.…

The book of Judges opens with some detail on events that were outlined in Joshua 15-19. And note that these opening chapters are not strictly chronological with Joshua. If they were, we have Joshua dying 3 separate times in Joshua 24:30, Judges 1:1, and 2:8. He didn’t die 3 times. ☠️☠️☠️ He died once. And…