I finished reading the Bible book of Judges yesterday. It is a HARD book to read, with murder, rape, torture, war, rebellion, and treachery. In the book of Judges, even the heroes are bad. Remember Samson? He was a judge, which would be a ruler of Israel, but he was immoral, had no respect for God, for God’s law, even no respect for his own gift of miraculous strength. Gideon lived out a great story of God’s deliverance, but then made an idol which the people worshipped. These seem to be pretty big “character flaws”. The last story of the book is the one that I hate the most. A man is travelling with his concubine and spends the night in someone’s home. The men of the city come to the home and demand that the guest be handed over so that they can rape him. This is exactly what happened in Sodom and God destroyed it. Anyway, the man pushes his concubine out and the men rape her all night, and she dies. I don’t know what disturbs me more about this, the horrible inhuman treatment of the woman, or the total lack of care by the man. It is really disturbing. The whole book is so full of bad things, I don’t even know what I have to say about it all. I don’t watch movies about this kind of stuff!
I guess the final verse of the book sums it all up. Judges 21:25 In those days there was no king in Israel; everyone did what was right in his own eyes.
Where there is no king, and every one does what he thinks is right, the end result is bad, sometimes really bad.
BUT, there is something good about this book. God never turns his back on his people, a people that can be rebellious, proud, arrogant, immoral, ugly, mean, uncaring…wow, God is really kind and loving and really merciful.
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