Judges 3: Heroes

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Who are our heroes? Are they movie or literary characters? Are they individuals who have done great feats of bravery or heroism? Are they characters in the bible? There are different types of heroes: epic or tragic, perfect or flawed, real or fictional. We love heroes, and we love stories about them. Stories about heroes go back to the 20th Century B.C., telling a story is something that makes us human. Ancient Israel was no different. They too had heroes and stories about them. We could think of Judges as a book of such heroes, exploits of men and women who arose to fight their enemies in times of great distress and danger and who fought against all odds to win a glorious victory. But we would miss the point of Judges if we did so.

Judges has only one hero—Yahweh, the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob who remained faithful to a wicked and faithless people. The silence regarding the actions and flaws of the judges should not be taken as an affirmation of such actions rather the subtle action of God’s hand throughout the book reveals the true hero. Israel by doing evil in the eyes of the Lord (Judges 3:12) broke their covenant with God and called upon themselves the covenant curses (Deuteronomy 25:15-68). In order to bring Israel back to himself, God gave them into the hands of their enemies such as “little fatty,” Eglon king of Moab until Israel called out to God to deliver them. God then raised up from among his people a flawed deliverer who was often infected with the same plague of paganism as the rest of Israel. Ehud was not a grand hero but violent, opportunistic and crude. Yet God was faithful to his people and still delivered them however imperfect his people were.

Yet as we move through the book of Judges we can see that the deliverers that God used were increasingly violent, pagan and wicked. Israel found itself in a self-destructive cycle where they increasingly conformed to the wicked world around them and forsook their covenant with God. However, God is faithful and instead of leaving them in the cycle, he gives them a king from the tribe of Judah (21:25)—David. But this line of kings does little better than the judges. So God brings them his final and ultimate hero—one who would not fail Jesus Christ. God’s hero looks different from what we would expect. He is humble yet unbreakably strong, human yet infinitely more powerful. Unlike Ehud, Jesus does not change the socio-political factors in our deliverance. He changes our hearts, so that we are able to live and follow God. It is a victory of epic proportions which appeared tragic but ended in unparalleled glory in which we as his children get to participate.

Posted by Aaron Miner