Israelite Failures, Deuteronomy 20:16-18

This post concerns Israelite Failures as recorded in Judges 1 and 2.

Israelite Failures discusses what God wanted, and how His people failed to obey.

Before Joshua led the Israelites into Canaan, God gave them instructions, Deuteronomy 20:16-18. “… in the cities of these peoples that the LORD your God… giving you for an inheritance, you shall save alive nothing that breathes, but you shall devote them to complete destruction,  the Hittites and the Amorites, the Canaanites and the Perizzites, the Hivites and the Jebusites, as the LORD your God has commanded, that they may not teach you to do according to all their abominable practices that they have done for their gods, and so you sin against the LORD your God.”

However, they did not completely annihilate those nations. Then, God allowed the remnants of the nations conquered by Joshua to remain to test Israel in two possible ways:

  1. to see if they would obey God’s commandments exactly.
  2. to teach war to the children who did not know war.

So, after the death of Joshua, the Israelites turned to worshipping idols.

Then, Othniel, the first judge, liberated them from eight years of service to a Mesopotamian king. Forty years of peace followed.

But after his death, the people turned again to idol worship. Thereafter, the Moabites conquered them, and they served for eighteen years.

Then, Ehud, a left-handed judge, with a sword concealed on his right side, killed the fat Moabite king, and rallied the people to fight and win independence. His judgeship lasted eight years.

This cycle of worshipping idols, being conquered by the remnant of the idol worshipping nations, and then God sending a judge to free them occurred again and again.

Let these cycles teach us to be faithful and not turn from serving God.

So, what did we learn?

1.God told Israel to utterly destroy the remnants of the defeated peoples of the land to keep them from tempting Israel to worship idols—but they did not.

2.When the remaining remnants lured the Israelites into worshipping idols, the Israelites suffered. So, God sent judges to liberate them and turn them back to true worship.

3.But when a judge died, Israel turned back to idols.

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