Day 90: Total Corruption

Warning, this story has adult themes. Today we read Joshua 17-21 and Psalm 148. The Israelites hit rock bottom, this is the pinnacle of tragedy. This is the end of the book of Judges, the story is pointing to the need for a different way and we know this story is followed by Samuel a story that leads to King David and beyond, it points to the need and hope of a messianic king, Jesus. The story of Judges is disturbing and should be, it points to the corruption of the Israelites, the people God chose to be a part of His rescue mission and to put God on display, helping other navigate to atonement, interceding for the lost and rebellious in prayer, and being prodigally generous. While there are maybe three calls out to God about the Benjamites, this story is largely individuals and the assembly making their own choices about what is good and bad, it is largely or at least ambiguous not in alignment with God’s law and character. At this point, the Israelites including the priesthood and judges had fallen so far away from God’s intentions that even the tribe called to be priests and protectors of priests had fallen. So the next story will be about kings, let’s see what happens.

 

Resource:

Solomon, Marty and Billings, Bret (2017) The Redemption Cycle, Episode 36. BEMA Discipleship Podcast https://www.bemadiscipleship.com/36 

Dr. Mackie, Tim and Collins, Jon. Judges Summary, Bible Project. https://bibleproject.com/explore/video/judges/ 

https://bibleproject.com/blog/judges-messianic-hope/ 

Credits:

Podcast music by Stockaudios from Pixabay. Speaker, Dr. Rachel Bodell. Podcast Sound Engineer, Alan Darling. Podcast Artwork, Will Gerard.