The Book of Judges: God's presence in history

The latter part of Judges, the five chapters from Chapter 17 to the end, is one of the grimmest passages in all of Scripture, containing tales of rape, dismemberment, idolatry, and genocide, and with no visible Hand of God at work.

And that, I think, is the point.

"In those days, there was no king in Israel: every man did that which was right in his own eyes." (Judges 21:25)

The implication is that by the time these tales were committed to writing in the form in which we have them, there was a king in Israel. Perhaps they were placed here at the end of the book, out of chronological order [chapters 19-21 are dated by 20:28, when "Phineas, the son of Eleazar, the son of Aaron" was high priest, thus very early in the period], as cautionary tales, describing how bad it can get when, in absence of a king, orderly teaching and enforcement of the law is lacking. The children of Israel in those days had the Law. But they did not follow it. As one learns in the books of the Kings and in the Prophets, the situation did not improve under the monarchy. Someone like Hezekiah would make reforms, and others, like Manasseh, would undo them, leading to ruin.

So, why are these stories here, a part of the larger Story, and (in their way) an important part?

The children of Israel learned that the Hand of God was manifest in history, in the life of families and nations -- in, ultimately, the little decisions, moment by moment, of every person for good or ill, and the ramifications thereof. Sometimes the work of God is blindingly obvious, as in the deliverance from Egypt. But very often, as in these final chapters of Judges, God seems to be absent. Where was God when the children of Dan put the city of Laish to the sword and took it as their own (Chapter 18)? Where was God when the concubine out of Bethlehem-Judah was shoved out the door into a night of horror, and when, as day dawned, she crawled with her last strength to the threshold of the door and died (Chapter 19)?

Where was God during the Armenian Massacre? Or the Holocaust? Or the Soviet Union in the days of Josef Stalin? Or the killing fields of Cambodia? Or Rwanda? Or the Congo and the Sudan? The definitive answer came on a day when it seemed, even to the Son of Man, that God was absent:

"And when they were come unto a place called Golgotha, that is to say, a place of a skull, they gave him vinegar to drink mingled with gall: and when he had tasted thereof, he would not drink. And they crucified him. . . ." (St. Luke 27:33-35a)


In the distant age when "there was no king in Israel," God was manifest in the likes of Ehud, and Deborah, and Jael, and Gideon, and Jephthah, and Samson, and many others, who "through faith subdued kingdoms, wrought righteousness, obtained promises, stopped the mouths of lions, quenched the violence of fire, escaped the edge of the sword, out of weakness were made strong, waxed valiant in fight, turned to flight the armies of the aliens . . . . They were stoned, they were sawn asunder, were tempted, were slain with the sword: they wandered about in sheepskins and goatskins: being destitute, afflicted, tormented. . . ." (Hebrews 11:33-34, 37)

It was in the context of chapters 17 through 21 that these women and men of faith lived their lives and did what was right in the sight of the LORD. They were joined by Naomi and Ruth and Boaz, and by Hannah and Samuel, and (perhaps) by righteous Job and his friends. It was a time of anarchy and much violence, but that did not prevent them from living as lights of the world in their generations. It did not prevent God, through them, from influencing the course of history.

Where is God in this Year of Our Lord 2010, when it seems that God is absent from the affairs of men and nations?

"Christ has no body now but yours
No hands, no feet on earth but yours
Yours are the eyes through which He looks compassion on this world.
Christ has no body now but yours."
(St. Teresa of Avila)