1 Samuel 27-31: David in Philistia?

That's kind of like the ultimate irony, isn't it?  David got famous by killing Goliath, champion of the Philistines, and now, having been chased by Saul for some time (apparently he didn't put too much hope in Saul's second moment of clarity, as discussed in the last post), he runs away to Philistia.  Go figure.  But it works - Saul stops looking for David.  And David does well in Philistia for about a year and four months.  At first the Philistines are pretty leery of him - can't for the life of me think why - but then David tells them that he's killed some people from around Judah and the surrounding area (in reality it was the Amalekites and some of those), and that makes the Philistines think David and his people are on their side and they think he's going to be on their side for the rest of his life, which would be a major plus, as evidently he's pretty handy with a weapon.

Then the Philistines go to war with Israel - big surprise, right? and Saul is scared because there are a lot of them.  So he does something majorly wrong.  You know how I said before that whenever David was about to attack someplace, he inquired of God to see if he should or not?  Saul does almost the exact opposite; he goes to a medium.  We know from the Law that mediums were not supposed to be allowed even to live in Israel, so somebody clearly hasn't been doing their job because there's at least one, and Saul goes to her.  He wants to talk to Samuel.  Remember, the last time Saul asked God something, God didn't answer him, so Saul is probably thinking Samuel is the only person who would listen to him, except he's dead.

Now, apparently opinions are divided as to whether or not this woman really conjured up the spirit of Samuel.  I have heard that the word for "medium" in Hebrew is the same as the word for "ventriloquist," although I don't know if there were such things as ventriloquists in ancient times.  Also, if you read the passage, Saul doesn't see Samuel.  He asks the woman who she sees, and she replies that she sees an old man with a robe, so then

Saul immediately believes it's Samuel.  Like, really?  How would you describe Abraham then?

But let's say, for the sake of argument, that it really is Samuel.  Samuel gives Saul a mini-lecture for calling him up just because he can't get a hold of God, and tells him the Philistines are going to win and he and his sons are going to die.  Considering that this is exactly what happens, it just might have been really Samuel.

Meanwhile, the Philistines start to mistrust David again, probably because they're going to war with his people, and they think that David's going to turn on them.  So the guy who's basically David's boss tells him that he can't go into battle with them.  David acts all sad like he wants to fight against Israel, but then he goes back to his Philistine home while the Philistines all go out to battle.

When they get there, though (they meaning David's people), they find that the Amalekites have raided their city and burned it and taken all the women and children (cuz those are the only people who were there once everybody went to battle) captive.  So David and his people go and get them back.  They run into an Amalekite deserter (well, he was actually left behind), who tells them where his people have gone in exchange for his life, and some of David's people get too tired to go after them so they stay behind with the stuff while the rest of the people go get the women and children and spoils.  When they come back, there's an argument over whether the tired people should get any of the spoils or not, since they didn't help fight.  David says they should because they were protecting their stuff, so they still deserve a reward.  The moral of this story is, don't leave the stuff you care about unprotected, or somebody will steal it.  Also, staying behind and defending what you have can be just as important as going out after what you've lost/what you don't have.

So then we shift focus back to Israel, fighting against the Philistines.  Three sons of Saul die, including our beloved Jonathan.  It's hard for me to picture Jonathan dying in battle like that.  He was the guy who sneaked out and killed Philistines for fun, after all.  And we don't even find out how he died, just that he did.

Saul has been hit by archers, his sons are dead, and his army is losing.  Rather than go out in a blaze of glory, Saul commits the ultimate act of cowardice: he asks his armor-bearer to kill him.  But his armor-bearer is like, no way.  So Saul falls on his own sword.  His armor-bearer, seeing that his master is dead, does the same.  That, to me, is like the ultimate act of loyalty, although I don't necessarily think it was the right thing to do.

The Philistines take Saul's body and his sons' bodies and cut their heads off and basically put the bodies on display for all the Philistines to mock.  But then the valiant men of Jabesh-gilead hear about it, and they steal the bodies of Saul and his sons and burn them, but then bury the bones and fast for seven days. And that's the end of the story.  Really, that's how the book ends.

The Jews were pretty much rotten people for most of their history, but they were good when it came to one thing: honor.  Saul may have not been a very good king, and he may have lost the battle, but the valiant men - those are like the knights - would not allow his body to rest in dishonor.  They risked their lives to bury their dead king.  That's pretty amazing to me.  And I guess that's why the Bible calls them valiant.  Valor goes beyond mere bravery; it's (according to Dictionary.com) "boldness or determination in facing great danger, esp. in battle; heroic courage; bravery."  These men were heroes, and it was the heroes who respected the dead so tremendously.  I don't know what to say about that, but it's something to think about.

1 Samuel 21-26: David on the Run

Now that David knows for sure Saul's out to kill him, he takes off.  First he comes to a place called Nob, and there's a priest there named Ahimelech.  David asks him for food, but all he has is the consecrated bread that only priests are allowed to eat.  David tells him Saul has sent him on a secret mission, which is not true, and also that he has a bunch of companions waiting just outside town, which I don't think is true.  But I'm not entirely sure because Jesus, in Matthew 12, makes a reference to this story and specifically says that David "and his companions" ate the bread.  I know that later on David has about 600 guys following him; maybe some of them are already with him?

Anyway, so one of Saul's servants, a guy named Doeg, overhears this whole conversation.  Remember that because we'll see him again shortly.  And David also asks for a weapon, and the only thing available is Goliath's sword - kind of ironic, eh?  So David takes that.

In the next chapter, David goes to a cave somewhere, and a bunch of people join him, including his family and people who are in debt or distressed circumstances.  I think it's pretty cool that David's brothers join him; the last time we saw one of David's brothers, he was telling David to go home because war is no place for little boys.  I guess the brothers realize that David is a grown-up now (and David probably is a grown-up now, being married and all; I don't know how many years have passed between when he killed Goliath and now).  Then David goes to Moab and the king lets his family stay there.  You might wonder, why is the king of Moab suddenly being nice to an Israelite?  The last time we heard from Moab, they were not on friendly terms with Israel.  Well, if we were reading the Bible chronologically, we would have seen already that David's father Jesse is the son of a guy named Obed, and Obed is the son of a man named Boaz, whose wife was named Ruth.  Ruth was from Moab.  Anyway, then David leaves because a prophet tells him to.

Meanwhile, Saul is trying to track David.  He asks people where David is, and who should volunteer information but Doeg, who happens to be around.  Doeg tells Saul about Ahimelech giving David food, so Saul summons him and tells his guards to kill him, but the guards are intelligent enough to see that it's a bad idea to kill a priest.  So Saul tells Doeg to do it, and Doeg kills not only Ahimelech, but 85 priests total in that one day, plus pretty much every living being in the city of Nob - men, women, children, babies, and animals.

What is up with this Doeg guy?  First he rats on David, then he kills priests?  Is he trying to get a raise or something and thinks that's the way to do it?  He seems pretty unscrupulous and shady to me.  I don't like him at all.

Now, while David's on the run, he's not so busy hiding that he doesn't have time to help people.  There's this town that's at war with the Philistines, and David consults God and then goes and helps them out.  Now what I love about David is that before he goes and fights someone, it always says that he inquires of God and asks him whether he should go or not, and then whatever God tells him to do is what he does.  I think that's a smart battle plan.

Now Saul is actually out following David's tracks, and he catches up to him.  Saul's men take a pit stop, and they don't know it, but they park outside the very cave where David and his men are hiding.  Saul thinks the cave is a bathroom so he goes inside, and all David's people tell David to kill him.  But David refuses because Saul is the Lord's anointed.  I find this really intriguing.  David knows that he is also God's anointed, and he probably knows that God has rejected Saul, or at least that His Spirit has left Saul.  David could probably convince any judge or jury that he was acting in self-defense if he killed Saul, and I bet nobody would think the worse of him for doing so.  I mean, the guy's already responsible for the deaths of 85 priests plus who knows how many hundreds or thousands of lives on top of that - all just because he was jealous.  But David refuses to harm Saul.  Why?

I think, honestly, that David likes Saul.  The guy is his father-in-law, after all, and before the Goliath thing it seemed like they had a really good relationship.  And David is best friends with Jonathan.  I'm sure that for Jonathan's sake alone he wouldn't do anything to hurt his dad.  David knows Saul will die someday, but he doesn't want it on his conscience.  David chooses to be above reproach.  And more than that, he tries to repair his relationship with Saul by showing him that he spared his life.  And Saul appears to have a moment of clarity.  It's like there's this dark cloud hovering around Saul, and for a moment the sun breaks through and he comes to his senses.  He goes back home.

Very briefly, the text says that Samuel dies and all Israel gathers together to mourn for him.  I wonder if Saul and David were there - especially if they were there together.  But the author doesn't want to dwell on this, probably so they can get back to the action of David, who moves again, this time to a place called Paran.

Next there's a story that I really like, about Nabal and Abigail.  They're a rich couple who live near a place called Carmel (not Caramel).  David and his people are staying out in the wilderness where Nabal's sheep graze, and apparently David's people are kind of watching out for Nabal's flocks and shepherds and stuff, making sure nothing bad happens to them while they're around.  So then David wants to move on, but first he wants to get some provisions, so he sends messengers to Nabal to ask him.  Nabal is a jerk; he basically thumbs his nose at David's messengers.  David gets really mad that his people were insulted, so he's about to go desecrate this guy's house.  But before he can, Nabal's wife gets wind of what happened, and she shows incredible domestic powers by somehow coming up with a ton of food and bringing it out to David and apologizing very gracefully for her husband.  So David doesn't go desecrate Nabal's house after all, and he's very grateful to Abigail for preventing him from doing something stupid.  A few days later, Nabal gets struck by God and dies.  David hears about it and proposes to Abigail, so she goes and joins him.  David already has another wife by this time named Ahinoam.  We don't really know anything about her.  We also find out that Saul has given David's first wife, Michal, to somebody else.  I didn't know that was allowed.

Remember Saul's moment of sun breaking through the clouds?  It's over now.  He hears where David is and goes out after him.  And almost the same thing happens that happened before: David has the opportunity to kill Saul, and he doesn't, and afterward he calls out to Saul - only this time he yells at the King's general for not guarding his king better.  Saul has another moment of clarity; he blesses David and goes home.

I think Saul is really troubled.  Whether it's this evil spirit or he's just really twisted his heart around, I don't know, but he is absolutely paranoid.  Even when he sees that David clearly does not want to kill him, he can't accept that; he is determined to think that David is against him and needs to be stopped.  Sometimes when we get a false perception of a situation or a person, we get obsessed with that idea, and it becomes really hard to let go of it even when it's proven to be false.   I think we should pray to see things through God's eyes so we will not misjudge situations or people so badly like Saul did.

1 Samuel 1-7: Samuel

I have to say, this book starts off on a way better note than Judges ended.  We find out, thankfully, that there are still some people in Israel who follow God.  One of them is a man named Elkanah, and he has two wives: Hannah and Peninnah.  Peninnah has children and Hannah doesn't, which in that culture was a HUGE disgrace.  Peninnah is also a bit of a witch to Hannah because she always ridicules her for not having kids - and this is why polygamy is a bad idea, by the way - although Elkanah loves Hannah more than he loves Peninnah - which is also why polygamy is a bad idea.

Remember the last time this happened?  Rachel, the beloved wife, didn't have any kids and Leah, the unloved wife, had a ton, so Rachel and Leah got in this war and Rachel tried everything from verbally abusing her husband to trying fertility drugs in order to get even.  Fortunately, Hannah is a way better person than Rachel. Check this out.  When the family goes to Shiloh (which is where the center of the priesthood was at the time), she goes to the temple and prays so long and so hard that the priest, Eli, sees her and thinks she's drunk.  Can you say intense?

I like Hannah.  All she wants is one kid, and she even promises to give her child back to God if He answers her prayer.  Even though Peninnah (I don't know what the technical term is . . .  co-wife?) constantly pesters and belittles her, she doesn't want to get even or to get revenge, she just wants one little kid, and she's even willing to give him up.  And instead of whining to her husband or digging up roots or doing anything else stupid, she goes straight to God, and only to God.

So God answers her prayer and gives her a son.  Remember what Rachel named her son Joseph? "I want another one."  Hannah names her son "I asked God for him."  Isn't that beautiful?  I have a friend who prayed and prayed for a kid for several years with her husband, and finally they had a son, and she named him Samuel, just like Hannah did.  And Hannah is true to her word and gives Samuel to the temple, and she worships God and sings a long song of thanksgiving because she is so happy to have a son, even though she's only going to see him once a year.  I don't know if I could do that.  But it's so cute that the text goes through the trouble of saying that each year when they go to Shiloh, Hannah makes him a new outfit and brings it to him.  She's a good mommy.  I would like to be like Hannah, although I hope I don't have to give my son away.

But guess what!  After Samuel is born, God gives Hannah five more children, three sons and two daughters.  And it's not because she asked and pleaded and went to drastic measures or made any more deals.  She was perfectly happy with Samuel, and I believe God blessed her for her thankfulness.

But I titled this blog entry "Samuel," and I am going to try to write about 7 chapters, so I should move on.  The priest at this time is a man named Eli.  Now he seems like an okay guy, but his sons are awful - which, by this point in the game, is no surprise to me.  Just about every good adult has rotten kids in Israel.  Except Hannah.  Samuel is not a rotten kid.  In fact, God tells Eli that since his own sons are so rotten, he's going to raise up a faithful priest instead of them.

So that's what happens.  God calls Samuel when he's still a little boy, and Samuel grows up knowing, obeying, and listening to the Lord.  And everybody in Israel knows it, too.

Next what happens is that Israel is at war with the Philistines again, and they're getting pretty badly, so they have a great idea: let's take the ark of the covenant into battle with us!  This strikes me as a form of manipulation, or maybe idol worship.  The presence of God dwells in the ark, so they're thinking, if we bring God to the battle, He'll have to make us win.  God doesn't have to do anything, ever.  Sometimes we assume that we know how God will act if we make the circumstances right, as if He's a chemical formula.  God is a person, not a formula.  We can't always assume we know what he's going to do.

So God doesn't let the Israelites win, and the Philistines take the ark with them.  But God's not about to be manipulated by them either; all sorts of havoc starts to break out as soon as the ark gets to one of their towns.  But I have to say, may favorite thing that happens is when they put the ark in the temple of their god Dagon, and the next day when they go inside the idol of Dagon has fallen on its face in front of the ark.  Ha!  Even false gods which cannot see or hear or speak bow before the Living God.

Anyway, the Philistines get all kinds of plagues, so they keep moving the ark from city to city, and eventually they've had enough and they decide to send it back to Israel along with a bunch of offerings, which is kind of a nice thought in the morning.  But when Israel gets it back they don't put it in Shiloh again, they leave it at Kiriath-jearim at this guy's house, and it stays there for 20 years.

So then Samuel, who is a grown-up now, tells Israel that what they need to defeat the Philistines is not to bring the ark of the covenant with them into battle but to serve God wholeheartedly - duh.  So they get rid of all the idols and serve God, and guess what?  They beat the Philistines.

So I think this passage clearly illustrates the importance of being straight with God.  If you have a request, just ask Him.  Don't be like the stupid Israelites who thought they could manipulate God into doing what they wanted, when they weren't even serving Him at the time.  Be like Hannah who prayed diligently, sacrificed, and was thankful.  I believe God honors wholehearted devotion and sincere worship.

Judges 13-16: Samson, or Proof that God Can Use a Doofus

You're going to tell me that I'm giving Samson a hard time, but I have a hard time liking this guy, and it's not just because of Delilah.  All the good things he did were the result of his own stupidity.  Let's look at his life.

So we begin in chapter 13 with the age-old story of Israel doing evil, and the Philistines oppress them for 40 years.  Then an angel appears to a woman who has no children and tells her she's going to give birth to a son who will deliver Israel from the Philistines, but there's a catch: he is to be a life-long Nazarite.

If you remember from reading the Law, "Nazirite" referred to a certain type of vow that a person would take for a period of time, and during that time they could not drink wine or any other strong drink, and they couldn't cut their hair either.  Normally the vow and its conditions were temporary, something that an adult would choose to do.  Samson's the only person I know of who was a Nazirite his whole life.  Pretty cool.

I like Samson's parents, I think.  Or at least, I'm glad that this story's not all about Samson but that we get to see a little bit of them.  After the angel visits the woman, whose name we don't even know, she tells her husband what happened, and he prays to God that the angel will come again so that he can tell them how to raise their kid.  Isn't that great?  First of all that he believes his wife right off the bat, and secondly that the reason he wants to see the angel is not because it would be really cool, but because he wants advice.  This guy's name, by the way, is Manoah.  I like Manoah.

So guess what?  The angel does come again, and Manoah gets to meet him.  He doesn't know that it's the angel of the LORD; he seems to think he's a regular person because he keeps referring to him as "man."  So he asks the angel some questions, which the angel really doesn't answer directly.  Then Manoah asks the angel what his name is, and we get another clue that the angel of the LORD may be the LORD himself, a theophany: he responds, "Why do you ask my name, seeing it is wonderful?"  the "wonderful" there means "incomprehensible."  That immediately brings my mind to Isaiah, where he prophesies the birth of Christ and says His name shall be, among other things, Wonderful.

So then Manoah wants to make dinner for the angel, and he gets some food and puts a burnt offering and a grain offering on a rock, and God sends a flame of fire down from heaven and the angel ascends in it, or something like that.  So then or told them stuff or shown them stuff. Manoah knows who he's just been talking to and thinks he and his wife are going to die for seeing God, but she says if they were going to die He wouldn't have accepted their offerings  Smart lady.

Okay, so now it's Samson's turn.  Samson gets born and grows up.  One day he sees a Philistine girl and without talking to her or anything, he goes home and tells his dad he wants to marry her.  His father says, are the pickings really that bad amongst our own people that you want to marry a Philistine?  Samson's response?  "She looks good to me."  I just have this picture of Samson talking like a stereotypical caveman and grunting.  Whatever happened to people like Isaac who trusted his dad to find him a wife, and loved Rebekah his whole life?

So finally Samson goes back and talks to her, and what does the text say?  "She looked good to Samson."  I don't think he really got much out of talking to her, personally.

Next, we find out that Samson is also kind of a pushover.  He's throwing a wedding party, because he really is going to marry this girl, and he tells all her friends a riddle that they can't guess, promising them new clothes if they can guess, but demanding new clothes from them if they can't.  I think he is purposely trying to trick them so that he'll get 30 new outfits. They talk to the bride and tell her to coax the answer out of him or else they'll burn her father's house down.  So she goes and pesters him for a whole week, and finally he cracks and tells her, so she tells the men, so they can answer Samson's riddle.  Apparently he doesn't have any extra clothes because he goes out of town and kills 30 Philistines so he can take their clothes and give them to his new wife's friends.  And he's so angry that he doesn't even go back to his own wedding, and guess what?  His bride is given to Samson's friend.  Ouch!  Can't say I'm surprised though.

So Samson waits a few months before thinking he wants to be a husband, and then he goes to visit the girl he is supposed to be married to, and her father doesn't let him see her.  He offers Samson a different daughter though.  So Samson gets angry, but he doesn't want people to blame him for killing Philistines again, so he go rounds up 300 foxes - do not ask me how - and ties two foxes at a time together with a torch between their tails, and lets them go right by the grain fields, which is ready to be harvested at this time.  So the Philistines go to Samson's non-wife and burn her and her father to death.

Samson says "I will surely take revenge on you, but after that I will quit."  What a nice guy.  So he just goes on the rampage and kills we don't know how many of them.  Then he goes and lives in a cave, until the Philistines come looking for them, and then he takes the jawbone of a donkey and kills 1000 men with it.  By the way, click here to see how this would actually have worked.

Next is the story we're all familiar with: Delilah.  But first he goes and sleeps with a prostitute, a Philistine prostitute at that.  Why can't Samson live with his own people and just go kill Philistines on the weekends or something?  Then he meets Delilah, who is also a Philistine, and falls in love with her.  Apparently the feeling isn't mutual because the Philistines pay her to find out the secret to Samson's strength.  You know the story: the first three times she asks him, he tells her something totally bogus, but the fourth time he tells her that his hair has never been cut, and so she cuts his hair off, he becomes normal, and he gets captured by the Philistines.  They gouge his eyes out, which is really really really gross to me, and parade him around at one of their parties.

Finally, finally Samson does something intelligent.  He prays.  In this story, we've seen the Spirit of God come upon Samson to endow him with strength, but we haven't seen Samson acknowledge God, in spite of being a Nazirite and everything.  In fact, he seems to be the most un-Israelite Israelite we've yet met: he doesn't live with his own people, he doesn't appear to have any kind of communication with God, and the only women he's interested in are Philistines, whom the Israelites are forbidden from intermarrying with.  But now, at rock bottom, Samson turns to God and prays that God will give him strength one last time.   True, Samson seems concerned only with avenging himself because the Philistines took his eyes, but God listens to him, and Samson pulls an entire giant house down, killing well over 3000 Philistines - and Samson.

It seems to me like Samson was really motivated by hormones, and that both got him into trouble and caused him to kill a bunch of Philistines, which was what he was born for.  And that brings me to the title of this blog.  Samson may have been a total Neanderthal without an ounce of gentleman in him, and he may have been really hormonal and made stupid rash decisions, but God used those things to do what He had always intended to do with Samson, in delivering Israel from the Philistines.  God can even turn our foolishness and our stupidity into something useful to Him.  Isn't that crazy?

Judges 10-12: Jephthah

I know what you're thinking.  Jephthah?  Why does he get his own blog post?  Isn't he a little blurb like Othniel and Shagmar?  Acutally no, his story actually does have three whole chapters.

Well, the first chapter of Jephthah's story isn't about Jephthah, it's about the Philistines and Amorites oppressing Israel.  The Philistines and Amorites keep popping up all over the place - we're going to be seeing them for a while, and the Philistines will actually become more and more prominent the further on we go.  Isn't that great.

So what we learn in chapter 10 is that there are a couple judges after Abimelech's death and before Jephthah comes into play: Tola the son of Dodo (I know! it's even better than Joshua son of Nun) and Jair the Gileadite.  So after they're both gone, Israel again does evil, and then the Amorites and Philistines kind of take over.  Israel cries out to God, and God says, I delivered you from everybody else, but you still left me to serve other gods, so I'm not going to save you this time (how about I'll leave the quotes off unless I'm directly quoting the Bible - that way there's no confusion).  But the people of Israel say something very interesting: "We have sinned, do to us whatever seems good to You; only please deliver us this day."  I think that when you can surrender yourself to God and say "do whatever you want," you've reached a good place to be.  But Israel is pretty desperate here, apparently.

I love what the next verse says: the Israelites got rid of all their foreign gods and served the LORD - and remember, this is before God delivers them or even raises up a judge.  And then it says, "and He [God] could bear the misery of Israel no longer."  Doesn't that statement amaze you?  When we are suffering, God's not up there rubbing His hands together saying "aha, finally they are good and miserable!"  It grieves God - I think He hurts when we hurt, because He loves us.  He would really not have any of this bad stuff happen to people, but remember, God is on a mission here.  He is on a mission to save the whole world, and He's going to do whatever it takes to accomplish it.  What does that have to do with anything?  Well, if Israel stops following Him and does its own thing for the rest of history, how do you suppose He's going to bring the Messiah into the world in the first place?  It seems clear to me that God wanted Jesus to be born and grow up in a place where the LORD was known and served.

So anyway, enter Jephthah, hereafter Jeph because Jephthah is too long to type..  Jeph is an interesting person right off the bat because he's the son of a prostitute.  But interestingly enough, we know who his father was, a guy named Gilead - in fact, it appears that Jeph was raised in his father's house.  Gilead has a wife, and he and his wife have sons, and when they grow up they drive Jephthah out of the house because he's an illegitimate son.  Now, if I remember my Torah right, people who had illicit sex were supposed to be killed or else made to marry if they were both single consenting adults, so technically this situation shouldn't exist.  But sometimes God takes things that shouldn't be, and does something really cool with them.  Bad stuff happens, and we can't always just get rid of it, but God can do something even better than erasing it - He can redeem it.

So Jeph is an outcast living in a place called Tob, and some guys who are apparently real losers hang out with them (seriously, my Bible calls themn "worthless fellows").  But Jeph must've been one heck of a fighter or something, because when the Ammonites start going to war with Israel, the elders from Jeph's hometown go out and find him and say, hey, we want you to be our chief so you can fight these Ammonites.  Jeph says, Um, didn't you guys kick me out?  Name one good reason why I should listen to you just because you're in trouble.  The elders say, because you'll become our chief.  So Jeph goes with them.

Jeph has an interesting battle tactic.  He sends a message to the king of Ammon saying, why the heck are you guys fighting us anyway?  The king replies, because you guys took our land away and we want it back.  Jeph says, No way dude, that's not how it happened.  And he tells them the story that we already know from Numbers: how Israel asked very nicely to pass through Moab, and Moab wouldn't let them, so they had to go around, and they had to go by Ammon, and they asked very nicely to pass through Ammon, and Ammon not only wouldn't let them, but went out to war against them.  Is this all coming back?

Anyway, Jeph's point is that after all this, God gave the land of Ammon to the Israelites, so the Ammonites lost their right to live there; they can live in whatever land their own god gives them (nice touch).  But he might as well not have said anything, because the king doesn't listen.

So of course, Ammon and Israel go to war, and Jeph does something really stupid.  He makes a vow that if they win, he'll give whatever walks out of his door first as an offering to God.  So of course Israel wins because God is with them, and Jeph goes home, and what - or should I say, who - walks out his door first? His daughter.

Okay, so I think scholars are probably divided on what actually happens to Jeph's daughter, because the Law forbids human sacrifice of any kind.  In fact, we learned all about the redeeming of the firstborn sons, since firstborn animals were offered as sacrifices, but instead of doing that with their children they would offer an animal in the son's place.  Now, the text says that Jeph's daughter goes into the mountains to mourn being a virgin her whole life, not that she goes to mourn being about to die, and when she comes back the text says that she had no relations with a man, so I think that what actually happened is that she just lived a celibate life, and maybe she spent the rest of her life in the Lord's service or something, kind of like what Hannah did with Samuel.  Here, I found a little article that explains it in further detail: http://www.apologeticspress.org/articles/2320

Anyway, so those Ephraimites once again are really miffed that they weren't invited to join the battle.  What is up with Ephraim?  Every time the people on the other side of the Jordan get in a fight, they want a piece of it.  Only this time the Ephraimtes tell Jeph they're going to burn his house down because he didn'task them to fight.  Jeph tells them that he did call Ephraim and ask for their help and they just didn't give it.  That part wasn't in the story already, so we didn't know about it.  Then Ephraim and the people of Gilead fight each other, and Jeph's team wins.  It kind of looks to me that what has happened is exactly what these people's ancestors were worried about when they made their memorial altar - that there would be a rift between the Israelites to the west of the Jordan and those living in Gilead, and that the people in the main part of Israel would say that the other guys weren't really part of them.  Ephraim says to the people in Gilead, "You are fugitives of Ephraim, O Gileadites, in the midst of Ephraim and in the midst of Manasseh."  I don't know what that means, but it sounds like it means "You're not real Israelites."  Their ancestors tried to prevent that from happening, but it happened anyway.

Oh, but this is really funny.  After this battle, there's a kind of lingering feud between Ephraim Gilead, and when crossing the Jordan the people all have to say the password: Shibboleth.  See, Ephraimites apparently couldn't make a "sh" sound, and they would say "Sibboleth," and then the Gileadites would know the person was an Ephraimite.  I think that's funny.

The end of this chapter just mentions all the people who judge Israel after Jeph, but the most significant ting about any of them is that the judge named Isban has thirty sons and thirty daughters, and another judge named Abdon has forty sons and thirty grandsons who rode on seventy donkeys.

Jeph's story is kind of a weird one, but I think he was a cool guy overall.  I really don't think he killed his daughter.  I like that he attempted diplomacy.  And I love that we see the heart of God in this story.

Judges 1-5: Dynamite Dudes and Deadly Dames

Now we're in Judges, which is, in my opinion, one of the Bible's most frustrating books.  The cycle of obedience, disobedience, oppression, repentance, and deliverance, is going to be repeated many times, and by the time we get to the end of the book things are just chaotic.  But there is some really cool stuff in this book too; in fact, a few of my favorite people are in this book.

So Judges begins more or less where Joshua ended, with Joshua having just died and the people of Israel wondering what to do about the Canaanite cities that have not yet been captured.  So they start to go after some of them, and Caleb even offers his daughter as a reward for whoever will capture Kiriath-sepher.  Things seem to be going well, but then we find out that the Benjaminites don't drive out the Jebusites in Jerusalem, and that there are people among Manasseh, Ephraim, Zebulun, Asher, Naphtali, and Dan that are not conquered or not driven out - in fact, the people of Dan get driven into the hills by the Amorites and they essentially lose their land.  So the angel of the LORD comes and rebukes the people for not obeying Him by not driving out all the people, and warns them that those people are going to become a snare to them.

Here's when things really start to go downhill.  We read again about how Joshua died and the people served God while he was alive and while his successors were alive, but then we read a very ominous verse: "All that generation also were gathered to their fathers; and there arose another generation after them who did not know the LORD, nor yet the work which He had done for Israel."

Time out.  Wasn't there a big push in the Law for the people to talk about the LORD constantly with their kids?  What happened?  From Abraham all the way till now, we have seen so few examples of good parents that I'm starting to think parenting skills are a genetic deformity with Israel.  So surprise surprise, Israel serves the Baals, which is the collective name for the pagan gods of the Canaanites.  And guess what? those people who didn't get driven out of the land, and a few people outside the land that God had given Israel peace with at the end of Joshua, they now are not so peaceful.

First the king of Mesopotamia oppresses Israel for 8 years.  God sends a dude named Othniel to deliver them, and for forty years things go well.  But once again, Israel is unable to make a good thing last more than one generation, because history repeats itself.  Only this time it's Moab who oppresses Israel, for 18 years this time.

Enter one of my favorite people in the Bible:  Ehud, a leftie.  He stabs the king of Moab, whom the Bible describes as "a very fat man," so deep that his blade gets lost in the king's stomach.  That's just gross, but the story is also really funny.  And after Ehud's display of left-handed cleverness, there are 80 years of peace - I think that's the longest period of rest that the nation is going to have during this whole book, so don't get too comfortable.

Next is a guy named Shagmar.  He only gets one sentence in the Bible, unfortunately.  He killed 600 Philistines using an oxgoad   I didn't know what an oxgoad was so I looked it up.  According to Wikipedia, "The goad is a traditional farming implement, used to spur or guide lifestock, usually oxen, which are pulling a plough or a cart; used also to round up cattle. It is a type of a long stick with a pointed end, also known as the cattle prod. Though many people are unfamiliar with them today, goads have been common throughout the world. Goads in various guises are iconographic device, and may be seen in the hand of Neith and the 'elephant goad' or 'ankusha' (Sanskrit) in the hand of Ganesha, for example."

Now I don't know anything about Shagmar, but he sounds pretty cool just from that.  I wonder why he didn't use a sword though?

After Ehud dies (so apparently Shagmar's oxgoad feat was during Ehud's lifetime), we have a really cool lady named Deborah, a prophetess.  She's not the judge - a guy named Barak is.  But she tells Barak to go fight Canaan, who is the current oppressor of the last 20 years.  Barak says he'll only go if Deborah goes with him.  I'm really not sure why; I guess he thought having a prophetess around would help him with strategy?  So Deborah tells him that Sisera, the army commander, will be given into the hands of a woman.  I thought that meant Deborah was going to get the credit for Canaan's defeat, but that's not at all what she's talking about.  She means, literally, that a woman is going to kill Sisera.  Her name is Jael.

Jael is probably the coolest lady in the Bible.  First, she has a cool name.  But more importantly, when Barak defeats the Canaanites and Sisera runs away, he comes to her tent, and she convinces him that she'll hide him, because apparently her husband's people has a peace treaty with the king of Canaan.  So he hides there and falls asleep, and Jael takes a tent peg and hammers it through his temple.  That's way grosser than what Ehud did.  Jael rocks!

The next chapter is a song that Deborah and Barak sing, and Jael has her own stanza.

So what do we learn about God from this passage?  One, that God is serious when he says there will be bad consequences for sinning.  Two, that God is also serious about forgiveness, and serious about keeping His covenant with Abraham.  I mean technically, God's already fulfilled the covenant; He kept His terms.  But He continues to keep it even after Israel has broken it over and over and over.  Why?  I guess because God has a plan that's bigger than Israel.  And He'll do what it takes to see that plan through, because ultimately it will save us all.