Judges 3:1-5

GOD’S MEANS OF TESTING CHARACTER AND CHASTISING FOR SIN.— Judges 3:1

CRITICAL NOTES.—

Judges 3:1. Which the Lord left.] Allowed to remain, i.e., spared from doom; not—did not mark out for destruction. For all the Canaanites were doomed to be exterminated, including the Philistines, the Phœnicians and Sidonians; also the Hivites, as far north as the Gate of Hamath, which was about one hundred miles farther north than the conquests of Joshua reached (Numbers 34:7; Genesis 15:18). God Himself was to do the work; His people were to be the instruments employed (Deuteronomy 7:2; Deuteronomy 7:23; Deuteronomy 11:23; Deuteronomy 20:16). But His engagement to aid them was conditioned on their obedience and trust. When they failed in fidelity to Him, their conquests were arrested, and the tide began to flow the other way (Joshua 23:12). When from unbelief or indolence they held back from attacking the Canaanites, God spared those whom they spared. Hence, what is called “breach of promise”—apparent, not real (Numbers 14:34). To prove Israel by them לְנַסּוֹת (Greek ὲπείρασειν). Some regard this phrase as having a different meaning here from what it has in Judges 3:4, and in Judges 2:22, where it is used of moral probation, or testing faith and obedience. Here, they say it means to exercise, or train for war—to give them practice in fighting with the view of keeping up the warlike spirit among them. [Pulp. Com. and others.] This alteration in the interpretation of the word, in one and the same paragraph, is purely arbitrary, and could scarcely have been thought of but for the necessities of a certain theory, as we shall see under Judges 3:2. Here, it means to test character, as in Deuteronomy 13:3; and the point to be tested is stated in Judges 3:4 to be, whether they had the spirit of true allegiance to their Covenant God. As many of Israel as] those who came to man’s estate after the close of the wars of Canaan (Judges 2:10). The survivors of the wars of Canaan did not need this discipline. Had not known all the war of Canaan] i.e., by personal eyesight and experience. They had not passed through them, seen with their own eyes the formidable dangers, and met them boldly, through strong faith in the promise of their God.

Judges 3:2. Only that the generations, etc.] Here we have a statement of the moral purpose served by the wars. It was to prove what the younger generations would do when they had personal experience of those wars. Would they show the same fidelity and courage as the fathers, or not? The construction of this verse is peculiar, arising partly from a difference in the idiom of the languages. Bertheau makes Jehovah the subject of the verb to know, and makes Israel the object—the sense being “that He (Jehovah) might know Israel (by putting them to the proof) in teaching them war (giving them the opportunity of fighting against these nations in dependence on His promise).” This gives a good sense, though it seems more natural to regard “the generations of Israel” as the proper subject of the verb. We prefer to render it thus: “Only for the purpose (רַק לְמַעַן) that the generations of the children of Israel might have the knowledge (דַּעַת) of war, through a personal experience of it (לְלַמְּדָס) (not all the generations of Israel, but) those only (רַק) who before had not known it.” The important question here is, what is meant by “teaching them war.” Many understand it to mean, knowledge of the art of war—to cultivate in them a martial spirit, skill in handling their weapons, and true valour in the field. This, it is said, would be a check on effeminacy, and keep them up to the mark of being always able to defend their country when peril should arise. Trapp has it, that Israel might not rust through long rest … “them slay not lest my folk forget.” “Scipio,” he says, “persuaded the Romans not to ruin Carthage lest their youth should want exercise, and grow wanton with too much ease.” If this be the correct view, it is singular that they should be required to fight with their enemies, in order to be able to fight with their enemies. But passing this, it is significant, that none of the many critics who adopt this meaning quote any parallel passages in its justification. There are no such passages. The whole teaching of Scripture is to the opposite effect, viz., that the people of the covenant must rely, in all conflicts with their enemies, solely on the promised help of their God. (Psalms 20:7; Psalms 44:3; Psalms 44:5; Hosea 14:1; Psalms 147:10.) The use of natural means had its place, but the people are never taught to rely at any time on that prop, for the defence of their country. On the contrary, the manner in which they acquired possession of the land, is ever represented as the rule according to which they might hope securely to occupy it, namely, by faithfully obeying the commandments of their God. To learn war after the manner of the “wars of Canaan” we understand to be, to look for victory, not through personal bravery, but through the omnipotent help of Jehovah, given in fulfilment of His promise, in answer to faith and prayer.

Judges 3:3. Five lords of the Philistines. Three of these lordships had been formerly subdued by Judah (Judges 1:18), but seem afterwards to have been lost through the sloth and unbelief of that tribe in failing to follow up their advantage. Where sin is not extirpated, it will, like a noxious weed, take root again—“lords,” or satrapies (Sept.). The original sarnaim, or “princes” literally signifies axles. The chief is so called because the people and public affairs alike revolved around him as the parts of a wheel upon its axis. [Bush.] Joshua 13:3; Judges 16:5; Judges 16:8; 1 Samuel 6:4; 1 Samuel 6:12; 1 Samuel 6:16, etc., 1 Samuel 29:2; 1 Samuel 29:6—(סַרְנֵי) lordships, or principalities. And all the Canaanites.] This list is not quite the same with that given in Joshua 13:3, etc. Changes had occurred; conquests had been won and defeats suffered. But the difference lies chiefly in the fact, that the paragraph in Joshua gives an account of the allotment to the different tribes of the land occupied by the nations, that are here said to be spared to serve as scourges for Israel’s sins. The phrase “all the Canaanites” does not refer to all the nations called by that name who originally occupied the country, for very many of these had been slain; but partly, it refers to those that were still found within the territory conquered by the tribes (both the uplands and valleys having towns that were either wholly or partially filled with Canaanites), and chiefly to that large and formidable nation of the Canaanites outside the conquered territory to the north-west, whom the Israelites had not yet met in arms—the Phœnicians. This people, who are generally identified with the Sidonians, occupied a narrow strip of land of only two miles in breadth, but extending along the coast for a distance almost equal to the entire length of Palestine from Dan to Beersheba. In this strip were the cities of Tyre and Sidon; it was densely populated, and the people were among the most intelligent, enterprising, and powerful nations of ancient times. It began near the point where the territory occupied by the tribe terminated, and extended northward, shut in between the Lebanon range and the sea. It was all within the original limits of the land of promise, and ought to have been occupied by the Israelites, as part of their inheritance, though it never was really subdued by them. Sidon was the firstborn of Canaan, and his descendants were the very worst among races where all were so bad. Take Jezebel for an example (1 Kings 16:31; 1 Kings 21:25). The Canaanites who dwelt among the Israelites were most numerous in the northern tribes, and it was these especially that were “snares and traps to them, scourges in their sides, and thorns in their eyes.” The Philistines.] The plain of Philistia, with a breadth of about twenty miles, ran along the entire seaboard of the Mediterranean from the desert, in a line parallel with Judah, to a point near the middle of Palestine. In the central section of the coast, the plain becomes narrower, being only two miles in breadth, and is shut in by the mountains of Manasseh and Ephraim. This is called the plain of Sharon. And the Hivites that dwelt in Mount Lebanon.] The derivation of “Hivites” is interesting. First comes תָוָה to live, and חָוָּה including the idea of roundness. ὼόν ovum an egg (Sept.), which is both round and the source of life. Hence חַיָה and חַוָּה came to signify encampment (2 Samuel 23:11), and village (Numbers 32:41), from the circular form in which camps and villages were disposed. The people called “the Hivites” are those who reside in round villages. Even down to the present day, the villages are so built that the conically-shaped houses form a circular street, enclosing an open space in the centre for the flocks and the herds. This habit of building distinguished the Hivites from the other nations. [Cassel.] Baalhermon.] from אֲרָס height, or highlands. Hermon is the loftiest peak in the Anti-Libanus range. It is the southern spur, and towers far above all its surroundings. This district and all northward among the hills and valleys of the Lebanon range, for a distance of nearly 100 miles beyond the point of Joshua’s conquests, was occupied by the Hivites (Joshua 11:17; Joshua 12:7). Baal-gad is the same with Baal-hermon. All this district was originally marked out for inheritance by the tribes, but in fact was never subdued by them. The entering in of Hamath. The narrow pass which opens out on Hamath—the most northern point in the land of promise [Eadie.] This is the gate to Canaan on the north.

Note on the “Wars of Canaan.”—These did not belong to the common category of human wars. They were specially made at God’s command for a high moral purpose—to vindicate Jehovah’s character in the punishment of flagrant transgressors. In doing this, solemn displays of the Divine Perfections were made, both before the heathen nations and before the chosen people. They were therefore sacred wars, and on sacred principles were they fought. As compared with other wars, the differentiating element in them was, that God Himself was the chief actor, who always determined the issue, and the principle on which He gave success or permitted defeat, was the possession, or the want of trust in His name, and fidelity in keeping His commandments. These wars were indeed both a test of spiritual obedience and also a discipline to correct and refine. To know them implied a great deal more than to know the art of fighting bravely as warriors. Brave as Joshua and his followers were, there was no proportion between their small resources and weak arms on the one side, and the chariots of iron, with the hosts numerous as the sand on the sea shore, which these nations mustered, on the other. It was a war of children against giants—of sheep against wolves. Never were armies more unequally matched, and never was faith of victory through God’s promised help more thoroughly tried. The fathers knew that the conquest of Canaan was not a thing of easy achievement. And now the children must be trained on the same lines, that they may learn how hard a thing it is, as a condition of their retaining possession of the inheritance, to be firm and loyal to their God in the actual presence of enemies, so superior in all the equipments of war, to themselves.

MAIN HOMILETICS OF THE PARAGRAPH

The genius of the history of Israel, as distinct from every other history, lies in the fact, that they were the people of the Messiah. They were His brethren, being, together with Him, Abraham’s seed and members of one family circle. They were His ancestry, for “of them Christ came who is God over all,” etc. They were His people, and represented Him on earth till the times of His personal appearance. Being the people of the Messiah, the Messiah’s God becomes their God. God unites them to Himself in the bonds of an everlasting covenant, engaging with great condescension to make Himself over to them as their God, and adopting them to Himself to become His people. In them and in their history, we see a practical embodiment of the blessings which the Messiah procures for men. In them we see an illustration of what God, for the Messiah’s sake, can do in following sinful men through all their course of disobedience and rebellion, and not only preserve them from utter ruin, but lift them up at last, through faith and repentance, to the full enjoyment of everlasting life.

This is the picture which is set before us in this, and in all the historical books of the Old Testament. The Covenant is the backbone of all the Divine dealings with this people, as set forth in these books. We see there, in the position which God takes up, and from which he never withdraws—I will be your God—the vast resources of love which may be drawn upon, in support of all the demands made on the patient forbearance and forgiving tender mercy of God, by the terrible depravity and highhanded rebellion of a perverse people. We see why it is they are not “consumed in a moment”—why not utterly cast off at any time, not even under the Babylonish captivity—why they are so often forgiven, and such astonishing proofs of the Divine favour are shown on their behalf. From the beginning, Jehovah became their God. That position once taken, their history throughout becomes the medium for a glorious display of all the Divine perfections, in pardoning and blessing men for the Messiah’s sake.

Hence we uniformly find them greatly beloved of God. We see God in close contact with them every moment of their existence; they are never out of His sight, and no hand is allowed to touch them but His own. They are to Him a “peculiar treasure,” and He keeps them in the hollow of His hand (Deuteronomy 33:3; Psalms 121). He takes the entire direction of their history, and all its issues are to him. This we shall now endeavour to trace.

TESTS AND CHASTISEMENT.—Judges 3:1

I. The work to be done.—The trial and chastisement of an unfaithful people.

1. Chastisement as well as trial. The people had already shown symptoms of apostasy, and there was more than reason to suspect their fidelity. The plague-spot had appeared, and there was need to cauterise. When symptoms of “fretting leprosy” show themselves, an examination must be made. The mere presence of such neighbours as these Canaanites, and the having to dwell among them, was itself a chastisement. The presence of bears and wolves in the family circle, even if they should be muzzled, would be a great affliction to the children, though the object might only be to ascertain whether they would put their trust under the parental wing. But it would be chastisement in terrible earnest, were the muzzle removed. So with Israel, when these wicked were first allowed to dwell among them, and when, afterwards, the reins were let loose, and they were permitted to exercise their savage passions at will.

2. A special mark is put on the reason for this course of dealing. God had already explained with great distinctness the ground of His procedure (Judges 2:20). Yet He now repeats it, to put emphasis on the necessity of such a course of dealing with a people who had been the recipients of unbounded mercy, and yet were beginning to show the extreme of ingratitude. “He speaks once, yea, twice.” He calls aloud that men may mark His jealousy for His own honour as a Holy God, while yet so full of compassion for His adopted people. Thus at the outset of this checkered history, He explains—“line upon line”—the ground of his procedure, that it may stand clear to every eye. On this trial and chastisement these things are to be noted:—

I. It was God’s own thought to put them to the proof. “The Lord left these nations.” He kept the guidance of their history in His own hand. He directed it this way, not that way. He put the machinery in motion. It did not fall out in the ordinary course of events. Neither did the nations themselves entertain any such thought.

1. Far otherwise were the thoughts of the nations. “Israel was a speckled bird among the nations—the birds round about were against her.” There was a something about that people which excited the hostility of the other nations. It was the old “enmity between the woman’s seed and the serpent’s seed.” This hatred was not due merely to the successful war which Israel had waged against their cities and armies, though that had its share of the reason. But it was due mainly to the character of Israel’s God and His ways. He was too holy and righteous in Himself—too severe in His condemnation of men’s sins—for a world lying in wickedness to do other than hate His image wherever seen. Their thoughts were—

(a) when Israel was strong, to seek alliance with them—only for their own advantage; to gain the profits of commerce, or obtain security against future possible exterminating wars. When true religion is in power, the world will be obsequious, and multiply honeyed words; but when the opportunity is given, it will stab to the heart, and not pity. So—

(b) when Israel became weak, their thoughts were of conquest and revenge. They gnashed their teeth when they thought how terribly these upstarts among the nations had decimated their armies, destroyed their cities, and robbed them of their soil. Feelings of retaliation, or of self-interest, were their only motives. Depraved human nature, without the grace of God, cannot rise higher. The last thing they would have thought of would have been to serve any purpose of the God of Israel in the matter. But “there be higher than they.” While they thought they were serving only purposes of their own, He was overruling all that they did to accomplish His own holy and benignant ends.

2. The nations could do nothing without God’s permission. God “sets a hedge round about” His people that none may touch them till permission is granted. Even Satan admits this (Job 1:10). The lapidary allows no one to cut or grind his jewels but himself, or if another comes in, it is by express appointment, and the work is done under his own direct supervision. Jehovah would not allow these nations to look Israel in the face, to tempt, chastise, or intermeddle with them, until they were needed as instruments to execute some gracious purpose of His own. Had he not judged it necessary to sift Israel’s character, and put it to the proof, we should not have read a line of the raids of Chushan-rishathaim, or of Eglon, and other marauders, whose tragic deeds constitute so large a part of the story of this book. These rough hammers would never have been employed on God’s precious stones, had he not seen good reason for it, and permitted it to happen. But as soon as the hammer has done its work, it is flung aside, and not another stroke is allowed. The nations did nothing till God gave them a charge; and when Israel became penitent, He applied the bridle to their wrath. “Their wrath He made to praise Him, and the remainder He restrained.”

3. This proving of character was done out of respect to His covenant. It was His own doing, and it was done according to a fixed rule of dealing.

(a) God acted by principle, and not by temporary impulse. He never acts otherwise. He is never in haste, and never under the influence of excitement as man is. Were it so, He would be weak like man. But He acts by fixed covenant arrangement. Covenant implies system—a definitely arranged course for all time to come. It is beneath the majesty of the King Eternal to act by temporary impulse, or to make any real change in His rules to meet what mortals regard as peculiar contingencies. He comprehends from the first all that may happen, and provides against every emergency.

(b) He acted according to His established manner of dealing with His people’s sins. It was foreseen that sin—its existence, its inveteracy, its continual breaking out among the people, notwithstanding all the precautions taken to prevent its prevalence—would constitute, to human wisdom, a perplexing, hopeless difficulty in the way of carrying out the provisions of the covenant. God’s character, as a “consuming fire” against the workers of iniquity, was not changed by His entering into covenant with this people. On the other hand, “His people were bent to backsliding from Him,” and there was an extreme necessity for vindicating the Divine character, in order to the righteous bestowment of covenant blessings.

(c) Provision made for this through the intervention of the coming Messiah, the real Mediator of the covenant. Of His appearance and work in “the fulness of time,” intimation was daily given by fresh victims evermore laid upon the altar, throughout their entire history as a people. Meanwhile some course must be taken to carry home to the hearts of the people a conviction of the flagrant character of their sin, in presuming to break their solemn pledge to the Most High, and to prefer the unhallowed service of heathen gods to the pure worship of Israel’s God. Afflictions serve this purpose. God will not break His promise, for it is an “everlasting covenant.” Neither can He look upon sin. But He will chastise. He will cast into the furnace to “purely purge away their dross, and take away all their tin.” So He leads them back to Himself, in the exercise of unwearying forbearance, “for His mercy endureth for ever.” (Psalms 89:31.)

4. God puts His people under discipline to serve wise and holy ends. If enemies are used, they are but the rod in His hand, employed to do a necessary work. They do nothing merely at their own discretion. Any commission given to an earthly power is limited by the charge, “Thus far, but no farther.”

(a) No real injury is ever intended. They are more sacred to Him than any other property. He watches over them as the mother bird fluttering over her young; and, as that mother placeth her own body between her young and the arrow that is aimed at their heart, so he who would smite a child of the covenant must first fight with Him that made it.

(b) Never is the rod without some gracious instruction. “Hear ye the rod, and Him who appointeth it.” “All his works are done in truth and uprightness.” (Psalms 25:10.) This gives confidence to the pious heart, and stills all apprehension as to the issue. How many “Fear nots” are in Scripture. Instances in David’s history. Before Shimei he “accepts the punishment of his iniquity.” “Let him curse, for the Lord hath hidden him!” God put him to the test, and he stood it. (See also Psalms 39:9; 2 Samuel 24:14.

5. God Himself determines the time, manner, and severity of the trial.

(a) The time—not too soon—lest He should seem to be suspicious of His people, and take pleasure in hastening to chastise. His language rather is, “Surely they are My people, children that will not lie” (Isaiah 63:8.) Nor too long—lest the malady should get too deeply-rooted, and require a far more severe operation to eradicate it at a future period. In the one case, the tendency would be to foster a spirit of bondage; in the other, to make light of sin, and presumptuously to cast off the fear of God.

(b) The manner—in such form as to instruct the mind in the evil nature of the sin which has brought down the chastisement. The bitter streams of which God causes them to drink, spring from the very sins on account of which God chastises them. “Thine own wickedness correcteth thee, and thy backslidings reprove thee.”

(c) The severity—not destructive, as if He found pleasure in taking vengeance. “To crush under His feet the prisoners of the earth … the Lord approveth not” (Lamentations 3:34; Lamentations 3:36). “I will not contend for ever,” etc. (Isaiah 57:16). A ruthless enemy may be employed as the instrument, yet he cannot go a step beyond the limit prescribed, nor durst he inflict a single pang to gratify malice or revenge, except in so far as that may be a means of carrying out the purpose of the real actor. “I am jealous for Jerusalem with a great jealousy; I am very sore displeased with the heathen, for I was but a little displeased (with my people), and they helped forward the affliction” (Zechariah 1:14). Sometimes His hand is very heavy. He goes the length of “barking our fig tree,” and “laying our vine waste” (Joel 1:7). That which is proverbially fruitful He makes conspicuously desolate. But He has always “a bottle for the tears,” and a balm for the wounds. He may use the “scourge,” but never the “sword.” He “afflicts not willingly.” He “chastens for our profit.”

COMMENTS AND SUGGESTIONS

THE LORD’S THOUGHTS ABOUT HIS PEOPLE.—Judges 3:1

I. God has many thoughts about His people. “Many are thy thoughts to us-ward; they cannot be reckoned up in order.” He concerns Himself much with them and their history. “I know the thoughts that I think toward you—thoughts of peace and not of evil, to give you an expected end.” They are the children He has nourished and brought up. They are called by His sacred name. He has once taken them by the hand, and His love is unchangeable. He has removed mountains for them, and dried up seas—rolled back rivers in their course, and made the hard rocks gush forth streams of water, and the heavens send down angels’ food. How should He not have many and loving thoughts about His people!

II. God’s thoughts about His people are often anxious thoughts. He has chosen them to show forth His praise; but how can a disobedient and rebellious people serve a purpose like this? He appoints them to illustrate the righteousness of His law, and the tenderness of His dealings; but how can they do this when they are daily sinning before Him, and there is no end of their murmurings? He has engaged to see them all safely through the dangers of the wilderness, and settled in the enjoyment of the spiritual inheritance above; but how can this be accomplished when there is so much unbelief and hardness of heart shown at every step of the Divine leadings? “O, Judah, what shall I do unto thee? How shall I put thee among the children, and give thee a pleasant land and goodly heritage?” “Have I been a wilderness unto Israel—a land of darkness? Wherefore say my people, We will come no more unto thee?”

III. Behind all His thoughts are gracious intentions. They all spring from love at bottom. Not one is dictated by enmity, or even indifference. They are all only different forms of loving-kindness and tender mercy, corresponding with the different or changing circumstances in which they are placed. “How precious are Thy thoughts to me, O God! How great is the sum of them!” Sitting on the throne of the Gospel, God’s thoughts to His people are only of pardon, reconciliation, peace, and the hope of eternal life. The Father’s will is that nothing of “the bundle of life” be lost, but “raised up again at the last day.” And even now His several chastisements are sent to serve the ends of love.

IV. God’s thoughts of what true love is are very different from ours. “As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my thoughts higher than your thoughts.” He can forgive without difficulty to any extent, where there is true penitence, and trust in the blood. “He abundantly pardons.” But He often withholds that for which flesh and blood ardently crave. He applies crucial tests to bring out the whole heart, and covers us with shame and humiliation. In place of allowing us to sit down at ease, and enjoy the good things of this life without stint or annoyance, He makes us go through the briers and thorns, and learn to “scorn delights and live laborious days.” “As many as I love I rebuke and chasten.” The permanent rooting out of sin from the heart, though requiring sharp present suffering, is regarded as true love in the end in the estimation of our God.

THE CHASTENING OF THE LORD

“God not only appoints all our chastisements, but they are under His special direction and management as to their nature, degree, continuance and effects. What a comforting reflection this! To have every circumstance of our distress in the management of such a hand! He is most intimately acquainted with our frame and feelings. He is possessed of unerring wisdom and infinite goodness, so that our affairs cannot miscarry in His hand. Not a sparrow falls to the ground without His permission. So minute and tender is His care over us, that He ‘makes all our bed in our sickness.’ ” [McLean.]

“The raising of our troubles, the keeping them upon us, and the removing of them, is all of the Lord. It is His wise disposal, and not an ill chance (Amos 3:2). Do not, therefore, rest in second causes, nor vex yourselves as if spurning against the Lord, but patiently bear them. Whoever may be the instrument, the Lord is the overruling cause.

“When by God’s kindness and many comforts we cannot be brought to cleave to Him with all our hearts, He will take another course to bring us thereto. He will acquaint us with wants, trouble, and sorrow. And yet such is His love, that if they prevail with us, and work kindly upon us, to bring us to repent, He will return to us again graciously and continue His former bounty. Our first parents when they sinned began to know what good and evil meant. Children, while tenderly dealt with by their parents, have all things with ease provided for them; but when they grow up and are put to shifts, they come to know what hardness means, through the rough handling of strangers.” [Rogers.]

“Chastenings from the Lord oftenact as a touchstone of human character. They are an Ithuriel’s spear to reveal every man as he is. When Pliable and Christian came to the Slough of Despond, they both fell in and wallowed for a time in the mire. Pliable was instantly unmasked. He angrily asked his companion, Is this the happiness you have been telling me of all this while? After a desperate struggle he got out of the mire on that side which lay next his own house, and Christian saw him no more. But Christian got out on the side next the wicket gate.

But sharp tests while they sift, also strengthen religious characters. When the wind shakes a young tree, and bends it to the earth, it seems to be retarding its growth, yet it is really furthering it. It makes it strike its roots deeper into the soil, that its stem may rise higher and stronger, till it can struggle with tempests and spread its green leaves to a thousand summers. The winds and storms are the educators of the tree, no less than the sunbeams and the dew. In the intellectual world a strong mind thrives on difficulties. There is no falser method of education than to make all smooth and easy, and remove every stone before the foot touches it. God has ordained that where there is to be progression there must be struggle. Specially is this the case where the alloy of sin has entered, and needs to be smelted out by the hot furnace.” [Ker].

“The country of the Israelites was rich, and abounded in dainties of all sorts, so that they were in danger of sinking into the utmost degree of luxury and effeminacy. They must, therefore, sometimes wade in blood, and not always in milk and honey.”

[Henry.]

GOD’S CHANGE OF DEALING

Here we have the first step taken in a new course of the Divine dealings. The change is very marked—similar to that of the attitude of the Lord God towards our first parents in the garden of Eden, when man had sinned. At first his voice was heard in loving intercourse with man at the cool of the day; but soon came the frown, and “He drove out the man.” All the days of Joshua were as a bright morning in the history of the young nation whom the Lord had brought out of Egypt. “He couched, he lay down as a lion; he did eat up the nations his enemies; he brake their bones, and pierced them through with his arrows.” Prosperity flowed “as the waves of the sea.” These were the “lights” of Israel’s history; but alas! the “shadows” followed. In the first chapter of Judges, the atmosphere becomes electrical; in the second, specks begin to appear on the horizon, and the first mutterings of the approaching thunder are heard. Now in this chapter, we see the dark clouds getting settled in the sky, and the elements of destruction being prepared. What could have happened that that same God, who had given up these Canaanites to Israel to be trodden down as the mire, should now permit them to rise up and become Israel’s masters, and even sweep over the land as an over-running flood? The change is too marked to escape notice:—

1. It is rendered necessary by sin. Israel had an “evil heart of unbelief in departing from the living God.” This apostacy in the heart was now showing itself in the life. “God who seeth all things, taketh notice of, and is much displeased with the sin of having any other god.”

2. There is no real change in the Divine love. An altered conduct on the part of the people leads to an altered tone on the part of their God. When the child forsakes the father, that does not imply that the father forsakes the child. God did not depart from His purpose, but other means now became necessary to carry it out. If God now speaks in notes of thunder in place of whispers, it is still Love that speaks.

3. A change in the Divine attitude is required from the danger of leaving sin unchecked. When the stone has begun to roll down the hill, it must be stopped at once, if stopped at all, for soon, otherwise, it will become unmanageable. As soon as the heart shows that it has decided to have another god, true love will hasten to take measures to show the folly and ruin in which such a course must end.

4. Apathy in the worship of God led to this change. We note a strange silence in this book on the subject of the observance of Divine ordinances. We hear nothing of the solemn feasts, of the services of the priesthood, and the performance of duties in the sanctuary. The altars and their sacrifices, the sprinklings, washings, and ceremonial requirements of the law, are as if they were not. The few glimpses given of the religious life of the people, show how mournfully they fail in forming the most elementary conceptions of the meaning of the Divine ordinances. Micah had a superstitious parody of the Mosaic rites. The Danites followed his example. Gideon worshipped a visible god. Jephthah had but a slight knowledge of the law of vows. While Samson and his parents had but a very crude knowledge of the Mosaic institutions.

This is instructive. The mind must be filled. If it does not accept the true God, that which is no god, or the things of this world, must occupy His place. If it is not led by the Spirit of God, it must be under the dominion of “ungodliness and worldly lusts.” To “walk in the Spirit” is the appointed means of gaining the victory. (Galatians 5:16.) To neglect to do so leaves the door open, and the danger is imminent.

The very mention of these nations looks like the wolves prowling round the sheepfold. It is the appearance of a dark cloud, ominous of stormy times. It is the first visible frown on the countenance of Him, who bore His people through so many dangers for two generations as on eagles’ wings. There was a change in God’s attitude, but not in God’s purpose.

MAIN HOMILETICS.—Judges 3:1

II. It was necessary to put Israel to the proof.
1. Their allegiance to their God must be ascertained. This was indispensable.

(1.) God’s jealousy required it. In this character He reveals Himself in the covenant. “I the Lord thy God am a jealous God—thou shalt have no other gods before me.” The smoke and the thunders of Sinai were a visible confirmation of that character of jealousy. Both the attitude of the Speaker, and what He said, showed that He was intently watchful of the measure of respect that was paid to His character, by those whom He addressed.

(2). Without allegiance the people were not in a fit state to receive Divine blessings. Every promise was conditioned on this. It was no secondary question. The good of the creature cannot be advanced by sacrificing the glory of the Creator. It would have been derogatory to God’s holy name, to have lavished His favours on a rebellious people. Those whom He shall bless must have a fitness of character to receive the blessing. If they are to be a mark toward which His love is to go out, He will see to it that they be worthy of His love. He loves all men with a love of compassion, but He regards those only with a love of complacency, who bear His image and keep His commandments. “He taketh pleasure in them that fear Him.”

(3.) Ways and means were easy where there was allegiance. A consistently religious character on the part of the people being given, all difficulty was at an end for bestowing any needed blessings upon them. As regards deliverance from dangers, however great, it was easy for God to “drive asunder the nations,” to make “one man chase a thousand,” or to make a mighty host melt away in absolute weakness, before a mere handful of men. Nay, even iron chariots, solid walls of masonry, and armies of giants, were as the small dust of the balance before Omnipotence. These things were small in God’s estimation; what was great was—trust in His character, and obedience to His voice. This trust was uniformly required ere He put forth an atom of his power. The refrain of every chapter seems to be, “O that my people had hearkened—I would soon have subdued” (Psalms 81:13). Men’s sins block the way to the outgoings of God’s loving kindness (Isaiah 59:1). Even the power of working miracles was a greatly smaller possession, than a good title for admission to the heavenly world. A similar principle in Matthew 12:50. Where Jesus found faith, He had no difficulty in working cures. In one short hour He could with ease heal the whole sick list, in any of the towns through which He passed. But when there was no faith He paused. “He could there do no mighty works because of their unbelief.”

2. Human protestations of obedience are little to be trusted. “He that trusteth to his own heart is a fool.” Every page of human life confirms the sentiment—the history of this people pre-eminently. Take two illustrations—

(a) When they first received the law from their God. Awe-struck with the majesty of Him whose terrible voice was echoed by the thunders and the earthquake, and which made even Moses exceedingly fear and quake, never did people pledge themselves more solemnly to keep His law with all care, in all the duties of life (Exodus 24:7). Yet, behind the scene, what is the verdict of the Searcher of hearts? “O that there were such an heart in them!” etc. (Deuteronomy 5:29). Within six weeks, this same people were gathered on the same spot to demand of Aaron, “Up, make us gods to go before us, for as for this Moses … we wot not what is become of him” (Exodus 32:1).

(b) When they were newly settled in their promised home. The human heart was here tried under totally altered circumstances. Formerly, there was indeed the great deliverance from bondage as an accomplished fact before them, but as yet there was nothing possessed. All was wilderness around them. They were in complete destitution, and had nothing to look to but promise, while that seemed to be of impossible accomplishment. Now the thing promised has been accomplished in all its length and breadth. The people are assembled in their thousands to receive the farewell counsel of the venerable captain, who had led them to an unbroken series of victories over mighty armies all over the land, with scarcely the loss of a man. Their hearts within them swelling with gratitude for “the great goodness of their God to the house of Israel,” they are called upon to say, in sight of the thrilling history they had passed through, would they, in all candour and sincerity, resolve from this time and henceforth to fear Jehovah and serve Him as their God, or would they prefer to join with the Amorites around them in the worship of their gods? Instantly and vehemently, they protest against the possibility of their forsaking Jehovah and worshipping other gods (Joshua 24:16). They are warned against a loose decision in so important a matter, and solemnly asked to make it on a broad and well-considered basis. They feel hurt that their sincerity should be doubted for a moment—“Nay! but we will serve the Lord.” The decision was unanimous, unhesitating, firm. Alas! for human protestations! At that very moment there were already strange gods among them, though the welkin rang with the cry of undying allegiance to Jehovah, and not a single dissentient voice was raised throughout the vast multitude, that were assembled on that solemn day. Now the “root of bitterness” has begun to bear fruit.

CAUSES OF FAILURE IN FIDELITY TO THE COVENANT

(1.) Their avowal was made in self-confidence. They did not rely on the promised grace of God, as alone able to make them stand. They trusted to the present warm emotions of their own breasts, when their feelings were raised to flood-mark at the retrospect of their marvellous history, and they supposed they would always feel as they felt then. But good resolutions are not indigenous to the human heart. They do not grow all the year round, nor all the week through. They are not like the stone pillars on which the rough blasts beat in vain, and stand unshaken in all weathers. Rather, they are like the gourd which comes up in a night, and perishes in a night. Our safety lies not in the warmth of present feeling, but in offering up the prayer, “Teach me the way of Thy commandments, and I shall keep it unto the end. Incline my heart unto Thy testimonies.” (Psalms 17:5.) Peter was sincere, though not wise, in what he said, as the result showed. (Matthew 26:33; Matthew 26:35; Matthew 26:72; Matthew 26:74.) His real security lay in the fact, that he was in the hands of a mighty Advocate, who had beforehand prayed for him that his faith should not fail. Good moods, even high moods, may be occasionally reached, but they afford no security for to-morrow. “If God withdraw His grace and leave us to ourselves, we are like a city without gates and walls—a prey to the first enemy that appears, however contemptible.”

(2.) It was made in self-ignorance. Every man is disposed to “think more highly of himself than he ought to think.” This is the besetting sin of our fallen nature. Trying themselves by man’s standard, many think themselves to be something before God when they are absolutely nothing, and so deceive their own hearts. The people that stood before Joshua thought, that the strength of their convictions was so great, they could stand any amount of temptation to turn them aside from their allegiance. The spectacle of all that God had done for them in the wilderness, and in the land of their inheritance, was now fresh before them, and they reckoned that it would always be thus vivid. But it is little that any man knows of “the plague of his own heart.” There is more latent wickedness in the hearts of even the best of men than is ever suspected to exist. It is only when the seemingly clear pool is stirred to the bottom, that a discovery is made of the large sediment of evil that is deposited in it. The heart is not a fountain whose goodness is in itself, and that has power to purify itself, but it is a springhead naturally impure, that has to import from without all its cleansing influence. “Let him that thinketh he standeth, take heed lest he fall.”

(3.) It was made in ignorance of the evil influences around them. Satan is ever desiring to have the Jobs, the Davids, and the Peters, to sift them as wheat. The wolf does not more thirst for the blood of the lamb, than does the Wicked One show himself ravenous for the ruin of souls. “He goeth about as a roaring lion,” etc. Woe to those that are off their watch, and are unprepared for the spring of the terrible enemy! He ever prowls around the fold of the Good Shepherd, hoping yet one day to be able to seize something out of His hands. Yet there is the precious assurance; “I give unto my sheep eternal life—and they shall never perish.” The world too, both by its smiles and by its frowns, proves a formidable enemy. It has long been an enchanted ground to Zion’s pilgrims. Yet through faith we “overcome the world.”

(4.) It was made without counting the cost. God’s service ever has a cross of some kind, and every man who enters it must have some idea of the weight of that cross. If this is not done beforehand, he will soon come to “take offence at that cross,” for he will find that what he supposed to be a mere pleasure-walk, has turned out to be a steep, rugged, and dangerous course. The rule is—“Crucify the flesh with the affections and lusts”—“cut off a right hand” when that is required—“hate father and mother” rather than lose Christ. We must appreciate the strength of Christ’s claims upon us, and know beforehand the lions we shall have to fight with, if we are to enter His service, and so calculate whether we shall accept it with all its risks, or whether reckoning the cost to be too great, we shall go over and join the standard on the other side.

3. Their responsibility was now greatly increased. God had done great things for them, and the rule now applied—“To whom much is given, of them much shall be required.” For upwards of eighty years they had had a remarkable history of privilege. No nation since the beginning of Time had seen such a sublime series of Divine interpositions on their behalf. It was a unique history, and now the climax was reached. They were in actual possession of the land flowing with milk and honey. God was now saying, “What more could I have done for my vineyard?” The time of a great expectation was come. The fruit of so much nurturing and caretaking, for two generations or more, was at last to be reaped. Settled in the land after so much cost, and with Jehovah himself as their God, it was a reasonable expectation that they should be a pattern of loyalty and allegiance to all the other nations—an oasis in the otherwise wide desert of heathenism—a solitary garden bringing forth the fruits of righteousness, while all around rose up nothing save briers and thorns. No people were more sacredly bound by obligations, and if their devotedness were at all to correspond with the measure of their privilege, it must amount to a “cleaving to the Lord with full purpose of heart.”

4. Their temptations to indolence were increased. Flesh and blood love to be at ease. The “wars of Canaan” were practically over. They were “sitting comfortably under their vine and their fig-tree.” They had long been wanderers; now had reached home at last, and such a home!—The glory of all lands!—“A land of brooks,” etc. (Deuteronomy 8:7). Their heads laid on the lap of ease, sweet odours filling the air, and a table of luxury daily spread before them, it was a hard battle to keep in subjection the cravings of sense, and live according to the dictates of a pure and spiritual faith. Some sharp stimulus was needed to prevent a people so situated from “settling down on their lees.” They must be “emptied from vessel to vessel.” By some suitable ordeal they must be prevented from indulging in “the lust of the eye, and the lust of the flesh.” It was wise, it was needful to set them on great searchings of heart”—to cultivate self-denial and watchfulness on the one hand, and on the other to institute such external tests in the course of Divine Providence, as would infallibly indicate how the needle of the heart was pointing from time to time.

COMMENTS AND SUGGESTIONS.—Judges 3:1

GOD OFTEN PROVES BUT NEVER TEMPTS

He never puts any object before the mind with the intention of drawing it into sin, but He oftentimes applies touchstones to a man’s character to ascertain what he really is. When the magnet is presented, immediately it draws the steel filings to it; but if there were no affinity in these filings with the magnet, they would not be drawn. Were evil neighbours brought round a man, if there were nothing in him in common with the characters and ways of these neighbours, he would not be attracted by their society but rather repelled, and induced to make a resolute stand against their errors and wickedness. But if, with a profession of righteousness, he is yet really ungodly in heart, and has no true love to God, then the presence of the wicked around him is certain to disclose the fact, that he is an alien to God. When God tries a man’s character, He only brings to light the character which already exists. He never puts any evil into him which he had not before, nor does He ever stir up a man to commit sin, merely for the sake of committing it.

“Light might as soon become the cause of darkness, as holiness itself become the cause of unholiness. ’Tis a contradiction, that He who is the Fountain of good should become also the fountain of evil. Sweet waters and salt cannot come from the same spring. Men are said to be ‘fitted to destruction,’ but it is not said that God fits them. [The Greek verb is in the middle voice; it therefore must be read self-fitted.] They by their sins fit themselves for ruin, and He by His long suffering keeps it from them for a while. God cannot excite to that, which, when it is done, He will be sure to condemn. Sin would deserve no reproof from Him, if He were in some sense the author of it. If God were the author of it, why should our own consciences accuse us of it? It is God’s deputy, and cannot accuse us of what the Sovereign Power itself inclines us to. Having laid down such severe laws to restrain men from sin, and having crucified His own Son, when acting as our sin-bearer, it cannot be, under any circumstances, that He should stir up or excite us to sin. A pure flame cannot engender cold, neither can darkness be the offspring of a sunbeam.” [Charnock.]

“God neither deceives any man’s judgment, nor perverts his will, nor seduces his affections, nor does anything else that can subject him to the blame of men’s sins. Temptation, in the bad sense, always proceeds from the malice of Satan working on the corruptions of our own hearts. God may, however, consistently with all His perfections, by His providence bring His creatures into circumstances of special probation, not for the purpose of His receiving information, but in order to manifest to themselves and others the prevailing dispositions of their hearts. In this sense of putting to the proof—bringing to the test—the term is used in many other instances. In Deuteronomy 13:3 it is said, ‘The Lord your God proveth you, to know whether ye love Him with all your heart and soul.’ Of Hezekiah it is said, ‘In the business of the ambassadors, God left him to try him (le-nas-soth-o) that He might know all that was in his heart.’ Indeed, we find this kind of trial is sometimes made a subject of petition, on the part of good men, as if they regarded it as an act of special favour (Psalms 26:2). ‘Examine me, O God, and prove me (nassani), try my reins and my heart.’ Also (in Psalms 139:23), ‘Search me, O God, and know my heart; try me, and know my thoughts; and see if there be any wicked way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting.’ Also (2 Corinthians 13:5), ‘Examine (πειραζετε)—try yourselves whether ye be in the faith—prove your own selves; know ye not your own selves,’ etc.”

[Bush.]

MAIN HOMILETICS.—Judges 3:1

III. This testing of character was made in love, not in anger. It was the doing of a wise and loving Father, not of an offended Lawgiver. For—

(1.) All God’s dealings with His covenant-people are necessarily in love. This is the very spirit of His covenant: “Your God”—“God is for you”—always on your side. This is His fixed attitude. His love may assume many different forms, corresponding with the different phases presented of their character and conduct, but it is always love. When He chastens them for their sins, even going the length of scourging, it is still love that leads Him so to act by them. (Hebrews 12:6; invariable as in Judges 3:7.) His threatenings are the hoarse notes of His love. The hidings of His face in dark, providential dispensations are so, as in bereavement, adversity, or a sense of desolation, so that they cry out, “All these things are against me!” All tests of character, in like manner, are still but different forms which the covenant love assumes, working mysteriously, but not less sincerely or fervently. It is the love of an unchangeable God. “He loves to the end.” “He rests in His love.” The whole tone of His dealings is, “I have loved with an everlasting love.”

(2.) It was love to prevent a breach of the covenant. Though the covenant is everlasting, it is expressly on the condition that His law is observed and His name glorified. Most of the Divine promises are conditional; few of them absolute. Were no change of circumstances to take place from those under which they were made, they would remain without change. But where such an alteration of circumstance occurs, the very unchangeableness of the Divine character requires that there be some alteration in the promise itself, or that it be not carried out, for it was made only as applicable to certain circumstances, and where these no longer exist the promise cannot apply. God promised to bless His people with blessings, but it was only as a holy and obedient people that He could possibly do so, in consistency with His character as a holy God. On their ceasing to manifest this character, God’s blessings towards them would cease to flow, yet not because of any change in His desire to love them, or fulfil His promises, but simply from the want of the necessary condition. The same character, however, always continuing, the promise would also always continue. There never was a promise made to carry a disobedient people into the land marked out for inheritance. For only loyal subjects of the God of Israel was it intended from the beginning. When, therefore, God dealt sharply with the sins of His people, He was really taking the direct course to prevent a direct breach of the covenant, and so was acting in the purest love.

(3.) It was love to teach the heart the bitterness of sin. That, in the first instance, is learned from the bitterness of its fruits. “The end of these things is death.” The chain becomes heavier at every step, for “the way of transgressors is hard.”

(a) God hides His countenance when His people sin against Him. “I will go and return to My place till they acknowledge their offence,” etc. (Hosea 5:15.) That is usually the case when they prove stubborn, and “will not frame their doings to turn unto their God.” (Hosea 5:4.) Sin in any form is unspeakably abhorrent to His holy nature. Intercourse with Him, therefore, cannot be granted to His children till they come to view their sins as He does. He would impress on them, that it is an exceeding evil and bitter thing to forsake Him as their chief good, and “cast off His fear from before their eyes.” (Psalms 25:14; Matthew 5:8; Hebrews 12:14.)

(b) An evil conscience troubles the soul. Conscience is either the best friend or the most terrible enemy the soul has. It is the echo of God’s voice in the inner man. The trouble which it can raise in the soul is like a spiritual earthquake, so profoundly are all things unsettled by it. The pleasures of sin are felt to have been purchased at a terrible price. “Thou art the man!” is rung in the ear with threatening emphasis, and the soul is glad at any price to buy back its former quietude. The sinner feels that his way is “hedged up with thorns,” while “trouble and anguish make him afraid” on every side. “A dreadful sound is in his ears. He is scared with dreams and terrified with visions.” He cries out in the bitterness of his soul—

“The fire that on my bosom preys
Is lone as some volcanic isle;
No torch is lighted at the blaze,
A funeral pile!”

At last, feeling the hopelessness of carrying on a war with God, and remembering that His mercies are great, he thinks of confessing his sin and returning to Him from whom he has deeply revolted. He takes up the language of the penitent spouse, and says, “I will go and return unto my first husband, for then it was better with me than now.”

(c) The mere cherishing of sinful thoughts in the soul causes misery. They pollute and degrade. The feelings that necessarily accompany them are shame, dread, and self-reproach. The soul is conscious of being deeply dishonoured, as was Cain when banished from the presence of the Lord. Sin is felt to be a great humiliation. It is like a bird of paradise dropping to the ground from mid-heaven, and trailing its wings in the mire. It is felt to be something abnormal, as if the wheels of life were moving backward. It is something strangely unnatural for the creature to rise in rebellion against the author of its being; and when conscience is awake, the instinctive experience of the heart is a thrill of horror, or a feeling of disquiet that is prophetic of a danger we cannot measure. Sin means the giving over of man’s nature to a vile use. It is the profanation of God’s holy image, and the rendering of the great gift of an immortal life not only practically worthless, but converting it into a boundless and intolerable misery. It implies the perversion of every faculty of our rational nature, and a total eclipse of its spiritual loveliness. It darkens the understanding, deflects the will, deadens the conscience, corrupts the affections, and subjects the reason and the moral instincts to the service of the appetites and the passions. Sin is in all respects the bane of the soul, of which it must absolutely get rid, if life and happinesss are to be enjoyed. Hence it is truest love to teach the bitterness of sin.

(4.) It is love to teach self-knowledge and humility.

(a) Self-knowledge. God’s people knew little of the real state of their own hearts—what a small foundation of goodness there was in them, and how even that was entirely owing to the grace of God. Hence the innumerable mistakes they were ever falling into when giving promises for the future. It was true love to discover the foundation of all these mistakes; and the proof that was made of Israel by the discipline to which it was subjected, was for the instruction of Israel itself, quite as much as for any other reason. To know one’s self is indispensable to make every other kind of knowledge valuable. The knowlege of ourselves as we stand before God is necessary in order to realise our guilt, and need of an Advocate—our vileness and need of cleansing. Heart-searching trials give this knowledge. Then our destitution of good, and natural corruption are made to appear. The man feels he must be speechless when the demand is made for a righteousness such as God can accept. A glance at that standard leads him to cry out, “Woe is me! for I am undone!”—“in me dwelleth no good thing.” The Laodicean Church imagined itself “rich,” etc. until put to the test by the Searcher of hearts; then it was found to be “wretched,” etc. (Revelation 3:17).

(b) Humility goes with self-knowledge. “God led thee these forty years in the wilderness, to humble thee and prove thee, to know what was in thine heart,” etc. (Deuteronomy 8:2). It is humbling to feel that we are dependent for everything on the will of another. But it is crushing to our pride to be told, at the place of judgment, that, “from the sole of the foot even unto the head, there is no soundness in us, but all is wounds and bruises, and putrefying sores,” etc. The natural man’s natural plea should be, “God be merciful to me—the sinner!” And when the natural man becomes the spiritual man, his natural language will be, “By the grace of God I am what I am!” Poverty of all native goodness, with alienation from God, and a tendency to evil thoughts and desires, will be found to be more or less the state of every heart when discovered to itself.

(5.) It is love where a false character exists to have the discovery of it made in good time. God’s Israel was now beginning to prove “an empty vine bringing forth fruit only to himself.” Had this been allowed to go on, justice must ere long have required that the tree be “cut down as a cumberer of the ground.” Faithfulness to his interests prompted to the use of such means, as would seriously awaken his attention to the fact. Hence the trials which were now brought upon Israel. It is kind to “stony-ground” hearers to impress them with the fact that they have “no root” to their religion while going forward to meet the day of trial. For those who are “building on the sand,” it is truest kindness to have it thundered in their ears, that they may not lose a moment in quitting their ground, and placing all that is precious on the solid rock. Tests of the very strictest will be applied when the day of reckoning comes. As travellers are searched for contraband goods on crossing the frontier, so when the soul passes the boundary line between time and eternity will it be searched, lest it should have about it such forbidden things as unbelief, deceit, pride, lusts and passions, covetousness, and the like. For “they that cherish such things shall not inherit the kingdom of God.” It is true kindness to have all the chaff winnowed out of our character on this side of time, that we may enter the solemn world beyond with the true wheat alone. Trials put us through this preliminary winnowing process.

SUGGESTIONS AND COMMENTS.— Judges 3:1

THE IMPORTANCE OF HAVING THE REAL CHARACTER REVEALED

I. Religious character is the most important thing about man before God. He is more important as a creature of intellect or imagination, of judgment or reasoning, than he is as an organism of flesh and blood. And in like manner he is greatly more important as an intelligence gifted with will, conscience, affections, and moral faculties, generally, than simply as a possessor of intellectual powers. Hence it is a spectacle of deeper interest to the Searcher of hearts, to behold the powers with which man worships and knows God, going out in proper exercise to their legitimate object, than to look on the exercise of the faculties which are either merely intellectual or physical.

God loves to see man’s heart going out to Himself as its chief good, and its affections clinging to Him as the highest and best of all objects. He loves to see the will, amid all the oscillations in the stormy sea of life, always deciding according to God’s will, as the needle follows the direction of the pole. He loves to see the conscience in man responding in perfect harmony to the teachings of the Divine law. He delights to see the whole soul bowing habitually in reverence before him. To his Creator, this is the most pleasing aspect which a creature made after His image can present.

And since man has lost this excellent disposition of his faculties, what God now delights in is, to see his disordered nature beginning, through His grace, to get back somewhat of its original exquisite balance. Hence He loves to try them, especially His own children, that He may see whether the heart will come back to Him in new obedience.

II. The foundation of God’s dealings with men must be made clear. It seems singular that God should apply tests to bring out men’s characters, though He already absolutely knows them. But in ruling over a world of men, God deals with things as they appear at men’s point of view. For Himself, He “knows what is in man,” without any use of means. His eye reads character with equal clearness, as it exists in embryo in the heart, as when it comes to full developement in the life. It reads the first emotion, or purpose of the heart, with equal distinctness, as it does the lines of the countenance, or the doing of the hand. To him “the darkness and the light are both alike.”

But that God may be glorified in the estimation of man, it is necessary that the grounds of His proceedure be to some extent made known to him. That of which He approves or disapproves must be made visible that man may understand the meaning of His providential rule; also men’s characters must appear in their actual conduct, that it may be known why He chastises on the one hand and blesses on the other. The grounds of His moral government with men, are either, what is brought out in their conduct, or what in their hearts they know themselves to be.

III. Men do not know even their own hearts till they are tried. Tests are often used to bring to light unsuspected evils. Peter little thought he was capable, when put under the pressure of a strong trial, of denying his Lord. David little supposed that, when left to himself, he could have gone so far in presumptuous sin, as he did in the matter of Uriah the Hittite. Hezekiah, when he was sick, little dreamt that he could have acted so vainglorious a part, as he did in parading his wealth before the deputies of the king of Babylon. His friends never supposed that in the heart of so meek a man, vanity of so rank a growth should be found.

In like manner, the people who had been called by Jehovah’s name, who had experienced numberless proofs of His fatherly care and love, and had had the most marvellous history the world ever saw, of Omnipotence itself interposing in their behalf, might have been expected to have been the most loyal of all people to their God, and the most unswerving in keeping His commandments. Yet at the very moment they were protesting fidelity, idolatry was appearing among them in the background, and ere long the mass of the people began to show an inveterate tendency to apostatize from the God of the covenant. It was fit that means should be used to bring out their real character, that they might know themselves.

THE DECEPTIVE CHARACTER OF SIN

“Sin deceives with appearing to be so little before it is committed. It seems so shallow, that I might wade through it dry-shod from any guiltiness; but when committed, it seems so deep, that I cannot escape without drowning. Thus I am always in extremities. Either my sins are so small, that they need not my repentance, or so great that they cannot obtain thy pardon.” [Thos. Fuller.]

“Some children, when they first put on new shoes, are very careful to keep them clean. They will hardly touch the ground with their feet, lest they should dirty the soles of their shoes. Yet, perhaps, next day they will trample with the same shoes in the mire up to their ankles. Children’s play is our earnest. On the day of vowing we are overscrupulous in our professions, yet, soon after, we wade in sin up to the ankles—nay; they go over our heads.”

[Thos. Fuller.]

THE USES OF DISCIPLINE

“The stones from the wall said, We come from the mountains far away—from the sides of the craggy hills. Fire and water worked on us for ages, but only made us crags. Human hands have made us into a dwelling, where the children of an immortal race are born, suffer, and rejoice; act their part during the morning of their existence, and perform the duties which belong to their earthly state of existence. But we have passed through much to fit us for this. Gunpowder has rent our very heart; pickaxes have cleaved and broken us; to us it seemed without meaning, as we lay misshapen stones in the quarry. Gradually we were cut into blocks, and some of us were chiselled with finer instruments to a sharper edge. But we are complete now—are in our places, and are of service. You are in the quarry still, not complete, and much seems inexplicable. But you are destined for a higher building; and one day you will be put in it by hands not human—a living stone in a living Temple.” [Parables in Household Things.]

Self-searching is an imperative duty in the first instance, “Examine yourselves—prove your own selves.” Much unsuspected sin exists in the hearts of the best of men which trial brings to light. The pond is often clear on the surface, but when it is stirred much foul sediment is found to have been lying at the bottom.
“ ‘Whose fan is in His hand.’ Well it fits Him, and He it. Could Satan’s clutches snatch the fan, what work he would make! He would winnow in a tempest and throw the best away. Had man the fan, out goes for chaff all that are opposed to the opinions of his party. But the fan is in a wise and faithful hand. Only He who knows the heart is fit to hold it.” [Thos. Fuller.]

MAIN HOMILETICS.— Judges 3:4

IV. Obedience is with God the all-important requirement.

“To keep the commandments of the Lord” was the people’s term in the sacred covenant. To bless was God’s term; to obey was reasonably that of the people. “Fear God and keep His commandments; this is the whole duty of man.” To find the fruits of righteousness in the life, was the revenue of glory, which the Creator looked for in bringing His creature into existence. Never was the duty of obedience to the laws and statutes of the great Jehovah, more solemnly and affectingly impressed on men’s hearts and consciences, than in the illustration which we find in the book of Deuteronomy, from Judges 4 and onward. This, too, is the burden of every exhortation addressed by the servants of the Lord to the people. It is the natural condition laid down on which eternal life may be enjoyed. “If thou wilt enter into life, keep the commandments.”

1. Obedience is the index which shows that the heart is right with God. Not more certainly do the movements of the hands on the dial-plate indicate that the machinery is working correctly within, than does a regular walking in the way of God’s commandments prove, that the heart is faithful in its allegiance to its God. As the exercise of walking calls into play all the parts and faculties of the body, so does obedience call into exercise all the faculties, feelings, and principles of the soul, so that it becomes the offering of the whole man to God. It is the complement and the crown of devotion, meditation, and experimental feeling, and is the forthcoming of inward principle and inward purpose.

2. Obedience springs naturally from the fear and the love of God. The fear of God implies reverence for His authority, and shows itself by keeping His commandments. These two are always conjoined together in Scripture, as root and flower. But love must go with fear, for fear without love would be cold; but love produces the enthusiasm of fear.

3. In the Gospel obedience must spring from love. There man is dealt with as guilty, and so as having lost the true fear of God. This can only be got back through love. Love in the form of “love to Christ” becomes the spring of new obedience. “The great God, before whom man has fallen, restores him to obedience by leaving the throne of judgment, and coming down to him as a Friend and a Saviour. He descends, step by step, into closer relations of alliance, and binds men to Himself by personal ties until He reaches the lowest step, which is also the highest, for lowest condescension is highest love. He becomes one with men in all respects, especially in becoming sin that He might fully establish the claim of love, and so create obedience by attraction rather than command it by law. The Christian character of obedience is not built up like a cold and lifeless column, stone by stone—it grows like a tree from within, and its root is love to Christ.” [Ker.]

4. Obedience in the Gospel is the obedience of children. Those who continue to live ungodly after being dealt with by gospel motives, are called “sons of disobedience,” while those who yield to the gospel call are regarded as “obedient children” (see Ephesians 2:2 and 1 Peter 1:14). The love and the honour which are implied in making them “sons of God,” are mighty motives to inspire them with an obedience that “runs in the way of God’s commandments.” “Of all children, the children of God are most obliged to obedience, for He is both the wisest, and the most loving of Fathers. The sum of all His commands is, that they endeavour to resemble Him (Matthew 5:48; Leviticus 11:44). The imitation of this highest pattern—this primitive goodness—is the top of excellency. It is well said, ‘summa religionis est imitari quem colis.’ Children that resemble their fathers, as they grow in years grow the liker to them; so the children of God increase in resemblance, and are daily more and more renewed in His image. [Leighton.]

“All obedient believers are of near kin to Jesus Christ. They wear His name, bear His image, have His nature, are of His family. He loves them, and converses with them as His relations. He bids them welcome to His table, takes care of them, provides for them, and sees that they want for nothing. When He died, He left them rich legacies; now that He is in heaven, He keeps up a correspondence with them, and will in nothing fail to do the kinsman’s part.

[Henry.]

5. Obedience must be shown in the face of opposition. To show that it is not propped up merely, but has a root of its own. It must be of a robust, and not a sickly nature—able to withstand the force of a thousand breezes, and be only all the more firmly rooted in the soil. Steadfastness of obedience is very gloryfying to God. “Caleb had another spirit in him, and followed the Lord fully. He had no apprehensions when he looked at the dangers. He offered no objections and raised no difficulties. He had entire confidence in his God. The chariots of iron, the cities with walls up to heaven, the giant sons of Anak—all were nothing. With the eye of faith, he saw the Lord of Hosts going forth to battle before him, and treading down all enemies under His feet. ‘Only rebel not ye against the Lord,’ were his noble words. Consequences he left to omnipotence; his concern simply was to do his duty. Similarly did Nehemiah act. When all around him were giving way before the formidable dangers that were ever rising up, his uniform language was, ‘So did not I, because of the fear of God.’ ” [Gisborne.]

THE KIND OF OBEDIENCE DUE TO GOD

1. It must have respect to the authority of God. It does this or that from the motive, “Thus saith the Lord.”

2. It ought to be the best, and the most exact. The best of the flock was laid on the altar. “Hath the Lord as great delight in burnt offerings as in obeying the voice of the Lord?”

3. It must be sincere, and inward.

4. It must be sole obedience (Matthew 4:10; Acts 4:18).

5. It must be universal.

6. It must be indisputable. Readiness in the subject is of the essence of true obedience. This the centurion had from his soldiers, and God ought to have from all His servants. “Speak, Lord, thy servant heareth.” Thus did Abraham (Genesis 22:3).

7. It ought to be joyful. “Meat and drink to do the will of our Father in heaven.” “I delight to do thy will, O, my God.

8. It ought to be perpetual. As man is a subject as soon as he is a creature, so he is a subject as long as he is a creature. God’s sovereignty is of perpetual duration as long as He is God. And as God cannot part with His sovereignty, neither can man be exempted from his subjection. Obedience is continued in heaven.

[Charnock.]

It should also be:—

1.

Childlike and implicit.

2.

Single-intentioned.

3.

Unconstrained.

4.

Eager and hearty.

5.

All round the circle of duty.

6.

Pure in motive and aim.

7.

Faithful and true.

8.

Unfaltering and firm.

MAIN HOMILETICS.— Judges 3:1; Judges 3:3; Judges 3:5

II. God’s choice of instruments.

Scripture does not give us history from man’s point of view. It sees God as “King of all the earth,” reigning over the heathen and them that know Him not. So here, when describing the pivot on which the whole history turns, we do not read that the Canaanites, having recovered from the prostration caused them by the desolating sweep of the sword of Joshua, gathered up their strength anew to expel the presumptuous invaders of their territories, or try to crush them with a grinding servitude. But what is brought before us is, what the hand of the Lord did, and the instruments whom He employed to do His work. We are taught:—

1. God designates His own agency to do His work. “The Lord left these nations to prove Israel,” etc. It did not come about through the chances of war, through the turning of the wheel of fortune, or through the changes of time, which are always bringing up results that surprise us. The God who helped His people for the destruction of these nations for their sins, now, because of the apostasy of His people, strengthens these nations against them and employs them as fit instruments for doing His chastening work. He not only permits them to do what they did, but He gives them a Divine commission for doing it. As if He had said, “Go and scourge my people because of their grievous sins.” It is not any agencies at random that are so chosen, but certain specific nations whom the Divine wisdom selects. Besides the glory accruing to the Divine name from the doing of any work, there is the additional glory arising from the manner of doing it, God designates the instruments that He reckons the fittest—those, by whose doing it, most instruction will be conveyed. He puts His finger on the agencies He means to employ, and calls over their names at length in the hearing of all. He gives them in charge the particular work they have to do, and they are told off for the doing of it,—though all the while they know Him not, and do the work in reality from quite other motives, than that of a desire to serve and honour Him. Yet He puts His mark upon them beforehand, that it may be known that they are in His employment, so that what is done by them, may be understood to be really done by Him through their agency.

2. God selects His instruments from the camp of His enemies equally with His friends. His enemies do not cease to be His subjects, and His creatures though they have become rebels. He has not lost His right to command, though they have lost their will to obey. They are equally at His disposal with any of the loyal races, that people His dominions. Nor does He need to put any constraint on their free wills, to make them serve His purposes. He is so superior to them in the conduct of His moral government, as to lead them, all unconsciously, to carry out special designs and purposes of His own, while they have no other thought than to gratify their malicious purposes and cruel intentions.

(1.) God makes use of the enemies of His people as a rod to chastise them. They had ends of their own to serve. They wished to have some severe retaliation inflicted on these intruders from the wilderness, for having the best part of their country, taken from them, also their corn, their wine and their oil, and indeed for a complete spoliation made of their whole stock-in-trade, so that they were left with only fragments of territory, now in their possession. These Moabites, Canaanites, Philistines, Midianites and others, thought they were only favoured with excellent opportunities of taking revenge. Yet God was merely for a time—a time determined by His wisdom and love—delivering over His people to chastisement for their backslidings, that He might ere long convince them of the wisdom and necessity of returning unto Himself.

(2.) God has a place in His plans for the wicked to praise Him. “The Lord hath made all things for Himself, even the wicked for the day of evil.” Even some of the plagues of Egypt, it is said, were inflicted by God’s “sending evil angels among them.” Balaam God made use of to bless His people, when Balak would have cursed them altogether. Satan was made use of as an instrument to bring out, by his wicked devices, the utter spotlessness of the Saviour’s character. The efforts made by principalities and powers against man’s substitute, while they were allowed to do their worst as He hung on the cross, to get Him to mar His great work of silent uncomplaining suffering under the curse—by murmuring against God for the bitterness of the cup He was called on to drink, or by throwing up the cause of guilty men on account of their extreme ingratitude and wickedness—these, from their entire failure to gain their purpose, were overruled by God to bring out the perfect character of the offering made, on which men might build their hopes for the eternal future. Not only was the redeeming work not stopped—till the Sufferer could say, “It is finished”—but the gloriously excellent character of the work is brought out by the very efforts that were made to stop it.

3. A sinning people often supply the means of their own correction. The whole of these Canaanites were marked out for destruction. Their cup was full, the sentence against them was gone forth, and the people of Israel were appointed to execute it. So long as the firm hand of Joshua was at the helm, all went well, but when that hand withered in death, there was no other to strike in, and finish what was so well begun. It became irksome to put to death every idolater, young and old. Forgetful of the sins, of these Canaanites, and forgetful of the sacred charge laid upon them by their God to exterminate them, the people gradually shrunk back from their fulfilment of the duty, partly through sloth, and still more through the risks they ran in measuring swords with these stalwart natives of the soil. They did their work by halves, and came to the best terms they could with these enemies of their God. They lived with them as neighbours, and did business with them as traders. The demand made was virtually, to “cut off the right hand;” they chose instead to disobey their God; and, in righteous wisdom, God made their sin become the means of their punishment.

Did they spare the Canaanites? He also spared them, and allowed them to increase, and become strong in the land—the result being, that they became enemies always lying in ambush, and waiting their opportunity for slaking their thirst for revenge. Too truly did they prove “snares,” “traps,” and “scourges.” Had they been entirely rooted out, how many halcyon days of peace and true happiness would Israel have enjoyed, in a land which seemed little less than Paradise regained! How differently would their story have run! But their “own wickedness did correct them, their backslidings did reprove them.” Had Lot not sat down among the Sodomites, though well aware of the danger of moral contact with them, he would never have had such a fiery trial to go through in the end—with property lost and himself saved only “as by fire.” If David had not put his trust in the Philistines, instead of going forward in the path of duty, with his confidence solely in his God, he would have escaped the dire experience of that miserable morning, when he came upon the smoking ruins of Ziklag, and suddenly found the world turned into a desert before him!

“The sinners’ hands do make the snares
Wherewith themselves are caught.”

4. God can turn the most unlikely persons into fit instruments for doing His work.

(1.) These nations were unlikely instruments for doing God’s work. What purpose can be served by brambles, or upas trees growing in the garden of the Lord? What benefit to God’s church could ever be rendered by a people, that had sold themselves “to do evil, only evil, and that continually.” and who were now regarded as “reprobate”? How could it ever consist with propriety, that animals of the wolf species should lie down in the same fold with God’s sheep? Infallibly the wolf nature must quickly show itself, and deadly mischief be done. Yet the circumstances being abnormal, God uses an abnormal method of meeting them, and a valuable end is gained.

(2.) They served as tests of Israel’s character. As it was of their own choosing, God left His people to live side by side with the Canaanite, looking daily at the spectacle of idolatrous practices set before their eyes, so that it might be seen whether they would be allured by the objects and the ways of sin, and whether the needle of the heart pointed to the pole of allegiance, or that of apostasy. Had they been decided to “cleave to the Lord,” they would have rejected all the overtures used to turn them aside, but if secretly inclined to idol worship, they must certainly show it by the manner of associating with their sinful neighbours. The presence of these ungodly transgressors had the same influence on the ungodly heart, as the magnet has on the steel filings. Israel cannot be passive. If so, they were certain to be carried down the stream; if conscientious in their opposition to every feature and form of the prevailing sin, they must rouse themselves from their apathy, and resolutely take their stand on the side of Jehovah. The presence of these idol-worshippers was a touch-stone of character for the professing people of God.

(3.) Such a presence was a loud call to the exercise of prayer and faith. The Israelites, as a rule, were but children in the hands of strong men before these giant races. It was not by sword or spear they could hope to succeed in war, but only by earnest wrestling prayer, and the pleading of Divine promises specially given. Thus only could they hope that omnipotence would interpose on their behalf, and faith must ever enter into prayer. “Whatsoever ye shall ask in prayer, believing, ye shall receive.” Great faith in God’s word, and deep dependence on Him for hourly and daily protection, were specially called for. To believe that, in ways known only to Himself, He would deliver His people out of the hands of their enemies in due time, if they but proved true to Him—not to trust in human strength, skill, training, resources, or any thing of that kind, as the origin of the deliverance; but to trust that God Himself would be with them, and find the means of fighting their battles successfully in answer to believing prayer and righteous living before Him—that was to fight the “wars of Canaan” in the old spirit.

COMMENTS AND SUGGESTIONS.—Judges 3:1; Judges 3:3; Judges 3:5

GOD GLORIFIED BY THE INSTRUMENTALITY HE EMPLOYS TO EXECUTE HIS WILL

I. By the variety of instruments He employs. We seldom find that the same nation twice over is employed to oppress Israel. As a rule, in each new case it is a different nation, and different kind of nation from the last that is employed.

(1.) God would have transgressors to learn how full His quiver is of arrows, so that it is impossible to contend with him in battle. He could in a moment make all things become our enemies. It is “as if a man did flee from a lion and a bear met him, or he went into the house and leaned his hand on the wall, and a serpent bit him.”

(2.) He would show how many unsuspected instruments of death are all around the wicked, but for His preventing their action. How easily could all the nations have been turned against Israel together, instead of one at a time! and how many were there of them! But for Divine protection, they were in constant peril. The Egyptians never suspected it was such a terrible thing to contend with the God of the nation they held in captivity, till they found the vast variety and terrible character of the weapons which He could bring against them—in turning their waters into blood, filling their houses with frogs, making the dust of the land become lice, filling the air with swarms of flies, and again with swarms of locusts, smiting down all herbs and trees of the land by destructive hail mingled with fire, sending a murrain on the beasts, and severe boils on the men and women, not to speak of the terrible doom of all the firstborn. “Thou, even Thou, art to be feared, and who may stand in Thy sight, when once Thou art angry?” He does not need to go to a distance for troops to fight His battles. He can raise them up at hand at a moment’s notice when the occasion requires. Happy are the people that are protected by the God of Jacob as their God.

(3.) It suggests the thought that the universe itself is but a vast armoury, full of instruments at the disposal of Jehovah, to carry out His will. (Psalms 103:19.) The armies that are in heaven are His armies—“His hosts,” that do His pleasure. The place of supreme power is also the home of the good, and by all such His will is done. That world is a model of obedience. His will is done naturally, freely, implicitly, universally. It is done joyfully, swiftly, enthusiastically. There “His servants do serve Him, resting not day nor night in His service.” “Their plume never droops, their fervour never sleeps.” The swift-winged seraphim, with outstretched wing, stand ready, at a moment’s notice, to fly through the heavens, to execute the behests that issue from the throne before which they stand. In the kingdom of Providence, He who rules is attended by multitudes of spirits that are in the midst of the wheels, that are “full of eyes,” by whom the wheels are turned, and all of whom “go straight forward.” In fulfilling the instructions given them, these agents “run and return like a flash of lightning,” to show the extreme alacrity of their obedience. The very lightnings of heaven, when they hear His voice, report themselves and say, “Here we are!”

“He has all the creatures at His beck, and can commission any of them to be a dreadful scourge. Strong winds and tempests fulfil His word. He can make an army of locusts become as mischievous as an army of lions; can forge the meanest creatures into swords and arrows, and commission the most despicable to be His executioners. He can never want weapons who is Sovereign over the thunders of heaven, and the stones of the earth, and can, by a single word, turn our comforts into curses. He calls the caterpillar and the palmer-worm His “great army,” that climb walls without opposition, and march without breaking their ranks. He can restrain men from carrying out evil designs against His people. He kept back Saul, who, like a hawk, was pursuing David as a partridge among the mountains, when a special message came, that the Philistines had invaded the land, so that the persecutor was obliged to go elsewhere. He also put a check on the wicked men, who had gone so far in their malice as to crucify the Lord of glory, so that at first they did not absolutely oppose the preaching of the cross by the apostles. He that restrained the roaring lion of hell himself, also restrained his whelps on earth. The lions out of the den, as well as those in the den, are bridled by Him in favour of His Daniels.” [Charnock.]

II. By the liberty of action He allows to those who are held as instruments in His hands. God never restrains the free action of the human will. If He did so, it would destroy the foundation of human responsibility. That rests on the fact, that man is free to decide according to his pleasure. Were he not free so to decide, the decision would not be his, but that of another by whom his will was coerced. We say nothing at present about the depravity of the will, and of its constant inclination to evil. Every man is conscious that, notwithstanding his depravity of nature, his will is still free; he is not compelled either by God to do a good act, or by Satan to do an evil one. However much he may be influenced by others, he yet feels that every act which he does is his own act.

Men’s freedom of action consistent with God’s control over them as instruments. When God employed any of these kings, such as Eglon or Chushanrishathaim, to test the character of Israel and to chastise them, He was not known to either of those kings, nor did He begin by making Himself known to them. Their hearts were already entirely in His hands, and He could turn them as he pleased, though He should remain entirely unknown to them. He has Himself laid down the laws by which the movements of every heart are regulated, and in all His dealings with men, He shows respect to the laws which He has laid down. He has made it a rule of our nature, that the will should be influenced by motives, and of these motives, however numerous they may be, He has such an absolute knowledge—both of actual and possible motives—and also such an absolute control of these motives, in adjusting them in any manner he pleases, in the case of every individual heart, that he can foretell, and even fix beforehand with infallible exactness, what the decision of that will shall be, in regard to any one matter, without in the slightest degree interfering with its freedom of action.

Practical Illustration. The motives present to the minds of these two heathen kings, which induced them to go against Israel to oppress them, were as far as possible, away from any idea of causing Israel to pass through a salutary discipline, and this by the command of Israel’s God. They were altogether the reverse of what could be pleasing to that holy God. Yet He, of set design, allowed them to go forward with their own evil intentions in view, just in so far as it suited His own purpose, but not a moment longer. Then the current was changed, or was entirely stopped. Their motives were a desire for revenge, thirst for conquest, exaction of tribute, an extension of territory, and especially a boasting of the superiority of their gods. The incentives to their action were thus entirely wrong, but the action itself was exactly in the direction of the Divine purposes, and God was pleased to use them as His instruments accordingly. In acting from such motives, or with a view to such ends, they deeply incurred the wrath of Jehovah, more especially for these two things—their maltreatment of a nation that was now sacred in God’s estimation. “He that toucheth you, toucheth the apple of mine eye.” Also, for their daring to slight the authority, and despise the name of Israel’s God. On these two accounts mainly, great wrath went forth from Jehovah against them, which ended in their destruction.

Assyria and Babylon were long employed as God’s instruments in punishing the nations for their sins. But to punish them for their sins against Jehovah, was not their meaning in doing what they did (Isaiah 10:6). When therefore the work was done, the manner in which the rod had dared to shake itself against Him who wielded it came before God in judgment, and it was flung out of His hand as fuel into the fire (Isaiah 10:12). Babylon also was wielded by the Ruler among the nations as His battle-axe and hammer, and a whole list of nations was marked out for him to destroy (Jeremiah 25), and another list was made out to be put in servitude (Jeremiah 27). But the executioner of God’s designs in these cases had wicked motives in his heart, and wicked aims before his eyes, and his time of reckoning also came. Babylon was “rolled down from the rocks,” and broken in pieces, because of all the “evil it had done in Zion,” and of the contempt with which it had treated the sacred name of Jehovah (Jeremiah 50, 51)

MAIN HOMILETICS.—Judges 3:1; Judges 3:4

III. The tendency of the covenant people to apostatise from their God.

This is always the most visible thing in the page of Israel’s history. Other things may be traced only in faint and indistinct lines; but this is always broadly marked.

1. It is what might have been least expected. Situated as they were, they were the most favourable specimen of the human race to show the spirit of true allegiance. None were so highly privileged; none so well trained; none had such an excellent parentage; none had been the children of so many prayers; none were the heirs of so many promises; none had had set before them such force of motive in the noble obedience of a remarkably pious ancestry; none had had such striking patterns of fidelity to God set before them in the case of their national leaders; none had seen such a series of gracious interpositions of the hand of Omnipotence on their behalf;—in short, nothing but the firmest attachment to the God of their fathers, might have been expected of these children of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob—Abraham, the “friend of God;” Isaac, the man of devout meditation and readiness to sacrifice his life at the call of his God; Jacob, the man who, as a prince above other men, had power even with God in prayer, and prevailed. What a force of holy example did such men leave behind them for the good of their descendants!” What specimens of faith, of self-denial, and true fear of God did they exhibit!” Under what a hallowed roof-tree were their children cradled! Could a richer or fatter soil be found in which to plant the young shoots of a coming generation? Did ever richer dews or warmer breezes come from the Lord to foster any flowers that were put into His garden, than in the case of that generation which “entered into the rest” of the lion-hearted Joshua? And yet if anything is clear about them, it is that they showed a tendency to apostatise from their God!

2. The root-cause lies in the depravity of the human heart. There is within men an “evil heart of unbelief departing from the living God.” The character of the fountain is seen in the muddy nature of the stream. The disposition of the heart to go away from God, is not occasional or changeable, but it is in the very constitution, and is abiding. “The carnal mind is enmity against God.” The current flows uniformly in one and the same direction. Its tendency is fixed. After the miserable exhibition made by the descendants of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, what shall be said for the children of any other class of parents? We fear nothing can come out of it but the old conclusion, which we must write down once more—“there is none that doeth good, no not one!”

3. Remissness of parental training one of the immediate causes. The generation that formed the Israel of the day in this third chapter, were not those who had seen the Divine wonders of power and grace that distinguished the golden age of the immediate past, but those who followed after, and had only heard of such mighty acts. But no duty was more imperative on those who had seen and taken part in them, than to imprint the whole record diligently on the minds and memories of the rising generation. This was the fixed rule with regard to the whole history of this people from age to age—that one generation should instruct the one that followed it, and that again those that followed after, in regular succession. This was a binding duty (Psalms 78:3; Deuteronomy 6:2; Deuteronomy 6:7; Deuteronomy 6:20).

Parental training had a very important place among God’s people, for, first—
(a) God meant the lessons imparted to one age to be learned equally by all succeeding ages. He deals with all the generations of Israel as but one people. He appeals to any one generation by arguments drawn from what He had done to previous generations, or from obligations undertaken by these previous generations, as if they were identical with the generation immediately addressed. And this bond of intimate union of the different generations in one people, could only be sustained by a very full, faithful, and persevering course of instruction and pious example, such as is implied in the exercise of parental training.

(b) The children were taken into the covenant equally with the parents. Hence parental training became a sacred duty. The children are expressly mentioned as being present, along with their fathers and mothers, at the first great convocation, held when they were being devoted to the Lord as a whole people, in view of their being about to enter the land of their inheritance. (Deuteronomy 29:10). The charge of obedience is laid on the children equally with the parents (Deuteronomy 30:2).

(c) A special command for instructing the children in God’s law was given in perpetuity. Once every seven years was the great law of the covenant to be read aloud in the hearing of all Israel, and the children were then to be specially instructed (Deuteronomy 31:9).

(d) The young people of the early ages of Israel’s history were specially dependant on parental training. In times when writing was rare, reading as an art must have been very imperfect. Thus the young received all their knowledge in the form of oral instruction from the old. Besides, this dependance was all the greater, that the instructions which the young Israelites received from their God, were so widely different from those required of the children whose parents worshipped other gods, and required much greater self-denial.

(e) Difficulties of parental training under the circumstances. This training was conducted with fewer facilities, and amid more discouraging circumstances, than it is with us, so that less good fruit might reasonably be looked for than we are accustomed to do. From the severity of the trial of character, to which the whole people were subjected in so strongly idolatrous an atmosphere, those who were false in profession would quickly become supine in the discharge of duties for which they had no heart, while among the steadfast few there would be many a David, who never said to his Adonijah, “What doest thou?” or many an Eli, who “heard of his sons making themselves vile,” through idolatrous practices, and “he restrained them not.” And there might be few Abrahams, of whom God said as to parental training, “I know Abraham, that he will command his children, and household after him, and they shall keep the way of the Lord.” Thus may we account, in considerable part, for the subsidence into idolatrous practices, which quickly became general over the land.

IV. Each new generation requires in some degree to be taught by an experience of its own.

Parental training is not enough. It seems strange that both a history, and a law, which were so repeatedly impressed on the minds of the whole people, first under Moses, and then under Joshua, should not have so penetrated into the very heart of the nation, as to have been engraven with an iron pen, to last for many generations, if not for ever. And yet those laws which were proclaimed literally in notes of thunder from heaven, and those facts of extraordinary strength, which make up the stirring history of Joshua’s days, seem not to have got so deep into the minds of the Israelitish nation, but that in the very next generation, there was need for farther instruction in the same lessons. Those who had not actually seen the doing of the Lord, and witnessed the operations of His hand, required to be put through, on a small scale, the experience of the fathers. This teaches the following lessons:—

1. The strange incapacity of the human heart for receiving Divine lessons.

(a) Scripture—makes it the cardinal error of our fallen race, that “there is none that have understanding to seek after God.” as the first thing a creature should do (Romans 3:11). The people that were of all others the best instructed in the knowledge of God, who were taught it all their life, through “precept on precept, line on line,” are yet continually charged with being “a nation void of counsel, neither having any understanding”—“fools and blind”—even “sottish children,” “who have eyes and see not, ears and hear not, whose hearts have waxed gross, and their ears are dull of hearing,”—who know less of their God in the spiritual world, than “the stork in the heaven, the turtle, the crane, and the swallow” know of the laws which affect them in the natural world. Even the knowledge of “the ox,” and “the ass,” for practical purposes, is said to be superior to that of God’s own people. Well may the account be wound up with the statement, “my people are destroyed for lack of knowledge. And they are suitably addressed in such lines as these:—

“Ye brutish people understand,
Fools! when wise will ye grow?”

(b) Experience. As regards practical proof, we might say, it would take a less force to make water and oil mix together, than to induce the human heart to take an everlasting embrace of God’s holy truth.

(c) The names given to man in his natural state. Take one as a specimen—the name “Fool,” so often applied to those who know not God. This word not only indicates that man is ignorant, and without discretion, but also that he is unimprovable, under a spell, or infatuated. And the difficulty of teaching a fool any lesson of practical wisdom, is that he has no natural receptivity for it. “Reproof entereth more into a wise man than a hundred stripes into a fool.” Yea, “though thou shouldest bray a fool in a mortar, yet will not his foolishness depart from him” (Proverbs 17:10; Proverbs 27:22). Those who cannot catch God’s meaning at once, by a slight indication, or a significant movement of the eye, must be treated like the dull horse or mule who understand nothing save the bridle, or the lash (Psalms 32:8). What stubbornness characterises the human heart in receiving God’s holy truth!

2. Personal experience is the most effective method of teaching. The persons now to be instructed are those, who “had not known the wars of Canaan” by personal experience. God was now to put them through some of the experience, which the fathers had to go through. No knowledge is so effectually gained, as that which comes in this manner. Teaching by testimony, or report, exercises but a slight influence, compared with that which is gained by personally passing through all the circumstances of any particular scene.

(a) A more vivid impression is made. It is when knowledge passes in direct, through the five gates of the senses, that it gets the best hearing from the understanding, and makes the deepest impression on the heart. Everything is distinctly realised, and felt to be an actual fact. All passes before the eye and is no dream. There is no comparison, as to vividness of impression made by things known through personal experience, and things known only by hearsay.

(b) Personal interests are more deeply touched. It was one thing for this people to believe it as a tale that was told them, that through the Divine promise given, it was possible to fight all the giants and subdue mighty armies, for that had now become matter of history. But to see the lions at hand, to witness with their own eyes the ferocious Canaanites mustering their forces to battle, with a weight of armour, strength of bone and muscle, and equipment for the field far superior to their own, while yet they were successful in the conflict—this was to give the knowledge of experience, and teach what mighty things prayer could do, when it had Divine promises to plead—what trust in the character of the covenant God could do—and what good issue could arise from obedience to the Divine commandments in the practical duties of life.

Examples.—It was said of the good Richard Cecil, when leaving a sick bed, where he had been confined for upwards of six weeks, a friend remarked to him he had lost much precious time lying on that couch. “No,” he replied, “the time has not been lost. I have learned more within these curtains during these weeks, than I learned during all my academical course at the university.” Joseph, too, learned the lessons which served him so well in after life, more effectually in the pit of Dothan, and the dungeons of Egypt, amid cruelty, injustice, and desertion of friends, than he ever could have done under the wing of parental indulgence in his natural home. Suffering is the most effective of teachers.

3. Each generation must have a character of its own, and answer for itself. The parent cannot believe for the child, neither can the child inherit the faith, the prayerful spirit, and the religious worth of the parent merely from the fact that he is a child. However valuable the inheritance of piety, of faith, and godliness, left by those who had gone before, it was still imperative on the young generations after Joshua’s days, to know for themselves the sacred principles, by observing which they gained possession of their inheritance, and still retained it in possession. God dealt with each generation according to its own character, sending evil and dark days, or days of bright sunshine and prosperity, as their conduct was pleasing or displeasing to His Holy eye.

COMMENTS AND SUGGESTIONS.—Judges 3:1; Judges 3:4

THE DIFFICULTY OF GETTING DIVINE TRUTH INTO THE HEART

1. How much care and many arguments are used in vain. Why so much pains taken to instruct the coming generations. If the heart had been ordinarily willing to receive such precious truths, and to be taught such impressive lessons, no argument would have been necessary, and the only difficulty would have been to have rejected them. Yet arguments need to be employed for a whole lifetime, and kept up from generation to generation, to keep the people at the exercise of faith and obedience—sad proof that the “natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God,” etc.

2. The facility with which the heart lets slip the Divine teachings. It is like “the morning cloud and the early dew.” What earnest effort and intense anxiety are needed to retain truth which is already imparted! “Give earnest heed to the things you have heard, lest you should drift away from them.” (see Hebrews 2:1, revised version). “Take fast hold—keep—let not go” (Proverbs 4:13). As oil runs off water without uniting with its drops, so do God’s most impressive teachings pass off without mixing with the deep convictions of the heart. The young Israelites of the next generation, doubtless, heard a great deal about the glorious transactions of their national history, which made them the envy and the wonder of every land. The mere tale of such deeds should have sufficed, to rivet in their hearts for ever a sense of their obligations to the covenant God. Yet how faint the impression made! At the first rough blast of trial, it was found they had such a slender hold of religious principle that they gave up the services of Jehovah and accepted those of Baal.

3. When milder means do not suffice to educate men in religious duty, sterner measures are held in reserve. When these young Israelites would not listen to the quiet teachings of faithful parents, they had ere long to go forth and meet the Canaanite in the open field, and learn, in the stern work of actual war, those lessons which they were so slow to acquire around the domestic hearth. What an illustration of the inveterate tendency of the heart to reject and push aside spiritual appeals! It remains,

“Though woo’d and aw’d,
A flagrant rebel still.”

When the father’s kindly hand and the mother’s soft touch had no effect, God’s people must be given up to the handling of the rugged nurse—Adversity, that through her more rigorous discipline they might, by any means, come to learn practical wisdom.

PIOUS PARENTS MAY HAVE ERRING CHILDREN

1. Religious character does not depend on natural birth.

“That which is born of the flesh is flesh.” The corrupt nature which is common to our race is transmitted by natural law. Proofs of this are unfailingly given in every life. “There is not a just man upon earth that doeth good and sinneth not.” The undoubtedly pious son of the God-fearing Jesse tells us, he did not get his piety from his parentage. He says, “Behold, I was shapen in iniquity, and in sin did my mother conceive me.” And the Saviour affirms that every man, to be fit for His kingdom, must be “born again.” Thus, no generation, however pious, can give security that their children will be the same that they have been. The result is, that none are pious by birth. “Grace does not run in the blood,” as Eli, Aaron, Noah, David, and even Samuel (1 Samuel 8:3; 1 Samuel 8:5), knew to their cost.

2. Yet the children of godly parents are often pious. Though grace does not run in the blood, it does often run in the line. The line of Seth seems to have been the line of the godly, and it continued for centuries. The line of Eleazar’s priesthood appears to have gone on from the day that the people took possession of their inheritance, until the day when they were driven out of it into captivity, with only a few breaks (from Eli to the expulsion of Abiathar, 1 Kings 2:27)—or more than a thousand years—most of whom, if not all, appear to have been men worthy of their office. The line of Abraham is also a strong case.

3. Special advantages belong to the seed of the godly. There is—

(1). The standing special promise which God makes to all believing parents. “I will be a God to thee and thy seed after thee.” It is indeed conditional; but when the condition is fulfilled, or in the degree in which it is fulfilled, the promise is sure.

(2). They are usually the children of many prayers. Where parents neglect this duty it is cruelty to the children. Every parent should not only pray, but “travail in birth” again, till Christ is born in every child that God has given them. Look at the mothers of Augustine and John Newton.

(3). They have commonly the benefit of a good example set before them. This, though not alone sufficient, has in it all the teaching force which the silent presentation of religious realities can give. Example is often more effectual than precept.

(4). They are usually the subjects of a pious training. Parents who fear God themselves are required to “bring up their children in the nurture and admonition of the Lord.” They also have the promise, “Train up a child in the way that he should go, and when he is old, he will not depart from it.”

(5). For the most part they are in the company of the righteous. They are led “in the footsteps of the flock.” The natural principle of imitation—so strong in the young mind—is thus utilised to lead them to do as the righteous do.

4. Illustration of a degenerate seed springing from godly parents. The generation that entered Canaan under Joshua, are supposed to have been more pious than almost any other through the whole history of that people. Of this we have proof in the great outstanding fact, that “by faith they Subdued kingdoms,” over the whole length and breadth of the land (Joshua 2-11). Another proof of fidelity to principle we have in Joshua 22. Yet a large number of their children, and nearly all their grandchildren, became idolaters, and required dealing of the severest kind to bring them back to God.