The Living Bible (78 page)

Judges
2

One day the Angel of the Lord arrived at Bochim, coming from Gilgal, and announced to the people of Israel, “I brought you out of Egypt into this land that I promised to your ancestors, and I said that I would never break my covenant with you,
²
 if you, on your part, would make no peace treaties with the people living in this land; I told you to destroy their heathen altars. Why have you not obeyed?
³
 And now since you have broken the contract, it is no longer in effect, and I no longer promise to destroy the nations living in your land; rather, they shall be thorns in your sides, and their gods will be a constant temptation to you.”

    
⁴
 The people broke into tears as the Angel finished speaking;
⁵
 so the name of that place was called “Bochim” (meaning, “the place where people wept”). Then they offered sacrifices to the Lord.

    
⁶
 When Joshua finally disbanded the armies of Israel, the tribes moved into their new territories and took possession of the land.
^7-9
 Joshua, the man of God, died at the age of 110 and was buried at the edge of his property in Timnath-heres, in the hill country of Ephraim, north of Mount Gaash. The people had remained true to the Lord throughout Joshua’s lifetime, and as long afterward as the old men of his generation were still living—those who had seen the mighty miracles the Lord had done for Israel.

    
¹⁰
 But finally all that generation died; and the next generation did not worship Jehovah as their God and did not care about the mighty miracles he had done for Israel.
¹¹
 They did many things that the Lord had expressly forbidden, including the worshiping of heathen gods.
^12-14
 They abandoned Jehovah, the God loved and worshiped by their ancestors—the God who had brought them out of Egypt. Instead, they were worshiping and bowing low before the idols of the neighboring nations. So the anger of the Lord flamed out against all Israel. He left them to the mercy of their enemies, for they had departed from Jehovah and were worshiping Baal and the Ashtaroth idols.

    
¹⁵
 So now when the nation of Israel went out to battle against its enemies, the Lord blocked their path. He had warned them about this, and in fact had vowed that he would do it. But when the people were in this terrible plight,
¹⁶
 the Lord raised up judges to save them from their enemies.

    
¹⁷
 Yet even then Israel would not listen to the judges, but broke faith with Jehovah by worshiping other gods instead. How quickly they turned away from the true faith of their ancestors, for they refused to obey God’s commands.
¹⁸
 Each judge rescued the people of Israel from their enemies throughout his lifetime, for the Lord was moved to pity by the groaning of his people under their crushing oppressions; so he helped them as long as that judge lived.
¹⁹
 But when the judge died, the people turned from doing right and behaved even worse than their ancestors had. They prayed to heathen gods again, throwing themselves to the ground in humble worship. They stubbornly returned to the evil customs of the nations around them.

    
²⁰
 Then the anger of the Lord would flame out against Israel again. He declared, “Because these people have violated the treaty I made with their ancestors,
²¹
 I will no longer drive out the nations left unconquered by Joshua when he died.
²²
 Instead, I will use these nations to test my people, to see whether or not they will obey the Lord as their ancestors did.”

    
²³
 So the Lord left those nations in the land and did not drive them out, nor let Israel destroy them.

Judges
3

Here is a list of the nations the Lord left in the land to test the new generation of Israel who had not experienced the wars of Canaan. For God wanted to give opportunity to the youth of Israel to exercise faith and obedience
*
in conquering their enemies:
*
the Philistines (five cities), the Canaanites, the Sidonians, the Hivites living in Mount Lebanon, from Baal-hermon to the entrance of Hamath.
⁴
 These people were a test to the new generation of Israel, to see whether they would obey the commandments the Lord had given to them through Moses.

    
⁵
 So Israel lived among the Canaanites, Hittites, Hivites, Perizzites, Amorites, and Jebusites.
⁶
 But instead of destroying them, the people of Israel intermarried with them. The young men of Israel took their girls as wives, and the Israeli girls married their men. And soon Israel was worshiping their gods.
⁷
 So the people of Israel were very evil in God’s sight, for they turned against Jehovah their God and worshiped Baal and the Asheroth idols.

    
⁸
 Then the anger of the Lord flamed out against Israel, and he let King Cushan-rishathaim of eastern Syria conquer them. They were under his rule for eight years.
⁹
 But when Israel cried out to the Lord, he gave them Caleb’s nephew, Othniel (son of Kenaz, Caleb’s younger brother) to save them.
¹⁰
 The Spirit of the Lord took control of him, and he reformed and purged Israel so that when he led the forces of Israel against the army of King Cushan-rishathaim, the Lord helped Israel conquer him completely.

    
¹¹
 Then, for forty years under Othniel, there was peace in the land. But when Othniel died,
¹²
 the people of Israel turned once again to their sinful ways, so God helped King Eglon of Moab to conquer part of Israel at that time.
¹³
 Allied with him were the armies of the Ammonites and the Amalekites. These forces defeated the Israelis and took possession of Jericho, often called “The City of Palm Trees.”
¹⁴
 For the next eighteen years the people of Israel were required to pay crushing taxes to King Eglon.

    
¹⁵
 But when they cried to the Lord, he sent them a savior, Ehud (son of Gera, a Benjaminite), who was left-handed. Ehud was the man chosen to carry Israel’s annual tax money to the Moabite capital.
¹⁶
 Before he went on this journey, he made himself a double-edged dagger eighteen inches long and hid it in his clothing, strapped against his right thigh.
^17-19
 After delivering the money to King Eglon (who, by the way, was very fat!), he started home again. But outside the city, at the quarries of Gilgal, he sent his companions on and returned alone to the king.

    
“I have a secret message for you,” he told him.

    
The king immediately dismissed all those who were with him so that he could have a private interview.
²⁰
 Ehud walked over to him as he was sitting in a cool upstairs room and said to him, “It is a message from God!”

    
King Eglon stood up at once to receive it,
²¹
 whereupon Ehud reached beneath his robe with his strong left hand, pulled out the double-bladed dagger strapped against his right thigh, and plunged it deep into the king’s belly.
^22-23
 The hilt of the dagger disappeared beneath the flesh, and the fat closed over it as the entrails oozed out. Leaving the dagger there, Ehud locked the doors behind him and escaped across an upstairs porch.

    
²⁴
 When the king’s servants returned and saw that the doors were locked, they waited, thinking that perhaps he was using the bathroom.
²⁵
 But when, after a long time, he still didn’t come out, they became concerned and got a key. And when they opened the door, they found their master dead on the floor.

    
²⁶
 Meanwhile Ehud had escaped past the quarries to Seirah.
²⁷
 When he arrived in the hill country of Ephraim, he blew a trumpet as a call to arms and mustered an army under his own command.

    
²⁸
 “Follow me,” he told them, “for the Lord has put your enemies, the Moabites, at your mercy!”

    
The army then proceeded to seize the fords of the Jordan River near Moab, preventing anyone from crossing.
²⁹
 Then they attacked the Moabites and killed about ten thousand of the strongest and most skillful of their fighting men, letting not one escape.
³⁰
 So Moab was conquered by Israel that day, and the land was at peace for the next eighty years.

    
³¹
 The next judge after Ehud was Shamgar (son of Anath). He once killed six hundred Philistines with an ox goad, thereby saving Israel from disaster.

Judges
4

After Ehud’s death the people of Israel again sinned against the Lord,
^2-3
 so the Lord let them be conquered by King Jabin of Hazor, in Canaan. The commander-in-chief of his army was Sisera, who lived in Harosheth-hagoiim. He had nine hundred iron chariots and made life unbearable for the Israelis for twenty years. But finally they begged the Lord for help.

    
⁴
 Israel’s leader at that time, the one who was responsible for bringing the people back to God, was Deborah, a prophetess, the wife of Lappidoth.
⁵
 She held court at a place now called “Deborah’s Palm Tree,” between Ramah and Bethel, in the hill country of Ephraim; and the Israelites came to her to decide their disputes.
*

    
⁶
 One day she summoned Barak (son of Abinoam), who lived in Kedesh, in the land of Naphtali, and said to him, “The Lord God of Israel has commanded you to mobilize ten thousand men from the tribes of Naphtali and Zebulun. Lead them to Mount Tabor
⁷
 to fight King Jabin’s mighty army with all his chariots, under General Sisera’s command. The Lord says, ‘I will draw them to the Kishon River, and you will defeat them there.’”

    
⁸
 “I’ll go, but only if you go with me!” Barak told her.

    
⁹
 “All right,” she replied, “I’ll go with you; but I’m warning you now that the honor of conquering Sisera will go to a woman instead of to you!” So she went with him to Kedesh.

    
¹⁰
 When Barak summoned the men of Zebulun and Naphtali to mobilize at Kedesh, ten thousand men volunteered. And Deborah marched with them.
¹¹
 (Heber, the Kenite—the Kenites were the descendants of Moses’ father-in-law Hobab—had moved away from the rest of his clan, and had been living in various places as far away as the Oak of Zaanannim, near Kedesh.)
¹²
 When General Sisera was told that Barak and his army were camped at Mount Tabor,
¹³
 he mobilized his entire army, including the nine hundred iron chariots, and marched from Harosheth-hagoiim to the Kishon River.

    
¹⁴
 Then Deborah said to Barak, “Now is the time for action! The Lord leads on! He has already delivered Sisera into your hand!”

    
So Barak led his ten thousand men down the slopes of Mount Tabor into battle.

    
¹⁵
 Then the Lord threw the enemy into a panic, both the soldiers and the charioteers, and Sisera leaped from his chariot and escaped on foot.
¹⁶
 Barak and his men chased the enemy and the chariots as far as Harosheth-hagoiim, until all of Sisera’s army was destroyed; not one man was left alive.
¹⁷
 Meanwhile, Sisera had escaped to the tent of Jael, the wife of Heber the Kenite, for there was a mutual-assistance agreement between King Jabin of Hazor and the clan of Heber.

    
¹⁸
 Jael went out to meet Sisera and said to him, “Come into my tent, sir. You will be safe here in our protection. Don’t be afraid.” So he went into her tent, and she covered him with a blanket.

    
¹⁹
 “Please give me some water,” he said, “for I am very thirsty.” So she gave him some milk and covered him again.

    
²⁰
 “Stand in the door of the tent,” he told her, “and if anyone comes by, looking for me, tell them that no one is here.”

    
²¹
 Then Jael took a sharp tent peg and a hammer and, quietly creeping up to him as he slept, she drove the peg through his temples and into the ground; and so he died, for he was fast asleep from weariness.

    
²²
 When Barak came by looking for Sisera, Jael went out to meet him and said, “Come, and I will show you the man you are looking for.”

    
So he followed her into the tent and found Sisera lying there dead, with the tent peg through his temples.
²³
 So that day the Lord used Israel to subdue King Jabin of Canaan.
²⁴
 And from that time on Israel became stronger and stronger against King Jabin, until he and all his people were destroyed.