Israel’s Descent into Evil and Chaos | Episode 18

This week, we discussed Samson and the wild end to the book of Judges.

Transcript

SPEAKER_02 0:00

People are always on about how God is mean or whatever. And in the Old Testament, God is so forbearing with these people. It's ridiculous. It's crazy. Everyone, everyone is wrong here. Everyone, every single person in the story.

SPEAKER_00 0:17

Okay. Welcome back, everybody, to the Year Through the Bible podcast. My name is Rodney Adams. I'm the executive director at Asbury Church in Tulsa, Oklahoma. And you are? I'm Andrew Forrest. I'm the senior pastor here at Asbury. Yep. And we are reading through the entire Bible in this, in a year, 2026. And the format that we're using is the one-year Bible. There's an Old Testament, a New Testament, a Psalm, and a Proverb reading every single day. And we've spent a lot of our time on this podcast in the Old Testament, mostly because A, it's just really strange. Uh, we don't read it quite as much. And so it just intellectually it's helpful to just kind of stay in it as we're kind of leading people through it. Um, but also it's very difficult to really understand the New Testament if you don't understand the Old Testament. And so it's kind of helpful for us to spend a lot of time here.

SPEAKER_02 1:08

You know, part of the problem is, and we're gonna have trouble actually later, is that the four we're only we're still only in the Gospels. And you understand the forest for the trees and the gospels, everybody gets it. Jesus is born and he dies and he raised raised is raised again. But that's just not naturally gonna happen in in the Old Testament. And so that's another reason. So that's gonna give us trouble when we get to the letter of the Hebrews or something, and we're in the Old Testament.

SPEAKER_00 1:31

But we'll worry about that in the future. Well, and there, yeah, and there's so much of Paul's writings as he's working out sort of these large theological implications to Christ's resurrection. He just references the Old Testament so much that you kind of have to have a like a working facility with the Old Testament. So um I don't know if you could say we're reading the rocket as we're flying it. We're definitely, we're definitely like learning as we're going. And so the timing isn't gonna always be perfect when we're trying to uncover things in the New Testament.

SPEAKER_02 2:00

Yeah, but what else would what the the the beautiful question of but compared to what? Right? Yeah. There is no, there's no alternative to it. It's like, well, I could move to a foreign country and be in immersion, which would be really, really hard. Yeah. Or you can move to a foreign country and try to learn a sentence a a week for the next 40 years and you won't ever learn anything. So you gotta, you gotta jump in the deep water and just go. And our people are gonna be so much stronger. Oh my gosh. It's gonna be like um yeah, some kind of extended intense camp where they you went and you did it and you realize how far how much better you got at math over the week or something.

SPEAKER_00 2:35

Well, and and our um we're playing the long game here. Like we're not done reading the Bible after this year. Right. Like we're people of the word. We are gonna be um on the for every day that we had this side of the grave. And so um next year or the year after, whenever we get into more lengthy studies of a single book of the Bible, we'll all be referring back to things we learned this year. It's gonna make that even richer. So it's gonna be a lot of fun.

SPEAKER_02 2:59

So we're in Judges, and Judges is an absolutely wild book. We talked about it last week. I think we said the judges is rated R, but we weren't really in the rated R parts last week.

SPEAKER_00 3:09

Yeah, I mean, it was like PG 13 and definitely in the areas that we I don't let my kids watch.

SPEAKER_02 3:14

Violent and and swashbuckling, but now it's just more morally just corrupt. So you have Jephthah. This is in Judges 11. Jephthah becomes a judge. He does some good stuff, I guess. But he makes this crazy vow where he says, God, the first thing I see when I get home, I'm gonna sacrifice to you. And then it's his daughter. And he says, Oh, I guess I gotta kill you, sweetheart. And she's like, Yeah, I guess you do. I mean, I think there's no question reading against the grain. That is, we know God thinks that human sacrifice is an abomination. Because it says later in the prophets, he says, Not only did I not command it and never even considered it. So there's no way Jepp is doing right. I think that's another example of these flawed figures. And it's also why this cartoon version, this is by the way, this is the problem with like the woke view of history. It's either morally pure or usually morally bankrupt, which is just ridiculous. Nothing in history is like that. Nothing in history. So uh I was listening to a guy, uh, I was reading this blog post. Do you know much about Operation Market Garden? I mean, some. Okay.

SPEAKER_00 4:20

Well, I don't know. I didn't know anything about it. In fact, when I was in the Netherlands, there was a memorial jump every single year. About it. And I jumped.

SPEAKER_02 4:29

Great. There you go. Yeah, okay, to reenact the guys. Well, apparently it was an absolute disaster of a plan, even at conception. And it was basically because Field Marshal Montgomery was really arrogant and wanted to show he could do a thing. And he, you know, he was telling Eisenhower to slow down Patton because he thought, you know, I can't have Patton get the glory. Classic human behavior in these things. So all these ordinary men are dying because the bridge is too far of the famous movie, The Bridge Too Far, right? Well, and Eisenhower ultimately signed off on it. And Eisenhower was pretty senior then. He would have had experience. It wasn't in North Africa. He'd already had that. He should have known this plan is never going to work. Yeah. My point being, and Eisenhower still did great stuff.

SPEAKER_00 5:09

Everybody is like that, right? Yeah. There's another, there's a more modern uh scenario. So there's a book uh, and there's lots of books been written by this, but the one that I've read that I like the most is called Not a Good Day to Die. And it is about um Operation Anaconda, when um all those special operations guys died in Afghanistan, and when you peel the onion back, it's just all this like hubris at the flag officer level. We want to get our guys in there instead of those guys. I gotta prove my bona fide writers. So we're gonna we're and we're tough. And so even though the weather conditions are terrible and we shouldn't be able to make this mission because we got to do this, not only are we gonna send 10, we're gonna send 20. Like we're just all the stuff, and of course, it has real consequences.

SPEAKER_02 5:50

So except not for the flag officers.

SPEAKER_00 5:53

Not for them.

SPEAKER_02 5:53

That's a major difference between that and like Roman. And the Roman, when the guy who's leading the uh, whoever, the bunch of the legions, and he refuses defeat, that's it for him.

SPEAKER_00 6:03

Yeah, that guy's done too.

SPEAKER_02 6:04

Anyway, my point is with this uh tangent is that Jephthah does some good things and must be a good guy because by the way, Jephthah is referenced positively in Hebrews. He is full of faith. But there is no question that the idea, this is in the end of Judges 11. No question that the sacrifice of his daughter is a complete disaster. And it kind of just shows how um religiously ignorant the people are at this time. He should know God wouldn't demand that.

SPEAKER_00 6:30

Yeah, and I maybe that is the point with Jephthah specifically. It seems like he's he has forgotten so much about God and about about God's covenant and about what God requires, that he's sort of mixing, he's it seems like he's mixing these expectations of of of um religious practice. So appeasing, thinking he needs to uh uh appease the one true God in the way that he would appease other gods, the the gods of the Canaanites or something like that. He's he's like he's doing things that that God is not actually requiring him to do. Or he's he's um you know what I'm saying? Does that make sense? He does he's to your point, he's ignorant of what God is actually asking what the Lord is to do, and also what right sacrifice looks like in a sacrificial system. That's right.

SPEAKER_02 7:18

And yeah, and you're not yeah, he's crazy. So I I want to look at Judges 12, just as this is my own private uh personal point here. So there's a phrase that we that is in English today that that would 50 years ago would have been better known, but in our general age of everyone is a barbarian, we don't know this. It's the phrase shibboleth. And a shibboleth in modern English usage is when there's a certain phrase or word that the in-the-know people use. So here here's an example would be oh all the politically correct language is like that, actually. Um, how about um you don't uh sort of saying happy holidays instead of Merry Christmas, right? Which by the way, I don't I'm sure I don't know if you feel like this. I hate it that that's like supposedly like a thing. Like I I when I say Merry Christmas to someone, I'm not making a religious political point. I'm saying Merry Christmas. But now that you force me to say if I say happy holidays, it means I don't believe in Jesus, then I'm gonna say Merry Christmas. I hate all those games. They kind of force you into a box, right? Yeah, but Merry Christmas is kind of a shibelift, and all the politically correct words are, right? Don't say this, say this. Well, it comes from Judges 12. So here we go. Verse 5, chapter 12. There's a fight between the different tribes. And the Gileadites captured the fords of the Jordan against the Ephraimites. And when any of the fugitives of Ephraim said, Let me go over, the men of Gilead said, Are you an Ephraimite? He said, Oh no, no, I'm not. They said, All right, say Shibaleth. And he would say, Sibyleth, for he couldn't pronounce it right. And they seized him and slaughtered him at the forge of the Jordan. So it's because of their tricks of speech, and they didn't maybe they couldn't say these consonants. We have this now, different different words.

SPEAKER_00 9:01

So this is where my World War II uh trivia is gonna come full circle. Okay. So in the Netherlands, there's a town called Savingen. Skavingen. Okay. Um and even then I just said it incorrectly. When I was living there, I could say it correctly. But that was one of the uh pass and challenge words um on the front lines in on the Western Front, or and then in World War II, in the parts where the Netherlands, the Dutch forces were, because Germans couldn't say it. Nazis can't say that. They can't they couldn't say that they couldn't say that word. And so uh scaven scaving in. See, now I can't say it, they'd shoot me. Um but I could say it then. So you're good. I could say it actually with with the uh Well, that would be a modern-day version of a ship.

SPEAKER_02 9:44

Well literal version. It's the exact same thing. Yeah. French people can't say the word squirrel. And if you give it to them written down, they can't pronounce it. It's too many. The for us it's easy to squirrel, but they can't do it. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 9:57

Nor could one of my daughters when she was three. What did she say? Squirrel. Squirrel. Squirrel. Yeah. It was a squirrel.

unknown 10:04

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 10:04

Yeah. Which is easier. It's a weird word. Anyway, that's where Shibboleth comes from. Okay, so then there's a couple other guys for a little bit, and then we get to our famous friend Samson in Judges 13. And so many things in Samson's birth story are both referenced, I think, in the story of Hannah in 1 Samuel, and in the story of Elizabeth and Zechariah in Luke chapter 1, and with Mary in the second part of Luke chapter 1. Where the angel of the Lord tells the lady, You're going to have a child. Yeah. And he's got to be a Nazirite. And so he's born from birth. He's a Nazirite. He's dedicated to the Lord. The Nazarites take this special vow to God. And every single thing he does is against that in every way. And he's a complete disaster of a human being. I mean, you kind of like him because he is he's kind of charismatic. He's doing cool stuff. Uh, but he is a mess.

SPEAKER_00 10:54

And it's like he kept um like the legalist parts of the Nazarite vow. Like he kept the hair thing. He kept it's like he kept all the things that kind of were the markers of it, but didn't live any in any way um like that. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 11:09

I like so famously 14, 14, 8. Now, 145. Samson, well, let's get to actually let's start at the beginning. 14. Samson went down to Timnah and at Timnah he saw one of the daughters of the Philistines. He came up to his father and mother.

SPEAKER_01 11:23

I saw one of the daughters of the Philistines at Timnah. Now get her from me as a wife.

SPEAKER_02 11:28

His father said, Oh, Samson, Samson, dear, is there not a woman among the daughters of your relatives? Wouldn't that please you more, sweetheart, or among all our people, and he must go and take a wife from the uncircumcised Philistines? Samson said to his father, Get her from me, she's right in my eyes. I mean, obviously, this is Genesis 3. He sees, he desires, it's right in his eyes. It's so obvious. Well, that happens. And then when he's going down, verse 5, there's a young lion, and the spirit of the Lord takes on him, and he's strong, and he he kills the lion with his hands. He didn't tell his mom or his dad. Then he goes and talks to the lady, and she's riding Samson's eyes. Later on, he returned to take her, verse 8. And he turned aside to see the carcass of the lion. And behold, there's a swarm of bees in the body of the lion and honey. This is so disgusting if you think about a rotting animal carcass. The while probably the jackals and the wild dogs have ripped it apart. He scraped it out with his hands and went on eating as he went. And he came to his father and his mother and he gave some to them and they ate. But he did not tell them that he had scraped the honey from the carcass of the lion, which obviously proves he knows he's wrong. He's getting because you're not supposed to touch dead things. Yeah. Plus, by the way, I wonder if you even need a religious rule against that. Who wants to go ahead and pull? They're not starving. I know. It's disgusting. Okay, so think of all the flies buzzing around its eyes of the carcass.

SPEAKER_00 12:47

This again, this is a hyperlink thing for me. And I'm not saying that it isn't uh for sure connected in the way that I'm gonna say it, but like we know that there's a few, only a few. The Nazarite vow thing would obviously include a lot of people because it's a thing that's been going on for a long time, but there's only a few named like Nazirite guys like in the Bible.

SPEAKER_02 13:08

So Samuel.

SPEAKER_00 13:09

So Samuel's one, and then I guess some people think that John the Baptist might might have been one just because the way he lived. Um, and it was very clear that he lived on locusts and wild honey. Yeah. And I thought that was just interesting. You think about the Nazarites and there's a honey thing going on. Um I'm sure uh John the Baptist didn't eat it out of carcass, but maybe that's also the contrast.

SPEAKER_02 13:30

Um, and they're and they're they both have this the birth announcement stories. Their parents, you don't get the sense that Samson's parents are old, but they are um they don't have children. They're all childless, they are childless. Yep. Uh okay, so Samson is an awesome uh riddle. I love it. Out of the eater came something to eat, out of the strong came came something sweet. He says, I'll let you, I'll let you uh I'll give you some wedding presents, but you gotta know my riddle. And then they they his wife wheels it out of him, so he tells her, and then they they know, and then he's mad. And apparently, in in in Hebrew, as in English, when he says, when he finds out that they found out his secret, he says, This is in verse 18, chapter 14, if you had not plowed with my heifer, you would not have found out my riddle. Apparently, there's innuendo in English, as well, I mean in Hebrew as well as English. Whatever. What's his problem? He's just a total disaster. And then he, but then at times he does defeat the Philistines, and he is definitely their enemy. Then he's dealing with a prostitute for a while and some other stuff, and and then he then the famous episode with Delilah. And there's three times he won't tell her what it is, and the fourth time she finally gets it out of him. You say, I love you. So, oh, here it is. This is verse 15, chapter 16. How great is this? And she said to him, How can you say I love you when your heart is not with me? You've mocked me these three times, and you've not told me where your great strength lies. And when she pressed him hard with her words day after day and urged him, his soul was vexed to death. It's so funny.

SPEAKER_01 15:06

And he told her all his heart and said to her, A razor has never come upon my head, for I have been a Nazarite to God from my mother's womb. If my head is shaved, my strength will leave me and I should become weak and be like any other man.

SPEAKER_02 15:17

Okay, you idiot. And you know, the whole thing is just outrageous because he already knows they're trying to get him, because each time they've fit tried and failed.

SPEAKER_00 15:24

So he's Yeah, but his but his um I mean, let's just his passions and his undiscipline and all that, it ultimately gets to him. Gets him, yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 15:34

Then they catch him, they put his eyes out, and he dies in this tragic scene where he blinded and he's there to entertain them at their feast. Just think about the humiliation of that. The ancient world is a rough place to live. Yeah. They have humiliated him. He's chained up between two pillars, his eyes have been gouged out, and he prays, and God gives him the strength to pull the pillars down, and the house collapses, and the Philistines die along with him. And as we've pointed out uh in other contexts, there is a clear pattern between Samson's life and the life of Israel. Israel has a holy calling, Samson has a holy calling. Samson runs away from his calling, Israel runs away from its calling. Samson whores after foreign women, uh, Israel whores after foreign gods. Samson's eyes are put out. The last king of Israel has his eyes put out before he's carried off into exile in Babylon. This is the end of 2 Kings.

SPEAKER_00 16:22

And by the way, remember back to Genesis when we were started recording these episodes, um, you and I talked a little bit about how um seeing was a big was a theme for for for the patriarchs and really for the people of Israel. Like, do you see or do you see? Right. And they and they didn't see. They never see. They never saw. And so I think there's something poetic and and spiritual about this as well. So here's the tragedy.

SPEAKER_02 16:54

Samson has to get to the point where his eyes have been gouged out before he realizes his faults. And the question, it's an open question in the Bible. Will Israel realize its faults, or does it have to take it all the way to the end that your king has his eyes put out and you're carried off into Babylon? Right? Yeah. That's the man. People are always on about how God is mean or whatever. And in the Old Testament, God is so forbearing with these people.

SPEAKER_00 17:19

It's ridiculous. We'll even just look at these judges. So um the three judges, so there's um, is it Othniel, Deborah, who's the other three? Yeah, who is before Deborah? He's before those are the first three. And for those, they go kind of things kind of go okay. They're good. They don't really Shamgar. Yeah, he kills. He just has like one little line. So there's not a whole lot going on there, but and then the next ones that include Samson, it just kind of progressively gets worse and worse and worse. But like the spirit of God is still on them, and there's God is still raising up someone, even from this sinful people, to to essentially be the savior of of Israel. Like they're it's so it's so interesting how God's faithfulness is still on these horrible, horrible people. And this is the thing you and I talked about offline. It's just been confusing to me to see the the literal words, and the spirit of God was on this judge or this guy or whoever, and they go and do the thing that God kind of was asking them to do, even if it might be a vile thing, like killing a bunch of other people, and then they just spin out. It's very strange to see the the melding or the um conflating of the spirit of God being on someone, and there's still these atrocities, yeah, just horrible people.

SPEAKER_02 18:39

And they're and they and they don't learn, really. Yeah. So then Judges ends with just the vilest stuff in the whole Bible, not stuff of nightmares, stuff of horror movie. So Judges 17 and 18, one way to think about it, it's about the religious chaos in Israel. You have this guy whose name is Micah, and he has some money and it's ill begotten somehow, and he makes basically idols with it. And then a young guy who's a Levite is walking by, and Micah basically says, Come work for me and be my priest. Just think how wild. I mean, this image is just gross. This weird private thing. You know what it makes me think of? Have you did you ever see Waterworld? Kevin Costner, yeah, where he's kind of a half waterfish guy. Yeah. Yeah. And there's like Dennis Hopper is this weird guy. They live in these islands. There's a weird, like, religious nature to some of the thing that's going on. Yeah. That's what makes this makes me think of like a weird twisted religion where they use religious language, but they're off and doing weird stuff. That's happening here. Uh, and then the people from Dan come and kind of kidnap this guy's private priest and say you should work for all of us. And it's just a total disaster. And then they have the very, very, very troubling scene, chapters 19 through 21, which is about the moral chaos in Israel. And it's like a retelling of the Sodom story, but it's worse. So just think about that. Sodom is destroyed for its sin in Genesis, and here you have Israel behaving worse than Sodom.

SPEAKER_00 20:11

Yeah. I mean, yeah, whoa. Yeah. They're they're they're mirroring the Israelites, and they would know the stories of Sodom and Gomorrah. They're their behavior is an exact mirror of this, and there's civil war going on. Here's what it made me think of. So um the the enemy, Satan, the devil, seeks to steal, kill, and destroy. And you've probably met people like this where um when your life is descending into chaos, and the enemy is sort of seems to have taken root in your life, ultimately it destroys you. Like it destroys the host, right? So, like, not I don't really want to be offensive. Um, I know this can be hurtful for somebody, but like suicide is kind of that the ultimate expression of you, you you always turn inward, right? That's why the love of Christ, when you're filled with the Holy Spirit, is an outpouring, like you're always pouring outward. And you almost see this with the Israelites as they descend further and further into um godlessness and chaos, um, they begin to turn inward on themselves. And so I think I don't think it's a coincidence that the end of Judges um is a civil war, right? Where they're they're now turning inward on themselves.

SPEAKER_02 21:33

Literally a civil war. So here's the relevant passage that forgive me, this is not for the squeamish. This is in Judges 19. There's a guy and he has a concubine, and he's traveling through, and they stay at this town called Gibeah. Verse 14, chapter 19. They passed on and went their way. And the sun went down on them near Gibeah, which belongs to Benjamin. And they turned aside there to go in and spend the night at Gibeah. And he went in and said, Down in the open square of the city, for no one took them into his house to spend the night. So already that's a bad note, because the ancient world depends on hospitality. You don't have it. Behold, an old man was coming from his work. He was from Ephraim. He was sojourning in Gibeah. The men of the place are Benjaminites. He lifted up his eyes and he saw the traveler in the open square. And the old man said, Where are you going? Where do you come from? He said, Well, we're passing from Bethlehem and Judah to the remote parts of the hill country of Ephraim, from which I come. I went to Bethlehem and Judah and I'm going to the house of the Lord, but no one is taking me into his house. Can I stop you right there?

SPEAKER_00 22:35

Yep, real quick. We said that there's a mirror with um the Sodom and Gomorrah story. Is there is there something here with Bethlehem and there's no room at the end? I mean, there's no I've never thought that before where hospital I just it just strikes me there's there's a there was definitely a hospitality issue with with Mary and Joseph trying to find a place to have their baby. Never thought about that. And we know that the Israelites were hospitable people anyway.

SPEAKER_02 23:03

So David's in the house of David. It's David's, I mean, um it's Joseph's family's place. Yeah. It's even worse. Yeah. Yeah, maybe. Yeah. Well, it's certainly a failure. Which would be explained like the son of God can't even have no one welcomes him. Right. Okay. So this old guy, and he goes, What are y'all doing? And they go, Well, we're walking, we're going, going here. Uh, verse 19. We have straw and feed for our donkeys with bread and wine for me and your certain female servant and the young man. We don't have we have everything we need, but the old man goes, Hey, I'll care for all your wants, only don't spend the night here. It's almost like he knows this is not a safe place for you. So he brought him into his house and gave the donkeys feet, and they washed their feet and ate and drank. And here's the part that's like Sodom. And as they were making their hearts merry, behold, the men of the city, worthless fellows, surrounded the house, beating on the door. And they said to the old man, the master of the house, Bring out the men who came into your house. We may know him, so they want to rape him. Exactly happens in Sodom. It's the exact same thing. And the man, the master of the house, went out to them and said to them, No, my brothers, do not act so wickedly, since this man has come into my house and do not do this vile thing. So so far, so good. And then look at this. Behold, these here now are my virgin daughter and his concubine. Let me bring them out to you. Violate them and do with them what seems good to you, but against this man do not do this outrageous thing.

SPEAKER_00 24:30

Which also happens exactly.

SPEAKER_02 24:32

Yes. In fact, let's turn there. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 24:34

Let's turn there.

SPEAKER_02 24:34

Turn to Genesis 19.

SPEAKER_00 24:35

Yep, yep, yep.

SPEAKER_02 24:37

Uh it doesn't actually happen in Genesis 19. It's proposed to happen in Genesis 19. So this is worse. This is 19.4. The angels are spending the time with Lot and his daughters and his wife. Before they lay down, the men of the city, the men of Sodom, 19.4 of Genesis, both young and old, all the people at the last minutes surrounded to the house, they said to Lot, Who are the men that came out with you tonight? Bring them out to us, but we may know them. They want to rape them. Lot went out to the men at the entrance and shut the door after him, and said, I beg you, my brothers, don't act so quickly. Behold, I have two daughters who have not yet known any man. Let me bring them out to you, and do with them as you please, only do nothing to these men, for they have come into the shelter of my roof. And they said, Stand back. And they said, This fellow came to sojourn, and now he has become the judge. We're going to do worse with you than with the other. They pressed hard against the man Lot and drew near to break the door down, but the men reached out their hands, the angels, and brought Lot into the house and shut the door, and they struck with blindness the men who were at the entrance of the house, both small and great, so they themselves are out groping for the door. So they're saved by the angels. And here in Israel, that's not what happens. So they both, it's weird, it's like they'd rather have rape happen to the women under their care than to have their hospitality violated. So it's misplaced priorities. Okay, back to Judges 19, 24. Behold, here this is again, this is not for the faint of heart, what we're about to read. Behold, here are my virgin daughter and his concubine. Let them bring them out now, violate them and do with them as seems good to you, but against this man, do not do this outrageous thing. The men wouldn't listen. So the man seized his concubine and made her go out to them. And they knew her and abused her all night until the morning. And when the dawn became to break, they let her go. And as the morning appeared, the woman came and fell down at the door of the man's house where her master was, until it was light. And her master rose up in the morning, and when he opened the doors of the house and went out to go on his way, behold, there was his concubine lying at the threshold, with her hands on the threshold. And he said to her, Get up, let's go. There's no answer. So he put her on a donkey, she's dead. And the man rose up and went away to his home. And when he entered his house, he took a knife, and taking hold of this concubine, he divided her limb by limb into twelve pieces, and sent her throughout all the territory of Israel. And all who saw it said, Such a thing has never happened or been seen from the day that the people of Israel came up out of the land of Egypt until this day. Consider it, take counsel and speak. So it is just this is this is human depravity at its ultimate form.

SPEAKER_00 27:02

And by the way, this guy's a Levite. Right. I mean, this is this is this is a um this is a priest set apart for the purposes of tending the tabernacle and um not to make too close of a connection here, but these guys would have been like butchers. Like they they were they they administered the sacrificial system, they knew how to do all this stuff. It's crazy.

SPEAKER_02 27:28

And so everyone, everyone is wrong here. Everyone, every single person in the story. I mean, some are more wrong than others. But the old man is like, hey, go ahead and take care of these ladies, do whatever you want to them. And then just the fact that the woman dies at the threshold, it's just disgusting. So this is the moral chaos we were speaking of. And they end the final two chapters of Judges are about the rest of Israel getting mad at the people of Benjamin and wanting to get back to them, and there's going and comings, and Benjamin fights pretty well, and that's how that's how judges end. So here's the final verse. Yeah, this is this is why this is why we're saying all this. Right. Here we go. Judges 21, 25. After all this nasty stuff and the civil war, in those days there was no king in Israel. Everyone did what was right in his own eyes, setting you up for the idea that they have got something has got to change, which is going to happen next. So that's the book of Judges. It is a wild ride. It is disturbing, but it is the true picture of humanity. It's what humanity is actually like. It's what people like. It's always interesting to me when people they wanted this binary. Well, people are basically good or people are basically bad. I don't know how you could say people are basically good because they're left to our devices. We tend into this moral chaos. People have good things in them, and even nasty people can do some nice things, you know.

SPEAKER_00 28:52

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 28:52

Presumably the guy that runs the drug cartel can be nice to his baby or something, I don't know, or nice to his girlfriend.

SPEAKER_00 28:57

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 28:58

Or his, you know, and then they do murders over here. So that's the picture of humanity that judges gives us.

SPEAKER_00 29:06

Well, yeah. And ultimately, what we've been talking about this whole year is how these, these are, these are the covenant people of God set apart to be a blessing for the world. And they themselves can't even receive a blessing or be a blessing unto themselves. Like they can't do it.

SPEAKER_02 29:24

They cannot do it. Yeah. Which is because you sp you spoke about the apostle Paul. This would be in the background of the apostle Paul. When Paul is making his great pronouncements, see, this is the problem with kind of Christian theology in a laboratory, in a whiteboard. All have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God, Romans 3.23. There is no right, none are righteous, no, not one. We have these complicated theological systems about sin in our hearts and all these things. But Paul is just reflecting on actual reality.

SPEAKER_00 29:53

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 29:54

There he's looking at Israel's stories and all these things. That's what he's reflecting on. And judges has got to be part of it. Look, we can't get it right.

SPEAKER_00 30:01

We're about to start reading the book of Acts here in about a month. And what we know about the book of Acts is when Christ is risen from the grave, and before his ascension, um God gives his Holy Spirit to his church. And now, and and now um the Spirit of God is available in all those who are in all those who who who love him and profess Christ as Lord, as their savior. Well, you can't underestimate the power of having this decentralized um the spread of Christ like in us all over the world. Right. Right? Like my marriage and us um centering our lives on the lordship of Christ is a blessing to my neighbors in a way that's very difficult to tell. But in a world where that's not that's not possible, where God's grace is administered differently, you could see how you could just see how um you you actually can't really understand in 2026 what Paul means by for all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God without understanding the Old Testament. Right. Because we don't know what life is like without the giving of the Holy Spirit to Christ's church. And again and post-Christ defeating death on the cross and in his resurrection.

SPEAKER_02 31:28

And as you pointed out, these are the chosen people who have already God's law, which is one of the things Paul's wrestling with. They have all that, and they still, this is their this is their moral descent. I can't remember if we talked about this in the podcast. If we have, we can cut this out. But in our English Bibles, Ruth is the next book, which is a little beautiful palate cleanser. Basically, everybody behaves pretty well in Ruth. Yeah. There's a couple of Ruth is a sad book. There's hard things that happen, but the people are good. That's like a sweet book. Yeah. Totally. And that's happening at the same time as the judges is going on. So not everyone is corrupt. Not every single person is morally depraved. Yeah. Which makes Ruth even more remarkable because these are people who are trying to do the right thing in the midst of all this moral depravity. But in the so in our English Bibles, we go judges, Ruth, first Samuel. But in the Hebrew Bible, Ruth is stuck at a different section, and it goes from Judges right to 1 Samuel, which is about the calling of the king that Samuel's going to anoint.

SPEAKER_00 32:23

We'll see later, and this is soon, probably on the next episode, to your point about Ruth and these people. There are people that are being faithful. Um Hannah is uh one of those who is who is uh will become Samuel's mom. She's one of those. Um because you can't forget that we'll talk about this more later, I guess, but they're they're whoring after other gods. And so when you take these women who are barren, and Baal or Baal is this fertility god that that you could see how it would be pretty tempting if your entire society has has started whoring after these fertility gods for you to do it as well. If you yourself are barren, cover your bases. And and we see that some of these women don't. Like they they they stay, they they put their faith in the one true God, which is kind of cool. I have a a quick little note. I wonder if there's anything to this. I was just thinking about since they've entered the promised land, um, the Ephraim, the hill country of Ephraim comes up all the time. Right. Like it's and and if you look at a map, it's like right dead center of of the promised land. Um and I just wondered if there was anything too, when you go back to Genesis and the blessing that that Jacob, when Jacob blesses Ephraim and Manasseh, remember that remember that weird scene where he crosses his hands and Manasseh is the firstborn, but Ephraim gets the blessing because he crosses his hand. I wonder if there's anything to that. When I when I make my way through the Old Testament and I read the names of the tribes, I always think of that scene in uh Genesis 49, I think it is, where Joseph goes through and blesses all the tribes. And he kind of he's kind of making a proclamation about them. You know what I mean? Um I just wonder if there's anything to that. There may not be, but I just can't help but notice how much Ephraim comes up when Ephraim, he and Manasseh are sons of Joseph, and we all we've gone through the Joseph story a bunch of times. So anyway.

SPEAKER_02 34:30

And they're adopted in. Yeah, it's right there in the middle. It was right in the dead center of it. And so you gotta go up and down through Ephraim.

SPEAKER_00 34:37

All the tribes are all around Ephraim.

SPEAKER_02 34:39

You gotta go up and down through them.

SPEAKER_00 34:40

Yeah. Yeah. So anyway. Well, we're gonna hit Ruth a little bit this week, um, or in in terms of our reading, and then we're right into first Samuel by the end of this week.

SPEAKER_02 34:49

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 34:50

Which moves pretty quickly as well. It does.

SPEAKER_02 34:52

By the end of the following week, we'll be done with the Samuel section of First Samuel. Uh, and then we start the Saul section. So, I mean, it moves quick. Uh, Samuel is easy to read, but it is, it is like judges, there's a lot of strange stuff that happens that's gonna raise a lot of questions. It's relatively easy to understand what's going on. Like a child can get it. It's also pretty violent. Yeah. Not not this nasty violence so much a few times, but more just like they're the is the princes of Israel killing each other left and right, stabbing each other in the back, Saul's men, David's men.

SPEAKER_00 35:28

Have you seen that show, House of David? No. People have talked about it. It says great. I haven't seen it. Apparently, it's kind of like that.

SPEAKER_02 35:33

It's more it would be a great television show.

SPEAKER_00 35:35

It's more like um kind of like the the swashbuckling parts of the David story.

SPEAKER_02 35:40

It it would be great because you have all the intrigue. Yeah. David's generals versus Saul's generals and who's loyal to whom.

SPEAKER_00 35:47

Yeah. But we'll get there. Okay, we'll get there. We'll keep going. I know this stuff is uh tough sledding sometimes, but um keep going. Don't get bogged down too much in the details. But if you find a hyperlink, I have found it fun to kind of go back and see if there's anything to it. If you find a tribe that seems interesting, go back to something you heard about a tribe earlier. Um, and then later, a lot of this will come up too when we get to Paul's letters. We'll have a lot of fun stuff probably to look at in the Old Testament. So yep, so keep going. This has been the Year Through the Bible podcast. I'm Rodney Adams. I'm Andrew Forrest. All right, see you next time.