Words in italic type have been added for clarity. They are not found in the original Hebrew or Aramaic.

Judges 3

The Nations Remaining in the Land

Judges 3:¹ Now these are the nations which the Lord (yᵊhōvâ) left, that He might test Israel by them, that is, all who had not known (experienced) any of the wars in Canaan

Judges 3:² (this was only so that the generations of the children of Israel might be taught to know war, at least those who had not formerly known it), ³ namely, five lords of the Philistines, all the Canaanites, the Sidonians, and the Hivites who dwelt in Mount Lebanon, from Mount Baal Hermon to the entrance of Hamath.

 Judges 3:⁴ And they were left, that He might test Israel by them, to know (find out) whether they would obey the commandments of the Lord (yᵊhōvâ), which He had commanded their fathers by the hand of Moses.

• What’s the difference between men being tested or tempted?
  • James 1:13 Let no one say when he is tempted, “I am tempted by God”; for God cannot be tempted by evil, nor does He Himself tempt anyone.
• Temptations come from Satan and testing comes from God.
• Testing is God way of trusting us to make the right choices when He gives us the resources to follow His instructions; just as parents allow their children to grow in maturity.

Judges 3:⁵ Thus the children of Israel dwelt among the Canaanites, the Hittites, the Amorites, the Perizzites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites. ⁶ And they took their daughters to be their wives, and gave their daughters to their sons; and they served their gods.

• The Jebusites are those people who dwelt in Jerusalem before it was Jerusalem. The area of the temple was a threshing floor which David bought from Araunah the Jebusite (II Samuel 24.16).

• In summary: The Israelites failed to be trusted to make the right choices with God’s instructions and resources. Marrying pagan women leads to worshiping other gods.
  
  • Nehemiah 13:27 Should we then hear of your doing all this great evil, transgressing against our God by marrying pagan (foreign) women?”
  • Ezra 10:11 Now therefore, make confession to the Lord God of your fathers, and do His will; separate yourselves from the peoples of the land, and from the pagan wives.”

Othniel

Judges 3:⁷ So the children of Israel did evil in the sight of the Lord (yᵊhōvâ). They forgot the Lord their God (yᵊhōvâ ‘ĕlōhîm), and served the Baals and Asherahs (name or symbol for Canaanite goddesses).

 Judges 3:⁸ Therefore the anger of the Lord (yᵊhōvâ) was hot against Israel, and He sold them into the hand of Cushan-Rishathaim king of Mesopotamia; and the children of Israel served Cushan-Rishathaim eight years.

• Eight is symbolic for “A new beginning”.

Judges 3:⁹ When the children of Israel cried out to the Lord (yᵊhōvâ), the Lord (yᵊhōvâ) raised up a deliverer for the children of Israel, who delivered them: Othniel the son of Kenaz, Caleb’s younger brother.

 Judges 3:¹⁰ The Spirit of the Lord (yᵊhōvâ) came upon him, and he judged Israel. He went out to war, and the Lord (yᵊhōvâ) delivered Cushan-Rishathaim king of Mesopotamia into his hand; and his hand prevailed over Cushan-Rishathaim. ¹¹ So the land had rest for forty years. Then Othniel the son of Kenaz died.

• Forty is symbolic for “Its time for a change”.

Ehud

Judges 3:¹² And the children of Israel again did evil in the sight of the Lord (yᵊhōvâ). So the Lord (yᵊhōvâ) strengthened Eglon king of Moab against Israel, because they had done evil in the sight of the Lord (yᵊhōvâ).

Judges 3:¹³ Then he gathered to himself the people of Ammon and Amalek, went and defeated (struck) Israel, and took possession of the City of Palms. ¹⁴ So the children of Israel served Eglon king of Moab eighteen years.

• Eighteen is symbolic for “the “Time to loosen the bonds”

Judges 3:¹⁵ But when the children of Israel cried out to the Lord (yᵊhōvâ), the Lord (yᵊhōvâ) raised up a deliverer for them: Ehud the son of Gera, the Benjamite, a left-handed man. By him the children of Israel sent tribute to Eglon king of Moab.

Judges 3:¹⁶ Now Ehud made himself a dagger (it was double-edged and a cubit in length) and fastened it under his clothes on his right thigh. ¹⁷ So he brought the tribute to Eglon king of Moab. (Now Eglon was a very fat man.)

Judges 3:¹⁸ And when he had finished presenting the tribute, he sent away the people who had carried the tribute.

Judges 3:¹⁹ But he himself turned back from the stone images (Tg. Quarries) that were at Gilgal, and said, “I have a secret message for you, O king.”

He said, “Keep silence!” And all who attended him went out from him.

Judges 3:²⁰ So Ehud came to him (now he was sitting upstairs in his cool private chamber). Then Ehud said, “I have a message from God (‘ĕlōhîm) for you.” So he arose from his seat. ²¹ Then Ehud reached with his left hand, took the dagger from his right thigh, and thrust it into his belly.

 Judges 3:²² Even the hilt (handle) went in after the blade, and the fat closed over the blade, for he did not draw the dagger out of his belly; and his entrails came out.

Judges 3:²³ Then Ehud went out through the porch and shut the doors of the upper room behind him and locked them.

Judges 3:²⁴ When he had gone out, Eglon’s (Lit. his) servants came to look, and to their surprise, the doors of the upper room were locked. So they said, “He is probably attending to his needs (Lit. covering his feet) in the cool chamber.”

Judges 3:²⁵ So they waited till they were embarrassed, and still he had not opened the doors of the upper room. Therefore they took the key and opened them. And there was their master, fallen dead on the floor.

Judges 3:²⁶ But Ehud had escaped while they delayed, and passed beyond the ^[i]stone images and escaped to Seirah.

Judges 3:²⁷ And it happened, when he arrived, that he blew the trumpet in the mountains of Ephraim, and the children of Israel went down with him from the mountains; and he led them (Lit. he went before them).

Judges 3:²⁸ Then he said to them, “Follow me, for the Lord (yᵊhōvâ) has delivered your enemies the Moabites into your hand.” So they went down after him, seized the fords of the Jordan leading to Moab, and did not allow anyone to cross over.

Judges 3:²⁹ And at that time they killed about ten thousand men of Moab, all stout men of valor; not a man escaped. ³⁰ So Moab was subdued that day under the hand of Israel. And the land had rest for eighty years.

Shamgar

Judges 3:³¹ After him was Shamgar the son of Anath, who killed six hundred men of the Philistines with an ox goad (cattle prod); and he also delivered Israel.

1. There is one other biblical reference to Shamgar, the son of Anath:
2. Judges 5:6 In the days of Shamgar, the son of Anath, in the days of Jael, the highways were unoccupied, and the travelers walked through byways.
3. Israel is strategically located for trade. So why empty highways; unoccupied by travelers or caravans? They were oppressed by Sisera and Jabin. Two main speculations are danger and bad economics. Either way, it seems to paint a landscape of an era of depression.

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• Like Ehud, It only takes one man of God to change everything:
  • One of many examples:
  • The monk, Telemachus, emptied the Roman Coliseum during the days of Rome, and stopped the vicious gladiator games. From http://discerninghistory.com/2016/09/telemachus-one-man-empties-the-roman-coliseum/
  • by : John Huffman September 15, 2016
    
    Today, the visitor to the city of Rome can visit the ancient Coliseum.  The mere sight of the gigantic structure is enough to cast a chill upon the stoutest heart.  Its massive structure fills the sky, but the skeleton that exists today is only a shadow of what the ancient Coliseum was in its days of glory, or perhaps we should call it the days of shame.  Every visitor to the spot should pause and ponder that open area of ground in the center of the arena, for the blood of many martyrs hallows that small bit of ground.  The soil of that sacred spot must be very rich indeed, for much blood has drained into that sand over several centuries.
    
    The Coliseum was known all over the world as the center and climax of Roman entertainment.  The Roman masses had an insatiable appetite for observing bloodshed.  Gladiatorial games were held there in the arena.  Gladiators would be trained for years to the height of physical strength.  Then, on the climactic day, they would march out into the arena, stripped naked to the waist.  They would be armed with their favorite weapons and would march to the box where the Caesar sat.  Lifting their swords or battle axes or spears to the skies, they would chant, “Ave, Caesar, morituri te salutant!”  “Hail, Caesar, those about to die salute thee!”
    
    Then the ferocious combats would begin.  When one of the gladiators had wounded his adversary severely and the wounded man was lying helplessly on the ground, the triumphant gladiator would look up at the faces in the crowd, and he would shout, “Hoc habet!” “He has it.”
    
    The crowd would then express their will.  If they gave the sign of thumbs up, the wounded gladiator would be dragged bleeding from the arena, to recover if possible.  If the sign of thumbs down was given, however, the victorious gladiator would lift his weapon to give the final stroke.  The crowd would shout in delight, “Recipe ferrum!” “Receive the steel!”  The lifeless form would soon lie on the sand, another victim to Roman butchery.  Thus the games continued, century after century.  Victorious gladiators became folk heroes, the Roman version of superstars or sports heroes.
    
    But these gladiatorial games were not the worst aspect of the Coliseum, for here, pious Christians were slain by the droves.  Wild beasts such as lions, tigers, leopards, and bears were kept in pits till they were crazed with hunger.  Then they were released upon Christians—boys and girls, old men and matrons, it mattered not.  All were made to feel the pain.  Sometimes Christians were soaked in oil then lit on fire as if they were living torches.  Men and women were torn with iron hooks, grilled on irons, sawed asunder, and placed in boiling pots of oil.  Other things too horrible to even speak of were practiced upon pious young ladies.  Yet even small children met these tortures with fixed resolution, and many times, the song of hymns would waft up from the blood-soaked floor of the Coliseum, the joyful song of human voices rising above even the roar of lions as the souls of the slain, one by one, rose from the arena to ascend to their Saviour and King Who, as He had done to receive Stephen, advanced to the portals of heaven to meet His martyrs.  Roman ingenuity knew no bounds, and every imaginable form of torture, mayhem, and brutal lust was practiced upon the pious Christians of the first through the fourth centuries.
    
    Telemachus Confronts the Gladiators
    
    One day, however, at the height of the gladiatorial games, during a celebration of the Roman victory over the Goths about 370 AD, a lone figure interrupted the proceedings.  Without warning, a rough and weather-beaten man jumped over the wall and into the arena.  Shouts of excitement over the combat gave way to a profound silence, as all eyes turned from the gladiators to look at the lone figure.
    
    He was covered with a mantle.  He had come all the way from Asia to Rome.  He was a Christian.  He had heard about these barbaric entertainments, and, by the grace of God, he intended to stop them.  He had shoved his way to the edge of the arena and jumped into the midst where every eye could see him. He advanced to the two gladiators who were engaged in mortal combat.  Interposing himself between the combatants, he faced the crowd.  Fearlessly, this hero raised his voice.  “In the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, King of Kings and Lord of Lords, I command these wicked games to cease.  Do not requite God’s mercy by shedding innocent blood.”
    
    A shout of defiance met the voice of our hero.  Pieces of fruit, stones, daggers, and other missiles were hurled down from the stands.  One of the gladiators, expecting the applause of the crowd, stepped forward and rammed his battle axe into the skull of the man who had dared interfere with Rome’s favorite entertainment. As the hero sunk lifeless to the ground, the angry cries of the crowd died away into a profound silence in the arena.  As the life’s blood of this new martyr joined the blood of the thousands who had bled there before him, the crowd suddenly faced a courage that was greater than the strongest gladiator. The work of this Christian was accomplished.  His name was Telemachus.  From the hour of his martyrdom, the gladiatorial games ceased. 
    
• According to John Foxe, in his famous book of martyrs, “From the day Telemachus fell dead in the Coliseum, no other fight of gladiators was ever held there.”
  Such was the legacy of a man who dared to jump over a wall and declare that an aspect of popular cultural entertainment was ungodly and unlawful.

• How many pagan entertainments and even supposed “Christian” substitutes of our day await such a display of boldness?  It is interesting that Telemachus did not suggest a “Christian” gladiatorial contest to be staged in the Coliseum.  It is remarkable that he did not advertise a “Christian play” to be performed down the street as an alternative to the impure productions in the Roman theater.  He did not try to innovate some new strategy to appease the circus-loving crowds of Rome.  He did not try to invent a “Christian version” of the circus.  God had ordained to save the unbeliever by the foolishness of preaching, not by the clever drama of the stage or the entertainment of the circus.

• Telemachus believed, in his generation, that the Bible was sufficient for all faith and practice, that God had ordained preaching as His sole mandated method, and that the way to take dominion over some things was to destroy them and not to attempt to make a “Christian” substitute. The dominion of Christ must be in terms of His law, and He will not have in that dominion anything foreign to that law.  Thus, the dominion mandate is lawfully extended over only those institutions that are themselves lawful.  Telemachus called for the end of the games, not for the re-Christianizing of them.  There could not be a “Christian” circus or a “Christian” theatre or a “Christian” gymnasium. This was affirmed by such men as William Farel, John Calvin, and Robert Lewis Dabney who, following the example of Telemachus, wrote in their own generations against the fallacious notions of “Christian theater,” “Christian dancing,” and “Christian novels.”  Sadly today, many Christians are trying to Christianize their own interests and pleasures in the name of “dominion” when, at the core, the institutions they seek to take dominion over are not authorized in the Word of God as legitimate means by which to advance Christ’s Kingdom.

• For this truth, Telemachus was willing to jump over the wall and shed his very life’s blood.  He had the boldness to command, in the name of Jesus Christ, that the gladiatorial games cease, and by the grace of God, they did cease.  Today, the Coliseum stands in ruins while the Church of Jesus Christ continues to advance.  But we must not rest upon the laurels of “mighty men” of the past such as Telemachus or Farel or Dabney.  Today, in our generation, there are things in our culture, things that are considered culturally acceptable by many sincere Christians, that await the steadfast courage of a Telemachus.

• Bibliography:

• Foxe’s Book of Martyrs by John Foxe
  Discussions by R. L. Dabney, vol. 2

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• Archeology:

• ► Judges 3:1-6

• There was a spate of headlines last week claiming that new scientific discoveries disproved the historical narrative of the Bible. Headlines included, “DNA vs the Bible: Israelites did not wipe out the Canaanites” and “Study disproves the Bible’s suggestion that the ancient Canaanites were wiped out.” The problem is that the reverse is actually true: The discoveries confirm what the Scriptures explicitly state.
  
  Not surprisingly, these headlines didn’t come from obscure, Bible-bashing websites. Instead, they came from Cosmos Magazine, Yahoo.com, New Scientist (claiming that the discovery helped unravel the “true fate” of the Canaanites), and others. As stated in the New York Times, “There is a story in the Hebrew Bible that tells of God’s call for the annihilation of the Canaanites, a people who lived in what are now Jordan, Lebanon, Syria, Israel and the Palestinian territories thousands of years ago.
  
  “‘You shall not leave alive anything that breathes,’ God said in the passage. ‘But you shall utterly destroy them.’
  
  “But a genetic analysis published on Thursday has found that the ancient population survived that divine call for their extinction, and their descendants live in modern Lebanon.”
  
  The problem, again, is the word “But,” since there is no contradiction between this genetic discovery and the Old Testament accounts. A more accurate statement would have been, “But the Hebrew Bible tells us explicitly that Israel failed to complete this mission of extermination, and a genetic analysis published on Thursday lends confirmation to this account, finding that the ancient population survived that divine call for their extinction, and their descendants live in modern Lebanon.”
  
  As for the study itself, “Dr. Tyler-Smith and an international team of geneticists and archaeologists recovered ancient DNA from bones belonging to five Canaanites retrieved from an excavation site in Sidon, Lebanon, that were 3,650 to 3,750 years old. The team then compared the ancient DNA with the genomes of 99 living people from Lebanon that the group had sequenced. It found that the modern Lebanese people shared about 93 percent of their ancestry with the Bronze Age Sidon samples.”
  
  What did the team conclude? According to Iosif Lazaridis, a Harvard geneticist who did not participate in the study, “it turns out that people who lived in Lebanon almost 4,000 years ago were quite similar to people who lived there today, to the modern Lebanese.”
  
  But why should this surprise us? Or why should this discovery, assuming its accuracy, be taken as a contradiction of the Bible?
  
  You don’t need to be a Bible scholar to figure this out. You don’t even need to read the Hebrew language. Any English Bible will do. The story is forthright and clear.
  
  After the death of Moses, it was up to Joshua to lead the people into the promised land, the land of Canaan, driving out the peoples that lived there. These included “the Canaanites, the Hittites, the Amorites, the Perizzites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites” (Exod. 3:8). According to a number of biblical passages, these peoples were notoriously wicked (see, e.g., Deut. 9:4-5). Still, God told Abraham that he would have to wait 400 years before his descendants could possess their land. At that time, their guilt and wickedness would be complete (see Gen. 15:13-21).
  
  The Book of Joshua recounts Israel’s conquest of Canaan, with city after city falling before them. But was it a complete victory? Was it an absolute annihilation of the enemy? Not even close.
  
  As Joshua itself states, “Now Joshua was old and advanced in years, and the LORD said to him, ‘You are old and advanced in years, and there remains yet very much land to possess.’” (Josh. 13:1). So, towards the end of Joshua’s life, Israel had hardly completed its mission.
  
  The verses that follow contain a detailed list of all the regions that were not yet taken, including, “all Lebanon, toward the sunrise, from Baal-gad below Mount Hermon to Lebo-hamath, all the inhabitants of the hill country from Lebanon to Misrephoth-maim, even all the Sidonians” (Jos. 13:5-6, my emphasis). So, the inhabitants of Lebanon were not driven out, as these DNA discoveries seem to confirm.
  
  Then, in the next book of the Bible, called Judges, which continues the story after Joshua’s death, an angel of the Lord rebukes the people for failing to drive these nations out. The angel even says, speaking for God, “I will not drive them out before you, but they shall become thorns (literally: curses) in your sides, and their gods shall be a snare to you” (Judg. 2:3). In fact, the last 17 verses of Judges I detail all the peoples that Israel failed to drive out. Verse 31 specifically mentions “the inhabitants of Sidon,” which was one of the major cities of Lebanon.
  
  And look at what the very next chapter states, “Now these are the nations that the LORD left, to test Israel by them, that is, all in Israel who had not experienced all the wars in Canaan. It was only in order that the generations of the people of Israel might know war, to teach war to those who had not known it before. These are the nations: the five lords of the Philistines and all the Canaanites and the Sidonians and the Hivites who lived on Mount Lebanon, from Mount Baal-hermon as far as Lebo-hamath. They were for the testing of Israel, to know whether Israel would obey the commandments of the LORD, which he commanded their fathers by the hand of Moses. So the people of Israel lived among the Canaanites, the Hittites, the Amorites, the Perizzites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites. And their daughters they took to themselves for wives, and their own daughters they gave to their sons, and they served their gods” (Judg. 3:1-6, my emphasis).
  
  In the centuries that followed, Lebanon remained a distinct kingdom, sometimes at war with Israel and sometimes with good relations with Israel, but never conquered by Israel. All this is recorded in the Hebrew Scriptures.
  
  So, the headlines should have read, “DNA Confirms the Bible.” Why, then, didn’t these news outlets tell us the truth? Your guess is probably similar to mine.
  
  https://www.christianpost.com/news/new-dna-discoveries-prove-the-bible-accurate-despite-what-headlines-claim.html
  By Michael Brown, CP Op-Ed Contributor
  CP Current Page: Opinion | Tuesday, August 01, 2017
  
  Michael Brown holds a Ph.D. in Near Eastern Languages and Literatures from New York University and has served as a professor at a number of seminaries. He is the author of 25 books and hosts the nationally syndicated, daily talk radio show, the Line of Fire.

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• ► In Judges 3:

A story about the assassination of Eglon of Moab by an Israelite Judge named Ehud takes place in “the city of palm trees,” also known as Jericho (Judges 3:7-13; Deuteronomy 34:3; 2 Chronicles 28:15). According to the Biblical chronology, this event takes place in the late 14th century BC. During the excavations at Jericho directed by Garstang, an isolated, large residence or villa with a short period of occupation dating to the end of Late Bronze IIA, the late 14th century BC, was discovered on the mound (Garstang, The Story of Jericho; Kenyon, Digging Up Jericho). In addition to the large size of the residence, finds there indicated a wealthy inhabitant, including a cuneiform tablet—an extremely rare find in Late Bronze Age Canaan (Bienkowski, Jericho in the Late Bronze Age). The discovery of this building at Jericho agrees with the narrative about Eglon in Judges 3, and demonstrates the historical nature of a story from the early Judges period.

https://www.apxaioc.com/article/archaeology-judges-period
Archaeology of the Judges Period
Submitted by Archae27 on Sun, 12/02/2012 – 12:25am

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