Judges 10:16

The verses just before this passage tell how Israel came to this point (Judges 10:6–9). The children of Israel “served Baalim, and Ashtaroth, and the gods of Syria, and the gods of Zidon, and the gods of Moab, and the gods of the children of Ammon, and the gods of the Philistines, and forsook the LORD”. So he gave them into the hands of the Philistines and the Ammonites, who oppressed them for eighteen years, the Ammonites from the east and the Philistines from the west. Baal was the storm and fertility god of Canaan, credited with the rain and the harvest, and he was worshipped alongside the goddess Ashtaroth. The neighbouring nations had their own gods, such as Chemosh of Moab, Milcom of Ammon and Dagon of the Philistines. For a people working the land, gods who promised good harvests were a constant pull.

This is the pattern of the whole book, set out at its start. Israel forsakes the LORD, he gives them into the hands of their enemies, they cry to him, he raises up a judge to save them, and after the judge dies they go after other gods again (Judges 2:11–19). A generation grew up that knew neither the LORD nor the works he had done for Israel (Judges 2:10–13). There was no king in Israel, and “every man did that which was right in his own eyes” (Judges 17:6, 21:25).

The oppression was the LORD’s discipline under his covenant. At Sinai he had commanded, “Thou shalt have no other gods before me” (Exodus 20:3), he had called Israel to love him with all their heart (Deuteronomy 6:4–5), and the people had promised, “All that the LORD hath said will we do, and be obedient” (Exodus 24:7). The covenant set blessings before them for obedience and curses for disobedience, and the curses included falling before their enemies (Leviticus 26, Deuteronomy 28). Moses had warned that the people would forsake the LORD for other gods and that trouble would follow (Deuteronomy 31:16–18). In the wilderness God had already taught them that “as a man chasteneth his son, so the LORD thy God chasteneth thee” (Deuteronomy 8:2–5), and the letter to the Hebrews says the same of every child of God: “whom the Lord loveth he chasteneth” (Hebrews 12:6). He let Israel suffer in order to bring them back to himself, and their cry in verse 10 shows the discipline doing its work.

“And the children of Israel cried unto the LORD”. The verb, zâʻaq, means to cry out, to shriek from anguish or danger, and especially to call for help in hardship. It can also mean to call people together. It is the cry of Israel under its slavery in Egypt (Exodus 2:23) and of Israel under its first oppressor in this book (Judges 3:9), and a psalm tells of this moment happening again and again: “Then they cried unto the LORD in their trouble, and he saved them out of their distresses” (Psalm 107:13). This time they have reached the end of their strength, and they turn to the God they left.

What they say matters most. “We have sinned against thee” uses châṭâʼ, a verb that literally means to miss the mark and is the Bible’s common word for sin. It can also mean to forfeit or to bear the blame. Israel names its guilt plainly, makes no excuse, and owns that the sin was against God himself. Then they name it in two parts. They have “forsaken our God”, and the verb ʻâzab means to leave, loosen or let go, the deliberate abandoning of a relationship. “Our God” is ʼĕlôhîym, plural in form, which when it names the true God is read as a plural of majesty. And they have “served Baalim”. The verb ʻâbad means to work, labour, serve, till and worship, and in its causative form to enslave, so it is the word for a servant’s work and a worshipper’s devotion alike. This confession names their sin more fully than the earlier cries in the book.

Confession is the right first step home. David wrote, “I acknowledged my sin unto thee, and mine iniquity have I not hid” (Psalm 32:5), and Proverbs promises that “whoso confesseth and forsaketh them shall have mercy” (Proverbs 28:13). John gives the same promise to us: “If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness” (1 John 1:9).

“And the LORD said unto the children of Israel”. The speaker is Yᵉhôvâh, the covenant name of Israel’s God, which speaks of his eternal being and of his presence with his people through their history. The verb ʼâmar is the ordinary word for saying, and the weight of this moment lies in the words it introduces. “Children” is bên, the word for son, from a root meaning to build, and “the children of Israel” takes in the whole nation descended from Jacob. The verse names no prophet or judge, so the words come to us as the LORD’s own, and Judges leaves unsaid how they were given.

He answers with a question. In the KJV, “Did” and “I deliver you” are words the translators supplied, and the question turns on the Hebrew word for “not”, which expects the answer yes. God reminds them of something they cannot deny: he was the one who saved them, every time.

Then the turn comes. “Yet ye have forsaken me, and served other gods”. The Hebrew opens with “and you”, setting Israel’s conduct squarely against all that God has done. The LORD’s charge uses ʻâzab and ʻâbad, the same two verbs Israel used in its confession in verse 10, so he takes their own words and holds them up: they forsook him, and they served others. This broke the first commandment (Exodus 20:3). Jeremiah would later charge Israel with the same two sins: “For my people have committed two evils; they have forsaken me the fountain of living waters, and hewed them out cisterns, broken cisterns, that can hold no water” (Jeremiah 2:13).

“Wherefore I will deliver you no more.” “Wherefore” means therefore, and it ties the sentence to the sin just named. God takes up yâshaʻ, the verb of all their past rescues in verse 12, and now he withholds it. By choosing other gods they had turned from the one who had always saved them, and he lets them see what those gods can do. Isaiah says it plainly: “Behold, the LORD’s hand is not shortened, that it cannot save”, but “your iniquities have separated between you and your God” (Isaiah 59:1–2).

The LORD’s command in verse 14 is cutting irony. “Cry” is zâʻaq, the same verb as Israel’s cry to him in verse 10, and he sends that cry on to the gods they preferred. “Chosen”, bâchar, makes the point that Israel had decided to serve those gods with open eyes, preferring them to the LORD. That choice had brought them into “tribulation”, tsârâh, a word for distress, trouble and anguish, the state of being hemmed in by difficulties. “Let them deliver you” means: let the gods you chose do what I have always done.

The command makes Israel face the question inside it. Can these gods save you from the distress that serving them has brought on you? The song of Moses puts the same challenge in God’s mouth about Israel’s idols: “let them rise up and help you, and be your protection” (Deuteronomy 32:37–38). Isaiah describes a man who burns half of a tree in his fire and makes a god of the rest, then falls down to it and prays to it, unable to deliver his own soul (Isaiah 44:9–20).

Israel’s reply in verse 15 has three parts. “We have sinned” repeats the confession of verse 10 with châṭâʼ again, and they add nothing in their own defence. “Do thou unto us whatsoever seemeth good unto thee” gives them into God’s hands. Ṭôwb, good, covers what is right, proper, beneficial and fitting, and they accept God’s own judgment of what is good, even if it means more discipline. They have stopped setting terms. “Deliver us only, we pray thee, this day” begs for rescue now. This “deliver” is nâtsal, to snatch away, rescue or preserve, a different Hebrew verb from the one God used when he said “I will deliver you no more”. The two share the English word. “Only” fixes their whole request on rescue from their present distress, and “this day” shows how pressing it was.

Their surrender rests on who God is. He had proclaimed himself to Moses as “The LORD, The LORD God, merciful and gracious, longsuffering, and abundant in goodness and truth” (Exodus 34:6). “It is of the LORD’s mercies that we are not consumed, because his compassions fail not. They are new every morning: great is thy faithfulness” (Lamentations 3:22–23). And “a broken and a contrite heart, O God, thou wilt not despise” (Psalm 51:17).

“And they put away the strange gods from among them, and served the LORD.” Here repentance becomes action. “Strange” is nêkâr, foreign or a foreigner, or in the abstract heathendom, so these are the gods of the foreign nations named in verse 6, gods that had no place in Israel’s covenant with the LORD. The law had told Israel to destroy the altars and images of the nations (Deuteronomy 7:5), and now they removed these gods from their midst. Then they “served the LORD”. The verb is ʻâbad once more, and the service they had given to the Baalim and other gods in verses 10 and 13 they now give to him, in worship and in keeping his commands.

Turning from idols and turning to God belong together. Paul says the same of the believers at Thessalonica, who “turned to God from idols to serve the living and true God” (1 Thessalonians 1:9–10).

The passage closes with God’s heart. “His soul was grieved” uses qâtsar, a verb that means to be short or to cut short, and also to reap or harvest. Joined to “soul”, it speaks of distress and vexation, and the KJV renders it “was grieved”. “Misery” is ʻâmâl, toil, wearing effort, worry and trouble. Israel’s misery came from its own unfaithfulness, and still the LORD is moved by it. Isaiah says of him, “In all their affliction he was afflicted, and the angel of his presence saved them” (Isaiah 63:9), and a psalm, after telling of Israel’s many rebellions, says, “Nevertheless he regarded their affliction, when he heard their cry” (Psalm 106:44).

The God who said “I will deliver you no more” now grieves over their suffering, and his grief leads on to rescue through Jephthah. His justice is held together with his mercy, and what he wants for his people is their restoration.

The repeated cycle in Judges shows how much Israel needed a deliverer who could deal with the sin at the root of its misery. The judges saved Israel from its enemies for a time, and the people turned back to their idols. The same is true of all of us: “All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned every one to his own way” (Isaiah 53:6). “All have sinned, and come short of the glory of God” (Romans 3:23), and “the wages of sin is death” (Romans 6:23).

Jesus is the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world (John 1:29). He is the obedient Son who said of his Father, “I do always those things that please him” (John 8:29). Israel said, “do thou unto us whatsoever seemeth good unto thee”, and Jesus prayed in Gethsemane, “nevertheless not my will, but thine, be done” (Luke 22:42). There his soul was “exceeding sorrowful, even unto death” (Matthew 26:38), and on the cross he cried, “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?” (Matthew 27:46), bearing the forsaking that our sin deserved so that those who believe in him are never forsaken. God “hath made him to be sin for us, who knew no sin; that we might be made the righteousness of God in him” (2 Corinthians 5:21), and he did it while we were yet sinners (Romans 5:8).

So Christ delivers us from the enemies behind every oppressor, which are sin, death and the devil (Hebrews 2:14–15). God “hath delivered us from the power of darkness, and hath translated us into the kingdom of his dear Son” (Colossians 1:13–14). We are made free from sin and become servants of God, with fruit unto holiness and everlasting life at the end (Romans 6:22), and God gives us the victory through Jesus (1 Corinthians 15:57). He is the mediator of the new covenant (Hebrews 9:15), and “there is none other name under heaven given among men, whereby we must be saved” (Acts 4:12), for he is “the way, the truth, and the life” (John 14:6).

Our cry to God now goes through him. He “ever liveth to make intercession” for those who come to God by him (Hebrews 7:25), and he is a high priest “touched with the feeling of our infirmities”, so we may come boldly to the throne of grace for mercy (Hebrews 4:15–16). He calls the weary and heavy laden to come to him for rest (Matthew 11:28–30), and the Father seeks those who worship him in spirit and in truth (John 4:23–24).

These seven verses show us who God is in a single scene. He is holy, and he will share his people’s love with no other god. He is faithful, and he can name the enemies he has saved them from one by one. He speaks hard words to people who come to him only when every other help has failed, and he means them. And when they turn from their idols to him, his soul is grieved for the misery they brought on themselves.

The gods Israel chose had names like Baal and Ashtaroth. The gods we are drawn to are more often money, a career, comfort, the approval of others or trust in our own strength, anything we lean on in God’s place, and in the time of tribulation they can save us as little as the Baalim saved Israel. The passage sets the two side by side, the gods of our own choosing and the God who has delivered his people again and again.

The way back is the one Israel took, in plain confession, in surrender to what God judges good, and in putting away whatever has taken his place. The God who met Israel there is the God who, in Christ, still hears the cry of those who turn to him, and whose compassions fail not.