Judges2chapter 2

Judges 2:1-3

The messenger comes from Gilgal, which is where Joshua 5 put the circumcision and the passover, so the rebuke starts from the place the obedience started. He speaks in the first person throughout, I made you to go up out of Egypt, and says I will never break my covenant with you, and then asks a question nobody answers: why have ye done this. The sentence at verse 3 is the exact wording of the warning at Numbers 33:55 and Joshua 23:13, thorns in your sides and their gods a snare, so what falls on Israel is what it was told would fall.

Judges 2:4-5

They weep and they sacrifice, and the place is named Bochim, which means weepers. Nothing is said about throwing down an altar or breaking a league, which is what verse 2 charged them with failing to do. The book's first recorded response to God is grief without amendment, and chapter 3 begins the cycle anyway.

Judges 2:6-7

The narrative reaches back before chapter 1 and repeats Joshua 24:28-31 almost word for word, so the reader is taken to the start again and shown the same events from a different angle. What it adds is the measure of how long the obedience lasted: all the days of Joshua, and all the days of the elders that outlived him. The thing that held them was men who had seen the works with their own eyes.

Judges 2:8-9

He dies at a hundred and ten, which is the age Genesis 50:26 gives for Joseph and no other man in Scripture. Both men are buried in the same country and Joshua 24:32 records Joseph's bones going into the ground at Shechem in the chapter before this one. The title given him here is the servant of the LORD, which the book of Joshua had reserved for Moses until its last chapter.

Judges 2:10

One sentence carries the whole distance between Joshua 24 and the rest of this book. There arose another generation after them, which knew not the LORD, nor yet the works which he had done for Israel, and the failure named is not rebellion but ignorance. Deuteronomy 6:7 and Joshua 4:21-24 had both laid the remedy on the parents, and this verse reports what happened where it was not done.

Judges 2:11-13

This is the first of seven times the book says it, at 2:11, 3:7, 3:12, 4:1, 6:1, 10:6 and 13:1, and three of those read did evil again, so a reader counting the shorter phrase finds only four. The gods named are Baalim and Ashtaroth, the storm god and the goddess of the surrounding towns, so what draws them is the religion of the neighbours rather than an argument. The verb forsook falls twice in three verses.

Judges 2:14-15

He sold them into the hands of their enemies, and the word sold treats the nation as property changing owner rather than as an army losing. Verse 15 says the hand of the LORD was against them for evil, as the LORD had said, and as the LORD had sworn, which points back to the curses of Deuteronomy 28 rather than to bad fortune. Their defeats are read as the covenant working exactly as written.

Judges 2:16-17

The word nevertheless is the turn the whole book runs on, and it arrives before anyone has repented. The judges of this book are deliverers rather than men who sit and hear cases, and the text says God raised them up rather than that Israel chose them. Verse 17 adds the thing that makes the pattern worse than a simple cycle: they would not hearken unto their judges either, so the rescue is refused while it is happening.

Judges 2:18-19

The reason given for the rescue is their groaning rather than their repentance, which the verse says plainly, it repented the LORD because of their groanings. Deliverance lasts exactly as long as the judge lives and no longer. Verse 19 is where the cycle becomes a descent, since they corrupted themselves more than their fathers, so each round starts lower than the last and the book is built on that slope.

Judges 2:20-23

The nations Joshua left are now left on purpose, and two reasons are given in four verses: as a sentence at verse 21, and as a test at verse 22, that through them I may prove Israel. Joshua 21:45 said there failed not ought of any good thing which the LORD had spoken, and 2:23 says he left those nations and did not deliver them into the hand of Joshua. Both statements stand in the canon, and the readings that hold them together, that God gave what he promised while Israel did not take what was given, or that Joshua speaks of the land as granted rather than as occupied, are old and are named without a verdict.