JUDGES
(Answers)
Updated 12/2023
CHAPTER 1
- Israel failed to utterly
drive out all the inhabitants of Canaan.
- Israel made the remaining
Canaanites slaves and had them pay tribute.
CHAPTER 2
- God was angry and would not
help Israel anymore because of their covenant with Canaan.
- Israel began to worship Baal
and other false gods.
- God raised up judges to lead
them back to Him.
CHAPTER 3
- 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.
- Othniel and then Ehud were
the first of the judges.
CHAPTER 4
- Deborah was a female judge
and prophetess.
- Barak felt God was with her
and nothing would happen to him if she was with him.
- Barak would receive no glory
in this battle. It would go to another, a woman.
- Jael, a Kenite woman killed
Sisera.
CHAPTER 5
- 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
- Gideon was chosen to fight
the Midianites.
- Gideon's clan was the
weakest, and he was the least in his father's house.
- 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.
- God made the fleece on the
floor wet by the dew and everything around it dry.
- God made the fleece dry and
everything else around it wet by the dew.
CHAPTER 7
- 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.
- 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.
- 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
- Ephraim was upset because
they had not been called earlier to the battle.
- a. Gideon made an Ephod
which he hung up in the city. b. They people began to worship it instead
of God.
- Gideon had seventy-one sons.
- Israel soon turned again to
worshiping the Baals.
CHAPTER 9
- Abimelech murdered
sixty-nine of his seventy brothers.
- Jotham escaped from
Abimelech.
- Jotham predicted Abimelech
would turn against the people of Shechem and Beth Millo, and they would
turn on him.
- Gaal, the son of Ebed turned
on Abimelech.
- Abimelech killed those who
had turned on him.
- 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
- The nation of Ammon came
against Israel.
CHAPTER 11
- Jephthah was the son of a
harlot. His brothers would not let him have an inheritance with them.
- Jephthah and his men became
a band of raiding bandits.
- Jephthah was called to be
the leader of Israel to fight against the Ammonites.
- The Ammonites accused
Israel of taking their land.
- Jephthah used the recorded
history of Israel from the books of Moses to justify Israel's possession
of the land of Ammon.
- 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.
- Jepthah’s daughter was the
first thing out of his house when he returned home.
CHAPTER 12
- 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
- The wife of Manoah would
conceive and bear a son who would deliver Israel out of the Philistines'
hands.
- The child would be a
Nazarite.
- A Nazarite could not eat
anything unclean or of the vine from birth until death. This would start
from the mother’s womb.
- Manoah’s child would be
named Samson.
CHAPTER 14
- Samsom wanted to marry a
woman of the Philistines.
- 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
- 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.
- a. Samson used the jawbone
of a donkey to kill the Philistines. b. One thousand Philistine men were
killed.
- God provided water for
Samson after his battle with the Philistines.
CHAPTER 16
- The lords offered Delilah
eleven hundred sheckles of silver from each of them.
- Samson’s hair had never been
cut because he was a Nazirite.
- The Philistines put out
Samson’s eyes and made him a grinder in the prison.
- Samson killed about three
thousand people at his death, which was more than he had killed when he
was free.
CHAPTER 17
- Micah was an Israelite from
the mountains of Ephraim.
- One of Micah’s sons became
his priest.
- A Levite who happened to
stop at Micah’s house became his priest.
- Micah gave the Levite a
place to stay, a suite of clothes, money, and food to be his priest.
CHAPTER 18
- They were going to spy out
land for their inheritance.
- They convinced him to serve
them, a tribe, as priest rather than serve just one household.
CHAPTER 19
- The Levite and his
concubine stopped overnight at Gibeah in Benjamin.
- The concubine was
physically abused by evil men of the city and left dead.
- 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
- The tribes of Israel went
to war to destroy the Benjamites.
- Three times Israel fought
the Benjamites before the Lord let them defeat them.
- Six hundred men of Benjamin
were left who fled to the wilderness in Rimmon.
CHAPTER 21
- 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.
- 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.