Israel Undone
November 4, 2012 | Patrick Preheim | Judges 17

In the sermon last Sunday I looked at the character of Rahab speculating on how her story influences our reading and interpretation of Joshua.   My conclusions were that conquest through mercy, rather than the sword, is a much larger theme in Joshua than we assume.   The editor of Joshua, in fact may have been encouraging the exiled Israelites in Babylon to pay attention for Rahab like foreigners who might aid the Hebrews in returning to the Promised Land.  If this interpretation has merit and Joshua encourages openness to the people of foreign nations, it must be said that Judges cautions against identifying too closely with the nations.   It is one thing to cooperate with the foreigners in areas where there is a common goal.  It is another thing entirely to take on habits which erode fidelity to the Lord and erode unified worship.  Judges tries to make the point through negative examples, and it can make for tough reading.
In our hunt for an appropriate bulletin cover earlier this week our administrative assistant (Helen) made the bold exclamation that she does not like Judges.  This shocked me.  Rarely does Helen, daughter of a Mennonite pastor and long suffering assistant to a series of nutters, speak ill of anything let alone the Word of God.  I think, however, that Helen has hit the sentiment of Judges on the nose.  We are not meant to like it.  If there is a shred of theological integrity within us we will be deeply troubled by the time we reach chapter 21.   It is a comedy of errors—a horror film.   Yes, God does amazing things through particular judges to deliver the Israelites.  Yet in each of these episodes there is something off, and it gets worse every chapter.  So why read these stories?   Well, they ask hard questions; questions we need to be asking

• Questions like:   To what extent do our surface rhetoric and actions...promote a true and deep...love of God and of Jesus Christ? 
• Questions like:   Do our lives and practices embody a devoted commitment to God and familiarity with Scripture? 
• Questions like:  Do our religious words and actions simply veil a real devotion to the interests of self, the power politics of the world, the worship of greed? 

These are the underlying issues Judges puts before us as we hear its sordid tales (Dennis T. Olson, Book of Judges (The New Interpreter’s Bible Commentary series), p. 872).  So, let us ease into this book study with one of the tamer fables.

The story of Gideon (ch 6-8) is a classic.  The angel of Lord finds poor Gideon beating out his wheat in a wine press so that the Midianites don’t take his precious grain.  The angel’s greeting is rather sarcastic, “The Lord is with you, you mighty warrior”.  A mighty warrior?  Seriously, what kind of mighty warrior is so afraid that he is threshes grain in a wine press?  In response to the angel’s commission Gideon tries desperately to get out of the call.  Certainly he can’t be the one because he comes from the weakest clan of Maanasseh.  And if that weren’t enough he is the least of his family.  Sorry, Gideon you are the chosen one.  Not content with the angel’s reply, Gideon goes up the chain of command and addresses God directly: “Look, if I am your man let there be dew on the fleece only”.  Bad news, there was only dew on the fleece.  Somewhat rebelliously Gideon tests the Lord again by requesting a reversal of the fleece experiment, “If I am your man let the fleece be dry amidst a ground of dew”.   Where is the faith?  Where is the trust?  Gideon is a flawed champion whose cracks widen as the chapters roll by.  After God’s success against the Midianites Gideon requests gold for himself.  Flaunting prohibitions against the making of idols found in Exodus 20 and Deuteronomy 4, Gideon melts the gold into a household idol for his private worship.  What are the questions Gideon’s tale puts before us?:

• Do we, like Gideon, at times hunt for excuses to avoid God’s commission? 
• Do we, like Gideon, sometimes claim God’s victory as our work so that the glory, power and gold might come our way? 
• Do we, like Gideon, sometimes forget the 1st command and make an idol of our successes:  an idol of our business, our education, our home?

The good news of the story is that despite Gideon’s flaws, and our flaws, the Lord still works deliverance.  God is patient when we run from our divine commissions.  God is understanding when we cry out for confirmation and cry out again.  God is gracious.

Mid-week I told Patty that I was disturbed the direction my sermon was taking.  She asked why.  I told that my sermon draft to that point was simply a collection of bible stories from Judges.  She grimaced visibly.  “I know”, I said in confirmation, “I know they like a few reports from real life, but what am I to do?  There are too many powerful illustrations from the text.  At least most of them have a bit of sarcastic humour if you can appreciate it, not that we usually look for irony and sarcasm when reading the bible.  Oh dear, I am stuck.”   “Well”, Patty said as she shrugged her shoulders, “it’s all right for them to get a bit of meat.  They can’t expect to have sides and sweets every week”.  And with that we are on to Jephthah (ch 11).

This is one of those Biblical accounts which Phyllis Trible calls a “text of terror” (see her book Texts of Terror  for additional horrific passages).   The story gets off to a rough if not humorous beginning.  Even though both Leviticus (chapters 19, 21) and Deuteronomy (ch 23) caution against prostitution, we learn straight off that Jephthah is the son of a prostitute.  Gilead is Jephthah’s father, but Gilead is also the name of the town.  This is, I think, a linguistic dig at the high levels of promiscuity found within the city limits.  The whole town is the boy’s father!  James Mischner’s book The Source links the business of temple prostitution with fertility cults.  In the great pecking order of transgressions I am not sure if it is worse for the whole town to be complicit in a fertility cult or addicted to carnal pleasure.  Either way, we get the idea that Gilead, and Israel more generally, is tanking morally.  In a moment of theological clarity Jephthah derides the Ammonites for their adherence to the god Chemosh and the sacrificing of children in fire which their worship entailed.  But Jephthah’s bold theological statement and success as a judge only elevate him for his big crash.   In a pre-battle prayer he vows to kill one of his household as a pleasing sacrifice the Lord.  Where Jephthah gets the idea that Lord desires seared human flesh is unclear, but this is what he does.  At tale’s end Jephthah burns his own daughter.   Jephthah is no different than his Ammonite neighbours; he has delivered his child to flames.  Jephthah and Gilead have taken on the practices of the nations around them.   And now the tough questions:

• Are we surprised that when we prostitute ourselves to the work / sports / entertainment / toys of the nations around us that our children have a confused faith?
• Like Jephthah have we reduced the Lord to the same bargaining and blood thirsty deity to which the nations pray?

It is truly a testimony to Lord’s steadfast love that Jephthah was used to deliver the Israelites.

Several weeks ago before the snows came I visited a farmer who narrated the heroic end of his harvest.  With about three hundred acres left he began to hear the squeak of a bearing deep within the armoured shell of his combine.  From the holy of holies of the cab he divined that it would be a two day surgery on the threshing machine to replace the frail bearing—not his first choice with predictions of bad weather coming by week’s end.  Much like the various prophets found in the book of Judges the Spirit of the Lord fell upon him and he began harvesting like a wild man.  The thresher gobbled up swathes much like Samson carving a path through an army of Philistines.  By day’s end the squeak had become a rattle of metal balls dancing in a hollowed out shell, and still the harvest continued.  By the last windrow the fragmented bearing had done untold damage to the wounded combine.  The harvest was finished, but it was a grizzly ending.  The thresher had been eaten from the inside out.   Not that much different than Judges.

Chapter 17 is the first scene in the last section of Judges which describes Israel’s complete disintegration (Olson, 863).  In chapters 17-21 you have the ultimate privatisation of religion, immoral clergy, gang rape, fratricide and kidnapping.  If it doesn’t make your skin crawl there is something wrong with you.  And it all starts in chapter 17.  There are three main characters in our story and I will spend a bit a time with each.
Micah is first to enter the stage.  A literal translation of his name is “Who is like Yahweh” (Terry L. Brensinger, Judges (in the Believers Church Bible Commentary series), p.175), but once again the author is using sarcasm.  It is rather ironic, don’t you think, for someone named “Who is like Yahweh” to make his own shrine and idols which have absolutely no link to Israelite worship or tradition?  Not to mention this fellow steals enormous sums of money from his mother.  Not to mention this guy willingly ordains his son to be a priest—shouldn’t the broader religious community be involved with something like this?  And to top it all off he hires a Levite as a good luck charm further clarifying that this guy’s theology bears no resemblance to Yahweh.  Who is like Yahweh?  Certainly not this Micah.
The next character we find in the narrative is the mother of Micah.  Lest we place all the blame on Micah for his wacky theology and unethical behaviour we must recognize that the seed falls not far from the tree.  She is a mother who does not scold her son for his thieving ways.  She is a mother whose vows to the Lord benefit her house, not the Lord’s house.  She consecrates the 1100 pieces of silver to the Lord but only uses 200 for the idol’s creation—what happened to the other 900 pieces of silver?  And what kind of God fearing woman is making an idol anyway?  Curses become blessings; consecration to the Lord becomes idolatry; vows to the Lord are partially fulfilled, and even then benefit the self (Olson, 870).
Enter the Levite.  If the apple falls not far from the tree, this character demonstrates that the apple is rotten to the core.  He is supposedly a religious man, but he has lost his identity.  To which of the 12 tribes does he belong:  is he a Levite (descended from Levi) or is he Judean (descended from Judah)?  He comes from Bethlehem, but has no great ties to the village.  We get the sense that this guy is a drifter, and when the religious leadership of a people begins to drift you know there are problems.  He sells his prayers for 10 shekels a year which smacks of offering services to the highest bidder.  And perhaps most troubling of all is that this Levite, who should be undergirding the unified temple worship of the Lord, joins up with Micah’s unsanctioned sanctuary.  17:6 reads, “all the people did what was right in their own eyes”.  These are the vary words which conclude the book of Judges, and words which should make us consider our own spiritual condition.

• Are we, like Micah, disciples of our Lord in name only?
• Are we, like Micah’s mother, happy to make vows and offerings which in actuality really benefit ourselves?
• Have we, like the Levite, so lost our identity that we endorse the privatisation of faith, bless the idols of the nation who has invited us in, and yoke ourselves to any sanctuary for 10 pieces of silver or several point tax break? 

I am finished with my public reflection on Judges.  The stories which follow chapter 17 are so horrific they would ruin our appetites, and that would not be a good thing with it getting on toward lunch time.  Let me conclude with some good news.  If there is one truth we take from the book of Judges it needs to be this:  that God is faithful even when we are faithless.  Jesus loves us even when we are not lovable.  The worst we can do can be redeemed.  Our sin and the sin of the world can be terrible, but this sin will not carry the day.  Even when we have done our worst there will be another book which will speak of God’s redeeming, re-creating, resurrecting Spirit.   Beneath the layers of grime this is the underlying message of Judges and a reason for us to give thanks.  Amen.