I am a great lover of cartoons and one I have always enjoyed shows two elephants in a confused herd of stampeding elephants and one is saying angrily to another, “Worst organized stampede I ever attended.” It’s not a sort of roar-with laughter type cartoon, but it does provoke you to think with a smile: Is a stampede meant to be organised? How much of human life do we like organised? And how much do we like personal freedom to do our own thing in our own way at our own time?
In human societies the pendulum swings between control and freedom, and I guess that it would be fair to say of Britain today that it has swung a long way in the direction of personal freedom: the liberty to make my own mind up, to exercise choice, to be my own master, is highly prized—whether it is the range of choice we demand as consumers on our supermarket shelves or in our car showrooms, or whether it is in our attitude to belief systems: It does not matter so much what you believe, as that you are sincere about it and have chosen it for yourself. That is one of the highest values of our society—the freedom of the individual to make his or her own mind up. We think that is very important, don’t we?
And that is why we are going to find the final chapters of Judges interesting (I hope). Look please at the verse with which the book ends: ‘In those days Israel had no king; everyone did as he saw fit’ (Judges 21:25). The older translations put ‘every man did what was right in his own eyes’. That does not mean ‘everyone did what was evil’. We miss the point if we read it that way. Everyone did what was right in their own eyes. Notice it also comes at chapter 17, verse 6: ‘In those days Israel had not king; everyone did as he saw fit’ and the first part is echoed at the beginning of chapters 18 and 19. It is something of a refrain in these chapters.
So, I’ve called our first point:
I think there is quite a deliberate structure to these five chapters: It all starts with a very domestic little story in chapter 17, verses 1-2: ‘Now a man named Micah from the hill country of Ephraim said to his mother, “The eleven hundred shekels of silver that were taken from you and about which I head you utter a curse—I have that silver with me; I took it.” Then his mother said, “The Lord bless you, my son!”’ Micah had stolen a huge sum of money from his mother, but the old lady obviously uttered such a hair-raising curse on the thief that it frightened he son in to owning up. Whereupon, with the unpredictability of a doting mother, she blessed him instead, and gave him the silver to equip a household shrine:
‘When he returned the eleven hundred shekels of silver to his mother, she said, “I solemnly consecrate my silver to the Lord for my son to make a carved image and a cast idol. I will give it back to you.” So he returned the silver to his mother, and she took two hundred shekels of silver and gave them to a silversmith, who made them into the image and the idol. And they were put in Micah’s house. Now this man Micah had a shrine, and he made an ephod and some idols and installed one of his sons as his priest’ (17:3-5).
The law of Moses could not be clearer on this point: ‘The Levites shall recite to all the people of Israel in a loud voice: “Cursed is the man who carves an image or casts an idol—a thing detestable to the Lord, the work of the craftsman’s hands—and sets it up in secret”’ (Deuteronomy 27:14-15). What Micah was doing had been forbidden by God. Nor was it remotely permissible for anyone to make their own son a priest, just because there was a household shrine for a priest to serve at.
But the writer of Judges does not quote the law of Moses. He just writes: ‘In those days Israel had no king; everyone did as he saw fit’ (17:6). Micah was not trying to break the law. This was not high-handed law breaking with malice aforethought. As soon as the opportunity arises to have a proper, kosher, Levite as his priest (in vv. 7-9), Micah leaps at it, no expense spared. ‘Then Micah said to him, “Live with me and be my father and priest, and I’ll give you ten shekels of silver a year, your clothes and your food.” So the Levite agreed to live with him, and the young man was to him like one of his sons. Then Micah installed the Levite, and the young man became his priest and lived in his house. And Micah said, “Now I know that the Lord will be good to me, since this Levite has become my priest”’ (17:10-13).
He is trying to be religious and to win God’s favour. But he is paying no attention at all to what God had said. It was religion without revelation. If God has not spoken, then we have got to do the best we can to please Him, as Micah did. But there had been revelation. It was just not being heeded. When you or I decide we will respond to God in our own way and on our own terms, we make the same mistake. If I ask clearly and specifically for a white coffee and the waiter brings me iced water, it might be well-meaning but it won’t please me. Those of us who choose to ignore what God has said and to decide for ourselves what we will offer Him, may be well-meaning, but we won’t please Him. We are not treating Him as God, if we do that.
Can I ask: Is your God a speaking God? (The God of the Bible certainly is). And, if so, are you responding to what He is saying? It is so easy to squeeze revelation out of religion, and then we end up doing what is right in our own eyes. Well, I’ve called our second point:
It covers the other 4 chapters. The repetition at 18:1 and 19:1 of that little refrain, ‘In those days Israel had no king…’ suggests that these passages are governed by the same theme—without a ruler (whether a king or a judge) what God had said to His people would be ignored. And every man doing what is right in his own eyes, without reference to the revealed will of God, will be disastrous for human society. There is no real disaster in Chapter 17, as we’ve seen, nor is there really in Chapter 18, which is the story of the weakest of the Israelite tribes, Dan, carving out some territory for itself at the expense of a peaceful non-Canaanite people, the Sidonians, to the north. The Danites’ behaviour is greedy and bullying—among other things, en route they steal from Micah the contents of his household shrine and his young Levite priest, who, it turns out, is called Jonathan. For them, religion has become sacramentalism—it is to do with things (ephods, household gods and idols) and a priesthood that is under their own control. See how chapter 18 ends:
‘There the Danites set up for themselves the idols, and Jonathan son of Gershom, the son of Moses, and his sons were priests for the tribe of Dan until the time of the captivity of the land. They continued to use the idols Micah had made, all the time the house of God was in Shiloh’ (18:30-31).
Chapter 19 also starts with a domestic story, this time of an unfaithful concubine and the attempt of her Levite husband to bring her back home. We had the rest of that story in all its unsavoury detail read as our first reading, and it ended with the whole nation inflamed by the startling publicity. The Levite may have lacked the communication capacity of our modern media, but he certainly knew how to get results: he had (in the words of one commentator) ‘three things which produced the desired effect: a corpse, a knife and an unerring instinct for what the public relishes’. A domestic incident had escalated out of all control, and chapter 20 chronicles the descent of the nation into civil war, as the other tribes demand the death of the wicked men of Gibeah, but the Benjamites close ranks around them; and over 65,000 men die in the resulting bloodshed, including the entire tribe of Benjamin, bar 600 men.
Our final chapter (21) concerns the attempt by the rest of Israel to ensure a future for Benjamin, in spite of the fact that they have destroyed all bar the 600 men, and have put the other 11 tribes under a solemn oath to let none of their daughters marry a Benjamite. We see the nation tying themselves into moral knots with their stupid oaths and their willingness to shed unnecessary blood without a second thought. (You will have to read it for yourself).
So if the Danites of Chapter 18 reveal the danger of sacramentalism, in chapters 19-21 we see a powerful indictment of emotional subjectivism, the politics (or the religion) of passion, where anything I feel strongly enough about becomes self-authenticating, simply because of my passionate feelings about it. So today the animal rights lobby, some pacifist groups and parts of the feminist movement, have closed down rational debate (let alone divine revelation) on certain issues because of the intensity of the human emotion directed at those issues.
Notice it is first Israel’s anger over the outrage at Gibeah (Chapter 20), then in Chapter 21, it is Israel’s sorrow over the plight of Benjamin (caused by Israel’s own over-reaction in the previous chapter). Human feeling is never a safe moral or spiritual guide. It needs the correction, the control of the Word of God. But, once there is no ruler to uphold God’s teaching, God’s people lapse either into the mere rituals, the outward trappings of religion, as in the sacramentalism of the Danites; or they lapse into emotionalism, a religion driven hither and thither by human feeling (which incidentally, is bound to be the form of religion best suited to an age like ours that puts such a high value on personal choice. No wonder that a feelings-based Christianity is the most popular form of Christianity today).
But
the writer of Judges wants to point us somewhere else. He wants to point us to
our need to be ruled over. And so the book ends with chapter 21, verse 25: ‘In
those days Israel had no king; everyone did as he saw fit.’ And we must
end with our third point and conclusion to all these sermons—
Those first 16 chapters with their 12 different Judges followed that cycle pattern we have grown familiar with. The rebellion (evil) got worse; the repentance (cry for help) figured less and less; the judges (deliverers) grew morally more ambiguous, but it was absolutely clear that (a) we cannot save ourselves—not from the outward enemies in chapters 1-16, not even from ourselves in chapter 17-21. But (b) God can save us. Some of the Judges may have been pretty dubious figures. But they were effective. Even more effective would be some of the kings to come. They would both save Israel from her external enemies, and ensure righteousness within the life of the nation, by teaching and obeying God’s word. All judges and all kings alike would fall far short of the one they prefigured, Jesus Himself—the perfect Saviour and the perfect King.
But notice the third lesson from this strange Old Testament book: (c) God must rule us. To be saved we need a ruler, whether for the Israelites a judge or a king, or for us Jesus Himself. God’s salvation is never just rescue from oppression and discomfort, into liberty and prosperity. It is to enter His kingdom, to be ruled by His king, to come under His control. Our lives will be the worst organised stampeded we ever attended—confusing, meaningless, potentially damaging and ultimately futile—unless we are prepared to let go of our own ideas about what God wants us to do and let His word rule us, to come under his King and be ruled by Him.
But our human natures do not like that prospect: we hate the idea of not being in control, of having to do what is right in God’s eyes, rather than what is right in our own eyes.
Years ago there used to be a silly story about a young man driving an open sports car far too fast along a mountain road. He misjudges a bend, spins out of control, and the car plunges over the cliff. But the driver is flung clear and manages to grab the branch of the tree that dangles him over the chasm. “Help, help, help!” he shrieks. “Is anybody there?” His cries bounce back as echoes from the empty cliffs. “Oh God,” he cries, “ If you’re there, please help me.” And a voice answers, “I will help you, but you must trust me.” “ Yes, yes, anything!” “Right, first you must let go of the branch.” A long silence follows, then the man gasps, “Is there anybody else out there?”
We need saving. God can save us. But He must rule us. Is He?
(All scripture quoted is from the New International Version of the Bible unless otherwise stated.)