JUDGES

(Answers)

 

Updated 12/2023



CHAPTER 1

  1. Israel failed to utterly drive out all the inhabitants of Canaan.
  2. Israel made the remaining Canaanites slaves and had them pay tribute.

CHAPTER 2

  1. God was angry and would not help Israel anymore because of their covenant with Canaan.
  2. Israel began to worship Baal and other false gods.
  3. God raised up judges to lead them back to Him.

CHAPTER 3

  1. The new generation of Israel had not known war. God wanted these to experience war and also wanted to test them to see if they would obey His commandments.
  2. Othniel and then Ehud were the first of the judges.

CHAPTER 4

  1. Deborah was a female judge and prophetess.
  2. Barak felt God was with her and nothing would happen to him if she was with him.
  3. Barak would receive no glory in this battle. It would go to another, a woman.
  4. Jael, a Kenite woman killed Sisera.

CHAPTER 5

  1. The song of Deborah condemned the tribes who did not go to help fight the Canaanites. It praised the woman, Jael, who killed the commander of the army of the Canaanites.

CHAPTER 6

  1. Gideon was chosen to fight the Midianites.
  2. Gideon's clan was the weakest, and he was the least in his father's house.
  3. a. Gideon tore down his father's altar to Baal and the wooden image. b. He tore the altar down at night for fear of his father's household and the men of the city.
  4. God made the fleece on the floor wet by the dew and everything around it dry.
  5. God made the fleece dry and everything else around it wet by the dew.

CHAPTER 7

  1. a. Gideon had 32,000 men in the begining to fight the Midianites. b. God did not want Israel to say it was by their own power they defeated the Midianites.
  2. a. Gideon's men were reduced to just three hundred. b. The men were led to water and separated according to those who drank water by putting their face to the water and those who drank from their knees.
  3. Gideon divided his men into three companies, each man with a trumpet, an empty pitcher, and a torch. They surrounded the Midian camp with the torches shielded by the pitchers. They broke the pitchers, raised the torches, and blew the trumpets shouting to God and Gideon. The Midianites became confused and killed one another.

CHAPTER 8

  1. Ephraim was upset because they had not been called earlier to the battle.
  2. a. Gideon made an Ephod which he hung up in the city. b. They people began to worship it instead of God.
  3. Gideon had seventy-one sons.
  4. Israel soon turned again to worshiping the Baals.

CHAPTER 9

  1. Abimelech murdered sixty-nine of his seventy brothers.
  2. Jotham escaped from Abimelech.
  3. Jotham predicted Abimelech would turn against the people of Shechem and Beth Millo, and they would turn on him.
  4. Gaal, the son of Ebed turned on Abimelech.
  5. Abimelech killed those who had turned on him.
  6. A woman dropped a millstone on his head, but he had his sword bearer to finish him off so he would not die by the hand of a woman.

CHAPTER 10

  1. The nation of Ammon came against Israel.

CHAPTER 11

  1. Jephthah was the son of a harlot. His brothers would not let him have an inheritance with them.
  2. Jephthah and his men became a band of raiding bandits.
  3. Jephthah was called to be the leader of Israel to fight against the Ammonites.
  4. The Ammonites accused Israel of taking their land.
  5. Jephthah used the recorded history of Israel from the books of Moses to justify Israel's possession of the land of Ammon.
  6. Jepthah vowed a foolish vow. He vowed to sacrifice as a burnt offering, the first thing that would come of his house to meet him when he returned from the battle.
  7. Jepthah’s daughter was the first thing out of his house when he returned home.

CHAPTER 12

  1. a. Ephraim was angry with Jephthah. b. He did not call on them for help to fight the Ammonites. c. Pride, haughtiness, and greed. They wanted to show their power and strength and, possibly, they  sought  the plunder of the other nation's wealth.

CHAPTER 13

  1. The wife of Manoah would conceive and bear a son who would deliver Israel out of the Philistines' hands.
  2. The child would be a Nazarite.
  3. A Nazarite could not eat anything unclean or of the vine from birth until death. This would start from the mother’s womb.
  4. Manoah’s child would be named Samson.

CHAPTER 14

  1. Samsom wanted to marry a woman of the Philistines.
  2. a. Samson killed a young lion with his bear hands. b. A swarm of bees and honey was in the carcass of the lion later.

CHAPTER 15

  1. Samson caught three hundred foxes and tied a torch between the tails of each pair and sent them through the Philistines' fields burning up their fields.
  2. a. Samson used the jawbone of a donkey to kill the Philistines. b. One thousand Philistine men were killed.
  3. God provided water for Samson after his battle with the Philistines.

CHAPTER 16

  1. The lords offered Delilah eleven hundred sheckles of silver from each of them.
  2. Samson’s hair had never been cut because he was a Nazirite.
  3. The Philistines put out Samson’s eyes and made him a grinder in the prison.
  4. Samson killed about three thousand people at his death, which was more than he had killed when he was free.

CHAPTER 17

  1. Micah was an Israelite from the mountains of Ephraim.
  2. One of Micah’s sons became his priest.
  3. A Levite who happened to stop at Micah’s house became his priest.
  4. Micah gave the Levite a place to stay, a suite of clothes, money, and food to be his priest.

CHAPTER 18

  1. They were going to spy out land for their inheritance.
  2. They convinced him to serve them, a tribe, as priest rather than serve just one household.

CHAPTER 19

  1. The Levite and his concubine stopped overnight at Gibeah in Benjamin.
  2. The concubine was physically abused by evil men of the city and left dead.
  3. The Levite cut her up into twelve pieces and sent one piece to each tribe in Israel as a message of the evil deed done in Gibeah.

CHAPTER 20

  1. The tribes of Israel went to war to destroy the Benjamites.
  2. Three times Israel fought the Benjamites before the Lord let them defeat them.
  3. Six hundred men of Benjamin were left who fled to the wilderness in Rimmon.

CHAPTER 21

  1. The tribes of Israel attacked Jabesh Gilead (who had not come to their gathering before the Lord at Mizpah) and took four hundred of their virgin women for the Benjamites.
  2. The tribes told the men of Benjamin to go to the yearly feast in Shiloh and take the daughters of Shiloh as they came out to perform their dances.