Judges, 20 - War Within | Prophets of Israel Daily

[music] >> Shalom friends, welcome back to the Prophets visceral daily. This is Judges chapter [music] 20 brought to you by the land of Israel network at the land of Israel.com. Yesterday Ari walked us through one of the darkest [music] nights in Tanakh. A Levite, a concubine, the city of Gibeah. What should have been the safety among brothers became an unspeakable atrocity and the Levite cuts his concubine into 12 pieces and sends her to every one of the tribes. A brutal, unforgettable alarm screaming to the people, "Wake up! Something in Israel is broken. This cannot stand." And today, in chapter 20, Israel wakes up. Chapter 20 is arguably one of the most emotionally complicated chapters in Shoftim because it begins with something that's genuinely beautiful and then it ends in just absolute catastrophe. This is one of Shoftim's darkest mirrors and we're meant to look right into it. And so, it begins with unity, verse one. Vayitz'u kol b'nei Yisrael vayikahalu ha'eidah k'ish echad. And all the children of Israel went out and the congregation assembled as one man. K'ish echad. As one man. The tribes of Israel now, for the first time in the book, are acting like a nation. I mean, the last time we heard language like that in Tanakh, Israel was standing at Sinai. The rabbis say k'ish echad b'lev echad. Israel encamped there with like one man with one heart. Sinai. And now here in the ruins of the book of Judges, that phrase echoes again as Israel is about to go to civil war. And so, we just came through 400 years of cycles. Each tribe on their own, sometimes tribe against tribe, everyone on their own doing what's right in their own eyes, idolatry, betrayal. And now for one extraordinary moment, something clicks into place. It's like the tragedy brings us together, all of Israel, from Dan in the north to Beersheba in the south, they all gather together like one man. It's like something primal is awakened when Israel receives such news. It's like a line has been crossed and Israel rises up together. 400,000 swordsmen gather from every tribe before Hashem in Mitzpah. Yeah, you know, Jeremy, every time I read k'ish echad, I think about what it actually takes to produce that unity. Because throughout this entire book, Israel has been a collection of competing wounds and loyalties. Right? There's Ephraim versus Gideon, uh Yiftach killing 42,000 of his own brothers at the Jordan, tribes refusing to show up for Deborah, men of Succoth refusing bread to exhausted soldiers fighting for their freedom. And then something happens so awful, so undeniable, so universally outrageous that all of it falls away. And suddenly they're one. And on some level, I I mean, it brings me to October 7th for me. You know, I remember the morning after, I remember how the country felt. The arguments stopped. The protests stopped. The signs came down and for a few weeks, maybe the first time in my adult life, Israel felt like k'ish echad. One body, one grief, one purpose. You know, and it shouldn't take a massacre to make us one. But the book of Judges is honest enough to show us that sometimes, tragically, something like that is what it takes. And uh what do we do with that unity? That's the real question. We'll We'll see We're about to see how it played out then and we'll see how it plays out now. Exactly. I mean, nothing brings us together like a crisis. Some societies, they fall apart in times of crisis, but it seems like Israel, every time, comes together. But here it's a lot more complicated because this isn't the Hamas. It's Gibeah. It's the tribe of Benjamin. The crisis came from our own brothers. And so, let's go back to the story. Representation from all of Israel gather together and the Levite stands before the assembled nation and tells exactly what happened, every detail. All of Israel, 400,000 armed men respond in verse eight. And all the people rose up as one man saying, "None of us shall return to his tent. None of us shall return to his house." It's like the moral clarity in this moment is real. It's like what happened in Gibeah was a national wound. And a nation that can still be galvanized by moral outrage, that means that that's like it it hasn't lost itself completely. And so, they sent messengers to the tribe of Benjamin and they demand that Gibeah hand over the guilty people. It's like let justice be done within that within the family first. And but Benjamin refuses, verse 13. V'lo avu b'nei Binyamin lishmoa b'kol acheihem. But the children of Benjamin would not listen to the voice of their brothers, the children of Israel. And that refusal is what turns this moral crisis into a civil war between brothers. And so, 26,000 Benjaminite warriors, they they have 700 elite left-handed slingers in Gibeah, men who could each hurl a stone at a hair's breadth, can't miss, extraordinary fighters. And now, they are assembled together to protect the perpetrators of the worst crime in Jewish history. It's like what is going on? >> Yeah. Well, the detail about the 700 left-handed slingers is something I keep coming back to because we've seen left-handedness before in this book. Right? It was Ehud ben Gera, Ehud, the left-handed man who Hashem chose to deliver Israel from Moab. That very trait that once saved Israel is now assembled in defense of Israel's shame. Right? The same gift pointed in the opposite direction. And that is such a painful picture of what happens when a nation's extraordinary strengths are no longer in service of its mission. Right? Benjamin had warriors of breathtaking skill, like you said. King David level accuracy with a slingshot. And in this heartbreaking moment, those skills are protecting evil instead of defeating it. And I I think the lesson that I at least take from this is that our greatest strengths can become our greatest dangers the moment they're no longer oriented towards truth and the mission of who we are. That's right. And at least at this moment in time, Benjamin's strength was being channeled to defend the evil within them. And so, tragically, war begins. Israel goes up to ask God who goes first and Hashem answers. Yehudah. Judah, the tribe of leadership, tribe of kings, the tribe that's going to bring us King David. He goes up first and they go. But this part is really shocking. They lose. It's like 22,000 Israelite soldiers fall on the first day. So, the nation returns to Bethel. They're crying before Hashem until evening and they ask again, "Shall we go? Shall we continue? Should we go up?" And Hashem says, "Go up." They go up a second day and another 18,000 Israelites fall, another defeat. 40,000 dead Israelites. And they're fighting for something righteous. They sought peace at first. They asked Hashem. Hashem said, "Go." And they're losing. And like I've sat with this for a long time. Why did they lose twice? And I think the answer is clearly they needed to do teshuvah as well. Benjamin is just a part of Israel and Benjamin's fall is their fault. So, Hashem can say, "Go up." And you can still fall. Israel was being guided or to process, not victory. And if you stray from the path of righteousness, that process can be really hard. Yeah, I want to focus in for a second, Jeremy, on that a little bit because, you know, that it's not just you that's wrestled with that question and throughout Jewish history, why does Hashem let Israel lose twice when they're actually fighting for justice? Like this is how their integrity, their moral clarity is repaid? You think Hashem would be like, "Yeah, you're going in the right direction. Immediate victory. Empower them." But that's not what happens. And so, one answer that spoke to me was that Israel, even in their righteous outrage, was not yet complete. Right? They had unified against external evil, but they had not yet fully reckoned, I think, like you said, Jeremy, with the internal failures that made Gibeah possible in the first place, right? The idolatry, the selfishness, the cruelty, the years of every man doing what was right in his own eyes. Right? Micah's shrine was still standing. Jonathan, the son of Moses, was still running in a stolen idol shrine in Dan. Right? You can't fight for justice abroad while tolerating injustice within. You cannot wage a righteous war while ignoring the rot inside. And so, Hashem delays the victory, not to abandon Israel, but to draw something deeper out of them. A more honest accounting, a truer teshuvah. Right? A true repentance. It's the It's the hardest kind of test because while it may look exactly like punishment and it may feel exactly like abandonment, I believe it's actually a calling, an invitation to to go deeper and look within. You know, I think that's exactly what it's pointing us to. It's like they wanted to fix the symptom with Benjamin without addressing the disease that existed within all of Israel. And two defeats forced a truer teshuvah. It's like a deeper reckoning. And that's exactly what happens on the third day. The entire assembly returns to Bethel, and this time in verse 26, and all of the children of Israel, and all the people went up and came to Bethel and wept. And they sat there before the Lord. They sat. They didn't just cry and go home. They sat before Hashem. They fasted. They brought burnt offerings and peace offerings. And they inquired of Hashem, but this time, Phinehas, the son of Eleazar, the son of Aaron, is like standing before the ark. And Phinehas, the same Phinehas who stood for justice in the wilderness when everyone else was paralyzed, who channels righteous passion into courageous action, this third gathering is different from the first two. Something shifted. You can see that the grief went deeper and the prayer became more real. And Hashem answers now, but he answers a little bit differently. And he doesn't just say go up. This is what he says, verse 28, "Go up, for tomorrow I will deliver him into your hand." So now, tomorrow, it's like for the first time there's a promise. It's not just a command, it's a promise of victory, which means the previous two days, they weren't broken promises, they were just a process that was needed to go through. And it's as if all the tribes of Israel were being held responsible for that tragedy in Benjamin. And this is the moment that finally the process was complete and the Israelites can go out to war. And the third battle unfolds with military tactics. It's like an ambush, a retreat. It really reminds us of the strategy that Joshua used at Ai. Benjamin is drawn out of the city. Israel turns back on them. And then there's the signal. The pillar of smoke rises from the burning city of Gibeah. And then Benjamin sees it, and their courage, of course, collapses because in that rising smoke, they understand, that's it. It's all over. And so verse 41 says, "And Benjamin was terrified, for they saw that disaster had overtaken them." 25,000 Benjaminite soldiers fall. Virtually the entire fighting force of the tribe, 600 men escape to the wilderness of Rimmon. And they hide there for 4 months. So the tribe of Benjamin, one of the 12 pillars of Israel, is brought to the very edge of extinction. It's like the last war in the book of Judges is a civil war, and it leaves a nation at just rock bottom. It starts off with Ish Chad, one man, and it ends off in just disaster. A tribe at the end, it's like at the very edge of of extinction. 600 men from Benjamin hiding in the wilderness of Rimmon. And so, the Bible is painfully honest. It never tries to paint the chosen people as these saints, as lofty. No, they're just being real. But that honesty gives us a real gauge of where we are spiritually on the spectrum of Israel's history. Because, you know, we can be hard on ourselves. It's like so impatient with this redemption process. We're disappointed that it doesn't look cleaner, that we're not more unified. But chapter 20 is a reminder of what rock bottom actually looks like. And we're nowhere near that today in Israel. I mean, we look at modern Israel at the divisions and the arguments and the secular and the religious, the left, the right, the settlers, the Tel Avivs, you know, it's easy to feel disappointment, and it's easy to look at the fractures and feel like, "Oh man, we're so far from where we should be." But the truth is, we can disagree as loudly as we do, argue, and protest everything from the Supreme Court to the Kotel, and still show up ke-ish echad, like one man, when it truly matters. And we still run toward the fire on October 7th. And still we can plant vineyards in Judea and raise children who speak Hebrew and pray in a united capital in Jerusalem. And Jerusalem is more built up now than ever before in Jewish history. That's not rock bottom. That's extraordinary. This is the story that brings an end to the book of Judges, and it's coming right before the arrival of the king of Israel. And so, we're not perfect, but it's a gauge telling us that we're closer to redemption than we know. And I just want to end with this last connection to where we are right now. You know, Benjamin survives. 600 men in the wilderness of Rimmon, it's almost nothing. That's the very edge of disappearance. And yet from 600 men, the tribe rebuilds, and from Benjamin comes Saul, the first king of Israel. So from total despair comes malchut, comes the kingdom. And so, from Saul's line, you know, that's Esther and Mordecai, and the very people that saved the entire Jewish nation from annihilation in Persia. It all emerges from a tribe that was nearly destroyed. So the lowest moment in the book of Judges plants the seed of monarchy and salvation. And so, you know, think about that. The darkest chapter in the book of Judges is also the beginning of something entirely new. It's like rock bottom wasn't the end of the story. It was the clearing ground. And it's like the painful, it's necessary, what needed to happen, but that's was what gave birth to Samuel, and then David, and then we would build. And so, we're not chapter 20 of the Judges, but chapter 20 of Judges is a mirror that shows us how far we've come and how close the next chapter might be. So hold on, my friends. Keep building. Keep returning, because even the disaster and devastation that led only 600 men, eventually those 600 men became the kingdom of Israel. Chazak ve'ematz. And be'ezrat Hashem, we will see you tomorrow as we close the book of Judges together with chapter 21 with Ari. And friends, you've been on this journey for a while through the prophets of Israel. And if it's speaking to you, don't walk it alone. Come and join our global community at the Land of Israel Fellowship. I mean, we gather every week in the hills of Judea online, bringing families around the world together, learning together, praying together, building something real, rooted in the land of Israel, and then broadcast [music] to the world. So you can find out more and become a member at the landofisrael.com. We'll see you tomorrow. Shalom.