To The Reader

Chronologically, Samson was the end of the judge-narrative until we get to the opening of 1 Samuel. Let’s mentally put a bookmark in the story. We’ll pick it up in about a week. Chapters 17-21 of Judges and the book of Ruth overlap previous events. So we’re going back in time nearly 300 years to…

Samson just has a thing for pagan Philistine women. He visits a prostitute in Gaza. 💃🏼Seriously, Samson. Dude walks down into the heart of Philistine country when he is Philistine public enemy #1 and visits a brothel. (Tell me you think you’re an invincible hotshot without telling me you think you’re an invincible hotshot.) 🙄…

We come to one of Samson’s big victories. There is a bunch of word-play here that isn’t evident in English. Though I am still a rookie Hebrew scholar I’ll do my best to point it out so we can all appreciate God’s sense of humor. First we get the impetuous Samson deciding he’d like to…

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: Othniel, heroic city-conqueror Ehud, left-handed, fat king slayer Shamgar, axe wielding giant-slayer Deborah, Palm tree prophetess Gideon, a.k.a. “The Feller” Tola Jair TOLA We know nothing of Tola’s deeds. He’s not even mentioned by Josephus. But the…

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.…

Othniel Ehud Shamgar Deborah Gideon 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…

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.…