Judges. Abraham Kuruvilla
(2:6–10)
Othniel’s parade example: minimizing self (3:7–11)
Move-to-relevance: The blessings of God for following him167
III. Experience God!
How we can experience God firsthand
How we can teach the next generation to do so
A rearrangement of the outline above gives us this:
I. LESSON: Forgetting God vs. Following God
Failure to experience God firsthand: new vs. old generation (2:6–10)
Missing the blessings of God: the cycle/spiral of failure (2:11–19)
Divine punishment (2:20—3:6)
Move-to-relevance: How God’s people forget him; the consequences
II. EXAMPLE: Othniel
Othniel’s parade example: minimizing self (3:7–11)
Move-to-relevance: The blessings of God for following him
III. APPLICATION: Experience God!
How we can experience God firsthand
How we can teach the next generation to do so
122. O'Connell, The Rhetoric of the Book of Judges, 117.
123. Younger, Judges, Ruth, 84–85.
124. Polzin, Moses and the Deuteronomist, 151.
125. Judges 2:6 begins with a wayyiqtol verb, usually indicating a sequential order of the narrative, but that need not always be the case: see 2:23; 3:16; 5:1; 8:4 (referring back to 7:25), 29; 9:42; 11:4 (referring back to 10:9); 12:4; 16:3; 20:36; 21:6, 24; etc., for exceptions. It is best to see 2:6 as a flashback. See Chisholm, Judges and Ruth, 152 n.9.
126. Judges 3:7–11 remains distinct from 2:6–3:6, for it introduces the first of the judges; it forms part of the Body of the book (3:7—16:31). But Othniel’s account adheres perfectly to the paradigm of the cycle depicted in 2:11–19 and is therefore included within Pericope 2 (Jdg 2:6—3:11). As was noted in the Introduction, “pericope,” as I see it, simply designates a preaching text, irrespective of size or genre. The distinction made between pericopes is more pragmatic than technical. A pericope generates a theological thrust for a sermon sufficiently distinct from the theological thrust of the pericope preceding and following. In other words, a pericope is a unit of text upon which a sermon with a discrete theological idea can be preached.
127. The LXX maintains an identical order of verses between Josh 24:28–31 and Jdg 2:6–9 but, like the MT, it adds 2:10.
128. A further nuancing: The generation of Joshua includes those elders who outlived him (2:7), those who had seen Yahweh’s great work. These, of course, die only after Joshua (2:10a). It is the subsequent generation that is the problem (2:10b). The term “gathered to one’s fathers” (2:10a), employed of Joshua’s generation, is idiomatic for death and burial, but in this instance it may also connote integral union and solidarity in faith with the generations that preceded them (i.e., before Joshua). This is, of course, in contrast, to the subsequent generation (i.e., after Joshua) that was ignorant of God and his work (2:10b). Did the generation of Joshua’s time contribute unintentionally to this loss of collective memory of Yahweh and his deeds? “In one generation true religion, the religion of Josh 24, vanished from the promised land. . . . A generation that does not teach its children, as Josh 4:6, 21 advised, would lose its children to false religion” (Butler, Judges, 42).
129. The verb “know” shows up in 2:10: the generation after Joshua did not “know” Yahweh or his deeds.
130. And emphasizing what the previous generation had seen, the narrator of Judges also adds “great” to describe the work of Yahweh (2:7; the adjective is missing in Josh 24:28). There are, in addition, a few stylistic alterations of conjunctions, a minor difference in the name of Joshua’s burial place, etc., between the Joshua and Judges accounts.
131. Webb, Judges, 138.
132. The mention of Joshua’s 110 years (2:8) also subtly underscores the lengthy service of Yahweh that this leader of an earlier generation performed, making the rapid failure of the following generation all the more striking and painful.
133. Block, Judges, Ruth, 118.
134. Ibid.
135. Ibid., 122–23.
136. Modified from Gillmayr-Bucher, “Framework and Discourse,” 691–93; and Greenspahn, “The Theology of the Framework of Judges,” 388. Yahweh “selling” his people into the hands of their enemies also finds mention in 11:21; 15:12, 18. And the “giving” of enemies into Israel’s “hands” is also mentioned in an oracle (1:2), prophetic speeches (4:3, 14), a divine utterance (7:7), a dream sequence (7:14, 15), altercations (8:3, 7), a recital of history (11:21), a vow (11:30), and in a plea (15:18). The presence of the Spirit of God, as we shall see again, is not an indicator of Yahweh’s approval of the subsequent actions of the judge so imbued; it merely reminds the readers that God is acting, whether the judge knew it or not. One also must remember that, outside of Othniel’s story—he was the model judge—the rest of the stories show deviations from this paradigm, the shifts and alterations themselves being clues to the theologies of the individual pericopes.
137. In addition, Chisholm notes the sequence of weqatal forms in 2:18 (“[Yahweh] raised,” “[Yahweh] was with . . . ,” where one might have expected wayyiqtol forms), and a customary imperfect followed by a weqatal in 2:19 (“they returned and acted corruptly”)—all evidences of the narrator describing a pattern or a custom (Judges and Ruth, 149 n.5).
138. Ibid., 153. Amos 1–2 has, in a similar fashion, seven judgment oracles against the nations and Judah, followed by an eighth specifically against Israel.
139. We find out in 2:19 that these depravities were the result of “stubbornness”—deliberate and rebellious acts of evil. The note in 2:17 about Israel neglecting the “commandments of Yahweh” is particularly stinging, in light of the efforts of Joshua in the previous generation to instill in his people the importance of abiding by the word of God (Josh 1:7–8; 23:6–8, 14–16; 24:26–27). The succeeding generation, then, had not only forgotten (“not known”) Yahweh and his deeds (Jdg 2:10), they had forgotten his words, too!
140. “Baals” in 2:11 is a generic term