JUDGES 1:1 – 2:3 – A CULTURE OF TOLERANCE
Today’s chapter from the Book of Judges is the start of a new Act, Act 7 in our Creator God’s Epic Play outlining history through HIStory. 
If you have been following my Breadcrumbs since the beginning of May, you will has seen how I picked up Father God’s epic storyline with the previous Act: Book of Joshua. It was the point at which the Creator God’s children were about to enter a dwelling place, a final place of rest, a promised land. They were once a family of shepherds numbering 70 – the grandson and his offspring from a man name Abraham, whose name means Father of Nations. They had moved from what is now modern-day Israel down the Egypt temporarily, due to a widespread famine. However, 400 years later they were the slave population in Egypt, crying out to the Creator God for deliverance. The Master Playwright, Father God, the Creator of us all, had previously promised their father Abraham, that He would bring them back to modern-day Israel, but that they had to be away 400 years… “until the sin of the Amorites had reached its full measure”.[a]
Now before you fall asleep with boredom as you wonder who on earth cares about a story that happened more than 3½ millenniums ago, hung on in there. It’s extremely important for us to navigate our choices in a turbulent, and at times, out-of-control world where tolerance and acceptance is the only choice we have left. So then, before going a step further, you need to understand that there’s a bigger picture. There’s a story, behind our human story that we see and think we’re in charge of. Truth is, we have no idea what tomorrow will bring. So, what we accept today as right and true, may turn out to be ‘shifting sand’ that will grieve us in the future, haunting us of the loss of yesteryear.
In today’s chapter, the curtains to the Stage of Life open with the fulfilment of something that the Creator God predicted 600 years earlier. The sin of the local population had indeed reached its full measure and, in the absence of a European Court of Appeal for Human Rights, Father 
God had to use a group of faithful people that He thought He could trust. That true, the Book of Judges is about people who should have been able to judge their circumstances correctly and do exactly what our Maker said, in order to surgically remove a festering cesspool of shocking activity. The chapter starts off promisingly: they “enquired of the LORD” to ask what their next move was. [v1] So, the first thing I hope you’ll keep in mind moving forward is that we’re to ask the Creator God for wisdom over everything we engage in – especially the big decisions – to measure it against His Word. This is “walking with God” and it characterizes the lifestyles of the greatest people in HIStory: those that our Maker both saved and used in Deliverance.[b]
But what was He asking Yehoshua (whose name, Joshua, means: “God is Deliverance”) and His family to do? And, can such instructions have a place in the modern world? The answer is: No, there is likely not to be a place for these particular instructions. However, not because of what you are likely to be thinking. With our framework and globalized culture that reveres inclusion, tolerance, and acceptance, our modern sensibilities have coloured our vision. The clue for understanding our Maker’s decision-making processes in this chapter, set in the 4th millennium before us, can be found in the depths to which the people groups in this region had sunk, our Maker’s care for the victims[c], and all this so soon after the global flood! (A prehistoric worldwide environmental disaster among the records of 200 people groups spread over 52 nations, in which most interpret as divine judgement for bad behaviour. Everyone in today’s chapter would have known about it but seemingly have ignored a concern for it in their daily actions.) One way to fractionally understand is to google the ancient gods Baal and Ashtarot/Ashtaroth.[d] You’ll soon see the depths of disgusting crimes against humanity (against children most especially); but let’s look at a local example in today’s chapter…
Adoni-bezek in today’s chapter had already cut off the thumbs and big toes of 70 kings! [v5-7] If cutting off the thumbs and big toes of 70 kings wasn’t utter abhorrent, he then humiliated them to the nth degree thereafter, by starving them enough so that they’d abandon 
their royal dignity (not just as local country leaders, but images of God and therefore created to “rule” under Him[e]) in order to eat the scraps under this tyrant’s table! How long had this unchecked villainry been going on for? The only way I can describe this is by likening it to Hitler taking over 70 nations, then cutting off the thumbs and big toes of 70 European kings, Prime Ministers, and (depending of how far his power reached) Middle Eastern and North African Sultans; then staving them so that they would abandon a fight-back and stoop to grovel under his table like dogs to eat his food scraps. If Adoni-bezek (whose name in two parts in the local language means “lord/master”, Adoni first used as the Creator God’s title before it was used as God’s name) the man called Adoni–Bezek (god of Bezek) could do such things to kings, what was his capacity for brutalizing the general population! When “the axe fell” for him in today’s chapter, he virtually said, “I did it, now I’m getting my ‘just deserts’.” [v7] In other words, our Maker’s righteousness in our future will be seen to be just and true.[f] Yet this was just one story in a matrix of hidden atrocities that only surfaced in the following centuries, after the consequences came true….
“Therefore, [Malach Hashem – The Name The LORD] also said, ‘I will not drive them out from before you; but they shall flank you in, and their gods shall be a mokesh (a snare, bait, lure used to capture prey) to you.’” [Judges 2:3]
To say, “I understand”, is a misjudgment.[g] To try making excuses for my Creator’s decision-making process [v4,19,22; 2:1-3] and this based on human understanding (i.e. the image explaining the real thing), will be inadequate, skewed to my worldview, and therefore flawed.[h] And to simply tolerate HIStory with a level of I-don’t-know trusting-acceptance, will only work as a basis of Faith until my capacity for acceptance shifts. My only way for dealing with the accusations levelled against my Maker and Father who supernaturally 
preserved these chapters for all the world to read in 2000+ languages today, is to go back to Him and ask Him what it all means. This most obvious plan of action is what Eve in The Beginning should have done; but because both male and female images didn’t follow this simple manoeuvre in the face of destabilizing questions, humanity’s life experience on earth was changed forever.[i] If I seek to see, my Maker has given me all I need for understanding Him through the power of His Holy Spirit[j] – assuming that I’m willing to use my head, logic, common sense, conscience, then shift the angle on what I’m looking at in order to see from His perspective. Only then will I be equipped from His Handbook for LIFE for grappling, engaging, asking, and imagining what’s right in a world that’s culturalized towards universal tolerance.
CLICK to return to today’s “Daily Breadcrumbs”
[a] Genesis 15:12-16
[b] Genesis 5:22-24; 6:9
[c] Genesis 19:13
[d] Judges 2:13
[e] Genesis 1:26-28
[f] Revelation 15:3; 16:7; 19:1-2 & v11
[g] Isaiah 55:9
[h] 1 Corinthians 13:11-12
[i] Genesis c3
[j] Jeremiah 31:34