New duties. Who, me?

Isaiah 6:8 offers a beautiful example of one who is listening and receptive to God's instructions and who is ready to step up to new duties, even as he or she feels completely inadequate. It reads:

Then I heard the Lord asking, "Whom should I send as a messenger to this people? Who will go for us?" I said, "Here I am. Send me." (NLT)

One of the judges appointed to protect the Israelites from enemies such as the Midianites, Amalekites and Amorites was the agricultural man, Gideon. He was minding his own business, quietly keeping out of harm's way as he was working at threshing wheat -- in the winepress no less* -- when an angel message startled him into work that would be much more ground-breaking and way out in the open.

So here he was under a big old oak tree when he finds himself addressed as “a mighty man of valour” and assured that “the Lord is with thee” (Judges 6:12). Gosh, he thinks, but “if the Lord be with us, why then is all this befallen us? and where be all his miracles which our fathers told us of, saying, Did not the Lord bring us up from Egypt? but now the Lord hath forsaken us…” (ibid 6:13).

He has his doubts. Do we?

There follows a lovely conversation – a to-ing and fro-ing:

God: “Go in this thy might, and thou shalt save Israel from the hand of the Midianites: have not I sent thee?” (v. 14)

Gideon: “Oh my Lord, wherewith shall I save Israel? behold my family is poor …. and I am the least in my father’s house.” (v. 15)

God: “Surely I will be with thee…” (v. 16)

Gideon: “If now I have found grace in thy sight, then shew me a sign that thou talkest with me.” (v. 17)

What followed was more introspection as Gideon seeks additional proof that the message indeed came from God.

At one point, he gets the idea to pull down the Baal altar and the adjacent big pole (KJV inexplicably translated it as “grove”) erected by his dad years before. It’s like a shrine to Baal, “king of the gods” (Britannica web site) of the Canaanites. This incurs the wrath of the Baal-worshippers (vv. 29 and 30), but Gideon’s dad himself stands up for his son. He suggests that Baal should be his own defender. It seems at this point that all opposition scampered off (v. 33)!

Gideon faced up to the seeming forces of evil that stood in his way. Do we? Or does personal sense (“Someone else should be doing this work; I’m the problem here; I’m no good at this”) try to trick us into giving up?

Soon, he was asking for help. And they responded to that call. They came from the tribes of Manasseh, Asher, Zebulun and Naphtali (v. 35). Are we humble enough to ask for help?

He was at a crossroad** in his life. He needed reassurance as to the direction he was to take. Here the story of the woollen fleece “wet with dew”*** is both charming and inspirational. Gideon, who was also called Jerubbaal because of his work in throwing down the altar of Baal, really did get the message that God was directing his path.

Chapter 6 was the preparation. Chapter 7 is the work carried out by Gideon and his army.

The work of gathering a suitable work-force lay before him. Twenty-two thousand who had applied for the job were let go. They were afraid (Chapter 7 verse 3). A further ten thousand, however, remained: ready to work. Too many. It might appear that mere physical numbers would be credited with their future success.

There would be a test of character. All might be willing, but which of them would forsake a deep, refreshing drink of water. Those who got down on the knees, put their faces right in the water, and were oblivious to what was going on around them, were sent home. Those who merely quickly scooped up a handful of water – there were just 300 of them – were chosen as the select group of warriors needed for the work.

The opposition was overwhelming and intimidating. They were “like grasshoppers (The Message by Eugene Peterson says locusts) for multitude; and their camels were without number, as the sand by the sea side” (Judges 7: 12).

But Gideon apparently stayed calm. He hatched an inspired plan. They were each given food (v. 8), a trumpet (probably the horn of an animal), a lamp, and a pitcher (an earthenware pot which would temporarily hide the torchlight) (Judges 7: 16). They split into three groups. They were on watch until Gideon gave the word to blow the trumpets, break the pitchers, and shout: “The sword of the Lord, and of Gideon” (see vv. 18-20).

Utter confusion broke out in the camp of the opposition. Gideon had won the day for his people and his shining example remains for us today.

Gideon is mentioned by the author of Hebrews when recounting the blessings of faith. See Hebrews 11: 32:

           And what shall I more say? For the time would fail me to tell of Gedeon, and of Barak… Who through faith … out of weakness were made strong, waxed valiant in fight, turned to flight the armies of the aliens.”

Julie Swannell

*One commentator suggests that for Gideon to be threshing wheat in the winepress, there must have been no grapes to press i.e. that enemy had destroyed the whole crop of grapes.

** See “On the job hunt – with God” by Bethany Davenport Protzmann, from the June 2010 issue of The Christian Science Journal. Bethany quotes John Greenleaf Whittier, who mentions dew in these words from hymn 49:

Drop Thy still dews of quietness, / Till all our strivings cease; / Take from us now the strain and stress, / And let our ordered lives confess / The beauty of Thy peace.

At a crossroads herself, Bethany writes: “I felt the freedom to release my attachment to a paycheck and find a job to fulfill my emotional, financial, and spiritual needs.”

*** I am reminded of Samuel Longfellow’s words from hymn 218-220 and 542:

               O Life that maketh all things new, / The blooming earth the thoughts of men; / Our pilgrim feet, wet with Thy dew, / In gladness hither turn again.

 

Fracture: moral leadership, where are you?

I too have struggled when reading Judges. The idea came to list all the characters so I could decide which "side" they were on. (I remember doing a similar thing when I read Charles Dickens A Tale of Two Cities. I listed the characters so I would recognise them when they reappeared in the story!) So, I bought myself a new notebook here in Turkey--not so easy to find--and started again. 

The events of Judges take place around 400 years before David becomes king (about 1000BC).  Moses had led the children of Israel out of slavery in Egypt and delivered them safely into the promised land of Canaan under the stewardship of Joshua. Both men have now passed on. But in this new land there is strife; the newcomers are not welcomed with open arms. 

Canaan is the enemy, which Crista Kreutz, in her excellent article Judges: An Overlooked Book of the Bible (The Christian Science Journal, August 2010), describes as typical of pagan or idolatrous nations. Idolatry is explained as the practice of "creating gods in man's image" or "suited to man's needs", in contrast to loving and serving the one God alone.

Ms. Kreutz suggests that the editors of the book of Judges offer both history and teaching as they trace the internal conflicts that finally bring the Israelite nation to a state of "fracture".

In the first four chapters, on the Israelite side we read about some of Jacob's sons and grandsons and others:

• Jacob's sons: Judah, Simeon, Caleb, Benjamin, Joseph, Zebulun, Asher, Naphtali, Dan
• Jacob's grandsons: Manasseh, Ephraim
• others: Joshua (who remained a strong example of leadership among the Israelites) and Caleb (who served alongside Joshua under Moses' leadership and must have been like an elder statesman by this time)

Here's a cute cartoon of Jacob's sons from BibleCartoons.co.uk: 

On the other side are characters like Adonibezek (whose gruesome punishment is recorded in Judges 1: 6), and Sisera.

At one point, an angel reminds the Israelites of God's instruction and promise: "make no league with the inhabitants of this land; ye shall throw down their altars: but ye have not obeyed my voice: why have ye done this? ...they shall be as thorns in your sides" - see Judges 2: 1-3.

Interestingly, the Israelites apparently had only foot-soldiers while the Canaanites had iron chariots, the latest technology (Judges 1: 19). (The Iron Age succeeded the Bronze Age and is said to have lasted from around 1200BC to 500BC.) Nevertheless, the Israelites had some notable successes, some of which involved women.

At least six women are mentioned in the book of Judges: 

• Achsah (Caleb's daughter), 
• Deborah (unique as both prophet and judge), 
• Sisera's mother (Judges 5: 28), 
• Jael (the wife of Heber the Kenite, the one who kills Sisera and is called "blessed above women" Judges 5: 24), 
• Jephthah's daughter (a tragic story) and 
• Samson's mother. 

There are other references to women with intermarriage quite common between the Israelites and the nations they either went to war against or simply integrated with, e.g. Judges 3: 6 "And they took their daughters to be their wives, and gave their daughters to their sons, and served their gods."

In the meantime, while it appears that this next generation lacked leadership qualities, cohesion and moral accountability, God was right there for them: "Nevertheless, the Lord raised up judges, which delivered them out of the hand of those that spoiled them" (Judges 2: 16). 

Twelve judges appear in the narration: Othniel, Ehud, Shamgar, Deborah, Gideon*, Tola, Jair, Jephthah*, Ibzan, Elon, Abdon, Samson*.  *mentioned in Hebrews 11:32

This period (around 400 years!) reads like a cycle of missteps and repentance. The moral code of Moses was no longer their guiding star.

Discoverer of Christian Science, Mary Baker Eddy, had this to say about where God should be in our hearts: 

"I say, Be allied to the deific power, and all that is good will aid your journey, as the stars in their courses fought against Sisera. (Judges v. 20.)

(Unity of Good, Mary Baker Eddy, p. 17:4-7 I)

This reminds me of Irving Tomlinson's words in hymn 236 which begins "O peace of the world". Stanza three has: "As stars in their courses never contend / As blossoms their hues in harmony blend / As bird voices mingle in joyful refrain / So God's loving children in concord remain.

The Bible is truly our story.

Julie Swannell

The feminine aspect of God

Was Deborah the only female judge in all those centuries?

The Feminine

The Shalvi/Hyman Encyclopedia of Jewish Women says this:

The only female judge, the only one to be called a prophet, and the only one described as performing a judicial function, Deborah is a decisive figure in the defeat of the Canaanites.

-by Tikva Frymer-Kensky, updated by Caryn Tamber-Rosenau June 23, 2021

One is reminded that perhaps the scriptural record has been translated to exclude much that had been written about the feminine. For instance, one day, when browsing the 1908 Bound Volume (print copy) of The Christian Science Journal in the Reading Room, I came across an excerpt from a book titled The Kabbalah Unveiled* by McGregor Mathews.** 

Here’s a portion:

For some reason best known to themselves, the translators of the Bible have carefully crowded out of existence and smothered up every reference to the fact that the Deity is both masculine and feminine. They have translated a feminine plural by a masculine singular in the case of the word Elohim—they have, however, left an inadvertent admission of their knowledge that it was plural, in Genesis 1: 26, 'And Elohim said, Let us make man.' … The word Elohim is a plural formed from a feminine singular noun Eloh—by adding ... a termination customarily used for the masculine plural. It therefore gives to the word Elohim the sense of a female potency united to a masculine idea …  

-quoted in The Christian Science Journal, Feb. 1908.

I will tell you what happened after that. On the Antiques Road Show I saw a very old Valentine’s Day card where the idea of hope was accompanied by an anchor. I sent the notion to my daughter whose second given-name is Hope, a sort of family tradition. This brought to thought the phrase “the anchor of hope” which I knew from Mrs. Eddy’s work Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, i.e.

The nature of Christianity is peaceful and blessed, but in order to enter into the kingdom, the anchor of hope must be cast beyond the veil of matter into the Shekinah into which Jesus has passed before us; and this advance beyond matter must come through the joys and triumphs of the righteous as well as through their sorrows and afflictions. Like our Master, we must depart from material sense into the spiritual sense of being.
(p. 40:31)

So, I had to look up “anchor of hope” and “Shekinah”, didn’t I?

Anchor of hope

… we … lay hold upon the hope set before us: Which hope we have as an anchor of the soul, both sure and steadfast… (abbreviated from Hebrews 6:18, 19)

Shekinah

The following, from a website called My Jewish Learning is note-worthy for the Jewish perspective:

In contemporary Jewish discourse, the term shekhinah most commonly refers to the divine feminine, or to the feminine aspect of God — God as mother, nurturer, protector and compassionate one. Though the term — from the Hebrew root meaning to “dwell” — is found throughout early rabbinic literature, in its early usage it referred generally to God’s presence among the people and had no gender associations. The connection between shekhinah and femininity emerges mainly in Jewish mystical literature. The concept was later embraced by Jewish feminists as a counterbalance to prevailing masculine notions of God as king, father and judge. 

The literal meaning of the word Shekinah is dwelling, where God dwells. ***

The Jewish Encyclopedia has a lengthy piece on Shekinah:

The Shekinah is here identical with Yhwh. Yahwah

In the Apocrypha and New Testament.

Since the Shekinah is light, those passages of the Apocrypha and New Testament which mention radiance, and in which the Greek text reads δόξα, refer to the Shekinah, there being no other Greek equivalent for the word. Thus, according to Luke ii. 9, "the glory of the Lord [δόζα Ḳυρίου] shone round about them" (comp. II Peter i. 17; Eph. i. 6; II Cor. iv. 6); and it is supposed that in John i. 14 and Rev. xxi. 3 the words σκηνοῦν and σκηνή were expressly selected as implying the Shekinah.

Sweet, sacred place

A hymn (words by Roberta B. Lynch) mentions Shekinah:

                        Calm of Shekinah where hope anchors fast,

                        Harbor of refuge till the storm be past;

                        Sweet, sacred place where God and men do meet,

                        Horeb whereon we walk with unshod feet.

(Christian Science Hymnal, No. 297:2)

Joyce Voysey

* Ed.  A Jewish Rabbi explains that “The Kabbalah is a language for discussing spirituality.” – see Christian Science Sentinel May 11, 2009 “A Rabbi Talks about Christian Science”. This beautiful interview includes an account featuring a Christian Science Reading Room. Here’s a snippet:

“Anyway, I sat with the lady in this Reading Room, and told her about my father. I don’t remember the ideas that were expressed as such, but I went home immediately, and told my father, “You’re going to recover completely.”

“When I visited the Reading Room, the people there, wonderful people, were not offering me any kind of intellectual ideas as such. It was the kindness, and the prayerfulness. It was the atmosphere, the gracefulness, the graciousness.”

** Ed. Note that the author's name as it appears in the Journal seems to be incorrect. Research indicates that a book titled The Kabbalah Unveiled was written by Samuel Liddell MacGregor Mathers.

*** Ed. The Oxford dictionary says: Shekinah. (Jewish and Christian Theology) the glory of the divine presence, conventionally represented as light or interpreted symbolically (in Kabbalism as a divine feminine aspect).

          --Origin: mid-17^th cent.: from late Hebrew, from šākan ‘dwell, rest’.

Love your enemies

The peoples of Israel in the centuries recorded in Judges were constantly at war with their neighbours. Enemies everywhere. In many chapters, it seems that the silver thread of the Christ Messiah is missing.

Oh, to hear Mary Baker Eddy’s commentary on the chapter Judges! Didn’t she say that everything in the Bible can be interpreted spiritually?

How grateful we can be for Mary Baker Eddy’s definition of enemies given in Miscellaneous Writings 1883-1896 in the article Love Your Enemies: “Simply count your enemy to be that which defiles, defaces, and dethrones the Christ-image that you should reflect” (8:17-19).

It seems like a good time to re-read this remarkable article. I will.

On looking up Love Your Enemies in the Concordance to Prose Works Other than Science and Health, I found the listing of ‘enemy’ very revealing.

Here is the Concordance listing under enemy:

Mis. 8-9 Who is thine e

8-11 Can you see an e

8-12 except you first formulate this e

8-17 count your enemy to be that which

8-20 Whatever purifies,. . . is not an e

9-32 all that an enemy or enmity can

10-30 and this one e is yourself

10-32 Soon or late, your e will wake

42-14 or destroyed this last enemy

38-31 The e is trying to make capital

76-32 overcame the last e, death.

170-1 the last e to be overthrown;

223-27 * “If I wished to punish my e

Un. 540-16 its most potent and deadly e

Pul. 2-18 fiercely besieged by the e

2-25 e we confront would overthrown

7-13 away from the e of sinning sense

My 185-21 destroys the last e, death

283-15 Sin is its own e

300-15 overcome “the last e” – I Cor. 15-26

358-10 pray that the e of good cannot

So we are to watch our thinking to put to silence any and every thought which would “dethrone the Christ-image that you should reflect.”

Lessons for the world!

Joyce Voysey

Settling disputes and leadership

I feel rather daunted at the thought of studying Judges!

When I first read the Old Testament, I was aghast at all the killing, especially in consideration of the Ten Commandments and their forbiddance of killing. When I questioned a person more Bible savvy than I, I was told, “The Israelites took it to mean, You shall not kill an Israelite.”

(Did I make up a word there?  Forbiddance!)

I turned to Dummelow’s One Volume Commentary Bible Commentary, which is often just what I can cope with in my study of the Bible.

I shall quote part of the Introduction, The Name:

The word ‘judge’ implies to us something very different from what it implied to a Hebrew. The Hebrews…. knew nothing of the complex machinery of the law-court; disputes were settled by the head of the family, the elders of the tribe or of the village or town, or by the priests; later on, in the more serious cases, by some person of national influence, and even by the king. The procedure was informal, and regulated at most by custom and a general sense of what was right. The sentence could only be enforced when public opinion was behind it. But a man who was qualified by age or experience, or both, or by special nearness to Jehovah, to settle disputes, could also do something more; men would naturally look to him for counsel, guidance, deliverance. To judge was thus to lead and to govern... It is in this sense that Deborah, Gideon, Jephthah, and the other heroes of this book are judges. In each case their rise is the result of divine selection.

Further,

All the judges mentioned in this book appear to have been military leaders.

When they proved their worth in battle, they naturally were trusted in peace.

I think the closest we in Australia have to a military person being called in civilian life to be a ‘judge’,  would be their appointment as Governor General of Australia. Although, of course there have been many returned servicemen who have subsequently served as members of Parliament.

Joyce Voysey