Day 69. Judges 1-3

The death of Joshua created a leadership vacuum which tribal leaders tried to fill, but with mixed success. They were either unwilling or unable to drive out the Canaanites, and as a result the people of Israel found were weakened both militarily and spiritually by their association with these pagan folk.
Chapter 1 of Judges ends with a melancholy list of places where the Canaanites continued to live. Israel had been repeatedly commanded not to make any covenant with the natives of the Land, but instead to tear down their altars. (The LORD, who is a "jealous God," opposes all other gods and will not tolerate those who worship them.) But Israel chose to tolerate evil, and the LORD in jealous anger left a "fifth column" of Canaanites among them as a test and a "snare" (2:3).
It was a test they failed to pass. We are told that the Israelites began to join enthusiastically in the worship the Baal and Astarte. The word "baal" means 'lord.' Baal was the Canaanite god of thunder, war, and virility, often personified as a bull. Astarte was a female fertility goddess, often worshipped as the consort to Baal, whose orgiastic cult promised fertility to the land and the livestock and healthy children to her devotees—together was good fun. The high-minded and austere law code of the covenant with its God who refused to be pictured in any way had to struggle at a considerable disadvantage with these popular cults.
The people of Israel were willingly seduced by these cults, and as a result they were given over to "plunderers who plundered them" (2:14) and found themselves "in distress" (2:15). But the LORD, ever mindful of his covenant, had mercy and sent them a series of "judges." These homegrown "messiahs" were a colorful, warlike bunch. (The word "messiah" means deliverer and throughout biblical history had a strongly military connotation.)
They came equipped with the "spirit of the LORD" (3:10) and each in his or her own way was able to liberate Israel from its current dilemma. But at the death of the judge, the people would always relapse into their evil ways and the cycle—apostasy, oppression, deliverance and relapse-would recur with dreary regularity (2:18-19). During the period of the judges—from about 1200 to 1020 B.C.—the story of Israel is mixed record of limited military gains and larger setbacks.
Chapter 3 begins with a list of the nations that "the LORD left to test all those in Israel who had no experience of any war in Canaan" (verse 1), and these neighboring peoples proved a ready source of temptation and corruption.
It is against a background of intermarriage and religious syncretism (3:6), we are told the stories of the first two charismatic judges—Othniel and Ehud. The story of the left-handed Ehud—it appears that the little tribe of Benjamin produced more than its share of sinister folk--is typical of the stories of the judges. His assassination of the fat king of Moab is filled with grotesque detail, ribald humor, and ancient bathroom language—e.g. "covering his feet" (3:24). But God strengthened Ehud's strong left arm, and by a combination of craftiness and military leadership he succeeds in quelling the Moabite threat. As a result we are told that "the land had rest eighty years" (3:30).
It was during this period that a new menace appeared on the scene—the Philistines (3:31). These "sea people" migrated to Palestine from the Greek isles and settled on Mediterranean plain. In spite of Shamgar, the judge who killed six hundred of them with an oxgoad, the Philistines were an aggressive foe, numerous and technologically advanced. They will prove a redoubtable threat to Israel for a long time to come.