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Judges 1-13:

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Judges 1-13:

Israelites Fail to Drive Canaanites from the Land:

Some of the tribes of Israelites “dwelt among the Canaanites.” (Jdgs. 1:33)  In Israel’s disobedience, the Angel of the Lord spoke out against the Israelites:

“Now the angel of the Lord went up from Gilgal to Bochim. And he said, “I brought you up from Egypt, and brought you into the land which I swore to give to your fathers. I said, ‘I will never break my covenant with you, and you shall make no covenant with the inhabitants of this land; you shall break down their altars.’ But you have not obeyed my command. What is this you have done?  So now I say, I will not drive them out before you; but they shall become adversaries to you, and their gods shall be a snare to you.”  When the angel of the Lord spoke these words to all the people of Israel, the people lifted up their voices and wept.” (Jdgs. 2:1-4)

The angel of the Lord was still with the Israelites, but He delivers the bad news to the Israelites because of their disobedience and failure to drive the Canaanites from the land. 

The death of Joshua:

“And Joshua the son of Nun, the servant of the Lord, died at the age of one hundred and ten years.”(Jdgs. 2:8)  Joshua died“in the hill country of Ephraim, north of the mountain of Gaash,” which is located in the modern West Bank area, southwest of Nablus.  

Israelites worship false gods:

“And the people of Israel did what was evil in the sight of the Lord and served the Baals; and they forsook the Lord, the God of their fathers, who had brought them out of the land of Egypt; they went after other gods, from among the gods of the peoples who were round about them, and bowed down to them; and they provoked the Lord to anger.  They forsook the Lord, and served the Baals and the Ashtaroth.” (Jdgs. 2:11-13) The Israelites did what was evil in the sight of the Lord.  So, the Lord consequently abandons the Israelites to subjection of the Canaanites and their false pagan religions, particularly Baal and Ashtaroth.  

The Lord raised up Judges to help Israel:

 “Then the Lord raised up judges, who saved them out of the power of those who plundered them.  And yet they did not listen to their judges; for they played the harlot after other gods and bowed down to them; they soon turned aside from the way in which their fathers had walked, who had obeyed the commandments of the Lord, and they did not do so.  Whenever the Lord raised up judges for them, the Lord was with the judge, and he saved them from the hand of their enemies all the days of the judge; for the Lord was moved to pity by their groaning because of those who afflicted and oppressed them.  But whenever the judge died, they turned back and behaved worse than their fathers, going after other gods, serving them and bowing down to them; they did not drop any of their practices or their stubborn ways.”  (Jdgs. 2:16-19)  The Israelites dwelt amongst the Canaanites and intermarried, and worst of all, “they served their gods.” (Jdgs. 3:6)  

Jael, a type of Church, kills by the type of the Wood of the Cross:

“But Jael the wife of Heber took a tent peg, and took a hammer in her hand, and went softly to him and drove the peg into his temple, till it went down into the ground, as he was lying fast asleep from weariness. So he died.” (Jdgs. 4:21)  Origen deemed Jael a prefigurement to the Church, by which the devil is defeated by the wood of the Cross.  He stated: “The woman Jael, that foreigner about whom Deborah’s prophecy said that victory would be had ‘through the hand of a woman’ (Jdgs. 4:9), symbolizes the church, which was assembled from foreign nations  . . . She killed him with a stake, then, which is to say that she overthrew him by the power and cunning of the wood of the cross.” (Origen, Homilies on Judges)

The Flesh and Bread Offering of Gideon:

Gideon makes an offering to God of flesh (i.e., meat) and bread (i.e., unleavened cakes). This was a prefigurement to the Eucharist: “Then the angel of the Lord reached out the tip of the staff that was in his hand, and touched the meat and the unleavened cakes; and there sprang up fire from the rock and consumed the flesh and the unleavened cakes; and the angel of the Lord vanished from his sight.” (Jdgs. 6:21)  Gideon then pulled down and destroyed the pagan altars to Baal and Asherah.  

Israel’s Idolatry Continued:

“Yet you have forsaken me and served other gods; therefore I will deliver you no more.  Go and cry to the gods whom you have chosen; let them deliver you in the time of your distress.” (Jdgs. 10:13-14)

Samson and the Nazirite Vow:

The Angel of Lord prophesied the birth of Samson and his vows as a Nazirite.  These threefold Nazirite vows included: (1) No contact with dead bodies; (2) No strong wine or drink; (3) No razor upon his head, no shaving of his hair.  

“And the angel of the Lord appeared to the woman and said to her, “Behold, you are barren and have no children; but you shall conceive and bear a son.  Therefore beware, and drink no wine or strong drink, and eat nothing unclean, for lo, you shall conceive and bear a son. No razor shall come upon his head, for the boy shall be a Nazirite to God from birth; and he shall begin to deliver Israel from the hand of the Philistines.” (Jdgs. 13:3-5)

Some have hypothesized that John the Baptist, and even Jesus Himself had taken the Nazirite vows.  

The Angel of the Lord:

This is the oft repeated instances in the Old Testament of the Lord or the “Angel of the Lord” appearing in human form as a man.  These are the pre-incarnate appearances of Christ in the Old Testament, “and the angel of God came again to the woman as she sat in the field.” (Jdgs. 13:9)  The Angel of the Lord answers her husband that He is the one who appeared to her, “And he said, “I am.” (Jdgs. 13:11)  The Angel of the Lord uses the name of God for Himself, “I Am,” or the translation of the Tetragrammaton, YHWH.  This is the preincarnate Christ.  

Manoah and his wife then offered a “flesh and bread” sacrifice to God: “the kid with the cereal offering, and offered it upon the rock to the Lord.”(Jdgs. 13:19)  The Angel of the Lord then ascended to Heaven in the flame of the sacrifice upon the altar. Manoah and his wife fell on their faces recognizing that they had seen the Lord saying, “for we have seen God.” (Jdgs. 13:22)  They recognize that the Angel of the Lord was, in fact, God, and from a New Covenant perspective, He was the preincarnate Jesus. Interestingly, like the disciples on the Road to Emmaus, they recognized the Lord in the flesh and bread sacrifice, with its obvious Eucharistic connotations.  She then bore a son, Samson.

The Book of Judges

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Judges Overview:

The Book of Judges recounts the transition from the Mosaic period to the settled period in Israel in anticipation to the time of the Davidic king.  Moses is mentioned nearly sixty times in Joshua, and only five times in the Book of Judges.  According to one source, “Israel’s past will remain firmly rooted in Moses, but its future hopes will lie entirely with David.” (The Deuteronimistic History) This is the transition in salvation history from the time of Moses to the promised time of David.  The central narrative of Judges consists of telling the story of thirteen separate judges and “anti-judges” over Israel (i.e., Othniel, Ehud, Shamgar, Deborah, Gideon, Abimelech, Tola, Jair, Jephthah, Ibzan, Elon, Hillel, and Samsom).  This period of Israel’s history repeats cycles of disobedience and sin, punishment and suffering, repentance, and restoration and redemption, and finally, setback and relapse.  Judges is largely a counterexample of how not to do things.  Hence, there were few sacramental typologies are found in the text by later Christian Tradition.  

This time of moral, social and liturgical dissolution without a king or central authority was encapsulated in the lamentation of “In those days there was no king in Israel; every man did what was right in his own eyes.” (Jdgs. 21:25)  Pitre and Bergsma call this time period of Judges “the ugly face of rampant relativism.” (Old Testament Introduction, p.328)  The Book of Judges does not show the Israelites in conflict with the native Canaanites, who God had commanded them to drive out of the land. Rather, the Book of Judges shows Israel living peaceably with the Canaanite populations, which Judges hints is precisely the problem.  There was synchronization with Canaanite paganism, just as God had warned about and prohibited.  Bergsma and Pitre conclude: “The book of Judges recounts one of the darkest periods – morally, spiritually, politically, socially – in Israel’s history. Abandonment of the worship of the Lord in favor of Canaanite paganism was rampant.” (p.337)  Judges shows the inadequacies of the Mosaic Covenant and anticipates a time of the new Covenant under the Davidic king, who will lead Israel to greater fidelity.