Ruth

            Given its location in the Scriptures, the book of Ruth shines like gem.  After all, after the horrors of Judges, this wholesome little story is like sunshine after a week of storms.  (Not incidentally, it has been raining here all week, and the sun is supposed to shine this afternoon and all day tomorrow!)

            Judges ends on the lowest of all notes:  there has been inter-tribal warfare, sexual sins in Gibeah that echo (loudly) the depravity of Sodom, idolatry, duplicity, and violence.  And that doesn’t account for the fact that a lot of the judges were a little . . . shady.  Ehud began in deceit, concealing his sword and striking the king of Moab in secret.  Barak hid behind Deborah’s skirt.  Samson—well, what are you going to say about a man dedicated to the Lord from before birth who loves all manner of pretty Philistine girls and has a temper to rival Al Capone?

            Now frankly, Ruth doesn’t start off so well, either.  The prime Israelite in the story is Naomi, but her faith has been so frayed and tried that she changes her name to “Bitterness,”  “Mara.”  It’s the foreign girl, who faithfully casts her lot with her former mother-in-law, who demonstrates the best things that God’s people are supposed to be.  “Where you go, I will go; your people will be my people; your God will be my God.”  If only the Lord’s own chosen people had had that same sense of dedication to Him and to one another!

            There is a faithful Israelite here, too.  That is Boaz, who shoulders the responsibility of his kinsman’s family.  (Ruth is less a love story than it is a story about accepting family responsibility.)  The point, I suppose, is that while the majority of the people are doing what is right in their eyes, the humble few—Boaz, Ruth, Naomi (when she comes to her senses)—are remaining faithful.

            Finally, there is the closing announcement that Ruth and Boaz are the ancestors of David.  David is not explained in Ruth, but the alert reader is supposed to know where the story is going, that David is the great king of Israel, the high point of their history.  While there is no king in the land, the Lord is working to rectify that condition by preparing the way for the one who has His own heart (1 Sam. 13:14).

            Light in the darkness, a faithful remnant in the land—that’s the way the Lord works.  He works that way a thousand years before Jesus, in the life and ministry of Jesus, and two thousand years after Jesus.

"Israel had no king."

            Judges 17-21 is bracketed by this sentence:  “In those days, Israel had no king and everyone did as he saw fit.”  The notice that there was no king is repeated in 18:1 and 19:1.  This is important for two reasons:  one historical, the other theological.

            Historically, throughout the period of the judges, Israel didn’t really exist as a cohesive nation.  There were no central governing institutions.  Instead they seemed to have existed as a loose confederation of semi-integrated—and often antagonistic—tribes.  Let’s stipulate at the outset that this picture seems at odds with the idea of a unified people coming out of Egypt.  Some scholars will use that as a way to drive a wedge into the historicity of the story.  They’ll argue, “Look, the Exodus thing is clearly a propaganda piece, because the historical reality is different.”  We could counter two ways.  First, we can stipulate that Moses has a different story to tell than the writer of Judges.  The former wants to emphasize the Lord’s gracious call to Israel; the latter wants to emphasize how bad things were.  Second, it is possible that the settlement of the land undermined whatever sense of unity had been there following the Exodus.

            Theologically, Israel did have king.  They just forgot to worship Him and treat Him as a king.  (You will have picked up, I’m sure, that the king in question is Yahweh, the God of Israel.)  That Israel doesn’t own Yahweh as king is a major theme through her history.  In a week or so, we’ll read 1 Samuel, and there the people will ask for a king—“like the other nations.”  In Judges this contradiction is demonstrated in the way that Micah builds an image and an idol just before the lack of a king is mentioned (17:5-6).

            The disorder and irreligiosity of Israel is further highlighted by the violence that Dan does to an unsuspecting people and by the brutality of a Levite and of the other tribes against Benjamin.

Belated Thoughts on Samson

            Samson is one of the least likeable judges—to me, at least.  He is headstrong, lustful,  and angry.  He insists on the woman from Timnah, regardless of his parents’ or his countrymen’s concerns.  He justifies his violent actions under the cloak of having been wronged himself.  He even demands that the Lord give him water.  He is the most un-Christ-like figure you can imagine.

            Yet, in one of those only-God moments, Samson becomes a type of Christ.  One hymn writer likened Samson tearing the gates off of Gaza to Jesus ripping off the gates death and hell.  The line goes, “Our Samson storms death’s citadel and carries off the gates of hell.”  And, a little more obviously, Samson dies, and in dying, destroys his enemies.  That event foreshadows the death of Jesus, which destroys sin and death itself.  I cited these lines from Samson Agonistes, by John Milton, on Good Friday:

                                                            all this
With God not parted from him, as was fear'd,
But favouring and assisting to the end. [ 1720 ]Nothing is here for tears, nothing to wail
Or knock the breast, no weakness, no contempt,
Dispraise, or blame, nothing but well and fair,
And what may quiet us in a death so noble.

With Samson, the Lord was with him at the end and enabled him to perform a feat of strength one more time.  With Jesus, although He cried out in abandonment on the cross, in the end He committed His spirit to the Father.  So God was not parted from Him, either.

            I find myself strangely comforted by men like Samson.  I confess, I feel a little superior to Samson.  I generally have my temper under control, and I married a good Lutheran girl.  So, I haven’t got the obvious character flaws that Samson exhibits.  Then, I figure, if the Lord can accomplish his purposes through Samson, He can surely work with me.  Samson slaying 1000 Philistines with the jawbone of a donkey reminds us that it’s not the tool that matters—it’s the One who wields it.

Easter Break

I know it's been a few days since I posted.  I've been swamped with Holy Week services and sermons, and I'll be taking Easter Monday.  Tuesday, I'll be back with comments on Samson and the end of Judges.  Christ is risen!

Hardly a Pure Example

            We’re often looking for pure examples.  Aside from Jesus, we won’t find one—especially in Judges.  There are aspects of Jephthah’s story that inspire.  Here is an outcast, a man of shameful birth, surrounded by “worthless fellows” (11:3), and he is called to a high and noble task.  That’s inspiring.  It’s is comforting to think that the Lord can redeem us of the ash heap.  “He raises the poor from the dust and lifts the needy from the ash heap” (NIV; Psalm 113:7).  We gain hope for our own lives in the way that God uses the most ignoble tools for His purposes.

            Jephthah makes a principled and faithful appeal to the king of Ammon:  “The Lord gave us the land of Gilead 300 years ago.  If your god (Chemosh) was going to give it to you, he would have done it.”  That’s inspiring.  I think we’d all like to have the clarity to see God’s hand in our lives and the courage to say so out loud.

            But Jephthah makes a ridiculous vow to the Lord.  I mean, it’s not as if God needed Jephthah’s bargain to do what he had intended to do anyway.  Before he makes the vow, Judges has already told us that the Spirit of the Lord was on him.  There’s a tragic lack of necessity here.  Unfortunately, it’s a tragedy that we too often participate in.  It might not be quite so blunt as Jephthah, but most of us have said to the Lord, “If you . . ., then I . . .”  Somehow we miss that the logic of our dealings with the Lord is just opposite of that.  (Check out Ps. 50, about the fact that the Lord doesn’t need our sacrifices.)  The Lord says to us, “I have . . ., therefore, you will . . .”  The initiative is always His.

            There’s more to see here:  the tragedy is compounded by the fact that Jephthah has only the one child.  (Note how many of the judges have truckloads of children.)  She laments her virginity, that is, that she has borne no heirs to carry on the family name.  There’s the tragedy that Jephthah followed through on his ill-considered vow and killed his daughter—an affront to the Lord (Lev. 18:21).  There’s the battle with Ephraim, who tries to horn in on the credit for beating Ammon.  There’s the original “litmus test,” that is, the Shibboleth.

            There’s more to see, but let’s focus on Jephthah’s redemption and his faithful claim that the Lord had given Gilead to Israel, and let’s avoid his rash vows.  That will be task enough.

Contrasting Approaches

            What a contrast in stories in Judges 9-10.  In the first story, the sordid tale of Abimelech and Shechem, we have the Lord who allows a curse to be fulfilled.  Interestingly, aside from the note that the Lord sent an evil spirit between Abimelech and the Shechemites, the Lord is pretty isolated from the story.  It is portrayed largely from a ‘down-below’ perspective:  oppression and robbery and revolt and violence.  So, we see that the Lord often uses circumstances that are ‘natural’ to call His people to account.  (The whole question, “Why did God do this?” is a bit of a dodge in that it seems to want to absolve us—and humanity—of any responsibility.  Our race seems to do just fine in messing things up all by ourselves.)

            Contrast that with the beginning of the story of Jephthah.  There, humanity responsibility abounds.  Israel is not just worshipping Baal; it’s a veritable smorgasbord of idols!  And the Lord wants them to take responsibility.  He refuses to help and tells them to ask their other gods.  But, when they repent, we read, “He could bear Israel’s misery no more.”  Here the Lord is at center stage, and He is there to show mercy.  Humans, it turns out, are quite capable of disciplining themselves simply by suffering the consequences of their misdeeds.  But, only the Lord God of Israel is capable of saving.

Questionable Instruments

            One of the things that we notice about the judges is that the Lord chose men of questionable character.  Ehud is a sneak.  He hides his sword on the opposite that most men wear it and meets and kills the king of Moab in private.  (The king’s men are so duped that they think he’s taking a long time on the toilet.)  Barak hides behind a woman’s skirt, refusing to go to war unless Deborah comes with him.  And Gideon, well, he’s alternately a coward and a bully.  When we first meet him, he’s threshing in a pit to avoid detection; he accomplishes his first mission—destroying the Baal altar—at night because he’s afraid; and he asks for several signs—just to make sure.  On the other hand, he threatens the Israelites in Succoth and Penuel, and he retaliates against them before he’s even finished his business with Zebah and Zalmunna of Midian!

            What shall we make of these flawed heroes?  To start with, we can stop calling them heroes.  I know what we mean when we say ‘heroes of the faith,’ but I’m pretty sure the biblical writers don’t want us thinking these men are all noble and good, like Supermen of yore, fighting for truth, justice, and the Israelite way.  These are flawed, sinful men, whom God uses for His purposes.

            That’s the greater lesson, don’t you think?  On Saturday we’ll read about Samson, who slew 1,000 Philistines with the jawbone of a donkey.  The lesson?  God can use whatever He wants for His purposes.  So, Paul famously talks about having the treasure of the Gospel in clay jars.  We Christians ought to take some comfort in that.  He can use the ordinary for His purposes.  So, dads and moms who faithfully train their children in the faith through devotions, modeling, Sunday school attendance, and regular worship attendance are doing really ordinary things through which the Lord works.  Ordinary congregations, too, are the instruments through which the Lord accomplishes His saving work.  (You don’t need to be a 10,000 member mega-church for the Lord to accomplish what He wants.)

            The Lord’s use of the ordinary is at the heart of the Gospel.  It is difficult in these latter days to remember who ordinary crucifixion was—and how ignoble!  Lamentations 1:12, “Is it nothing to you, all you who pass by?”  Yep, on Good Friday, the suffering for a lot of the casual witnesses was nothing.  It was just, “Well, there go the Romans again.”  Tomorrow, our congregation will gather for the Lord’s Supper, another of those places where the very ordinary (bread and wine) contains the very extraordinary (the Lord’s body and blood).

            What we witness in Judges is the Lord’s typical M.O.:  “But God chose the foolish things of the world to shame the wise; God chose the weak things of the world to shame the strong.  He chose the lowly things of this world and the despised things—and the things that are not—to nullify the things that are, so that no one may boast before him” (NIV 1 Corinthians 1:27-29).