Outline of Chapter 2:

         vv.     1–5           The Angel of Jehovah Warns Israel

         vv.     6–9           Joshua’s Death

         vv.    10–23         Israel’s Apostasy and Instability Under the Judges: a Summary

Charts, Maps and Short Doctrines:

         Introduction         An Alternative Outline for Judges 2

         Introduction         Matthew Henry Summarizes and Organizes Judges 2

         v.       1              The Angel of Jehovah—A Brief Summary

         v.       1              The Appearances of the Angel of Jehovah

         v.       1              Commentators Discuss the Nature of the Angel of the Lord Here in Judges 2:1

         v.       1              What Form is the Angel of Jehovah in Judges 2:1?

         v.       1              To Whom Does the Angel of Jehovah Speak?

         v.       1              The Movement of the Ark of God and the Tent of Meeting

         v.       1              A Conditional Covenant Versus an Unconditional Covenant

         v.       1              A Summary of Judges 2:1

         v.       2              God’s Commands/Israel’s Disobedience; Past, Present and Future

         v.       2              The Paraphrases Obliterate Judges 2:2d

         v.       4              What is the Manner of the Angel of Jehovah?

         v.       5              The Location of the Tent of God

         v.       6              Exegetes Explain Why this Narrative Suddenly Returns to Joshua

         v.       7              The Parallel Passages of Joshua and Judges

         v.       9              Why Is Joshua’s Death Mentioned Again?

         v.      11              A Listing of Some of the Baalim in Scripture

         v.      11              Israel and the Baalim in Scripture

         v.      11              Israel’s 7 Apostasies in the Book of the Judges

         v.      12              The Anger of Jehovah

         v.      13              A Summary of the Doctrine of Ashtoreth

         v.      15              God Has Clearly Warned Israel

         v.      18              Matthew Henry’s 4 Conclusions and Applications to our Age

         v.      19              Matthew Henry Summarizes Judges 2:17–19

         v.      20              The Structure of Judges 2: the Parenthetical Nature of vv. 13–19

         v.      22              Why God Tests Us

         v.      23              The Parallels of Judges 2: Idolatry

         v.      23              The Parallels of Judges 2:the Covenants

         v.      23              The Parallels of Judges 2: Driving out the Heathen

         v.      23              The Parallels of Judges 2: the Anger of Jehovah

         v.      23              Clarke Explains Why God did not Quickly Remove the Idolaters from the Land

         v.      23              The Linear View

         v.      23              Jewish Logic and the Order of Judges 1–2

         v.      23              Barnes’ Theory of the Flow of Judges 2

         v.      23              A Complete Translation of Judges 2

I ntroduction: The organization of the book of Judges is rather disconcerting. I am expecting that there is a particular author, and that does not appear to be the case. Or, if there is one author of Judges, he does not appear to be necessarily a contemporary of the events which take place. The reason that I say this is, there is some overlap of historical events of chapters 1 and 2. Joshua’s death is mentioned in Judges 1:1 to set the historical time frame; but then, it is mentioned again, and in much greater detail in Judges 2:6–9. Furthermore, the actions of Israel in Judges 1 and 2 seem to almost be contradictory. In Judges 1, the tribes of Judah and Simeon appear to fulfill God’s mandate for their first few years in their inheritance; however, in Judges 2, there seems to be no obedience whatsoever to God’s mandates. Not to worry—all of this will be sorted out and explained. In fact, the two mentions of Joshua’s death, along with the very different actions of Judges 1 and 2 are tied together. The short explanation is, only Joshua’s death is mentioned in Judges 1:1; those who took the land under Joshua continued (at least, those in Judah and Simeon). However, in Judges 2:6–10, not only do we see the death of Joshua, but we also see the deaths of those who served under Joshua—the generation of promise. When they die off, then the events of Judges 2 take place.

The short, abbreviated view of Judges 2 is simple: this book gives us a pattern for what would take place in Israel over the next 300 or so years; and a pattern which will be followed in Judges 3–16. Actually, we get two specific historical events: the Angel speaking to Israel in Bochim; and the death of Joshua and the generation of promise. Beginning in v. 11, we have the historical trends which define the actions of Israel for the next several hundred years.

In Judges 2, we have quite the interesting appearance of the Angel of the Lord, Jesus Christ, Who makes some stern observations of Israel, which helps to explain the lack of progress and success that we observed in the previous chapter. Then we have the dismissal of Joshua to Israel to their inheritance, the death and burial of Joshua, and, most importantly, the death of the generation of promise. Two generations of Israelites left Egypt under Moses: Gen X (20 and older) and the generation of promise (their children and those who would be born to them in the desert). The failures of Gen X were spectacular—so much so that God killed them all in the desert (except for Moses, Aaron, Caleb); but allowed their sons to live and to take the Land of Promise. The generation of promise is seen in Judges 1; the generation of promise have all passed on in Judges 2.

In the latter half of this book, Israel’s idolatry is examined in a general way and their relationship to the judges of Israel is examined in a general way. Chapter 1 gives us an overview of what the troops did after being given their inheritance and chapter 2 gives us a rundown of Israel’s history from their inheritance through the period of the judges. It is almost as though the author of this chapter was the author of the entirety of the book of Judges, who gives us an overview here, knowing what would happen in the subsequent chapters.

The first portion of this chapter is rather surreal and seems to exist without any reference to time. The Angel of Jehovah, Who is Jehovah, travels from Gilgal to Bochim and then speaks, but it is unclear who He speaks to—I should rephrase that—He speaks to all of Israel, but the method is unclear. That is, we do not know whether He spoke through a prophet, through a judge; whether He spoke audibly and exactly who was able to hear Him. We do not even know His relationship to time in the book of Judges (however, we can make some reasonable guesses about all of these things).

In the second portion of this chapter, we deal with the death of Joshua and the his faithfulness and the faithfulness of the elders who died soon after him. The latter portion of this chapter deals with a summary of the book of Judges.

McGee comments: This is the beginning of Israel’s "hoop of history." They repeated the weary round of forsaking God, sinning, being reduced to servitude by the enemy , returning to God in repentance, being delivered by God-appointed judges, back to obedience to God .

What we need to deal with is setting up a time frame for these events. Most of us think in a linear fashion, so we want to think that the incident at Bochim occurred first, then Joshua’s death and then the contents of the book of Judges occurred afterwards. This is not how it works. Bochim gives us a general idea of what is coming in the book of Judges and why. Then we backtrack to explain why. We go back to Joshua’s death, his faithfulness; and the faithfulness of the elders under him. However, after their deaths, we have another generation (this begins the third portion of this book). The third portion of this book acts as a summary of the book of Judges, the second portion gives us the background and foundation for that period of time. The first portion tells us of the judgment which God laid upon Israel. We will go into more details, as well as some justification for this at the end of this book.

Judges is such an unusual book because, so far, we have no clue as to who the author is. The end of Joshua seemed to be undoubtedly written by Phinehas. Despite all of weird opinions that you have read, I would give that a 95% likelihood. And, prior to the study of the book of Judges, I would have given an equal likelihood to Phinehas beginning (but, of course, not completing) the book of Judges. Now, throughout the book of Genesis, we have various writers almost seamlessly picking up the thread of the story from the previous author; and in the books of Moses, without any fanfare, it appears as though Joshua picks up the thread, writing the last couple chapters of Deuteronomy and then launches into his own book. And it is clear that Phinehas picks up the pen and covers the last couple chapters of the book of Joshua as well; however, the writing style of Judges 1 is so simplistic as to seemingly preclude the authorship of Phinehas. In this second chapter, we no longer have the simplistic vocabulary of the first chapter, but we appear to have the writing of a person who is looking back upon this time period—possibly from several hundred years after the events of chapter 3 (I say that because in the latter portion of this chapter, the author gives us an overview of Israel and the judges). The vocabulary of Judges 2 is often very repetitive; but the sentence structure is rather complex; very different from the end of the book of Joshua.

The next problem with authorship is that Joshua’s death is mentioned twice—in Judges 1:1 and in Judges 2:6–9. There are reasons why his death is mentioned twice; however, this by itself suggests different authors for these two chapters. Furthermore, Judges 1 could have been easily written by someone who observed the events of that chapter—that is, he could have been a member of the generation of promise, as all of the events of this chapter reasonably take place immediately after Joshua’s death. However, in Judges 2, we move from some very specific incidents to a generalization over what would happen to Israel over the next several hundred years. Now, of course, a prophet could have written this from the generation after the generation of promise, and prophesied here what would happen in the future. However, it is just as likely that an editor from hundreds of years later gathered the historical documents that he could, and put together a history of the Judges, beginning here with an introductory chapter (Judges 2 better introduces the entire book of Judges than does Judges 1). What further seems to suggest that we have a later author who organizes and includes a variety of historical documents, are the final chapters of this book, which seem to be added on as an addendum, but which cover incidents which took place early on during the period of the Judges.

If I was to take a seat of the pants guess at this time, I would say that Samuel composed the book of Judges from several historical documents which he had at his disposal. Phinehas may have written the first chapter of Judges and possibly the first few verses of Judges 2; however, the summarization that we find in the second half of this chapter seems to have been written by someone who is looking back on the history of Israel for this time period, rather than an author who experienced a short period of time during the Judges. The chapters which follow are separated in time by as much as 300 years; it is reasonable that Samuel had access to the historical documents which covered what happened under each judge and the events leading up to God choosing a man to lead Isarel. Finally, at the very end of this book, we have a few chapters which seem to be tacked on. They don’t fit in with any of the Judges in particular; they describe a period of time where Israel is rejecting God’s authority; and they seem to be placed at the end of the book of Judges under the section heading of, Oh, yeah; I almost forgot—these things also took place during the time of the Judges.

One of the fascinating things about Judges 2 is how many theological topics we will study in this chapter and how many practical applications that we will have, based upon the narrative that we find here.

The Angle of the Lord Warns Israel

Here is how others have translated this verse:

Ancient texts:

Masoretic Text                       And so goes up an Angel of Y^ehowah from the Gilgal unto the Bochim. And so He says, “I bring you up from Egypt and so I will bring you up unto the land which I swore to your fathers. And so I say, ‘I will not break My covenant with you to [the] age.’

Septuagint                              And an angel [or, messenger] of the LORD came up from Gilgal to Bochim, and said, “I made you to go up out of Egypt, and have brought you unto the land which I swore unto your fathers; and I said, ‘I will never break my covenant with you.’

Significant differences:           None.

Thought-for-thought translations; paraphrases:

CEV                                       The LORD's angel went from Gilgal to Bochim and gave the Israelites this message from the LORD: I promised your ancestors that I would give this land to their families, and I brought your people here from Egypt. We made an agreement that I promised never to break,...

The Message