Daily Devotions
From Chivalry to Shame
Title: From Chivalry to Shame
Reading for March 20: Judges 20-21
In those days there was no king in Israel. Everyone did what was right in his own eyes.
Judges 21:25
The book of Judges illustrates for us what happens when there is a decline in male spiritual leadership. The book begins with Caleb offering his daughter to any man who would take Kiriath-sepher. Othniel rises to the challenge, demonstrating great faith and courage, thus displaying what male spiritual leadership should look like. (Judges 1:11-15).
A little later we come to Barak who shows a lack of faith in God, saying he will only go and fight the enemy if a woman (Deborah) goes with him (Judges 4-5).
Then there's Gideon, who refuses to be a king when the people call him to be king (and that's a good thing), but then he turns around and acts like a king by multiplying wives and a concubine (Judges 8:30-31).
Gideon's son by concubine, Abimelech, assumes the throne that his father refused. Once again (as with the story of Jael and Sisera) a woman saves Israel from a wicked man (only this time the man is not a foreign power but a power from within, Judges 9:53).
Then we read of Jephthah, whose rash vow costs his own daughter her life (Judges 11:29-40).
The final judge is Samson, who seems to represent everything that is wrong about men (Judges 13-16).
The book closes with some of the darkest and depressing stories in Israel's history. In chapter 19 a Levite, traveling with his concubine (that's right... a concubine!) decides it would be safer to spend the night in Israelite territory than Jebusite territory. (Wrong!) A group of men come to have sexual relations with him (think Sodom and Gomorrah), but he sends his concubine out to satisfy them. They rape her all night and leave her dead on his doorstep.
When the Levite asks the Benjamites to turn over the perpetrators, they refuse, and he proceeds to cut up his concubine into 12 parts and sends the parts to the tribes, thus inciting civil war against Benjamin. The Benjamites are nearly wiped out. Only 600 men escape. So that they don't become extinct, the other tribes annihilate the town of Jabesh Gilead (because they didn't join in the civil war), give 400 virgins to the 600 Benjamites, and then send the remaining 200 Benjamites to Shiloh to kidnap 200 more women dancing during the harvest celebration.
So, to summarize, we begin the book of Judges with women inspiring men to great deeds of faith and heroism. By the end of the book, women are treated as property (worse than animals, really). They are raped, kidnapped and slaughtered by their own countrymen.
Are we far off from this in our world today?
Father, help us to raise our boys to respect women. Help us to challenge young men to earn the affection of young godly women by demonstrating faith, courage, gentleness, kindness, compassion, and above all steadfast devotion and love for you.
