Judges. Abraham Kuruvilla

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Othniel sets the standards by which all other judges must measure themselves. Othniel places the tribe of Judah at the head of the list of deliverers just as it stood at the head of the list of tribes who would go up to conquer for Yahweh (1:1–2). Othniel lets God remain in center stage. Othniel delivers Israel after only eight years of oppression. Othniel does nothing to intrude his own personality, his fears, his doubts, or his greed into the narrative. . . . The book of Judges should reflect a boring string of framework narratives like this. Instead it has to add the many stories of disobedience and ego.164

      While the role of all the judges was to deliver their people (a notion introduced in the paradigm in 2:16, 18), only the first two judges, Othniel and Ehud actually are labeled “deliverers” (as a noun: 3:9, 15; the verb form is used of other judges, both major and minor: 3:31; 6:14, 15; 8:22; 10:1; 13:5). This sets these two apart from the ones who followed them. The unraveling has commenced!

The result of Othniel’s leadership is four decades of rest for the land—and this after a single-sentence report of a battle against one who was “doubly wicked”! The attainment of rest was a major goal of the conquest as Josh 11:23 and 14:15 indicate. But this is possible only when the leader is raised and empowered by God and aligns himself to divine purposes, eschewing self-aggrandizement, faithlessness, and fear. “Othniel, who lives in Israel after the death of Joshua and the elders who outlived Joshua, models true judgeship for all who follow him in that position. There never is another Joshua, a survivor of a faithless generation, and there never is another Othniel, a survivor of a faithful generation.”165 His faithful commitment to deity glorifies God and minimizes himself.

SERMON FOCUS AND OUTLINES166

      The negative side of “personal experience of God” is what is depicted in this pericope—the failure to experience God firsthand. Did the prior generation have a role in this? Were they negligent in some way? This pericope does not address the issue, but specific application could conceivably go in that direction: those who have experienced God firsthand are responsible to teach the next generation to do so themselves. Or the application could be an exhortation to the people of God to experience God personally, firsthand, themselves: perhaps this includes remembering the deeds of God in one’s own life (or in the corporate life of the church), etc.

      Possible Preaching Outlines for Pericope 2

      I. Forgetting God

      Failure to experience God firsthand: new generation (2:6–10)

      Missing the blessings of God: the cycle/spiral of failure (2:11–19)

      Divine punishment (2:20—3:6)

      Move-to-relevance: How God’s people forget him; the consequences

      II. Following God

      Importance of experiencing God firsthand: old generation (2:6–10)

      Othniel’s parade example: minimizing self (3:7–11)

Move-to-relevance: The blessings of God for following him167

      III. Experience God!

      How we can experience God firsthand

      How we can teach the next generation to do so

      A rearrangement of the outline above gives us this:

      I. LESSON: Forgetting God vs. Following God

      Failure to experience God firsthand: new vs. old generation (2:6–10)

      Missing the blessings of God: the cycle/spiral of failure (2:11–19)

      Divine punishment (2:20—3:6)

      Move-to-relevance: How God’s people forget him; the consequences

      II. EXAMPLE: Othniel

      Othniel’s parade example: minimizing self (3:7–11)

      Move-to-relevance: The blessings of God for following him

      III. APPLICATION: Experience God!

      How we can experience God firsthand

      How we can teach the next generation to do so

122. O'Connell, The Rhetoric of the Book of Judges, 117.

123. Younger, Judges, Ruth, 84–85.

124. Polzin, Moses and the Deuteronomist, 151.

125. Judges 2:6 begins with a wayyiqtol verb, usually indicating a sequential order of the narrative, but that need not always be the case: see 2:23; 3:16; 5:1; 8:4 (referring back to 7:25), 29; 9:42; 11:4 (referring back to 10:9); 12:4; 16:3; 20:36; 21:6, 24; etc., for exceptions. It is best to see 2:6 as a flashback. See Chisholm, Judges and Ruth, 152 n.9.

126. Judges 3:7–11 remains distinct from 2:6–3:6, for it introduces the first of the judges; it forms part of the Body of the book (3:7—16:31). But Othniel’s account adheres perfectly to the paradigm of the cycle depicted in 2:11–19 and is therefore included within Pericope 2 (Jdg 2:6—3:11). As was noted in the Introduction, “pericope,” as I see it, simply designates a preaching text, irrespective of size or genre. The distinction made between pericopes is more pragmatic than technical. A pericope generates a theological thrust for a sermon sufficiently distinct from the theological thrust of the pericope preceding and following. In other words, a pericope is a unit of text upon which a sermon with a discrete theological idea can be preached.

127. The LXX maintains an identical order of verses between Josh 24:28–31 and Jdg 2:6–9 but, like the MT, it adds 2:10.

128. A further nuancing: The generation of Joshua includes those elders who outlived him (2:7), those who had seen Yahweh’s great work. These, of course, die only after Joshua (2:10a). It is the subsequent generation that is the problem (2:10b). The term “gathered to one’s fathers” (2:10a), employed of Joshua’s generation, is idiomatic for death and burial, but in this instance it may also connote integral union and solidarity in faith with the generations that preceded them (i.e., before Joshua). This is, of course, in contrast, to the subsequent generation (i.e., after Joshua) that was ignorant of God and his work (2:10b). Did the generation of Joshua’s time contribute unintentionally to this loss of collective memory of Yahweh and his deeds? “In one generation true religion, the religion of Josh 24, vanished from the promised land. . . . A generation that does not teach its children, as Josh 4:6, 21 advised, would lose its children to false religion” (Butler, Judges, 42).

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