Read Time: 8 minutesJudges 20
The dismembered summons works, and Israel gathers as one man from Dan to Beersheba — four hundred thousand footmen drawing the sword — to Mizpeh, the place whose name means watchtower. For once the fractured tribes act in unison; the outrage at Gibeah does what no judge could and binds Israel together. But the unity is itself the chapter’s grim irony, for the war it produces is civil — Israel against Benjamin, brother against brother, the body turned on its own member.
The cause is just and Benjamin’s response is the heart of the tragedy. The men of Gibeah are sons of Belial, and Israel rightly demands they be handed over for judgment. But Benjamin will not give up its guilty; the tribe closes ranks around the wicked rather than purge them, and so makes the whole tribe partner to the crime. This is the engine of the disaster: the refusal to put away evil from the midst turns a city’s sin into a tribe’s ruin. The little leaven leavens the whole lump, and Benjamin chooses the lump over the law.
Then comes the chapter’s hardest feature — Israel inquires of Yahweh, is told to go up, and is beaten twice, twenty-two thousand fallen the first day, eighteen thousand the second. They ask whether they should go against their brother; the answer is go up, and they are routed. Only on the third inquiry, after they have wept, and fasted, and offered burnt offerings and peace offerings before Yahweh — and the chapter pauses to note the ark was there, and Phinehas the grandson of Aaron stood before it — does the word come with promise: Go up; for to morrow I will deliver them into thine hand. The pattern is severe and instructive: a righteous cause does not exempt the avengers from being humbled first. Israel goes up confident in the justice of its war and is twice broken before it is taught to go up weeping, in fasting and sacrifice, depending not on its numbers but on Yahweh.
The third day the ambush is set behind Gibeah as it once was behind Ai, the city is taken, and the flame goes up — and Benjamin is shattered, twenty-five thousand and more cut down, the tribe reduced to six hundred men fled to the rock Rimmon. Rimmon means pomegranate, the fruit whose hundreds of seeds in one rind made it the emblem stitched on the high priest’s hem and carved on the temple pillars — a sign of fruitful multitude. That the last seed of Benjamin survives at the rock called pomegranate is the thread of preservation hidden in the slaughter: from those six hundred at the rock the tribe will be rebuilt, and out of rebuilt Benjamin will come Saul, and Mordecai, and Paul.
A just cause does not spare the avenger the humbling; the war fought in confident strength is twice broken before it is won in weeping and sacrifice. And do not shield the evil in your own midst — Benjamin chose the lump over the law, and the leaven nearly cost the tribe its life.
Isaiah 42
After the courtroom of chapter 41, where the idols stood mute, Yahweh presents the One who can do what they cannot — the first of the great Servant Songs: Behold my servant, whom I uphold; mine elect, in whom my soul delighteth; I have put my spirit upon him: he shall bring forth judgment to the Gentiles. Matthew lays this passage word for word on the Lord Jesus (Matt 12:18–21), and the Father’s voice at the Jordan — this is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased — is the echo of mine elect, in whom my soul delighteth. The Servant is Christ, anointed with the Spirit, sent to bring true judgment not to Israel only but to the nations.
The manner of the Servant is the marvel. He shall not cry, nor lift up, nor cause his voice to be heard in the street. No demagogue’s clamour, no self-display — the opposite of the great swelling words that mark the false. And the tenderness: a bruised reed shall he not break, and the smoking flax shall he not quench. The bruised reed is the keystone — the half-crushed stalk that any passer-by would snap and discard, the lamp-wick guttering down to smoke that any hand would pinch out. These are the people the world writes off: the faith nearly broken, the hope nearly gone out. The Servant does not finish off the failing; he mends the reed and fans the smoke back to flame. Yet this gentleness is not weakness — he shall not fail nor be discouraged, till he have set judgment in the earth. The same hand that will not break the reed will not itself be broken until justice fills the earth, and the isles shall wait for his law: the far Gentile coastlands looking to Christ’s reign, the kingdom-age when the law goes forth from Zion.
Yahweh names him: I Yahweh have called thee in righteousness… and give thee for a covenant of the people, for a light of the Gentiles; to open the blind eyes, to bring out the prisoners from the prison. The Servant is himself the covenant, the living bond between Yahweh and the peoples, the light that Simeon will hold the infant Christ and name — a light to lighten the Gentiles. And then the jealous word that answers the idols of Judges and Isaiah 41 both: I am Yahweh: that is my name: and my glory will I not give to another, neither my praise to graven images. The new song that follows — let the isles and the wilderness and Kedar sing — is the song of the new thing Yahweh declares before it springs forth.
The chapter closes turning back on Israel the servant, blind and deaf, the nation that should have been Yahweh’s witness but would not see, given for a spoil because they would not walk in his ways. The contrast is exact: the Servant who opens blind eyes set beside the servant-nation that is itself blind. Christ is the true Israel who does what national Israel could not — the seeing Servant among the blind, the obedient Son where the nation failed.
The bruised reed he will not break; the smoking flax he will not quench — but neither will he fail nor be discouraged till judgment fills the earth. He is the covenant in person, the light of the nations, and Yahweh will not give that glory to a graven thing.
1 John 5
John gathers the letter to its point: faith, love, and obedience are one cloth, and the knot that ties them is who Jesus is. Whosoever believeth that Jesus is the Christ is born of God — and the new birth shows itself in loving the Father and keeping his commandments, which are not grievous. The victory over the world is named and dated to faith: this is the victory that overcometh the world, even our faith. And the overcomer is defined narrowly — he that believeth that Jesus is the Son of God. The whole battle reduces to the confession the antichrists deny.
Then the witness — there are three that bear witness in earth, the Spirit, and the water, and the blood: and these three agree in one. (The AV prefixes to this a verse naming three witnesses in heaven — the Father, the Word, and the Spirit — but it is a late interpolation, absent from every early Greek manuscript and inserted only centuries afterward to prop up the Trinity; John’s own text knows three witnesses, and they are in earth.) The water and the blood are the marks of the true coming of Christ in the flesh, the water of his baptism at the start of his ministry and the blood of his death at its end, with the Spirit testifying through both that this man is the Son of God. John is still fighting the lie that Jesus only seemed to be a man: he came not by water only, but by water and blood — against the teaching that the Christ-spirit came on the man at Jordan (the water) and left him before his death, leaving no blood to be shed. No, says John: water and blood, a real baptism and a real death. And it is the same John who alone records the spear-thrust at the crucifixion, when forthwith came there out blood and water — and who breaks off to swear he that saw it bare record, and his record is true (John 19:34–35), the eyewitness binding the pierced side to Zechariah’s they shall look upon me whom they have pierced. The water and the blood that John saw flow from the dead Christ are the very two witnesses he now sets before the ecclesia: a true man from Jordan to the spear. The witness of God concerning his Son is greater than the witness of men, and he that believeth not… hath made him a liar.
And the testimony’s content is the whole of the hope held in its true conditional shape: this is the record, that God hath given to us eternal life, and this life is in his Son. He that hath the Son hath life; and he that hath not the Son of God hath not life. Life is in the Son — not a possession held independently in the believer’s own right, but life held by union with Christ, kept by abiding in him. These things have I written… that ye may know that ye have eternal life — the knowing is the assurance of those joined to the Son, the life made sure in him and given in fulness at his appearing.
The letter ends with confidence in prayer according to his will, with the distinction between sin that is unto death and sin that is not, and with three great certainties hammered out: we know that whosoever is born of God sinneth not — the new man does not make a practice of sin, and that wicked one toucheth him not. We know that we are of God, and the whole world lieth in wickedness. And the summit: we know that the Son of God is come, and hath given us an understanding, that we may know him that is true… this is the true God, and eternal life. The closing charge is blunt and necessary in a chapter so full of the true God against the idols of the antichrists: Little children, keep yourselves from idols. The same warning that Isaiah hurls at the graven image and that Judges shows Israel ignoring, John lays as the last word on the ecclesia.
Faith in the Son is the victory that overcomes the world; the Spirit, the water, and the blood agree that the man Jesus is the Son of God. Life is in the Son — have him and you have it. And keep yourselves from idols.
Synthesis and Exhortation
Three readings about the purging of evil and the One who alone can purge it rightly. Judges 20 shows Israel rising as one man to put away the wickedness of Gibeah — a just war, a true cause — and being humbled twice before it learns to fight it in weeping and sacrifice rather than in confident numbers. Isaiah 42 shows the Servant who brings judgment not by the clamour of the street but by mending the bruised reed and never failing till justice fills the earth. And John shows the saint overcoming the world by faith and being kept from sin and idols by the life that is in the Son. In every case the lesson is the same: evil is real and must be put away, but it is purged not by human strength asserting itself but by dependence on Yahweh and union with his Christ.
The Servant of Isaiah 42 is the answer to both other readings. Israel at Gibeah fought its brother and nearly destroyed a tribe; the Servant brings a judgment that does not break the bruised but sets justice in the earth. Israel was the blind and deaf servant who would not see; Christ is the seeing Servant who opens blind eyes and brings the prisoners out of the prison-house. And where Benjamin sheltered the sons of Belial rather than give them up, and so brought the leaven into the whole lump, the Servant is the one who truly takes away the sin — not by shielding it, not by destroying the sinner, but by his own offering, a covenant of the people in his own person.
And the warning rings across all three: keep yourselves from idols. It is the thread of the whole week — Micah’s graven image, the nations’ nailed-down gods of Isaiah 41, the molten thing Yahweh will not give his glory to in Isaiah 42, and now John’s last word to the ecclesia. The idol is anything carved to the measure of our own eyes; the cure is the living God whose Servant will not break the reed, and the Son in whom alone is life. The reed bruised in the wars of Judges, the wick smoking low — these are not snapped by the Servant but mended. So the saint, twice-humbled and nearly broken, is not finished off but fanned back to flame, and overcomes the world not by his own arm but by faith in the Son of God.
Put away the evil, but in weeping and dependence, not in the strength of your own numbers — and never by sheltering it in your own midst. The Servant will not break the bruised reed nor quench the smoking flax; trust the One who mends what the world discards, and keep yourselves from every idol, for life is in the Son alone.