West Chester, Pennsylvania
tải về 6.33 Mb. Chế độ xem pdf
|
| Good to Bad
The first judges are good, the next are morally ambiguous, and the last judges are more villains than heroes. As noted above, the descending character of the judges seems to represent the descending state of the people. Judges like Othniel and Deborah are faithful and good. Yet, although Deborah judges the people righteously, the military leader of her time, Barak, is so afraid to fight that God delivers his enemy Sisera into the hands of a woman as a rebuke to Barak’s lack of trust and courage. After Deborah, the Midianites return to power and oppress Israel. Gideon beats out his wheat using a wine press indoors, where the Midianites will not see him and steal his wheat. In the midst of his work, an angel of the Lord tells Gideon, “The Lord is with you” (Jgs 6:12). A dialogue reminiscent of the conversation at the burning bush ensues, as Gideon questions this statement and God’s summons to deliver his people. Like Moses, Gideon demurs, appealing to the weakness of his clan and himself. Like Moses, Gideon claims to be too humble p 130 to do the Lord’s work. And yet, as with Moses, it is precisely the weak that God raises up—to show forth his glory. As with Moses, God gives Gideon signs as proof that he is with him. Fire consumes Gideon’s sacrifice, and the fleece left on the ground is dry, although the ground around it is wet with the morning dew. Gideon gathers an army to fight the Midianites, but the Lord repeatedly asks Gideon to reduce his numbers so that it will be clear that the victory is the Lord’s. Even so, after the stunning triumph over Midian, the men of Israel come to Gideon and ask him and his descendants to rule over them as king, ascribing the victory to Gideon, not God. Gideon wisely declines the royal position, but then gets greedy. Gideon demands a large portion of the spoils, particularly the gold, forgetting that the spoils went to the Lord who fought for Israel. Worse still, he uses the gold to make himself an ephod, a priestly garment adorned with gold and jewels. Gideon usurps the role of Aaron, and leads Israel into apostasy, just as Aaron did with the calf made from gold plundered from the Egyptians. The narrator clearly alludes to this connection, saying, “all Israel played the harlot after it there, and it became a snare to Gideon and to his family” (Jgs 8:27). The image of the harlot is repeated in the narrative of Gideon’s death, when Israel again goes after the Amorite gods. The author sadly observes that Israel did not “remember” the Lord, who had repeatedly rescued them. Gideon’s slide continues as he takes many wives, who give him seventy sons, and a concubine in Shechem bears him a son whom he names Abimelech (Jgs 8:31), or “my father is king.” Perhaps Gideon had second thoughts about the offer of kingship? Whatever Gideon’s thinking, Abimelech makes himself a ruler and slaughters all but one of Gideon’s seventy sons. This pattern of infighting among Israelites continues to grow in the last half of Judges. Jephthah will slaughter thousands from the tribe of Ephraim, and by the end of the book, civil war will almost completely wipe out one tribe. After Abimelech, the next major leader is Jephthah, the son of a harlot. Judges opens by telling us that the people did “evil in the eyes of the L ORD ,” which is explained as taking foreign women as wives and then worshiping their gods (Jgs 3:5–7). Given this background, it is likely that Jephthah’s mother was p 131 an Amorite. This is a vital detail, because when Jephthah wins a great military victory over the Ammonites, he must repay a rash oath he made, swearing that if he were victorious, he would offer up in sacrifice “whoever comes forth from the doors of my house to meet me” (Jgs 11:31). This kind of oath is not fitting for a faithful Israelite but is more akin to the kinds of sacrifices made by the Amorites, who offered child sacrifice. Jephthah’s daughter greets him, and after giving her two months to mourn the fact that she will die without marriage and children, he sacrifices her. The harlot’s son has mixed the faith of the Amorites with that of Israel, and now he offers a horrific sacrifice in the manner of the Amorites. Harlotry and pagan practices are again linked and condemned. tải về 6.33 Mb. Chia sẻ với bạn bè của bạn:
|