Bible Challenge Day 89: The Judges Spiral (Judges 7-9)

The book of Judges has a cool, spiral pattern.

At one level, the book follows a repeating pattern, like a circle. The pattern is established in chapter two, verse 11 forward. I take this chapter to be generic. It is not talking about a single event (e.g. verse 16) but rather introduces the pattern for each judge. First, Israel sins. God hands them over to a foreign oppressor. Eventually Israel cries out to God. God calls a “judge” (more like a general, normally) to deliver the people. The judge defeats the oppressor. The people remain faithful for the rest of the judge’s life, but then relapse and start the cycle all over again. The lesson is clear enough. Sin leads to punishment. Repentance and covenant loyalty lead to restoration.

Once we notice the pattern, then the deviations from the pattern become interesting. And it turns out the deviations are following a pattern too. Each judge is a little worse than the previous one.

So far we have read about Othniel (3:7-11), who follows the pattern perfectly. Then Ehud (3:12-30), who also follows it closely except that he begins to deliver the people by a political assassination that is described as disgusting. Deborah and Barak are third (4-5). Deborah is great, and perhaps the most impressive woman in the Old Testament. But Barak is the military leader, and he is less impressive. He won’t fight unless Deborah goes with him. As a consequence, he does not get the glory of killing the enemy leader (4:8-9).

Finally, today we get Gideon, who needs multiple signs before he is willing to act, and who is also explicitly told that neither he nor Israel as a whole will get the glory of the victory (7:2-8). Worse yet, Gideon slaughters non-cooperative Israelites and then constructs an ephod that ultimately leads him, his family, and his people astray. Then his son makes himself king ad fights a minor civil war.

We will continue the downward slide with Jephthah and Samson and especially with the Levite at the end.

The result is a kind of spiral, as the book circles around the theme of sin and punishment, repentance and restoration, but also moves consistently downward.

Where we are heading is social collapse and the need for a new start under a king. But the monarchy to come is set-up in Judges not as a wonderful institution so much as a desperate response to a desperate situation.

Fr. Harvey

 

Bible Challenge Day 87: Conquest, Twice! (Judges 1)

Because I am a history geek, I have always found Judges one intriguing. At the end of Joshua, the Israelites appear to have conquered and settled virtually all of the Promised Land, basically wiping out the Canaanites who stood in their way. But Judges one offers a quite different picture of conquest.

 

A few clues indicate that Judges one is indeed a second version of the same events. Joshua dies at the end of the book bearing his name (24:29). Joshua dies again in Judges two (verse 8), implying that Judges one covers material that took place during his lifetime. Also the episode of Othniel and Achsah is narrated twice, in very similar words (Joshua 15:15-19; Judges 1:11-15). Several places described as conquered in Joshua are again described as attacked in Judges. The most interesting example is Jerusalem, which is described as conquered in both Joshua 12:10 and Judges 1:8, but then described as successfully resisting the Israelite attack in Judges 1:21.

 

I conclude a couple of things. First, the editors of the Bible were not particularly interested in smoothing out discrepancies. Competing accounts of the same event are put side by side with no effort to determine which is more accurate (or if either is). Second, the conquest was not quite so total as Joshua seems to indicate. That is a relief to me since the book of Joshua seems genocidal. For once I am glad that the facts were more complicated than the story as told!

 

Most important, however, is the question, why tell the same story twice? And why tell it differently? In my view, the answer is literary and theological. The book of Joshua portrays the Israelites as faithful and united as they finally experience the fulfillment of God’s promises to Abraham so long ago. This version of the story teaches that God rewards faithful (and patient!) people. Judges, by contrast, is largely the story of Israel’s sin and gradual loss of control of the Promised Land. It is therefore unsurprising that the tribes are portrayed as less united, less successful, and less faithful. This version of conquest sets up the lesson that God punishes unfaithful people, but will forgive and restore them when they repent.

 

What emerges from this kind of analysis is less emphasis on historical accuracy in all its details and more on literary art and theological lessons. And that seems appropriate for a religious book whose primary purpose is to teach us how to relate to God!

Fr. Harvey

Bible Challenge Day 85: Healing? (John 5)

I have read this chapter of John many times, and always interpreted the healing in it as a straight-forward miracle story. Since John is never entirely straight-forward, that was foolish! Recently, a commentator drew my attention to the healed man’s poor behavior, which changes everything.

Jesus asks the man, “do you want to be made well” (5:6)? The man does not actually answer that question. Instead, he offers excuses as to why he has not previously been healed even though he lays beside a miraculous healing pool all day every day. His excuse is that no one else will put him in the pool when its healing powers are activated. Clearly his (unspecified) illness is not his fault. Of course, Jesus had never suggested that it was. Jesus just asked if he wanted to be healed of it. Apparently the answer is, not really. Unasked, Jesus heals the man, who takes up his mat and walks away.

In the next scene, we learn that this was on a Sabbath. Some religious leaders tell the man that it is not lawful for him to carry his mat on the Sabbath. Once again, his immediate reaction is to insist that it is not his fault: “The man who made me well said to me, ‘Take up your mat and walk’” (5:11). They want to know who made him well, but he doesn’t know.

In the third scene, Jesus meets the man again. The man says nothing to Jesus, but “went away and told the Jews that it was Jesus who had made him well” (5:15).

What a jerk! As I now interpret this set of exchanges, we are supposed to see him as too attached to his ailment to want healing, too committed to his own disempowerment to accept responsibility, and too afraid of the people around him to embrace the new life he has been given or to show gratitude to the one who gave it.

But I suspect that we all have a little of this man in us. I know that I hold on to some of my own wounds rather than seeking genuine healing. I sometimes blame others for my own failures. I sometimes retreat from God’s invitation to new life because I am more comfortable with what is more familiar. Ironically, I like John’s story much better now that I like the healed man much less. Now it gives me a picture of how I must sometimes look and thus an incentive to do better!

Fr. Harvey

Bible Challenge Day 80: Holy Violence (Joshua 7-9)

I had not planned to write anything during Holy Week, but I need to process my thoughts. I have always found Joshua to be the most troubling book in the entire Bible. Parts of other books trouble me, but always something inspires me as well. In Joshua, where virtually the entire book is about conquest, genocide, and expropriation, that is not as true.

I heard once that different ethnic groups in the United States during the nineteenth century typically responded to the story of Moses and Joshua in very different ways. Black people emphasized Moses the liberator who freed God’s enslaved people. White people emphasized Moses the lawgiver who established the (hierarchical) social order. Native Americans emphasized Joshua, the successor of Moses and the leader of an invading army which wiped out the native inhabitants of Canaan. I am guessing some Palestinians today would hear something similar. Sigh . . . .

The verse that particularly struck me today was 8:24-25: “When Israel finished slaughtering all the inhabitants of Ai in the open wilderness where they pursued them, and when all of them to the very last had fallen by the sword, all Israel returned to Ai, and attacked it with the edge of the sword. The total of those who fell that day, both men and women, was twelve thousand—all the people of Ai.” That is after Joshua’s troops killed every man, woman, and child in Jericho, along with all the oxen, sheep, and donkeys (6:21), and before they enslaved the Gibeonites, who survived only by deceit (chapter 9).

The lesson of Joshua is that God rewards the faithful people by honoring the covenant promises God made to Abraham. And there is a bright spot: Rahab, the Canaanite prostitute is spared because she recognizes the God of Israel. She then gets a cameo mention in the New Testament as part of the genealogy of Jesus (Matthew 1:5)! But this is not much good news in a pretty grim book.

One grand irony helps me a bit. The names Joshua and Jesus are very similar in Hebrew. The one I follow is not the fierce warrior but the prince of peace. This week, of all weeks, is a reminder that God suffers with and for us. God does not command genocide. Still, I struggle with what we are reading these days . . . .

Fr. Harvey

Bible Challenge Day 76: Standing By Jesus (Luke 22)

“You are those who have stood by me in my trials” (22:28). That is what Jesus says to the disciples at the Last Supper. But it is an incredibly ironic verse. He has just announced that one will betray him (22:21). Then they dispute about who is the greatest (22:24), something they have done consistently since he began warning them about his coming death.

That is what immediately precedes this verse. What immediately follows it continues the pattern of failure. The next verse is his prediction that Peter will deny him (22:31). Then they all go to Gethsemane, where he instructs them to pray but they fall asleep (22:39f).

In the midst of all that, Jesus praises them for sticking by him, and goes on to promise that they will eat and drink at his table in God’s kingdom!

I have always taken perverse pleasure in the failure of the disciples because it enables me to see myself in them. And so I take great comfort in Jesus’ praise of these bumbling failures as ones who stand by him. I assume what he means is not that they succeed, but that they try. Peter is the great example. He follows Jesus to the courtyard of the high priest’s house, where Jesus is being “tried.” Peter denies Jesus. But he is there.

That seems a lot like me. Following as best I can. Failing when tested. But still trying to stay close by. Maybe I, maybe we, can hear Jesus’ promises to the disciples as directed to us too, despite our failures. Hopefully that can help us to keep trying to follow, even despite our failures.

Fr. Harvey

Bible Challenge Day 74: Blessings and Curses (Deuteronomy 28-30)

“If you obey the commandments of the Lord your God . . . , then you shall live and become numerous, and the Lord your God will bless you . . . . But if your heart turns astray and you do not hear,  . . . you shall perish” (30:16-18). This verse encapsulates what we read today in Deuteronomy. Over and over again, it says, obey and be blessed; disobey and be cursed.

In its historical context, I get that. Deuteronomy was probably a manual for national reform at a time when the author thought the nation faced destruction for its sin. The many warnings about exile (e.g. 28:25f) show that the stakes were high. The author therefore preached a strong and clear message: repent and obey, before it is too late. That message helped the Israelites to survive exile with their faith intact.

I also believe that this message is generally true. Things go better when we do right. Things go worse when we do not. In the long run, I like to think that the moral arc of the universe does bend towards justice.

But of course it often does not work out that way in individual lives. If one were to take Deuteronomy as a kind of contract between God and every individual, with a guarantee that everything will always balance perfectly, then I would have to reject the whole. I imagine that everyone knows people who certainly seem faithful and good and yet suffer. Probably we all know people who are not nearly so good who seem prosperous.

And so I have very mixed feelings about the basic theology of Deuteronomy as I understand it. Historically important. True and valuable in the long run. A terrible oversimplification that can lead to insensitivity and gross injustice when interpreted too literally or rigorously. . . .

Fr. Harvey

Bible Challenge Day 69: The True Prophets (Deuteronomy 18)

Last week someone asked the question, how could people know which leader to follow? We were talking about First Corinthians, so the question was about Paul. How could those earliest Christians in Corinth know to listen to Paul and not to Paul’s opponents? The question is just as relevant today: given all the voices clamoring for our attention, who should we heed?

Deuteronomy asks the same question. There is a promise that God will raise up a prophet like Moses (18:15). In the Acts of the Apostles, that gets applied to Jesus (3:22; 7:37). But Deuteronomy seems to be speaking about prophets more generally, and gives two criteria for recognizing them. If prophets speak in the name of another God, they are false (18:20). And if prophets predict something that does not come true, then, too, they are false (18:22).

But that second is not always a good standard. Jonah is commissioned by God and (eventually!!) says what he was supposed to say: “Forty days more, and Nineveh shall be overthrown” (3:4). But the people of Nineveh repented, “God changed his mind” (3:9—itself an interesting thing to think about!), and the prediction did not come true. Still, Jonah was a prophet. Apparently the criteria are more fluid than it initially seems.

Still I think they can be translated into language that makes them applicable today. We should only follow those who speak in the name of God. God can do and say surprising things, but on balance this seems to me to look backwards. The standard we have for judging whether someone speaks in the name of God is Scripture and tradition. Religious leaders seeking our attention should be recognizably in conversation Christians of the past.

Predicting the future is a more difficult criterion, if only because we cannot know until after the fact if the prediction comes true. But we can think of this as the forward looking criterion. Religious leaders today need to offer a compelling vision of the future if they claim to speak in the name of God.

That is all still pretty nebulous. I guess God gives us enough freedom that we have to take the responsibility of judging for ourselves even when it is hard. But Deuteronomy 18 can help. . . .

Fr. Harvey