This book is both humbling and encouraging. While presenting a miserable picture of the constant departure of the children of Israel from Jehovah, it also sets forth the readiness of God to deliver when they called upon Him.
They failed to cast out the Canaanites (chap. 1), and the generation following knew not the Lord, but forsook Him, and served Baal and Ashtaroth; and though God raised up judges which delivered them, when the judge was dead they returned and corrupted themselves more than their fathers. (Chapter 2) When they intermarried with the heathen and served other gods, and forgat the Lord their God, He sold them in anger to the king of Mesopotamia; but when they cried unto the Lord, He raised up Othniel to deliver them, and gave them rest forty years. When they did evil again, and were delivered for their sin into the hands of the king of Moab, and cried unto the Lord, He delivered them by the hand of Ehud, and the land had rest eighty years. Afterward Shamgar delivered them from the Philistines. (Chapter 3) But the children of Israel again did evil in the sight of the Lord, and the Lord sold them into the hands of the Canaanites, but again He delivered them in the days of Deborah thee prophetess, when they cried unto the Lord (chap. 4.); and the next chapter tells us what a time of triumph and rejoicing it was, and the rest continued for forty years. "And the children of Israel again did evil in the sight of the Lord," and were impoverished greatly by the Midianites, to whom they had been delivered; and God raised up Gideon to deliver them when they cried unto Him, and he obtained a great victory. (Chapters 6. 7.) We are told, "Thus was Midian subdued before the children of Israel, so that they lifted up their heads no more and the country was in quietness forty years in the days of Gideon." But again the same sad tale is told, that the children of Israel remembered not the Lord their God who had delivered them. They turned again, and went a whoring after Baalim, and made Baal-berith their god. (Chapter 8:28-35.) Thus they provoked again the Lord to anger, and He sold them into the hands of the Philistines, and into the hands of the children of Ammon. (Chapter 10:7.) Again they called unto the Lord in their distress, saying, "We have sinned against Thee," &c. "And they put away the strange gods from among them, and served Jehovah; and His soul was grieved for the misery of Israel" (chap. 10:17), when Jephthah was raised up, and delivered them from the children of Ammon (chap. 11:32). But the same sad history followed. "And the children of Israel did evil again in the sight of the Lord; and the Lord delivered them into the hand of the Philistines forty years." (Chapter 13:1.) Then we find Samson was used of God to slay the Philistines and to judge Israel twenty years. (Chapter 13-16) The rest of the book gives further details of evil, and concludes with the telling words, "In those days there was no king in Israel, but every man did that which was right in his own eyes.”
Alas! what a history is that of man! What weakness, what evil he manifests, and how corrupting are his ways! Well might the angel of the Lord come up from Gilgal (the place of strength and blessing) to Bochim (the place of tears), and say unto them, " I made you to go up out of Egypt, and have brought you unto the land which I sware unto your fathers; and I said, I will never break my covenant with you. And ye shall make no league with the inhabitants of this land; ye shall, throw down their altars; but ye have not obeyed my voice: why have ye done this? Wherefore I also said, I will not drive them out from before you; but they shall be as thorns in your sides, and their gods shall be a snare unto you. And it came to pass, when the angel of the Lord simile these words unto all the children of Israel, that the people lifted up their voice and wept. And they called the name of the place Bochim." (Chapter 2:1-6.) How true it is that disobedience to the word of the Lord is always connected with sorrow!