Israel’s Tragic Pattern of Life

KEY VERSE: “The children of Israel did evil in the sight of the LORD, and served Baalim: and they forsook the LORD God of their fathers, which brought them out of the land of Egypt, and followed other gods, of the gods of the people that were round about them, and bowed themselves unto them, and provoked the LORD to anger.” —Judges 2:11,12

SELECTED SCRIPTURE: Judges 2:11-19

PRIOR TO THE First Advent of Jesus, Israel was the only nation which enjoyed the distinction and the blessing. of having Jehovah as its God. To that nation the Lord said, “You only have I known of all the families [or nations] of the earth.” (Amos 3:2) The Israelites were also the only people whom God had chosen for his “own inheritance.”—Ps. 33:12

However, this honored position of Israel as the specially chosen people of God was tentative, and in order for it to be made permanent it was essential that the nation prove its fidelity to God and to his laws. On this point the Lord said to the nation: “Now therefore, if ye will obey my voice indeed, and keep my covenant, then ye shall be a peculiar treasure unto me above all people: for all the earth is mine: and ye shall be unto me a kingdom of priests, and an holy nation.”—Exod. 19:5,6

The nation was blessed indeed to enjoy this favored relationship to God. Paul calls attention to this by asking, “What advantage then hath. the Jew?” His reply is, “Much every way: chiefly, because unto them were committed the oracles of God.” (Rom. 3:1,2) All of God’s covenant promises were made to and on behalf of Israel. But the riches of their heritage were wasted through disobedience—so completely, indeed, that Jesus said to the nation, “Your house is left unto you desolate.”—Matt. 23:38

From the Exodus to the death of Joshua, the nation of Israel was held in restraint by a consistently righteous leadership; a leadership upon which God manifested his favor and in support of which he used his power. However, with the passing of Joshua, the entire generation of which he was a part also soon died, “and there arose another generation after them, which knew not the Lord, nor yet the works which he had done for Israel.”—Judges 2:10

Even under the iniquitous conditions which developed, the Lord did not entirely forsake Israel. When they departed from him he allowed them to fall into difficulties for their punishment; and then, in his own due time, he raised up judges to deliver them. This era in their national experience lasted for 450 years, and is known as the period of the judges.—Acts 13:20

The ‘judges’ whom the Lord raised up, really became their deliverers. (See verse 18.) Undoubtedly this is typical of the world’s future Judgment Day. Jesus—and together with him, his church—will be the judges then raised up by the Lord, and through their judgeship all who return to God and obey his laws will be delivered from their enemies, even the greatest of all enemies, death.

In Judges 21:25 it is stated: In those days there was no king in Israel: every man did that which was right in his own eyes.” One needs but to read the Book of Judges to discover the low standard of righteousness which ‘every man’ considered to be ‘right’. It reveals clearly the degradation into which the human race, even at that time, had fallen—the low plane of morality to which fallen human minds will revert if, en masse, the people are allowed to find their own preferred level. True, individual encroachments upon each other in the sense of theft and murder may not have been as prevalent then among the Israelites as it would be today in a large city left unpoliced; nevertheless, the general course of the nation was downward deeper and deeper into sin.

This illustrates the necessity of the iron rule which will be imposed upon the people during the Millennium, and the disciplines which will be associated therewith. The Lord has allowed the people to experience the awful results of sin, and when, during the kingdom, they learn the benefits of righteousness, they will be well equipped to choose between right and wrong.

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