Judges. Abraham Kuruvilla

      JUDGES

      A Theological Commentary for Preachers

      Copyright © 2017 Abraham Kuruvilla. All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in critical publications or reviews, no part of this book may be reproduced in any manner without prior written permission from the publisher. Write: Permissions, Wipf and Stock Publishers, 199 W. 8th Ave., Suite 3, Eugene, OR 97401.

      Cascade Books

      An Imprint of Wipf and Stock Publishers

      199 W. 8th Ave., Suite 3

      Eugene, OR 97401

      www.wipfandstock.com

      paperback isbn: 978-1-4982-9822-3

      hardcover isbn: 978-1-4982-4823-5

      ebook isbn: 978-1-4982-9823-0

      Cataloguing-in-Publication data:

      Names: Kuruvilla, Abraham.

      Title: Judges : A Theological Commentary for Preachers / Abraham Kuruvilla.

      Description: Eugene, OR: Cascade Books, 2017 | Includes bibliographical references and index.

      Identifiers: isbn 978-1-4982-9822-3 (paperback) | isbn 978-1-4982-4823-5 (hardcover) | isbn 978-1-4982-9823-0 (ebook)

      Subjects: LCSH: Bible. Judges—Commentaries. | Bible. Judges—Homiletical use.

      Classification: lcc bs1305.53 k8 2017 (print) | lcc bs1305.53 (ebook)

      Manufactured in the U.S.A. 04/19/17

      To

      John

      for pointing me

      to some of the best stories

      I’ve ever read

      “God made man because he loves stories.”

      Elie Wiesel

      The Gates of the Forest

      Preface

      After completing a commentary on Ephesians, with delight I turned my attention again to narrative—this time to the book of Judges, the stories of which have captivated me all my life. But this was a troubling book to study and write about. The darkness of the accounts, especially in the latter parts of Judges, was saddening and heavy. All those leaders, with such great potential, chosen by God and gifted with his Spirit, frittering away their calling, squandering their divine opportunities—how could their stories not grieve the people of God, not to mention God himself?

      Painful though the reading and writing was, it strengthened my own resolve to attend more carefully to the call of God in my own life, in the spheres in which he has placed me to lead, as he has each and every one of his children. So this commentary goes out with the hope that all of God’s people—God’s leaders in some fashion or another, to some degree or another, in some arena or another—will endeavor to become godly leaders after God’s own heart, by taking the words of Judges and applying them, in the Spirit’s power, to their own lives.

      We must beseech God insistently, day and night, to make us understand why the Scripture was given, that we may apply the medicine of the Scripture, every man to his own wounds. If not, we remain idle disputers, and brawlers about vain words, ever gnawing upon the bitter bark outside, and never reaching the sweet pith inside. —William Tyndale, “Prologue to the Pentateuch”

      May our consumption, digestion, and assimilation of the “sweet pith” be for the glory of God, for the furtherance of his kingdom, and for the edification of his people! Let’s go . . . and lead, God’s way!

      Abraham Kuruvilla

      Dallas, TX

      Feast of Tyndale 2016

      Abbreviations

      1QM War Scroll

      Aqht Aqhat Legend

      ANET Ancient Near Eastern Texts Relating to the Old Testament (Pritchard)

      ARM Archives royales de Mari

      b. Babylonian Talmud

      B. Bat. Baba Batra

      Jub Jubilees

      L.A.B. Liber antiquitatum biblicarum (Pseudo-Philo)

      Meg. Megillah

      Naz. Nazir

      Sanh. Sanhedrin

      T. Reub. Testament of Reuben

      Yebam. Yebamot

      Introduction

      Theology, Goals, Prolegomena

      “Let those who love Him be like the rising of the sun in its strength.”

      Judges 5:31b

The goal of preaching is to bring to bear divine guidelines for life from the biblical text upon the situation of the congregation, to align the community of God to the will of God for the glory of God. This is the preacher’s burden—the translation from the then of the ancient text to the now of modern listeners, with authority and relevance. This commentary is part of a larger endeavor to help the preacher make this move from text to praxis.1

      THEOLOGY

Elsewhere it was proposed that the critical component of the ancient text to be borne into the lives of the modern audience was the theology of the pericope, what the author is doing with what he is saying in the text.2 This is what moves the people of God to valid application, for pericopal theology is the ideological vehicle through which divine priorities, principles, and practices are propounded for appropriation by readers.3 The goal of any homiletical transaction, thus, is the gradual alignment of the church, week by week, to the theology of the biblical pericopes preached. Pericope by pericope, the various aspects of Christian life, individual as well as corporate, are progressively brought into accord with God’s design for his creation: faith nourished, hope animated, confidence made steadfast, good habits confirmed, dispositions created, character molded, Christlikeness established.4

All such discrete units of pericopal theology together compose a holistic understanding of God and his relationship to his people, with each individual quantum of pericopal theology forming the weekly ground of transformation of the lives of God’s people into Christlikeness. In a sense, this week-by-week and sermon-by-sermon alignment to the call of each pericope is an imitation of Christ. This is at the core of the theological hermeneutic followed in this commentary, a christiconic hermeneutic specifically geared for preaching.5 Because the children of God are called to conform to the image of Christ, preachers everywhere are, in turn, called to discern the theology of the pericope—i.e., the facet of Christlikeness depicted therein—and apply it to the widely diverse situations of believers across the globe, across millennia, and across cultures, to enable them to emulate the perfect Man, their Lord Jesus Christ.6 In other words, while pericopal theology describes what Christ looks like, sermon applications based on pericopal theology tell us how we can begin to look more like him in our own particular circumstances. Unfortunately, the importance of the pericope and its theology—what the author is doing with what he is saying—and its employment in