Judges Chapter 2

“After those people had died, their children grew up. They did not know the Lord or what He had done for Israel. So they did evil and worshiped the Baal idols. They did what the Lord said was wrong.” Judges 2:10, 11 ICB

There is a lot to process on this chapter so I am going to go section by section and let’s see what comes from it.

Verse 1-5

God is making a Covent with His people and also giving a warning if they do not do as He asks. The first important thing is that God says that I have kept My promise to your ancestors. He is showing that He will do all that He says He will do. It’s a way that He shows to build trust with His people.

He then turns and says that you should not make an agreement with the people in this land, and not only that you also need to destroy their Gods and alters. But the Israelites did not do that so God made those people the Israelites enemies. In addition their gods would become a trap. The Israelites had had proven that other gods were a down fall for them. First when they took the goods from Egypt, and secondly when they had the Golden calf built in the wilderness.

They saw that there could be trouble and they wanted to follow God’s leading. It says that after this message they built and alter, had sacrifices and worshiped God there.

Verse 6-9

The Israelites followed what God had called them to do while Joshua was still alive, and also during the time that elders lived. But as it is with all people they die at some point. Sometimes I think about it this way, we tend to live a more spiritual life when we are around leaders that have a very close spiritual walk, we tend to follow the commandments of God, and tend to have an easier time reading the Bible, but when they are gone, we tend to have a harder time doing the things we know we are supposed to do. Other things start to take control of our lives.

Verse 10-15

As with all people they grow old and die, and new generations grow up. There was a new generation who had not experienced what God had done for the Israelites. They decided that they were no longer going to serve God the way that the generations had done so before them. The began to worship the idols of Baal and other pagan gods.

Sometimes you need to look at history to understand the present situation. Any time that people turn their back on God they usually cause themselves greater trouble than is necessary. You can look back to when we first started to sin till today and anytime that we turn our back to God things start getting harder.

For the Israelites there neighbors were no longer their friends. They were being robed from, they were being attacked. The Israelites would go out to defend themselves but it was in vain. They could not protect themselves from their enemies.

God had once again kept His promise. He had told them that if they fell for the gods of the other people that their protection was gone and that He would no longer protect them from their enemies.

Verse 16-23

This last section I like to call the thesis of the book. We have looked at the history of why the Israelites are in this place, and after this we learn about what God does to help save His people. But I am also getting ahead of myself. Let’s look at some passages.

“But the Israelites did not listen to their judges. They were not faithful to God. They followed other gods instead. In the past the people of Israel obeyed the Lord’s commands. But now the Israelites stopped obeying the Lord,” Judges 2:17 ICB

God set up Judges to show the people where they had gone wrong in hopes that they would turn from their ways back to Him. But what happen instead it not only did they decided not to obey God they also refused to listen to His messengers.

I like to define a Judge is someone, who looks upon the actions of a person, and determents if that persons actions fit inside or outside the law. Based on these determinants he issues a judgment of guilty or innocent. 

From the judgment the judge issues a plan that will allow the convicted to make repayment for what he or she has done wrong.

The Judges in the case of Israel where using God’s law to show God’s people that they needed to turn back to God to be restored under the law of God. But if they chose not to make the payment of change they would suffer the choice that they made to not follow God, and to not be protected by Him.

Even though the Israelites were not following what God had told them to do He still had compassion on them. That is why He sent Judges to deal with the situation. But when the judges died they would go back to the same way of doing things, which kept them in the circle of doing God’s will and then falling away from God’s will.

The last verse I find to be interesting

“In the past the Lord had permitted those nations to stay in the land. He did not quickly force them out. He did not help Joshua’s army defeat them.” Judges 2:23 ICB

God placed in the lap of the Israelites an awesome opportunity to witness to those nations around them. They had a chance to share the wonderful love that God had for them. They had a chance to share and win people over to God. But instead they had allowed themselves to be converted to their gods and to ignore the God that truly matters.