Judges, Chapter 12 - A Nation Torn | Prophets of Israel Daily

[music] >> Shalom everybody. Welcome to the Prophets of Israel daily. This is the Book [music] of Judges chapter 12. My name is Jeremy Gimpel. I'm here with Ari Abramowitz and this series is brought to you by the Land of Israel Network. If you're just catching this chapter now, you can go back to the beginning of the Prophets of Israel and find all the previous chapters in the entire Book of Joshua at the landofisrael.com. Go back and >> All right. Catch up if you're just coming in now. Catch up and join us. Exactly. All right. So, this chapter, we see Israel in just total breakdown. It's the first civil war in Israel's history. Judges chapter 12, it's one of the saddest chapters in all of Sefer Shoftim. After being saved from one war, they immediately fall into another one. It's like a bloody, devastating war. It's a civil war. And you know, what's always more dangerous than an external enemy is an internal one. It's like when you That's when you really don't know who you are anymore. It's like when fighting begins inside the family, something deeper really starts to break. And the chapter opens right after Iftach's victory over Ammon. He just saved Israel. Instead of gratitude, instead of unity, they come to Iftach, the men of Ephraim, and they complain. Verse one, "Why did you cross over to fight against the people of Ammon and did not call us to go with you? We will burn your house down on you with fire." It's like sound familiar? Cuz we've seen this before with Gideon. Ephraim then comes to their bruised ego, wounded honor, and they're upset because they weren't included from the beginning. But Gideon diffused it with humility. He lowered himself. He honored Ephraim. He preserved unity even at the cost of his own pride. But Iftach is not Gideon. And this time they threaten to burn Iftach's house down with fire. Iftach comes from a broken family, a totally different background. And Gideon, you know, it's going to It's going to end differently this time. Verses two and three. "My people and I were in great strife with the children of Ammon. And when I called you, you did not deliver me. And when I saw you would not help me, I put my life in my hands and crossed over. And Hashem gave them into my hand. Why then have you come to fight against me?" He just tells the truth, bluntly. He doesn't come and say like, you know, "You didn't come when I called. I did what I had to do. And now the victory is clear. And now you show up angry?" I mean, this is one of the recurring patterns in Tanakh and in life. There always people who don't want to step in during the danger, when there's still risk. But once the dust settles, yeah, they want all the credit. They They didn't want the responsibility, but they definitely want to be associated with the victory. But there's another layer. Because Iftach now, he's not just responding to Ephraim. He's carrying his whole life into this moment. I mean, this is a man that was already rejected by his own brothers, driven from his own. He was labeled as an outsider from the very beginning. And he's a judge that's really shaped by that pain and exclusion. So, when Ephraim comes to him with contempt, he doesn't respond like Gideon. He responds like a man who has spent his whole life fighting to survive. And that's really one of the most painful things about Yiftach, Jeremy, right? He's not just leading the battle in front of him. He's leading out of his entire biography. I guess like many of us in in some ways, right? Gideon could right Think about it. Gideon, he could absorb insults and redirect them with grace. He had that capacity. He had the vessels for it. Yiftach can't. Not because he's evil, but because wounded people hear conflict differently. When you spent your whole life being pushed aside, every accusation sounds like the same old rejection coming back again. And that's why Sefer Shoftim is so tragic. The judges are mirrors of the nation. As as as the people become more fractured, the leaders become more fractured, too. Yeah, it's so tragic. I mean, a broken leader leads a broken nation, and Israel reaches a new low. The situation escalates. Iftach gathers the men of Gilead, and they fight Ephraim. Israel is fighting Israel. The people who should be standing together after victory, they should be celebrating, they should be praising God together, they turn their swords on one another. Verse four. The men of Gilead struck Ephraim because they said, "You Gileadites are fugitives of Ephraim." I mean, this isn't just a military clash. This is real tribal contempt. They're basically saying, "You're not a real tribe with your own standing. You're just leftovers, runaways, and nobodies." I mean, you're living out there between Ephraim and Manasseh. And that hit Iftach, the son of a harlot, an outcast. I mean, that cut deep. And you know, once you have that kind of contempt and it enters the bloodstream of a nation, violence is just not that far behind. And then comes one of the most haunting accounts in the Tanakh. The men of Gilead seize the fords of Jordan, the crossing points back into Ephraimite territory. And when a fugitive tries to cross, they ask him one word, "Shibboleth." The Ephraimites pronounce it a little bit differently. They say "Sibboleth." And that one difference, that one syllable, that's how they're identified. Verse six. "Then they would say to him, 'Say now Shibboleth.' And he would say 'Sibboleth' for he could not pronounce it right. Then they would take him and kill him at the fords of Jordan." 42,000 men of Ephraim fall from one syllable. It's really The word I have to use is just disillusioning. These parts of the Tanakh are so painful for me cuz, you know, we have this idea in Israel today we would we never hurt our fellow Jew. And then we read this, it's just devastating. You know, because think about what they're not testing for. They're not asking them, uh "Do you believe in Hashem?" They're not asking, "Did you fight for Israel?" They're not asking, "Are you loyal?" They're asking you to say one word. And the way your mouth shapes that one word, the accent your mother gave you, the the dialect of the valley you grew up in, that's what decides whether you live or die. That's not ideology. That's not justice. That's tribalism so advanced and so poisoned that it's lost the ability to see a brother right in front of your eyes. Right? It can only see a syllable. And it makes it it's it's very human because civil conflict almost never erupts over the biggest differences. It erupts when small differences become loaded with contempt. When the way you speak, the neighborhood you're from, the school you went to, it stops just being a detail and starts being a uh uh a verdict. Right? One tribe says a word one way, another tribe says it another way, and that tiny difference is the difference between life and death. Not are they idolaters or are they evil? It's It's already lost what it was about to begin with. That's how far a nation can fall. Not when it stops speaking, but when even speech itself becomes a weapon. You know, the only comfort I have from this story is seeing how far Israel has come and where we are today. I mean, our unity now, Israel is more united and more diverse than ever. But there's something even deeper here. And when you think back to the previous chapter, Iftach made a vow. It was reckless, imprecise, and his daughter paid the price. His speech is untethered from wisdom, just unleashed tragedy. And now in this chapter, speech becomes central again. It's not through a vow, but it's through pronunciation. And it's as if the Torah is trying to thread a needle here through these two chapters, telling us, you know, words matter more than you think. How we speak, what we say, whether speech becomes a vessel for holiness or a trigger for destruction, speech can build a nation and speech can divide it. And there's, you know, one more dimension that I just don't want to move past. It's the Jordan River. And I think about, you know, when we started this journey into the land, that was the place where Israel crossed into the land together. It was a symbol of our national joint destiny, a moving people as one into our covenant with God. And now those same fords became the fault line, a checkpoint, a trap. I mean, it's like the very place that once marked our shared covenant became the site of internal slaughter. Yeah, I can't let that image go. I can't get it out of my mind. You know, because the Jordan doesn't The Jordan doesn't forget. Right? Or we we There's times we make rocks, and you are a testimony. You are a witness. The Jordan is a witness here. It was there when Yeshua led the nation across, the water splitting, the ark carried on the shoulders of the Kohanim, an entire people stepping into their destiny together. That was the Jordan at its most holy. A nation moving as one, eyes forward, oriented towards Hashem. Right? And now the same river, the same fords, but this time Israel is standing on both sides and killing each other in between. It's not just a military tragedy. It's spiritual because the Jordan didn't change, the geography didn't change. What changed is what the people were oriented towards. In Yeshua, they were following the ark. Here they're following their wounds and their pride and their tribal grievances. And the moment a nation stops orienting towards Hashem and starts orienting towards itself, even its holiest places become battlegrounds. And that image the Jordan as a as a crossing into promise and the Jordan as a killing field, that's the entire story of Sefer Shoftim compressed into a river. Right, this is what happens when a nation loses its orientation, its focus, its mission. Yeah, and you know, it really brings us to a point of really understanding why Israel had to have a king to bring everyone together and unite. And so, after the devastation, the chapter moves on the story and we have three more judges, Ibzan, Elon, and Abdon. And very little is recorded, 25 years of quiet, but there's one detail that stands out. Ibzan arranged marriages across tribal lines. And right after 42,000 men died because of tribal division, Ibzan is quietly, deliberately building bridges through family. And you know, it's not a miracle. It doesn't look like Gideon with clay jars or Deborah under the palm tree, but it means my son is going to marry your daughter. Our futures are intertwined. The fault lines don't disappear overnight, but you begin to the stitching. You stitch them closed one family at a time. And something that really caught my eye when I was preparing this chapter, the sages identify Ibzan with Boaz. And like, let that sink in for just a second. Right after one of the ugliest chapters of internal bloodshed in all of the book of Judges, the text introduces this minor judge who in rabbinic tradition is the very same Boaz who is going to marry Ruth, whose son Obed will be the father of Ishai who will father King David. The man that's standing in the wreckage of 42,000 dead Israelites, arranging marriages across tribal lines, stitching the nation back together one family at a time, is the great-grandfather of Mashiach. And that changes everything about how we read this chapter. Yeah, well, I'll just tell you for me, you know, Sefer Shoftim, Judges, it keeps asking, really like, what are you oriented towards? Because when you're oriented towards yourself or your wounds or your honor or your tribe, your syllable, right, even victory becomes a trigger for destruction. But Ibzan, this quiet man standing in the wreckage of it all, is oriented towards the future, oriented towards Hashem, oriented towards the nation as a whole, towards connection, towards the next generation. He doesn't make a speech, he doesn't win a battle, he he's a matchmaker. He arranges marriages. And from this we learn that inside that that small unglamorous act of bridge-building that he does, the seed of King David was already growing. Right, and I I think that's the that's something for us to really pay attention to today. We're living in a moment of real fragmentation inside Israel, inside the entire Jewish world, more than I can remember in my entire adult life. I feel these fissures in our nation. Right, inside families. And it's so tempting to fight over our syllables, over who has right and who showed up and who is showing up and who isn't. But the people who plant the roots of redemption are usually not the ones making the loudest noises. They're the ones quietly arranging the marriages, stitching the nation back together one relationship at a time. That is the work and it's not glamorous work. Nobody's going to make a podcast about the marriages that Ibzan arranged. Well, I guess not until right now with us today. Right, anyway, nobody cheers for the quiet builders. But his name has been preserved for all of time and Hashem preserved his lineage because in the unfolding story of redemption, the ones who stitch things together in the darkness matter more than anyone knows. So, the question isn't just, you know, what what you're oriented towards, the question is also, what are you quietly building right now in the middle of all this craziness? You know, it was craziness now, it's craziness then. I mean, the Jordan can become a place of slaughter. And God is already preparing the man who will one day have an ancestor who makes it a place of blessing again. I mean, the nation can tear itself apart over a single syllable and Hashem is quietly weaving together the lineage that is one day going to bring it all together in absolute unity. And that's really the genius of Sefer Shoftim, of the book of Judges. It never lets despair have the final word. Even in the darkest chapter, maybe especially in the darkest chapter, the seeds of redemption are already being planted. You just have to know where to look. And so, the Jordan River is still there, still flowing, still holding the memory of a nation that once walked through it together following the ark, stepping into the promise. And one day, please God, it will be that again. And so, chazak u'baruch, my friends. B'ezrat Hashem, we will see you tomorrow for Judges chapter 13 [music] and the beginning of the story of Samson. And if you're walking this journey with us, you're invited to join our global community at the Land of Israel Fellowship. You can find out more at the landofisrael.com.