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Observations from today’s readings and today’s S-WOD, Thursday, 10 July 2025:
Judges 21:1-3 — Now the men of Israel had sworn at Mizpah, “No one of us shall give his daughter in marriage to Benjamin.” And the people came to Bethel and sat there till evening before God, and they lifted up their voices and wept bitterly. And they said, “O Lord, the God of Israel, why has this happened in Israel, that today there should be one tribe lacking in Israel?”
After the brutal civil war against Benjamin, the Israelites are confronted with the unintended consequence of their zeal: one of the twelve tribes is on the verge of extinction. Their oaths, made in haste and passion, now bring sorrow. They weep before God, not recognizing that their own rash actions have contributed to this devastation. This tragic irony exposes a familiar pattern: sinful choices lead to crisis, then people blame God for the result. Israel had tolerated sin in their midst, overcorrected with violence, and made oaths without seeking God’s wisdom first. God is not the author of their mess—they are. But in their sorrow, they do not confess; they only grieve.
- Ecclesiastes 5:2 — Be not rash with your mouth, nor let your heart be hasty to utter a word before God.
- James 1:19-20 — Let every person be quick to hear, slow to speak, slow to anger; for the anger of man does not produce the righteousness of God.
Judges 21:4-7 — “What shall we do for wives for those who are left, since we have sworn by the LORD that we will not give them any of our daughters for wives?”
Israel faces a moral dilemma created by their own rash oath. Rather than seek forgiveness or humbly ask God to guide them, they devise manipulative workarounds. Their focus is not on righteousness but on preserving their own reputation and avoiding guilt while still getting what they want. This is religion without repentance.
- Matthew 5:33-37 — “Let what you say be simply ‘Yes’ or ‘No’; anything more than this comes from evil.”
Judges 21:8-12 — The Israelites destroy Jabesh-gilead for not participating in the assembly, sparing only 400 virgins to be wives for Benjamin.
The madness continues. To solve one moral problem, they commit another atrocity—massacre and abduction. Their solution to oath-keeping is violence. This isn’t justice. It’s tribal preservation at the cost of God’s law.
- Isaiah 5:20 — Woe to those who call evil good and good evil.
- Proverbs 14:12 — There is a way that seems right to a man, but its end is the way to death.
Judges 21:13-24 — When 400 women are not enough, they authorize the kidnapping of women from Shiloh during a festival to finish repopulating Benjamin.
Even more disturbing, Israel instructs the Benjaminites to kidnap women from a joyful celebration of the Lord. This final act epitomizes the moral collapse of a people who use religious cover to justify wickedness. They twist sacred observances into settings for sin.
- 2 Timothy 3:5 — Having the appearance of godliness, but denying its power. Avoid such people.
- Amos 5:21-24 — I hate, I despise your feasts… But let justice roll down like waters, and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream.
Judges 21:19 – So they said, “Behold, there is the yearly feast of the LORD at Shiloh, which is north of Bethel, on the east of the highway that goes up from Bethel to Shechem, and south of Lebonah.” And they commanded the people of Benjamin, saying, “Go and lie in ambush in the vineyards and watch. If the daughters of Shiloh come out to dance in the dances, then come out of the vineyards and snatch each man his wife from the daughters of Shiloh, and go to the land of Benjamin. And when their fathers or their brothers come to complain to us, we will say to them, ‘Grant them graciously to us, because we did not take for each man of them his wife in battle, neither did you give them to them, else you would now be guilty.’”
During a time dedicated to the worship of God, Israel executed an immoral, ungodly plan in order to achieve the worthy purpose of restoring a tribe – a good thing done a bad way. God expects His people to do the right things for the right reasons in the right way at the right time. The ends do not justify the means.
Judges 21:25 — In those days there was no king in Israel. Everyone did what was right in his own eyes.
The final verse is the tragic refrain of Judges. Without godly leadership, and without hearts submitted to God, everyone becomes their own authority. The book ends in chaos. God had called Israel to be a holy nation, but they have become indistinguishable from the surrounding cultures.
- Romans 1:21-22, 28-32 — Claiming to be wise, they became fools… since they did not see fit to acknowledge God, God gave them up to a debased mind.
- Matthew 7:26-27 — Everyone who hears these words of mine and does not do them will be like a foolish man who built his house on the sand.
“Hebrews 13 features specific guidance on how Christians are to live in light of the perfect atonement offered by Jesus. This guidance touches on many ethical matters, including marriage, sex, covetousness, and idolatry (vv. 4–6, 9). That raises the question of how Christians are to establish ethical standards and make ethical judgments. We will now take a short break from our study of the book of Hebrews to consider this question.
From the beginning, human beings have engaged in the study of ethics, attempting to determine the basis for what is right and wrong. Although there has been much disagreement over what constitutes the standard of ethical judgments, most ethicists have believed that there is some objective standard to which human beings are accountable. That began to change with the eighteenth-century Enlightenment and the philosophical movements that followed it. The Enlightenment represented a confidence in the power of human reason unaided by divine revelation to solve our problems. However, this confidence eventually gave way to despair when people discovered that human reason has limits. We cannot know everything. Instead of returning to divine revelation, however, ethicists began to say that the limits of human reason mean that we cannot know the objective standard for ethics even if one exists. Eventually, this bore fruit in modern ethical relativism, which says that there is no universal moral standard, that what is right for one person may not be right for anyone else. Today, most Westerners would confess moral relativism.
Although such relativism is a new development in the West, it has appeared in human history before. We see in Judges 21:25 that during the era of the judges, everyone in Israel did what was right in their own eyes, and this because there was no king. There was no human king because there was no human monarchy, but there was also no divine King because while God ruled over Israel and the world even then, the Israelites did not obey His law. His moral standards were seen as optional; they did not believe they were obligated to keep His objective moral law. Functionally, they rejected His kingship over them. So, they did whatever they wanted. Without belief in a fixed, transcendent standard of right and wrong, they had no reason to do otherwise.
Modern America is not the first culture to have embraced moral relativism, denying that there is a fixed, objective, transcendent standard of right and wrong. Israel during the time of the judges also embraced moral relativism. The book of Judges depicts a recurring cycle of events in which the ancient Israelites sinned, God handed them over to their enemies, the Israelites cried out for deliverance, and God delivered them. At the end of each cycle, the whole process would start over again. The concluding verse of Judges explains the reason for this trouble: “In those days there was no king in Israel. Everyone did what was right in his own eyes” (Judg. 21:25).
Here we have an important insight into human nature, particularly fallen human nature—without a king, people will quickly descend into doing whatever seems right to them. The absence of the king in the period of the judges was twofold. First, there was no human king, no representative of God’s righteous rule to direct the people. More importantly, there was no king in the sense that the Israelites did not acknowledge or obey the one, true King, namely, Yahweh, who created all things.
Yahweh, although He had a special relationship to Israel, was not only the God of Israel. He gave a law to Israel that contained many commandments designed only for the ancient Israelites, but as the New Testament shows us, His law also contains transcendent norms designed for all people (Rom. 2:14; 13:8–10). In fact, even the culturally bound rules in the law of Moses reflect transcendent principles.
If there is only one God and He has a law, it is not only Christians, Jews, Muslims, or people in any other religion that are bound by this law. Everyone God creates is answerable to His law. God and His law are the universal basis for ethics—not just for Christian ethics but for human ethics. This law reflects the very moral character of our Creator, of our King, and we cannot please Him or do what is right if we do not know His law.
People may deny that there is a fixed standard of right and wrong for everyone, but if they really believed this, they would not get upset when their property is stolen or when someone hurts one of their loved ones. They get upset because they expect all people to abide by a standard that exists outside of us. They know that God demands certain things of all people, and this awareness is a point of contact where we can begin pointing people to the Lord.” (Ligonier Ministries)
Listen to this lecture by Dr. R.C. Sproul on Christian ethics: https://www.ligonier.org/learn/series/christian-ethics/ethics-and-morality
“Cross” Fit S-WOD (Spiritual Workout of the Day) – 10 July 2025: Judges ends not with triumph, but with tragedy. The people of God, without godly leadership or spiritual discernment, descend into chaos. They try to preserve what God gave them without honoring the God who gave it. The result is self-justified evil in the name of religion.
Today, examine your heart. Are you justifying compromise by appealing to tradition, oaths, or outcomes? Are you trying to maintain spiritual appearances while ignoring the need for genuine repentance and obedience?
Confess any area where you’ve been doing what is “right in your own eyes.” Bring it into the light of God’s truth. Ask the Lord for spiritual clarity and courage to obey Him fully. Let your walk be ruled not by personal reasoning but by God’s revealed Word.
Pray: “Lord, I see in the closing chapters of Judges how far we can fall when we ignore Your voice and lean on our own understanding. Keep me from justifying sin in the name of religion or convenience. Restore in me a heart that trembles at Your Word. Teach me to walk by the Spirit, in humility and truth. In Jesus’ name, amen.”
Defenders Bible Reading Plan 