Stuck at Bochim
My wife Aimee and I have the privilege of providing basic necessities for a small group of cute but selfish little things who are noisy—especially if we’re trying to sleep in—constantly squabble with each other, are incapable of learning anything, and have no idea abut the money or the effort that we put in to keeping them alive. They eat our food, leave a mess behind, and rush off without saying thank you. And yet somehow Aimee and I receive pleasure from watching them play and listening to their voices and marvelling at the creativity God displayed in making each one. And even though our work is thankless, we’re glad to get to show care to them.
But enough about the birds in our backyard.
What about you and I? Aren’t we so often like them? Every day we live on the kindness and mercy of our creator, and yet return so little to him in comparison to the immense grace He shows us day in and day out. Often things need to get really bad before we turn to God with any kind of seriousness. And yet, after receiving from Him what we asked for, how long is it until we flit off to whatever we were doing before?
Today we begin a series in the book of Judges, which takes us back to a place in Israel’s history where they experienced God’s undeserving salvation again and again. And each time He rescued them and provided for them they enjoyed his benefits for a while, before rushing off to chase another idol, ignoring God again until things got bad enough to ask Him for His help.
Judges is an ancient book and a book with some of the Bible’s roughest and most violent stories. But it’s a book whose message is very relevant for us today. Because Judges is a window into the human heart—and, more than that, a window into the character of God. Judges, with all of its mess and grit, is about the God who saves. In these passages we will meet our Saviour again and again. And it’s because of Jesus that the gritty pages of Judges makes sense and have something to say to us today.
Introduction: Context
Now, let’s start our journey through Judges with a bit of context. First, we’ll consider the kind of book that Judges is. Judges is a very different kind of book than 1 Peter, which we just finished. 1 Peter was a letter. Judges is a historical narrative. We could say it’s a “story,” as long as we don’t assume that means it was just made up by someone. It’s a true story, and it was deliberately put together in a certain way to draw our attention to certain enduring truths.
And what you’ll notice is that we preach through narrative differently than through a letter. With a New Testament letter, we could spend a sermon or two on one verse, just because of how it’s written. In Judges, we might consider several chapters in one sermon. And that’s not because these words matter any less, it’s just that the authors are using their words differently. They are two very different kinds of books, which means we’ll preach them differently.
Next, let’s think about historical context. As we move from 1 Peter to Judges, we’re moving about 1,000 years back in time. We’re moving back to the time frame that’s indicated by the opening words of this book—“After the death of Joshua.” It’s interesting that new beginnings often start after the death of God’s servants. Think how Exodus begins with the death of Joseph, or how 1 Kings begins with the death of David.
The book of Joshua, which we walked through about two years ago, picked up from the death of Moses died and took us all the way to the end of Joshua’s life. And we saw how, at the end of Joshua’s life, Israel has control over the Promised Land even if they haven’t completely finished the conquest. They’ve started, but not finished the work of being God’s instruments of judgement upon the people of the land for all of their sin and idolatry.
And at the end of his life, Joshua called all Israel together to warn them about how hard it was going to be for them to stay faithful to the Lord. You can tell that Joshua was really concerned about this. But Israel insisted that they would follow the Lord, and close to the end of Joshua we read, “Israel served the Lord all the days of Joshua, and all the days of the elders who outlived Joshua and had known all the work that the Lord did for Israel” (Joshua 24:31).
But what happened after that? That’s the question that the book of Judges will answer for us.
1. The Continuing Conquest (1:1-20)
So, Judges 1 picks up after the death of Joshua, and at first things seem to be going well. Really well. “After the death of Joshua, the people of Israel inquired of the Lord, ‘Who shall go up first for us against the Canaanites, to fight against them?’” (Judges 1:1).
There are still enemies to conquer, there is still a conquest to finish, and even though their leader is dead, the people are committed to finishing the job. And so they seek the Lord. This is good.
And the Lord responds—verse 2: “The Lord said, ‘Judah shall go up; behold, I have given the land into his hand’” (Judges 1:2). The land is God’s, and He has given it into the hand of His people.
What happens next is really important: “And Judah said to Simeon his brother, ‘Come up with me into the territory allotted to me, that we may fight against the Canaanites. And I likewise will go with you into the territory allotted to you.’ So Simeon went with him” (Judges 1:3).
This seems like just a little detail. But it’s actually really wonderful. If you go back to Numbers 26 and look at the population of the tribes before they went into the Promise Land, Judah was the biggest tribe, as far as population went. Just over 1½ times the average size of the other tribes. Simeon, on the other hand, was the smallest tribe—just under half the size of the average.
And yet here we see the biggest offering to work together with the smallest, helping each other out as they obey the Lord. We know where this headed—Judah ended up completely absorbing Simeon into their territory. But at this point it’s good to see the tribes working together like this. In general we can say that things went well for Israel when the tribes cooperated.
And so in verse 4 we read about Judah and Simeon going tup and defeating 10,000 of their enemies which the Lord gave into their hands. In verses 5-7 we read about them dealing out judgement on a king who was known for cutting off the thumbs and big toes of the kings he would conquer. It was a humiliating way of making sure they could never run or fight again. And they repay him by cutting off his thumbs and big toes, like verse 6 says. And he recognizes this as divine justice. “As I have done, so God has repaid me,” he says in verse 7. Not long after, from complications or other causes, he dies.
Next, verse 8, “And the men of Judah fought against Jerusalem and captured it and struck it with the edge of the sword and set the city on fire.” We know that in just a few verses we’re going to read that Benjamin was not able to capture Jerusalem. So Jerusalem must have sat close to the border between the two territories, and there was probably both a city and a military fortress at Jerusalem. Judah was able to take one, but not the other. Still, we see the continuing pattern of victory here.
Next, verse 9, “the men of Judah went down to fight against the Canaanites who lived in the hill country, in the Negev, and in the lowland.” And again, verse 10, they have success.
In verses 11-15, we read about Caleb offering his daughter in marriage to the man who could capture the city Kiriath-sepher, and his daughter’s initiative in seeking an even greater blessing for her new family. This whole section is actually copied-and-pasted from Joshua 15:15-19, and it’s an illustration of a group of people who were operating with courage and faith and generosity, adding to the general sense that things are going well.
It’s also interesting to remember that Caleb was not an Israelite—he was a Kennezite. So we see God’s grace being extended to all who believe in Him and are faithful to him. That theme runs into verse 16, where some of Moses’ relatives, who were also not Israelites, settle with the people. Verse 17 tells us that Judah kept up its end of the deal and helped Simeon conquer their land. Verse 18 recounts more victories of Judah, including three of the five Philistine cities along the Mediterranean Coast.
If we could see things on a map, we’d see that these places we’ve read about form a loose circle. Judah started at the top of their territory, and went down to the south and back up to the top. And it seems like they’ve had success wherever they go. In fact, verse 19 says, “And the Lord was with Judah, and he took possession of the hill country.”
The conquest is going well, isn’t it? Joshua didn’t have anything to worry about.
Or did he? I guess we should read the rest of verse 19: “but he could not drive out the inhabitants of the plain because they had chariots of iron.”
Judah did not take their whole land. There as an area they couldn’t clear out. And why? According to the author, it’s because the people there had chariots of iron.
Those would have been the equivalent of tanks in that day. It was advanced technology that gave a distinct battlefield advantage, which Israel didn’t have.
But that shouldn’t have meant anything, because Israel had a God that the other nations didn’t have. And if he was with them, no technology in the world would have mattered, right?
Back in Deuteronomy 20:1 we read, “When you go out to war against your enemies, and see horses and chariots and an army larger than your own, you shall not be afraid of them, for the Lord your God is with you, who brought you up out of the land of Egypt” (Deuteronomy 20:1).
And back in Joshua 17, we read the same thing—Joshua encouraging Israel to fight their enemies, even though they had chariots of iron, saying that should be no barrier to them (Joshua 17:16–18). Chariots of iron should have been no match for a people who knew that their God was with them. So what are we to make of Judah’s failure here to fully take their land? Did they loose their nerve and back out in fear? Did they get lazy and think that what they had was enough? Did they break covenant with God and stopped experiencing His presence and power with them?
We’re not told the specifics, but what we can know is that this turn of events here in verse 19 is not a good sign. And from here, it’s almost downhill all the way.
There’s one final note of celebration in verse 20, where we read about Caleb’s fearless battle with giants, sons of Anak, in Hebron. Caleb was a faithful servant of the Lord if there ever was one, but the irony again is that he was a Kennezite, not actually an Israelite. And he goes up against the sons of the giants, in the fear of the Lord, and is victorious. Caleb’s faithfulness, given that he was probably foreign-born, ends this section on a sadly ironic note.
2. The Stalled Conquest (1:21-36)
When we turn to verse 21, the author of Judges begins to consider how the other tribes are doing. And if you can picture things on a map, we start moving north here. Benjamin was right north of Judah, and for the rest of the chapter we basically move up from Judah all the way to the very north of Israel’s territory and back again.
Verse 21 tells us what happened with Benjamin, and it’s not good news: “But the people of Benjamin did not drive out the Jebusites who lived in Jerusalem, so the Jebusites have lived with the people of Benjamin in Jerusalem to this day” (Judges 1:21). They left the job unfinished.
In verse 22, we turn to the “house of Joseph.” Typically Joseph’s two sons, Ephraim and Manasseh, were counted as two separate tribes. The fact that they are counted together here is rare, and suggests they could have been working together, like Judah and Simeon. And, just like Judah, the Lord is with them.
But what we read next is interesting. After scouting out the city of Bethel, they see a man coming out of the city, and say to him, verse 24: “Please show us the way into the city, and we will deal kindly with you.”
And he does, and when they conquer the city, they let him go like they promised. So it worked, didn’t it? They got the city, and that guy got to live.
But it’s not so clear this is a good thing. That word in verse 24, for “deal kindly with you,” is the word חֶ֫סֶד, which speaks of faithful, covenant-keeping love. In other words, they made a covenant with this guy, something they were told directly by God not to do (Deuteronomy 7:2).
But isn’t this what the spies did with Rahab at Jericho? In fact, there’s a few clues in this text that suggest these guys are almost trying to copy and paste what happened with Rahab. Sending in spies to scope out the city, making a pact with a local, letting them and their family live.
The crucial difference is that Rahab professed faith in the God of Israel. And she became a part of the people of Israel after Jericho was destroyed. This guy makes no profession of faith, even though he certainly knows who Israel and their God is by now. And what does he do after he gets let go? Verse 26: “And the man went to the land of the Hittites and built a city and called its name Luz. That is its name to this day” (Judges 1:26).
The Hittites were one of the peoples Israel was still yet to conquer. In other words, by making a covenant with this guy, they got one but he just goes and builds another city they need to conquer. Net gain of zero. Except they can’t destroy that other city, because they made a pact with him, when they shouldn’t have. It’s like what they did with the Gibeonites in Joshua chapter 9, except that this time they weren’t deceived and they chose it for themselves.
This is what happens when we make decisions that make sense on a human level instead of just listening to what God thinks. We might get some temporary success, but it never works out in the end.
And the bad news just grows as we move north and read a long list of failure. Manasseh didn’t take a number of towns and villages they were supposed to, for, verse 27, “the Canaanites persisted in dwelling in that land.” Verse 28 tells us something even sadder: “When Israel grew strong, they put the Canaanites to forced labor, but did not drive them out completely” (Judges 1:28).
So in other words, they had the strength to finish the conquest, but instead they came up with their own plan and turned the Canaanites into slaves. Verse 29—Ephraim didn’t complete the conquest in their territory. Same with Zebulun in verse 30, Asher in verse 31-32, or Naphtali in verse 33.
And this whole chapter ends with the total embarrassment of the tribe of Dan. Their section doesn’t even begin with “Dan” but with “the Amorites” in verse 34: “The Amorites pressed the people of Dan back into the hill country, for they did not allow them to come down to the plain” (Judges 1:34). The Amorites are calling the shots here, keeping Dan in a tiny sliver about 8 km wide in the eastern part of their territory, because they maintained control of the three major centres listed in verse 35. And this becomes so bad for Dan that they eventually have to migrate north and end up fining a home in the far north of Israel’s territory.
But for now, if we could see this on a map, we’re not far at all from where we began. We’ve made almost a figure-8 trip right back close to where we began. And we see failure everywhere, especially to the north. Only Simeon, the least of all of the tribes at this point, seems like they’ve actually done what they were supposed to. Judah has been mostly successful, but not fully. We don’t know about Issachar, Reuben, or Gad, but each of the other tribes has major failures on their hands.
Even when they had been successful, they had been successful on their terms, not God’s terms. They allowed their enemies to control major strategic centres that would cause them frustration for years to come, as we’ll see in the upcoming chapters of Judges. But most importantly they were unfaithful to the command of the Lord. They stopped acting like the faithful generation under Joshua and started acting more like the unfaithful generation in the wilderness who didn’t see the promised land because they refused to believe that God would actually help them take it.
3. The Supernatural Warning (2:1-5)
And so that brings us up to chapter 2, where the Lord steps into address His people. We read that “The angel of the Lord went up from Gilgal to Bochim.”
The “angel of the Lord” is a divine messenger who speaks for God Himself who appears a number of times in the Scriptures. At least three times in Exodus God promised to send His angel ahead of them into the land of promise (Exodus 23:20–23, 32:34, 33:2). It’s fair to assume this is the same “commander of the army of the Lord” who met Joshua before the battle with Jericho (Joshua 5:13-15).
And the fact that this angel first appears at Gilgal is important. Gilgal is to the east of the territory of Dan, right in the middle of the land where we started and left off our tour in chapter 1. Gilgal is where Israel camped right after crossing into the promised land for the first time and it was their base of operations for much of the early conquest. It’s where Joshua met the commander of the Lord’s army, and so it’s significant that this is where the angel appears.
And the angel makes a journey to Bochim, which may be another name for Bethel, a short journey to the west to another spot loaded with history. God met with his people here many times. And there, right in the heart of the land of Israel, through this angelic messenger, God addresses His people. Verse 1—“And he said, ‘I brought you up from Egypt and brought you into the land that I swore to give to your fathers. I said, ‘I will never break my covenant with you, and you shall make no covenant with the inhabitants of this land; you shall break down their altars.’ But you have not obeyed my voice. What is this you have done?” (Judges 2:1–2).
God begins by reminding His people of what He’s done for them, bringing them out of Egypt and keeping His covenant promises with them. A part of that covenant was commands—that Israel would, verse 2, “make no covenant with the inhabitants of this land” and “break down their altars.”
And so the story starts to get clearer. Israel was starting to get friendly with their enemies. That’s what’s been going on as they’ve been leaving the conquest unfinished. They’ve already started to soften up to the inhabitants of the land, making covenants with them—like the people did right at Bethel—and leaving their alters in place. In other words, they’ve been directly disobeying the one who gave them this land in the first place.
That question at the end of verse 2 is haunting: “What is this that you have done?” What a chilling question. “What have you done?”
And now comes the hard words of verse 3: “So now I say, I will not drive them out before you, but they shall become thorns in your sides, and their gods shall be a snare to you’” (Judges 2:3).
This was not the first time they would have heard this. Moses used almost identical words with Israel at the end of his life in Numbers 33:55. And some of Joshua’s last words to the people included this: “Be very careful, therefore, to love the Lord your God. For if you turn back and cling to the remnant of these nations remaining among you and make marriages with them, so that you associate with them and they with you, know for certain that the Lord your God will no longer drive out these nations before you, but they shall be a snare and a trap for you, a whip on your sides and thorns in your eyes, until you perish from off this good ground that the Lord your God has given you” (Joshua 23:11–13).
And once again, God is warning His people that these words will happen. These nations who looked so powerful and appealing and whose gods looked so convenient and alluring were going to be like thorns and snares to them. They will be torn and trapped by the consequences of their own failure to trust God and do what He said.
That’s quite the warning. And the fact that God gives His people this warning is an act of mercy. He’s giving them one more reminder, which they shouldn’t have needed. They heard it from Joshua, they heard it from Moses before him, but here it is again.
And how to the people respond? Verses 4 & 5: “As soon as the angel of the Lord spoke these words to all the people of Israel, the people lifted up their voices and wept. And they called the name of that place Bochim. And they sacrificed there to the Lord.”
That sounds great, doesn’t it? They have a strong emotional response to these words. They hear God’s words, they believe them in some measure, they feel sad, they weep, and they respond with sacrifice. Sounds good.
But spoiler alert: nothing actually changes. That’s where we’ll pick up next week. For all of the tears, and all of the sacrifices, the people left Bochim and went back to business as usual.
4. The call today
And that is the lesson for us from this text today that we’re going to end by considering. It’s certainly not the only lesson. We’ve seen the wisdom of working together and the blessing of unity. We’ve seen examples of faith in Caleb and his relatives. We’ve seen the warning against doing what “works” instead of what God told us to do.
But I wonder if there’s a big lesson here at the end, where God speaks to His people, and they cry and mourn, and… nothing changes. It reminds me of a lot of altar calls I’ve witnessed, and some I’ve even participated in. You know the experience: the preacher gives a rousing message that stirs the emotion, and he calls people to respond by coming to the front. So people pour forward, and there are tears and emotion and singing, and then you go home. And sadly, often, nothing changes.
And maybe a big part of the problem there is the whole idea of an altar call. It’s so easy to get swept up in the emotion of going to the front with a bunch of other people, and feel like you’ve actually done something. It’s a lot harder to go home and live it out. And it reminds me of those words of A.W. Tozer, who once concluded a powerful message by telling people not to come down to the front and cry about it, but to go home and live it.
Now we don’t do altar calls at our church, on purpose. But are there other ways we can call into the trap of Bochim? Maybe it’s the feeling of guilt or conviction you get from a challenging sermon. I think this is a fairly common experience Christians have. We come to church, we feel really challenged about something, and leave it at that. We think that as long as we’ve felt bad about our sin, we’ve done our duty. Cause you know, we’re not like those flakey Christians who don’t like hearing about sin. We’ll take the challenge. We’ll feel the guilt. And now we’ve paid our dues for another week without having to actually do anything.
But God doesn’t want us to stay stuck at Bochim. He’s not impressed with fruitless emotion. He wants our lives. The altar he wants us to lay ourselves down on is not some space at the front of a church building, but every moment of every day as we offer ourselves to Him. That’s the worship He’s after.
“I appeal to you therefore, brothers, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship” (Romans 12:1).
So one key question this passage leaves us with today is this: is there any place in your life where you’ve been like Israel? Where you have not been fully obeying God? Where you’ve been getting friendly with the enemy, letting altars stay built that you should be tearing down? Where you’ve been doing what works instead of what God commanded?
Is there something in your life that gets in the way of your faith-filled obedience to God, and you’ve been saying for years “ya, that’s probably not great,” but it stays there while you feel content to just live with a low-grade guilt about it?
Will you—today—actually do something about it? Kick the enemy out of your life? Tear down that altar? Actually do what God has told you because you really believe His words?
Jesus did not live and die and rise again and pour out His spirit so we could stay stuck at Bochim. He’s given us everything we need—in His word, in His church, in His very presence—to live to please Him.
Do you believe that? What are you going to do about that?