1-36 Israel's Failure to Complete the Conquest of Canaan
- The Israelites ask God, "Now [with the death of Joshua] who will go fight for us?" God answers, "Judah." Judah asks Simeon to fight with him, who agrees.
- At Bezek they defeat the Perizzites and Canaanite Adoni-bezek. They cut off his thumbs and big toes and bring him to Jerusalem, where he dies. (Adoni-bezek sees this as a "payback" from God for his doing the same thing to 70 other kings who then begged for scraps under his table.)
- Next: Jerusalem, then the hill country, the Negeb, and the lowland, Hebron (formerly Kiriath-arba), and others, including Debir. This seems to be a repeat of Joshua 14 and 15, which told of Caleb receiving the land Moses had promised him; it also includes the promise of Caleb's daughter to whomever would take Kiriath-sepher (his nephew Othniel).
- Kenites (descendants of Moses' father-in-law) join Judah to "settle" with the Amalekites, then Judah and Simeon "devote to destruction" Zephath, and called it Hormah. Jericho had also been "devoted to destruction" (Joshua 6:20-24).
- Benjamites did not drive out Jebusites in Jerusalem (another repeat from Joshua 15).
- Joseph defeats Bethel (formerly named Luz), with the help of a local man who helps guide them into the city. They spare him, and he moves to the land of Hittites and names his city there Luz, after the previous name of his hometown.
- Now a list of what the Israelites did NOT do:
- Manasseh did not drive out the Canaanites in several cities
- Ephraim did not drive out the Canaanites in Gezer
- Zebulun did not drive out the Canaanites in 2 cities
- Asher did not drive out inhabitants of several Canaanite cities
- Naphtali did not drive out the people of Beth-shemesh, but lived among them, using them as forced labor.
- Dan did not defeat the Amorites, but were driven back by them, although the Amorites did become subject to forced labor by Joseph.
1-5 Israel's Disobedience
- The angel of the LORD to Israel: I promised you I would give you the land, and I will never break that covenant. [God sends his angel now -- the second person of the Godhead who also appeared to Joshua in 5:13-15? -- instead of speaking to them directly.]
- On your part, you were not to make covenants with the people of this land, but were to tear down their altars.
- You have disobeyed me, therefore, they will become your enemies, and their gods will be snare to you.
- The people weep, and sacrifice there to the LORD and Bochim (which means "weepers").
- A reminder of the influence of Joshua and the faithfulness of those who followed him, their commitment to him and to God
- But this is a new generation, and though the angel made them sorrowful, they quickly forget their sorrow and look to the "gods" they can see.
- Then the Israelites:
- Do what is evil in God's sight and worship the Baals
- Abandon the LORD
- Follow others gods, bow down to them, provoke the LORD to anger
- (Once again) abandon the LORD
- So: God becomes angry, and gives them over to their enemies
- And they are in great distress
- Prophetic summary of the downward spiral in Judges:
- Out of pity, God raises up judges who deliver them
- They stop listening to the judges and go back into idolatry
- God raises up another judge, and they're okay until the judge dies
- Then they relapse and are worse than before.
- This is God's plan -- not to let Joshua defeat all the nations so his people will be tested in this way. Sure enough, they fail the test.
1-6 Nations Remaining in the Land
- Nations left to test Israel, so that successive generations will know about war: 5 lords of the Philistines, Canaanites, Sidonians, and Hivites. 2nd reason for not defeating all the inhabitants of the land.
- The Israelites live among the Canaanites, Hittites, Amorites, Perizzites, Hivites and Jebusites, marry their daughters and give their daughters to their sons, and worship their gods.
- Because of their disobedience, Israel is defeated by King Cushan-rishathaim and serve him for 8 years
- Israel cries to God, and he raises up Othniel (of Judah) as judge. (This is the same Othniel who married Caleb's daughter back in Joshua 15. I thought I'd heard that name before, and here it is!)
- Othniel defeats King Cushan-rishathaim, and the land has rest for 40 years.
- Israel again turns away, is defeated by King Eglon of Moab, in alliance with the Ammonites and Amelekites, and serves King Eglon for 18 years.
- Israel cries up to God, and he raises up Ehud.
- On behalf of Israel, Ehud goes to Eglon to deliver their annual tribute money.
- Left alone with Eglon, Ehud pretends to give him a "message," and reaching with his left hand stabs him with a sword he has hidden under his clothes. Eglon is so fat, his flesh closes over the sword. Ehud leaves, closing the door to the "cool chamber." His servants, granting their king privacy, don't discover the body until Ehud is long gone.
- Ehud returns to the hill country of Ephraim and sounds the trumpet for Israel to follow him in defeating Moab, killing about 10,000 of them.
- And the land has rest for 80 years.
Psalm 58 - A Miktam of David (Prayer for Vengeance)
An extremely violent psalm. This is written by the "sweet singer of Israel"?
3 - "The wicked...err from their birth, speaking lies." Some people are just born wicked.
And what does David want God to do with them? 6 - "Break the teeth in their mouths...let them be like the snail that dissolves into slime."
And how shall the righteous respond to the demise of the wicked? 10 - "The righteous will rejoice...they will bathe their feet in the blood of the wicked."
Note: The reason God did not allow David to build the temple was because he had become such a man of war. I think maybe his developed violent nature shows up in this psalm.
1 Corinthians 12
1-11 Spiritual Gifts
- Paul speaks to former pagans, who formerly worshiped idols that couldn't speak.
- Now they worship a God who does speak -- through His Spirit.
- Those led by His Spirit would never curse His Son, and those who claim His Son as Lord do so only through the Spirit.
- The activities of those led by the Spirit take on different forms, but they are still led by the same Spirit. Maybe there was a misunderstanding among the Corinthians that different gifts came from different gods -- like a god of ministry, and a god of wisdom, and a god of knowledge.
- But Paul does not want them to be uninformed (v. 1). There are a variety of gifts, but only one Spirit.
- Examples of those gifts -- all "activated by God" and given for the common good: utterance of wisdom; knowledge; faith; healing; miracles; prophecy; discernment of spirits; tongues; interpretation of tongues.
- The Spirit allots these gifts as He chooses.
- Again -- just as the Spirit is one, so the body is one.
- Jew, Greek, slave, or free -- at baptism we come into one body.
- Comparison with the physical body, which has many parts, but each one does its part to make the whole body function.
- Body parts that get the most attention are sometimes the least useful.
- When one part of our body is in pain, the rest of the body suffers with it. If one part is honored, the rest of the body rejoices with it. (So when we accomplish something, our face smiles, and our step is lighter.)
- You are all the body of Christ, and like the members of a physical body, are each important.
- God is the one who has appointed people to certain positions in the church. Just like the brain would be useless without necks, arms, fingers, knees, and elbows to carry out its commands, so each of us would be useless without our fellow members.
- There is one difference: we can all strive for the greater gifts. Greater than all of these is a "more excellent way."
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