Judges: Pure Horror, Transcript

Judges: Pure Horror | Secular Bible Study (Episode 7) - YouTube

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Transcript:

(00:00) welcome to mindshift I'm Brandon today is episode 7 of our secular Bible study Series in which we focus on judges judges is an interesting book it is a horrific book it is a book of transition it is a book that I think highlights a lot of very problematic things in multiple respects similar to numbers it is anything but boring even as it is one of still the most glossed over books in the Old Testament I think first thing to do would be to explain the name judges is this transition period between Moses

(00:28) or Joshua as a sole leader of a people group and before we get to having an established king or monarchy these judges don't serve in the same way that we think of Judges they do have something to do with that but they are also just tribal Warrior leaders it's more of a chief responsibility than anything else and it is someone who is picked by God usually for their violent capabilities and they lead Israel through this constant cycle so for book overview here's all you need to know we have a cycle Joshua has died that's what happened at the end of Joshua beginning of Judges here and the people are in

(01:04) Canaan and they've only conquered some of Canaan they've left undone much of what God had told them to do and as God's warning was Stern we see them intermingling with the Canaanites and learning their evil ways and every time that they do lean towards these Canaanite ways and away from God they get oppressed by the Canaanites because God hands them over to their own desires they eventually realize how wrong they were because of their oppression and they repent and in doing so God sends them a deliverer all of these judges in

(01:35) some way sometimes are linked to Jesus and his ability to Deliver us from sin as well and these judges through violent conquest and each with their own very unique stories and powers and strengths and weaknesses deliver the people from oppression within the Canaanite groups only for the entire cycle to happen over again and we see the cycle multiple times we focus on really six judges three very specific quickly and those three are going to be Gideon jephthra and Samson although we have Deborah as well who's a little lesser known and

(02:07) then the first two judges athenol and Ehud are mentioned just a little bit the story of Ehud by the way which is probably not going to get to it today but I encourage you to just look up the insanity of ehud's big epic Deliverance of the Israelite people but anyways that's a story for another time there are so many Side Stories in these books that after or sometime as I'm still going through a secular Bible study series I'd like to do a secular Bible story Series where we take just an individual story like Balaam and the donkey and we really deconstruct it I

(02:37) think that'll be fun to do here in the near future but anyways let's get back on track book overview we have these Cycles we have these different judges the period of time here is about 300 years best that we can estimate that this happens during and it all fails so miserably with what happens with Samson at the end of the book that we now need a monarchy and it leads us into what's coming next in the book of kings and Samuel Etc so the hard part for me as I do the series is always when to talk about what right is there a good example of a literary technique that I can bring

(03:06) up during the literary analysis instead of covering it here during book overview is there a problematic verse that I want to save for the end so I don't give it away in book overview Etc the problem is is that this entire book is so horrendous so immoral so problematic so hypocritical that we could just fast forward to 0.

(03:29) 7 where we talk about all the errors and contradictions and problematic verses and that would be it but I'm going to try not to go that route so I'm thinking if there's anything else for book overview you might need to know there's a lot of infighting between the 12 tribes of Israel at this point we're going to see some stories between what happens with Micah and the tribe of Dan Etc we're going to see some other things that happen with Judah it's a lot of inner tribal we always think of Israel during this point as just this one nation and here they are we really have to start understanding the tribal nature of these different 12 you know we're gonna see like jephthra for instance is from one of the tribes that's abstained kind of

(03:57) in the Hill Country of Canaan or now Israel I wonder when they started considering it their own they still have a lot of conquering left to do and that's what a lot of these campaigns by these judges are but jephthra is this kind of very serious Warrior that doesn't know God very well and isn't around the people very much he's been up in the hills he's almost fully Canaanite at this point and I think that's the other thing that's interesting to understand from an objective point of view we don't have this history of The Exodus and this people group we have that the Israelites came from a broken

(04:25) off tribe of Canaanites which is what we see happening in judges so it's interesting to try to attach the rest of the lore from the first five or six books of the Bible to what most likely is closer to their real starting point the way that the Bible is going to frame this is without the leadership of Moses and Joshua the Israelites have fallen into their own ways they are essentially Godless they are no better than the Canaanites they had no king so everyone just did what was right in their own eyes which is funny because that's again what the atheist is always accused of

(04:57) without an objective morality they have God right here they had Moses they had Joshua they have these appointed judges and even when they have the Kings what difference is that going to make what we see is a broken promise we see that God was going to set these people apart that they would be a nation of priests that their morality would showcase them as different among the Nations and they are no different at all and this book proves it so let's dive into it moving into authorship and date now we at least get something new here we are really moving

(05:28) forward from this everything was written and Amalgamated and put together as a collection during the 6th Century BCE that's what we have mainly from Genesis all the way through Joshua it's now going to be somewhere between the 6th and the 11th century and is going to be a compilation of both oral and written tradition and it's all mixed around so there were probably multiple editors multiple scribes that put these collections together from all of these different sources and we really just don't have a much better understanding

(05:58) than that the biblical and understanding or what the average Christian understanding is is that this was written by Samuel they always want to give it to one of their own Moses wrote the first five Joshua wrote his own book and now Samuel who is the last judge is looking back and writing all of Judges that just doesn't hold water for a multitude of reasons that we won't get into it is most likely again multiple authors multiple narrators multiple scribes multiple editors and we have this pretty epic work of a long period

(06:29) again between the birth of the nation of Israel with the Takeover of Canaan and when we get into their monarchy with Saul this is going to move us right into point three which is historical accuracy and background and context and things of that nature and again what we can see here is we start to see a real closer aspect of what history shows us about the Canaanite and Israelite connection that they were neighbors or neighboring tribes that kind of split off of course with their own gods and their own value systems we see many of the Canaanite tribes that we know to exist listed in

(07:01) the conquest that happened during this book that's going to be the amorites the moabites the midianites the Philistines and many others so we get this really good understanding of the tribal Warfare that was common at this time in this area of the ancient near East it's a good reflection of the political tug of war of the different alliances that happened of how people groups would elect a leader whether it was by Prophet or judge or King Etc to kind of see the economic and political power dynamics at play we are closer to approaching reality but the specific events and when

(07:37) these battles happened and which people group conquered which other people group that's all just completely within the own scope of circular Bible reading we see no archaeological evidence that backs any of that up and no historical evidence or written works that align with those same time frames or events or facts they're just not out there now that is not proof that those things didn't happen it's just a lack of proof or a wage to verify that the events as they recorded did happen we're going fast because there's going to be so much to cover in 0.7 here but let's do 0.4

(08:08) next which is literary analysis and this is pretty interesting within the Book of Judges the first thing to note is that within the Bible this is supposed to be one of the historical books or the historical accountants we have books of poetry we have books of Prophecy we have books of song and Psalms we have books of metaphor we have this though as a book of History here's what happened after Joshua died here are the names of the people and how long they ruled the judges here are the groups that were conquered or Not Conquered here are the parts of Canaan that were attacked or

(08:36) not attacked this is descriptive and historical accounting of supposed facts within that we see some different elements though one would be the song of Deborah I believe this happens in chapter five Deborah was a judge and she has a great Victory and she has this poetical song similar to the song of Moses after crossing the Red Sea this highlights the Israelite tradition of encapsulating their victory is in song or poem form to commemorate these kinds of things so that is one literary technique that is on display in judges

(09:07) other than just the historical narrative however the biggest literary technique here other than just listing and historical events is that of the cyclical nature of Storytelling with every single instance of the judge and we even see this with Joshua and with Moses and we'll see it still more with the King Saul and David and so on is that cycle that I first mentioned during book overview of let me see if I can shorten it for you Disobedience oppression repentance getting a judge slash deliverance and then it starts all

(09:37) over I mentioned earlier that we most likely had multiple authors or narrators with multiple edits and this is cool this is the power of science being applied we can see these different literary strands as they are sewn about through the Book of Judges I won't be able to do justice how the breakdown happens but these strands are showing things like different writing style even word choice the vernacular of certain time frames of Jewish words in their evolution Etc that we can see this happened over not just different times but multiple different times and in different ways you tell stories

(10:10) differently when you're telling them orally than when you're writing them down and so we can see almost an influence from both of those instead of like earlier versions where we had an oral tradition that was being written down for the first time so I think that's pretty neat to just be able to physically see within this singular book a multiple counting of how we got it let's move on to 0.

(10:30) 5 which you're going to be able to guess the main themes pretty easily because they all really have to do with that cycle so actually we'll just make the cycle of sin its own theme here or the cyclical nature of sin if you'd rather if you're talking about From yahweh's perspective it's going to be the grace the always willing to show mercy no matter how many times they mess up and they have to reap their natural consequences of their sin he is there ready to assign a new leader who can deliver them once again and it will be on them who messes up we see this so

(11:02) much in both Old and New Testament where everything God does is always right and everything man does is always wrong so the cycle of sin is going to look pretty merciful from God's perspective from a human perspective it's going to look a little ridiculous A we can see this so much for what it is the man-made narration of a plot development I'll use Gideon as an example here we all know the story of Gideon and I was going to save this for the end with problematic verses so we'll just cover this now and get out of the way Gideon takes the 300 God definitely intervenes on the Free

(11:30) Will and confuses everybody that they're fighting against so that just these 300 men can win it over and then what does Gideon do does he get down on his knees and thank God for the victory no maybe yes but also what he does is he goes and he kills a ton of Israelites who didn't help and then if that's not bad enough he makes an idol how how much from that first golden calf at Sinai should we have learned you don't make Idols he makes an idol out of the gold that he stole after the victory of the midianites that is really an idol unto

(12:02) himself but also unto God and then after he dies Israel starts worshiping this Idol I don't believe it obviously I know all of this is bollocks Israel cannot be this stupid to see God give them a victory with just 300 men to attribute it to God and then to so quickly forget that he exists that they would start worshiping a golden idol this is going to be an entire another main theme is that of idolatry and we're seeing it in display Within These narratives I'm getting just torn in many directions I'm going to try to focus in this is an

(12:39) example of the cyclical nature of sin and the two different ways that you can express that let's move on to the theme of idolatry though we see this happen not just with Gideon but with a few other judges and tribes here I think it's later in the book that Micah builds some kind of Holy Temple that's not specific to God it's just this idol worship place we see God giving powers like strength to Samson they get literally idolized advised and this happens with the other judges as well it's like these Israelites just don't get it and God warned them so much

(13:07) between Moses's final speech and Joshua's final speech before they got into the land of Canaan you're going to go you're going to see these evil people doing these evil things and one of the worst things they do is they worship both other gods and false gods don't you dare fall for it that's why he's so mad about the inner marriage that's why he's so mad about not killing every single person that they destroy because otherwise it could lead to these other kinds of worship practice and we know from the first four Commandments out of the ten that the worst thing you can do is have other gods before God or worship

(13:38) other gods before God or have false Idols Etc this is the greatest defense to God and sure enough despite all the warnings and all the consequences and all the punishments and all the setting aside of these people groups they have become just like the Canaanites this to me looks like an epic failure for God but he's gonna blame it on the people and furthermore it makes all those horrendous things that have happened in Exodus but specifically in books three through six where we see all of these conquests and genocides and mass murders

(14:07) and slavery and all of these things that were Justified with what we don't want to become like the Canaanites well here you are you're in Canaan you've taken certain parts of the land and now you're acting just like them and if we're acting just like them then aren't we deserving of the same wrath shouldn't God wipe them all out completely but he doesn't because they're his chosen people so we could add you know the consequences of Disobedience as a third theme we could add the need for proper leadership as a fourth theme within that cycle the whole thing is getting the right judge at the right time and really

(14:38) God's letting us go through this 300 years of horror so that we can recognize the need for a king this was God's end goal all along just like with the ten plagues like we covered on Tuesday let's just jump to what you're wanting to do because you're going to create all these things to happen and you're going to punish and kill all these people in the meantime like if you know where you want to end up can we just like fast forward a little bit so we could also talk about divine intervention for another theme but I think we can just leave themes

(15:01) alone we get it it's all about that cycle everything in this book points to those aspects of that cycle and that's what God is wanting us to know his people to know what the Jewish tradition tries to hang on to and see and what the Christian tradition has really utilized for a lot of their talking points and we'll cover that probably during reception and influence so let's just Dive Right into that 0.

(15:27) 6 reception and influence you know for the Jewish and even Christian tradition it's really a book of a cautionary tale look what happens when we don't take god seriously look what happens when we turn our backs on God look what happens when we leave morality to a subjective nature right that line from the end of Judges is in those days Israel had no king and every man did what was right in his own sight or something to that extent this is the great warning of atheism this is the great cautionary tale of leaving your God behind now I would argue the opposite that all these things happen in God's design and plan we see that it's

(15:59) just on unavoidable but these are the justifications and the reason to these groups to these religions judges is not about God's power it's not about God's blessing of these horrendous events it's these events had to happen and yes even when God gave special powers it says somewhere along the lines of each time that God let someone like Samson do something his Spirit Came Upon them that sounds to me like endorsement but the Jewish tradition and the Christian tradition will tell you no God was willing to allow these people to get

(16:28) themselves out of Oppression once they recognize their need for higher power their need for a savior pointing to Jesus and so he endowed them with his Spirit to do whatever needed to be done which in most cases looked like mass murder and mutilation and horrendous sexual abuse Etc to get back in God's divine right like I don't know how you're making excuses that that isn't God condoning that behavior if Israel became just like Canaan he should have treated them just like the Canaanites but instead he gave them special permission special special powers literally to work their way out of that

(17:03) sin and into his good graces where they could then do the horrendous acts to the unbelievers to the pagans to those who worshiped other gods and false gods but sometimes they went too far they put them in a position to be under the Canaanites and they didn't like being here so it's just this awful stupid little cycle of supposedly good and evil it all looks like evil to me so again there's tons of interpretation and application that you can use to build this into your religion and that's exactly what has happened it is the

(17:31) cautionary tale it is the moral warning it is the power of God it is the need to stay in his good graces and that comes through obedience look at the need to obey look at how good God is look at his Mercy like we can twist this in many different Fashions to arrive at a religious tradition and that's what we see in Judaism and Christianity outside of the religious influence and aspects of it we can see the historical again with the tribes kind of what we mentioned in point three this was very typical for the time in the gives us insight into how the Israelites at least

(18:02) viewed themselves and divided themselves up and that had a trickle-down effect throughout other tribes in the land of Canaan as they make alliances in response to the Israelites and we see again just this tribal Warfare that continues down generationally it is introduced really with the dividing and conquering aspects that we see in this book in the previous books unlike Genesis unlike Exodus and unlike what we'll see in more of the prophets of the Old Testament we don't see a lot of cultural or World building if you will off of these stories of course the best known part of Judges is Samson and so

(18:34) that's bled into the milieu of the heroic Warrior there's only so many archetypes that you can build out there but the strong blessed by some Divine being because of a physical aspect that can then be taken away from him later even leading to so much of a self-sacrifice like this whole thing is redundant but it has been so well encapsulated within the Israelite tradition that it made it down and with it being our source material for our religion that's where we get our biggest heroic narrative be strong like Samson

(19:05) for God be a warrior like Joshua we pull out the very small somewhat good parts of these Old Testament characters and then fashion all of these other idealized attributes to them without really looking at I mean Samson almost by God's own admission or at least the religion's admission is one of the worst judges he's atrocious he's angry he's promiscuous he's of soft Faith he is just horrendous and that's saying something compared to Gideon and jephthra and some of the others but this is the last person we should be looking up to but that's probably the most

(19:42) lasting story that has trickled down historically and culturally from this particular book of the Bible so let's move on to 0.7 which is our catch-all for all the issues with this book and we've already covered a handful of them but let's talk about more contradictions misconceptions errors and problematic verses the first one that I I know many of you would want me to mention is the issue with the Chariots of iron now there's two things that can be looked at here one is just how weak and ineffectual God is Dan Barker likes to talk about this a lot he compares the

(20:11) verses of God being all-powerful and so mighty and then you know he can help Judah drive out certain inhabitants of Canaan but he couldn't do it to the plains Canaanites because they had Chariots of iron so the big thing is oh iron chariots were too much for this Mighty God now I understand the Christian excuse of this we're talking about more of judah's Faith issues the people from the tribe of Judah believe they could defeat the hill people because they didn't have the Chariots and God rewarded their faith by giving them those always always always with God giving over the enemies and always based

(20:42) off of the faith of the people or the leader at the time to be able to do so and so I don't think that that holds a whole lot of weight because their faith was lessened when they had to go up against the iron chariots which is the benefit of the Plains Canaanites and because they're faith wavered God did not give them over to the these people and they couldn't win that particular battle that's at least how it's going to be explained by the Christian and I can see that if we're working within the framework however I completely understand the issue for the atheist or

(21:12) the skeptic who is just like I thought God can do anything and if this is God's plan why isn't he fulfilling it because he's already doing all this stuff and intervening in the Free Will anyways and two why would these people not believe that they could do it they've seen every Miracle Under the Sun at this point there's no excuses left for the lack of faith of the actual Israelites other than the fact there is no God to have faith in so I get that there's a lot of inconsistencies with how we're supposed to feel about these judges I mentioned this a little bit with Samson already in

(21:42) one way he's described as faithful and has been consecrated by God set apart to deliver this group and lead them literally described as a hero but we also see him be impulsive and angry and given to Vengeance and violence and sexual Temptation Etc now this is common and again there's good Christian excuses here I mean look at David David was a mass murderer who also gave in to sexual Temptation and Was the Same Heart Of God right these horrible people that are boasted about by God might just be because they are as horrible as he is

(22:15) but the Christian spin on this is God can use even the weakest and most sinful among us to do great things for his name I just want consistency like I've mentioned I just want Christian consistency I'm told all the time that God if you're sinful hands you over to your sin and then you can't do good things and you can't know him and you can't be in his presence but it seems like any time that anyone in the Bible did anything really bad or sinful God used them God Drew closer God revealed himself so there's issues just with the consistency of God's nature and how he

(22:44) views these judges and the people that he utilizes there are also discrepancies you know I said there are six main judges but there's plenty of other judges listed and we get a weird order uh not a weird order a contradicting order for instance where is jephthra in that line we get two different accountings now it's not entirely important it could be someone just listing these judges you might list a bunch of friends you have I'm friends with Peter James and John I'm friends with John James and Peter you're not trying to specify an order of who you became friends with first but it does seem like they are trying to give a

(23:14) lineage here and historical account so there could be a problem there again I'm trying to give you the like best steel man version I think it's fair to say there's inconsistencies with the ordering of judges in this book but it wouldn't be the hill that I try to die on we get our first positive contradiction in this we finally get a capable powerful woman in Debra this is in contrast to every other woman ever depicted in the Bible for the most part but it's nice to see some female judges and that they were capable and that they were in the Lord's favor so I will give credit where credit is due every once in

(23:45) a while a woman shows up as an equal almost to a man this time however she's only equal in her violence and capability to enact Vengeance on God's behalf but we'll take it I'll start going a little more rapid fire here because I want to get to the problematic verses and take some time with those but other contradictions are going to be who did the Israelites take Jerusalem from did Joshua kill or indeed not kill everyone in the land of gazer which woman is the Most Blessed woman we have different accountings for with cicersa murdered when he was asleep or not asleep did the Israelites kill every

(24:15) male in Midian or not we get multiple accounts here is it okay to test God we hear all the time God does not like to be tested God is not okay to be tested we should not test God Jesus says so much to Satan in the desert when he's being tempted but here we see Gideon being rewarded God answering his test the whole witch side of the blade of grass is the Dew come on and then being rewarded in Victory for it and even after that he couldn't get his act together and still made a false idol it's just ridiculous but we have an issue here different sides of God's character are always coming out in these books how many sons did Gideon have how

(24:44) many gods are there as human sacrifice okay or not okay we'll get into this with jephthra in the problematic verse but all we have heard is that the main reason the Canaanites are so evil is because of their practice of child sacrifice and then In This Very book we get God 100 allowing and utilizing and rewarding child sacrifice now I will tell you what the Christian argument is it's look how far they've Fallen this whole darn thing is a downward spiral away from God and towards the actions of the Canaanites with the Pinnacle being

(25:15) jephthra using child sacrifice to win a battle except who allowed the battle to be won because of that God it's not like Jethro went out and sacrificed his daughter to a Canaanite god who then was real enough to bless his victory then I could understand they fall into the same level as the Canaanites but he made this deal ahead of time with Yahweh who then still chose to deliver the battle for him no excuses you guys so this is a good transition to get into the problematic verses we talked about Job threat let's go ahead and just detail that one out and we'll move on this

(25:49) story comes in judges 11 29-40 I'm going to just read it to you and I'm going to leave out some verses for time so don't think I'm trying to do anything you can read it for yourself then the spirit of the Lord was upon jephthra and jephthra made a vow to the Lord and said if you will give the ammonites into my hand then whatever comes out of the doors of my house to meet me when I return in peace from the animites shall be the Lords and I will offer it up for a burnt offering so jephthra crossed over to the ammonites to fight and against them and the lord gave them into his hand twenty

(26:21) cities and as far as Abel kramim with a great blow so the ammonites were subdued before the people of Israel then jephthra came to his home and behold his daughter came out to meet him with tambourines and with dances she was his only child besides her he had neither son nor daughter and as soon as he saw her he tore his clothes and said alas my daughter you have brought me very low and you have become the cause of great trouble to me for I have opened my mouth to the Lord and I cannot take back my vow so I'm beyond tired of hearing about the

(26:53) excuses that the believer posits here here are the facts jephthra made a deal with God so God is okay making these deals in these bets we've seen it before for some reason jephthra didn't think God would deliver the ammonites without something without offering something up and by the way you still see this in like Christian circles today oh if I want God to hear my prayer I better fast along with it or I really need to sacrifice something to make sure that God is willing to show up for me it's sick and twisted in the ways that people try to deal with this invisible force of

(27:25) God to get him to show up in their life jephthra here is obviously taking it to the extreme now I wonder how many people were in jephthra's household he has no other children one daughter assuming then he has a wife so he was playing a worse version of Russian roulette with the two people he loved the most meaning jump throw was already willing to kill a family member however you say it and yeah maybe his grandfather lived with him or something I don't know either way he's willing to kill someone he he loves

(27:51) someone who is in his household to attain a military Victory God didn't ask him to do this he offered it up God could have said no no I want this anyways thank you for being willing like he did with Abraham it's not actually necessary let's go kick some ass but he said okay deal and then he ensured that that would happen by taking the Free Will away from the ammonites and delivering them into the hand of jephthra and with God's omniscience he knew it would be the daughter that came out and it really doesn't matter if it was the wife would it have made the story any better I understand child

(28:21) sacrifice sounds slightly worse than human sacrifice or spousal sacrifice but it's all abhorrent so yes does God accept child sacrifice for military Victory yes you cannot say otherwise so then instead of looking at how is jephthra different from the Canaanites let's look at the gods how is Yahweh different from Malik in needing child sacrifice to ensure Providence he's not so let's stop trying to separate them as good and evil teams it's all messed up tradition of believing that if you lost something the power it be would give you something better and the hierarchy of Need for jephthra was military victory

(29:04) over I can make another daughter so yeah I'm sure he was sad but it was obviously more important for him to get that Victory and that respect and that honor amongst the Lord than it was to take care of his family God knew it God allowed it God endorsed it don't see how I'm wrong let's move on though there's plenty of other bad verses to get to and we won't take this long on all of them judges 19 22-30 is pretty brutal we see a concubine that is murdered and dismembered and sent out all around Israel it actually Sparks the Civil War

(29:33) that happens here at the end of Judges so you at least have some people that were outraged Enough by it to take action and that's again what the Christian is going to point to this is just showing how depraved they got as they got without a good leader to help connect them to God and they were willing to act out like these Canaanites but you still had good Israelites who were willing to do this so we could spend more time on the story and just talk about it but I don't think this one holds as much water as God's actual

(29:56) obvious endorsement of an action like it does with the slavery and the child sacrifice and the genocide and the mass murder that happened throughout the rest of the book but still obviously horrific and very problematic in general for understanding that this is a good and moral God who is interfering in free will but still allows things like this to happen read that it's absolutely tragic and grotesque by the way these last chapters of judges are so bad you could just read the whole thing like it seems silly to even pull out problematic passages because it's all so atrocious

(30:30) but let's do judges 21 10 through 20 24 somewhere around there I love how the chapter is described wives provided for The Tribe of Benjamin so Benjamin is running low on women that's its own problem and we can get to it another time but here's the solution starts out around 10.

(30:50) so the congregation sent 12 000 of their bravest men and commanded them go and strike the inhabitants of the jabesh Khalid also the women and the little ones this is what you shall do every male and every woman that has Lane with a male you shall devote to destruction and they found among the inhabitants of jabesh Khalid 400 young virgins who had not known a man by line with him and they brought them to the camp when the whole congregation sent word to the people of Benjamin who were at the rock of Remnant and proclaimed peace to them and Benjamin returned at that time and they gave them the women

(31:19) who they had saved alive but they were not enough for them and the people had compassion on Benjamin because the Lord had made a breach in the tribes of Israel then the Elder said what shall we do for wives for those who are left since the women are destroyed out of Benjamin and they said there must be an inheritance for the survivors of Benjamin that a tribe not be blotted out from Israel yet we cannot give them wives from our daughters so they said behold there is the yearly Feast of the Lord at Shiloh and they commanded the people of Benjamin saying go and lie in

(31:47) ambush in those Vineyards and watch if the Daughters of Shiloh come out to dance in the dances then come out of The Vineyards and snatch each man a wife from the daughters of Shiloh and the people of Benjamin did so and took their wives according to their number whom They carried off the only bit of redeeming credit is the very last verse of Judges which says in those days there was no king in Israel everyone did what was right in his own eyes as if that's some kind of a justification for what just went on that this is The Tribe of

(32:17) Benjamin just being unhinged here this is God's chosen people who know God better than anyone else who have seen God move in real time they have seen God do amazing things impossible things miraculous things if they are no different if they bear no fruit from that and those experiences then why does God turn around and blame them here for being lost without a leader not having a king as if that's the thing that's going to change it why all of a sudden abdicate responsibility for these people what if we were reading this about the

(32:49) Canaanite tribes what do we think would be God's response what would be just they went and they committed all but genocide saving 400 virgins to fill the first gap of wives and when that wasn't enough because each man needed a wife of their own and no one else was willing to give them one from the other tribes because it was important that they kept pure they orchestrated this kidnapping and rape I'm so tired of hearing it wasn't raped they made him wives you're gross if you say that to me in the comments it's beyond disgusting you're

(33:19) either too immature to understand these Concepts or you're not being at all intellectually honest to say and see this for what it really is as someone who has a wife and has a daughter I promise you if someone invaded my country and stole my daughter when she's out dancing in the field or killed me and my wife but left her alive because she was a virgin and then made her wife there is nothing about that title of wife that redeems that fact these stories are the stories from the Bible that tells you you the good truth of the

(33:51) creator of the universe that loves you and wants a personal relationship with you how do you get that from this you don't so you make excuses for it or you ignore it and I am unwilling to do either God's character is on display constantly he brags about it and it is not a good character it is not in line with the objective morality that his Believers claim he created the whole thing is a house of cards and it has fallen down a thousand times how many more examples of genocide and rape and sexual slavery do you need but let me give you a few more verses just to round

(34:24) out judges let's do judges 9 23 I believe I'll let you know when I get there if I'm right in my memory always hard to do this on the spot yes 9 23 and God sent an evil spirit between abimelech and the leaders of sechum and the leaders of sechum dealt treacherously with abimelech that the violence done to the 70 sons of jerubital might come and their blood be laid on abymalek their brother who killed them and on the men of shekelum who strengthened his hands to kill his Brothers I don't really care about the details I care about that very first

(34:54) utterance and God sent an evil spirit how do we know God's not the one sending the evil spirits to The Tribe of Benjamin doing these things how do we know God's not the one sending the evil spirits to the Canaanites who are doing child sacrifice we have no proof of that we have no proof of the opposite of that either we see though that we have a God who is willing to interrupt free will not only by sending his powerful strong good presence to people like Samson to do these Mighty things which are also horrendous things like killing a

(35:24) thousand men with the Jawbone of a donkey but also to send evil spirits to confuse to disrupt to murder I would not trust this God at all and all we hear is God is the only thing you can trust the only thing to put your faith in everything else is going to fall away God is a god of confusion of treachery of Vengeance of jealousy of violence and on and on and on verse after verse after verse of proof that this God is not who you think he is or claim him to be or have created him to act like consistency

(35:53) is the word for the day let's give God the titles he sow covets and let's add inconsistent to God's character too because what did did we see happened when the first intermarriage happened between a Canaanite and an Israelite God was so grieved by it that he almost killed every single Israelite until one of the priests stabbed and killed both of those people in the marriage but what does Samson do in 144 he marries a Philistine woman and yet still is beyond blessed by God what if he had lost his strength right there at least there'd be some consistency but no no problem no problem at all we'll make you one of the

(36:27) best and greatest judges one of the most powerful and strategic military leaders this tribe has ever had another problematic verse I can't believe I forgot to mention this is judges 20 around verses 40 like verses 42 43 44 something like that we see the Civil War that I was telling you about earlier and it ended so poorly on Benjamin they got the brunt of this attack and mainly women and children thus why there was no women left for Benjamin the own Civil War that happened where they killed their own women and children what's the justification for that God for throwing

(37:00) stones from Heaven last book down to crush the enemy you can't control your own people to the point that they would Slaughter so many of their own women and children that they'd have to go Slaughter more to replace their women and then go kidnap more and I know that's the point that the Christian is trying to make yep you're right you're right you're right Brandon they fell all the way down to the level of the Canaanites but don't worry God's Gonna redeem it he's going to send good Kings like Saul like David what did they do they just continued the same thing more

(37:30) mass murder more genocide of neighboring tribes it doesn't get any better that's what we're always looking to right we had the fall we had everything happening in Egypt we had the slavery don't worry God will deliver and things will get better God has a plan oh you messed up no problem we'll just punish one generation but now we'll let the Next Generation into Canaan they can finally have the promised land and everything will be fine no we have to keep killing for it we have to keep genociding for it

(37:53) well that didn't work we didn't obey God there's a ton of land we didn't get let's start using judges because we don't have Moses and Joshua around anymore but that Lee to Civil War that leads to more rape and genocide and sexual slavery and all kinds of horrendous things like child sacrifice but don't worry the kings are coming right that's why that last verse doesn't provide any justification there were people without a king and so they did what was right in their own eyes as if getting a king is going to be any better

(38:16) and by the way all the king would do was bring back Law and Order they already had the law Moses gave them the law Joshua reinserted the law these judges know the law they have it they didn't lose it they chose not to obey it nothing is going to be different when they get the king and that's shown so the very fact that this is all excused because they were people without a king they weren't a people without a god they weren't a people without a law and when they get a king now they have all three of those things and they're still going to fail it never works out at some point

(38:44) you can't keep blaming people you blame God you blame the source you blame the being that has no problem getting down dirty and involving themselves in the very murder of all of these enemies and you say hey time to call your own people in but I digress I mean we could go on forever I could read Jew the Book of Judges and call that the problematic verse for point seven for today I know that many of you probably would have loved to hear more about Deborah or Samson or the 300 of Gideon Etc that's not really the point of this those stories are contained in this book we've

(39:15) talked about what they represent and the cycles that they have but I think what's more important to glean from these stories is that there is no arrival this is a defeated group that messes up over and over that never learns from their mistake whose God never helps them get better and only continues a worse path down all of the things that he once so supposedly hated so that's it that's the story of Judges it's sad there's no redeeming quality to it it ends the same way all the other books end with just

(39:41) horrendous ideas of what ethics and morality looks like and excuses excuses for God blame for the person and I for one am just tired of it let me know what I missed I do really enjoy seeing the comments on these particular videos and that's where I will leave you today so until next time keep thinking