Judges 10:1-11:28

Judges 10:1-11:28

Two more judges arose at the beginning of Judges 10, ruling for a total of 50 years. This was another great time for Israel, but as always, once both Tola and Jair were gone, Israel went back to its wicked ways. For 18 years, several nations surrounding Israel, including the Philistines, enslaved the Israelites. They were overtaken by these foreign nations and endured significant punishment. Israel again realized their mistakes and cried out to God. As often as this happens in their history, it almost becomes frustrating. It seems as if they only cry out to God for deliverance, and I sometimes wonder if they are truly repentant. The text is clear in Judges 10 that Israel recognized their sin and chose to turn away from it and turn back to God. That is crucial! We might admit that we have done something wrong, and we might tell people we are sorry for doing it. But how many times do we sorry without actually meaning it? Repentance is much bigger than just saying “sorry” to someone. Repentance is choosing to turn away from that sin for good. For Israel that meant turning away from all the false gods that they had been worshipping.


Repentance for us could be a variety of things. We all struggle with something specific at some point in our lives, and we have to decide whether we are going to continue to live in that sin or turn back to God. Saying sorry is not good enough. Also, we cannot turn back to that sin days later. Now you might be tempted to think that that is exactly what Israel did, and that is what Judges shows; however, we must understand the timeline of Judges. Judges spans hundreds of years. These judges reign from 20-50 years a piece, and there are significant time gaps between each judges’ reign. So although it is possible that some of the same people turned back to the false gods later in their life, it was more than likely a newer generation. Just as Moses’ generation decided to turn away from God and the next generation chose to follow Him, this generational shift could have been happening in the book of Judges as well. Now while that does not excuse the nation’s actions as a whole, it does show that there were changes in the lives of the individual people. That change is what should happen in our lives as well when we repent of our sins. Repentance is turning away and not turning back.

Sadly, there comes a time when God chooses to give people over to their sin. For Israel, that time had arrived. He had told Moses and Joshua that if Israel turned away from Him and continuously lived in their sin, He would eventually give them over to their sin and turn His back. By the end of Judges 10, Israel found themselves in that position. Although they were seeking after Him again, their continual disobedience had angered God. He did not promise them victory in the battles ahead.

In Judges 11 Jephthah comes on the scene, but not as a judge of Israel. Jephthah was a Gileadite who had been disowned. He was the son of Gilead, but by another woman, and Gilead chose to get rid of Jephthah, not allowing him to have any part of the land. Yet when Gilead found themselves under attack from the Ammonites (the same group of people who was attacking Israel at the time), they rushed to Jephthah for help. Obviously, he wanted no part in it after the way they had treated him, but he saw that they needed help. He agreed to help them on one condition: that if God allowed them to win the battle, they appoint him as their leader. Notice though that he was saying from the start that he was not expecting to get the victory himself; instead, it would come from God. He showed more faith in God at the time than Israel did, and he was not even an Israelite. He soon found out from the Ammonites that they were attacking Gilead because they believed it belonged to them (it was part of the land Israel had conquered under Moses on their way to the Promised Land). Gideon responded by saying that their problems with Israel had nothing to do with Gilead. They had no reason to start a war against Gilead for their disagreements were with Israel. Gilead did not pursue the battle either; instead, he left the results up to God. He knew that God had a plan, and He was willing to wait and see if God had chosen to give them the victory or not.

Matt