Forsaking God

Judges 1:1 to 2:5 constitutes an introduction, for it shows how the Israelites quickly lose zeal for their God-given mission of inflicting judgment on the Canaanites and begin to tolerate them in their midst. This section culminates with God’s indictment of Israel’s sin. But Judges 2:6 to 3:6 is an introduction of another sort. Here, the author of the book traces the spiritual decline of the people and shows us the pattern that will dominate this account. More important, he reveals much about God’s reasons for sending both oppressors and judges.

The author begins at the time of the apportionment of the land. With God fighting for them, the Israelites triumphed in their initial conquest of Canaan. God then divided the land to the tribes according to His own will as Joshua and the leaders cast the lot. Finally, there came the glad day when Joshua sent the tribes away to their God-given “inheritances,” fulfilling all God’s promises to the patriarchs. Those were blessed days, days of God’s favor. And the people “served the LORD” as long as the faithful Joshua and his contemporaries lived, for they kept alive a firsthand knowledge of God and of His great works on Israel’s behalf. But as his generation began to die off, another arose “who did not know the LORD nor the work which He had done for Israel.” It is inconceivable that the succeeding generation does not know of God’s existence or of the things He has done; the sense of the passage seems to point to a lack of devotion to Him. As Matthew Henry writes, they “had so little sense of religion, and were in so little care about it, that … one might truly say that they knew not the Lord, knew Him not aright, else they would not have forsaken Him.… They never minded the true God and His holy religion.”

Lacking devotion to God, the people do evil and forsake Him. But they do not lapse into atheism; rather, they follow “other gods from among the gods of the people who were all around them.” They fall into the snare laid by their toleration of idolatrous pagans—they begin to worship Baal, the Canaanite god of storm and fertility, and his consort, Ashtoreth. Doing so, they reject the true Lord of the storm and the true giver of life. And God, the jealous God who had commanded them to have no gods before Him, is provoked to anger by their evildoing.