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Wisdom-Trek / Creating a LegacyWelcome to Day 1326 of our Wisdom-Trek, and thank you for joining me.I am Guthrie Chamberlain, Your Guide to WisdomMastering the Bible – Judges and Kings – Worldview WednesdayWisdom - the final frontier to true knowledge. Welcome to Wisdom-Trek! Where our mission is to create a legacy of wisdom, to seek out discernment and insights, to boldly grow where few have chosen to grow before. Hello, my friend, I am Guthrie Chamberlain, your captain on our journey to increase Wisdom and Create a Living Legacy. Thank you for joining us today as we explore wisdom on our 2nd millennium of podcasts. This is Day 1326 of our Trek, and it is Worldview Wednesday. Creating a Biblical Worldview is important to have a proper perspective on today’s current events. To establish a Biblical Worldview, it is required that you also have a proper understanding of God and His Word. Our focus for the next several months on Worldview Wednesday is Mastering the Bible, through a series of brief insights. These insights are extracted from a book of the same title from one of today’s most prominent Hebrew Scholars, Dr. Micheal S. Heiser. This book is a collection of insights designed to help you understand the Bible better. When we let the Bible be what it is, we can understand it as the original readers did, and as its writers intended. Each week we will explore two insights.


Mastering The Bible – Judges and KingsInsight Thirty-Nine: Judges Were Not KingsThe book of Judges is largely an intentional contrast between the faithlessness of God's people and his own faithfulness. Repeatedly in Judges, we read that Israel turned against God's laws and commands, suffered under foreign oppressors as a result, and then had to be bailed out of their misery by God. Judges 2:15-16 (https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Judges+2%3A15-16&version=NLT) was the resulting consequence.  Every time Israel went out to battle, the Lord fought against them, causing them to be defeated, just as he had warned. And the people were in great distress. Then the Lord raised up judges to rescue the Israelites from their attackers.


When we see the word “judges,” we think of people who decide legal cases and pass out sentences to criminals. That isn’t who’s in view here. Reading through the book of Judges makes it clear that, with the exception of Deborah (who actually did listen to complaints and make decisions for people; see Judges 4:4-5, judges were military leaders that God raised up to defeat Israel’s enemies.


The period of the judges was one of lawlessness. It was chaotic and unpredictable. Twice the book tells readers in Judges 17:6; 21:25 that “In those days Israel had no king; all the people did whatever seemed right in their own eyes.” On nearly ten occasions, the author offers the blunt assessment that “The Israelites did evil in the Lord’s sight.”


Several analogies to the judges suggest themselves. The time of the judges could be looked upon like the Wild West, when gangs of outlaws controlled towns and territories by fear, ignoring the law. That would make judges the equivalent of sheriffs or hired guns. Perhaps more familiar, we could think of Canaan at this time like the fictional Gotham. None of the judges had a cape and lived in the Batcave, but you get the idea. Judges were deliverers, the superheroes of their day.


Judges were not kings. They did not rule over all the tribes, or even any single tribe. They did not have dynasties, although Gideon and his son Abimelech tried to pull that off (Judges 6-9). Judges were a temporary solution to the problems of the time. They defeated foreign enemies and restored law and order, ushering in a time of peace until the next judge was needed. Their authority was regional. For example, sometimes, Israel's oppressors only controlled specific cities (Judges 3:12-14).


The book of Judges serves an important