Wednesday Bible Study: The first Groundhog Day

The structure of most of Judges is cyclical. The people start marrying outside of the tribe, and worshiping other Gods, so Yahweh sells them into slavery. Then a Yahweh-fearing champion arises, slaughters the slavers, and they are restored in Yahweh ' s favor until the champion dies and the whole things is repeated. There are some variations, a couple of the quite notable, but that ' s true of the Groundhog Day movie as well. What seems quite odd is that even while they are enslaved for years and decades, the Israelites still seem to have a well-equipped army for the Judge to command. You ' d think the slavers would be smart enough not to let them keep it. Anyway, here goes. I ' ll have a couple of comments along the way.3 These are the nations theLord left to test all those Israelites who had not experienced any of the wars in Canaan2 (he did this only to teach warfare to the descendants of the Israelites who had not had previous battle experience):3 the five rulers of the Philistines, all the Canaanites, the Sidonians, and the Hivites living in the Lebanon mountains from Mount Baal Hermon to Lebo Hamath.4 They were left to test the Israelites to see whether they would obey theLord’s commands, which he had given their ancestors through Moses.5 The Israelites lived among the Canaanites, Hittites, Amorites, Perizzites, Hivites and Jebusites.6 They took their daughters in marriage and gave their own daughters to their sons, and served their gods....
Source: Stayin' Alive - Category: American Health Source Type: blogs