Read Time: 8 minutesJudges 21
The book ends in a tangle of oaths and grief. Benjamin is reduced to six hundred men at the rock Rimmon, and Israel, having sworn at Mizpeh that none would give a daughter to Benjamin, now weeps that there is one tribe lacking in Israel — the body that nearly tore off a member now mourns the loss it caused. The whole chapter is the spectacle of a people trying to repair with human cleverness the ruin its own lawlessness produced, and binding itself in fresh wrongs to undo the old ones.
The repair is grim. Because of the rash oath, no Israelite may give a wife to Benjamin — so they find a city that did not come up to Mizpeh, Jabesh-gilead, destroy it, and bring its four hundred virgins for the survivors. When that falls short by two hundred, they counsel the remaining Benjamites to lie in wait at the yearly feast of Yahweh at Shiloh and seize the dancing daughters — kidnapping cloaked as a loophole, so that the fathers of Shiloh would not technically have given their daughters and so not break the oath. A vow foolishly sworn is honored in the letter while it is shattered in the spirit; bloodshed and bride-theft are stacked up to keep a word that should never have been spoken. The leaven of every man right in his own eyes has reached even the assembly’s attempts at righteousness.
And so the book closes on its refrain, now stated bare and final: In those days there was no king in Israel: every man did that which was right in his own eyes. It is the verdict on the whole period — not merely that there was no monarch, but that there was no submission to the King of Israel who was always there. Judges ends not with resolution but with a question hanging over the nation: who will be the King who does right in Yahweh’s eyes and not his own? The very next book, Ruth, will open in the days when the judges ruled and quietly trace, through a Moabite widow and a kinsman-redeemer at Bethlehem, the line that answers it — David, and David’s Son.
Even here the thread of preservation holds. Benjamin is not allowed to perish; a tribe is rescued, however clumsily, because Yahweh keeps the twelve whole for his purposes. And Shiloh, where the daughters danced — the name means he whose it is, the word of the dying Jacob’s blessing, the sceptre shall not depart from Judah… until Shiloh come (Gen 49:10). The place named for the coming King is the place where Benjamin is given a future. The book that cries no king sets its last scene at the town named for the King who comes.
A rash vow honored in the letter and broken in the spirit only piles wrong on wrong; man’s cleverness cannot repair what man’s lawlessness destroyed. The book ends crying for the King — and sets its closing scene at Shiloh, the place named for him whose right it is.
Isaiah 43
The chapter opens with the word that answers all the fear of the courtroom and all the darkness of Judges: But now thus saith Yahweh that created thee, O Jacob… Fear not: for I have redeemed thee, I have called thee by thy name; thou art mine. The worm of chapter 41 is now the redeemed, named, owned. And the promise of presence is the high-water mark of the book’s comfort: When thou passest through the waters, I will be with thee; and through the rivers, they shall not overflow thee: when thou walkest through the fire, thou shalt not be burned. The water and the fire — the two judgments of 2 Peter 3, the flood that was and the fire that will be — cannot consume the people Yahweh has redeemed; he goes through them with his own.
The ground of the rescue is named: I am Yahweh thy God, the Holy One of Israel, thy Saviour… since thou wast precious in my sight… I have loved thee. He will give men for them, people for their life — the gathering of his own from north and south, east and west, every one that is called by my name: for I have created him for my glory. This is the regathering of the scattered seed, the calling home of the sons and daughters from the ends of the earth — the latter-day gathering of Israel and the gathering of the multitudinous body alike, all called by the Name, all made for his glory.
Then the courtroom reconvenes, and Israel is summoned as the witness: Ye are my witnesses, saith Yahweh, and my servant whom I have chosen. The function the idols could not perform — to declare and to testify — is given to the redeemed people: that ye may know and believe me… I, even I, am Yahweh; and beside me there is no saviour. The line is the bedrock of the whole prophecy and of the faith: one Yahweh, one Savior, no other. Every idol of Judges, every nailed-down god of the nations, is swept off the table by it.
And the climax is grace upon grace. Israel has not honored Yahweh — thou hast not brought me the small cattle of thy burnt offerings… thou hast made me to serve with thy sins. The relationship has been all one way: Israel wearying Yahweh with iniquities while bringing him no true sacrifice. And then, against all that the account demands: I, even I, am he that blotteth out thy transgressions for mine own sake, and will not remember thy sins. The pardon is for mine own sake — not earned, not deserved, flowing from Yahweh’s own nature and purpose, the free forgiveness that John’s letter also rests on (he is faithful and just to forgive). The Savior blots out the record for his own Name’s sake and remembers the sin no more.
Fear not — through the water and the fire he goes with the redeemed, for they are called by his Name. There is no savior beside Yahweh, and he blots out the transgression for his own sake, remembering the sin no more.
2 John, 3 John
Two short letters, both turning on truth and love held together — the same pair John pressed at length in the first epistle, now in miniature for two specific situations. John writes as the elder, and the watchword of both letters is the truth, named again and again: he loves the elect lady and her children in the truth, for the truth’s sake which dwelleth in us, and shall be with us for ever. In John’s writing the truth is never a bare set of propositions; it is a person, for Christ said I am the truth, and the Spirit is the Spirit of truth. To walk in the truth is to walk in him; to abide in the doctrine of Christ is to abide in Christ. So truth and love are not two separate virtues to be balanced but one cloth: the love is love in the truth, and the truth is what love guards.
The three letters form a descending scale of one Truth: the first epistle set it in the ecclesia, the whole called-out body; the second sets it in the house — the elect lady and her children; the third in the single man, Gaius against Diotrephes. What must hold in the gathered community first has to hold in the home, and what holds in the home turns on what one faithful person upholds.
The recipient herself reads as more than one woman. The elect lady and her children is most naturally an ecclesia and its members — the called-out community addressed as a lady because she is the bride, the same figure as the bride of the Apocalypse and the wife of the Lamb, with her children the saints born into her. The closing greeting confirms it: the children of thy elect sister greet thee — one ecclesia sending the love of its members to another. The letter to the bride, then, is the letter to the gathered community, charged to keep walking in the truth that is her Husband.
The second letter rejoices that her children walk in truth, repeats the old-and-new commandment to love one another, and then sets the hard boundary that love requires. Many deceivers are gone out into the world who confess not that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh — the same antichrist-lie of the first epistle — and the saints are charged to abide in the doctrine of Christ. The love that is so prized does not dissolve the line of truth; it guards it. If there come any unto you, and bring not this doctrine, receive him not into your house, neither bid him God speed — not cruelty, but the refusal to lend the warmth of fellowship to those carrying the denial of the Son, lest the bidder become partaker of his evil deeds. True love and true doctrine are not rivals; the one fences the other.
The third letter turns to the life of a small ecclesia and three men. Gaius is commended for walking in the truth and for his love shown to the brethren and to strangers — thou doest faithfully whatsoever thou doest to the brethren, and to strangers — receiving the travelling preachers who went out for his name’s sake, taking nothing of the Gentiles. Here is the hospitality that Gibeah refused and the old man of Ephraim alone offered, now made the mark of a man who walks in truth: the open house for the brother and the stranger.
Against him stands Diotrephes, who loveth to have the preeminence — the self-exalting man who will not receive the apostle’s word, prates against him with malicious words, refuses the brethren himself, and casts out of the ecclesia those who would receive them. The three names preach the contrast: Gaius and Demetrius are plain men commended for the truth, while Diotrephes means nourished by Zeus — a name carrying the pagan pride the man embodies. He is the small tyrant of the congregation, loving the chief seat, and his sin is the same root as Korah’s gainsaying that we will meet in Jude — the grasping after a preeminence that belongs to Christ alone, who is the head of the body. The antichrist-spirit appears here not in false doctrine but in domineering: a man may hold the truth in word and deny it in the lust for rule. He that doeth good is of God: but he that doeth evil hath not seen God. And Demetrius has a good report of all and of the truth itself. Three men, and the test laid on each is the one test of the whole of John’s writing: do they walk in the truth, and do they love the brethren?
Truth and love are one cloth, not rivals — love walks in the truth and guards its boundary, refusing fellowship to the denial of the Son while opening the house to every brother and stranger. Beware the love of preeminence; he that doeth good is of God.
Synthesis and Exhortation
The readings braid the end of one story into the beginning of another. Judges closes crying no king in Israel, its last scene at Shiloh — the town named for him whose right it is, the coming King of Jacob’s blessing. Isaiah answers across the centuries: I, even I, am Yahweh; and beside me there is no saviour — there is a King, and he is the redeemer who calls his people by name. And John shows the people of that King already gathered into ecclesias, tested by whether they walk in the truth and love the brethren. The arc runs from the kingless chaos of the Judges, through the redeemer-King declared in Isaiah, to the called-out community living under him in the letters.
The thread that runs through all three is the gathering and keeping of a people. Benjamin is preserved at the rock Rimmon and given a future at Shiloh; Yahweh gathers his scattered sons and daughters from the four winds, every one that is called by my name; and John’s elect lady and her children, his beloved Gaius, are the named members of that gathered family. The same Savior who blots out transgression for his own sake is the one who keeps Benjamin whole for the line of the King and keeps the ecclesia in the truth against the deceivers. Nothing is lost that Yahweh has redeemed and named.
And the test that closes the week’s letters is the cure for the week’s chaos. Judges showed a people who did right in their own eyes, refused hospitality, sheltered evil, and tore at their own body; John shows the redeemed walking in truth, opening the house to the stranger, guarding the doctrine of Christ, refusing the love of preeminence. Where there was no king, there was Gibeah; where the King reigns, there is Gaius receiving the brethren for the Name’s sake. The passage from the one to the other is the passage from every man right in his own eyes to every one called by his name.
The book that cries for a king ends at Shiloh, and the King has come — the one Saviour beside whom there is no other, who goes with his people through water and fire and blots out their sin for his own sake. Walk in his truth, love the brethren, open the house to the stranger, and beware the love of preeminence; for these are the marks of the people called by his Name.