If you’ll please turn with me in your Bibles to Judges chapter 3 beginning at verse 7.
And the people of Israel did what was evil in the sight of the Lord. They forgot the Lord their God and served the Baals and the Asherah. Therefore, the anger of the Lord was kindled against Israel, and he sold them into the hand of Kushan-Rishathaim, king of Mesopotamia. And the people of Israel served Kushan-Rishathaim eight years. But when the people of the Lord cried out to the Lord, the Lord raised up a deliverer for the people of Israel who saved them: Othniel, the son of Kenaz, Caleb’s younger brother.
The Spirit of the Lord was upon him, and he judged Israel. He went out to war, and the Lord gave Kushan-Rishathaim, king of Mesopotamia, into his hand, and his hand prevailed over Kushan-Rishathaim. So the land had rest for forty years. Then Othniel, the son of Kenaz, died.
This is the word of the Lord. Thanks be to God. Let us pray.
Lord, your word is filled with stories of people and places that seem so far away. Help us to know, remember, and understand what it is they have to teach us, even now, in this day and age. Help us to know what it teaches us for our faith and what it teaches us about you, our Lord and our Deliverer. Amen.
And the people of Israel did what was evil in the sight of the Lord. Following the prologue, we turn now to the first of the Shoftim, the judges: Othniel. Thinking back a few weeks, you should recognize his name: Othniel, the son of Kenaz, Caleb’s younger brother. But what do we know about him?
He was a hero from the tribe of Judah, conquering the city of Kiriath-Sepher for his uncle and thus winning for himself Achsah, his cousin, as his bride. At the time of his battle against Kiriath-Sepher, Othniel would have been at least 20 years old, the minimum age for someone to go out to war, yet no older than 64. So after Joshua died and about 25 to 30 years later, at the age of 110, Othniel would have been between the ages of 45 to 55 when his judgeship began.
Following the conquest, he settled near the Canaanite city of Kiriath-Sepher, renamed to the Hebrew Debir, south of Hebron, where Caleb’s clan was allotted land in the Negev by Joshua, and which Othniel would have possessed through his wife. He also had two sons, Hathat and Menothi, and a grandson, Oprah, by Menothi.
Now these are the biblical facts about Othniel, but together they do start to help us develop a picture of this man as a judge. By this time, Joshua was dead, and all the generation of elders who had experienced the wilderness wanderings, the Canaanite conquest, and who had repented of their disobedience and followed the Lord faithfully in life, they were also dead.
Trouble soon began. The Israelites did evil in the eyes of God, and the anger of the Lord was kindled against them. So, in judgment against their idolatry and faithlessness to His covenant, the Lord gave them into the hand of Kushan-Rishathaim, king of Mesopotamia.
But who was this king, and where exactly was he from? You’ve got a map that helps show that a little bit. Although his name is not one which has been found preserved in any other historical record, it does fit as being a Hebraic transliteration of similar names from the Mitanni kingdom near the Khabur River in ancient Mesopotamia, or modern-day Iraq and Syria.
The Hebrew term here translated as Mesopotamia is Aram-Naharaim, which is analogous to the same Padan-Aram which Abraham had left for Canaan, and was where his extended family—Nehor, his brother, Bethuel, his nephew, and Laban, his grand-nephew—remained.
So this king was a fellow Aramean, like the patriarchs of Israel. This king, in his army, sent by the Lord to discipline the Israelites, were, in fact, their distant relations. They were all family. It was a 14th-century family feud. Like most of the conflicts that the Israelites found themselves in, these Arameans traveled down, way down south from far away in the northeast, somewhere between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, and the Lord brought the suppressor down against the Israelites in judgment from the same general region where they would one day be taken back to in exile.
This first act of discipline foreshadowed or offered the promise of how harsh God’s discipline could become. Like our heavenly Father, we as parents never begin disciplining our children at the hardest level. We start lightly, hoping to not need to increase it.
When I was a child and I needed discipline—and yes, I needed it at times, thanks Mom and Dad—I would have my TV time taken away first. I would lose it for a day, then for a week or a month, and by then I had either learned my lesson and started to do whatever it was I was supposed to do, or stopped doing whatever I wasn’t supposed to do, or the punishment and discipline continued to become more severe until I did.
Through it all, I had no one but myself to blame; I deserved it. While my parents hated it, I could never say that I was not warned or that I was unaware of the consequences. So these invaders were used by God in the same manner that the Lord had used the Israelites against the Canaanites, just to a lesser degree.
The Lord used this Mesopotamian king to remind and warn the Israelites that if they continued in wickedness, not only would they lose their place and status in His promised land, but that they could also become subject to their distant past. If they continued and progressed in their sin and idolatry, then not only might they be oppressed in their land, but they would have to be removed, up to and including being returned to the pagan land which their father Abraham left.
This Mesopotamian king came down with his army to attack Israel and force them into servitude for eight years until the people of the Lord Israel cried out to the Lord. They remembered the Lord, the God of their fathers, and His promises. When they realized their mistake, they turned to Him for help in hope.
Yet Scripture does not say that they repented or that they stopped their idolatrous ways. Still, they cried out to God; they demanded His help; they asked for His assistance; they begged for His rescue. But they did not stop doing the things that had gotten them into this trouble in the first place.
Regardless, when the Israelites cried out to the Lord, the Lord raised up a deliverer for the people of Israel who saved them—and this may well be the most important sentence in this passage. The Lord raised up a sotera for the people of Israel who saved them, a sotera from the Greek word ‘sozo,’ meaning to save, and for which we get the word ‘savior.’
The Lord raised up a moshiach for the people of Israel who saved them, a Messiah from the Hebrew word ‘yasha,’ meaning to save—the same word from which we get the name Yeshua, Jesus. So God gave them a sotera, a savior, a moshiach, Messiah.
Furthermore, Othniel is interpreted as being a Christos, a Christ, because the passage continues saying the Spirit of the Lord was upon him, because he was divinely anointed by the Ruach HaKodesh, the Spirit of the Lord, and he judged Israel.
Did this man Othniel just suddenly decide one day that he was the best person to respond to the Israelites’ current crisis and save Israel? Probably not. He lived in the southernmost part of the land while the invaders were attacking the north. More likely, he was raised up to lead the people because, beyond the fact that he was a veteran of the conquest and an accomplished war leader, the people also saw the effect that the Spirit of the Lord had on him—that he was equipped and anointed, and so chosen by God to lead them.
The Spirit’s presence must have surely been obvious and evident, such that the people would follow him naturally. Does that remind you of anyone else you know? People in the crowds naturally followed Jesus because they saw and could tell that God was with him.
The Pharisee Nicodemus admitted it, saying, ‘Rabbi, we know that you are a teacher come from God, for no one can do these signs that you do unless God is with him.’ But even though John the Baptist testified, spoke of seeing the Holy Spirit descend upon Jesus like a dove, Jesus had to declare his anointment by the Spirit to the people of his hometown, to those for whom it was not obvious.
He came to Nazareth, where he had been brought up, and as was his custom, he read to the synagogue on the Sabbath day, and he stood up to read. The scroll of the prophet Isaiah was given to him. He unrolled the scroll and found the place where it was written: “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me because he has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim liberty to the captives, and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty those who are oppressed, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.”
And he rolled up the scroll and gave it back to the attendant and sat down. The eyes of all in the synagogue were fixed on him, and he began to say to them, ‘Today the scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.’
Unlike Jesus, even though Othniel also had a spiritual anointing, he was not a prophet or a priest; he was merely a man and a leader of men, like a king. But his divinely appointed mission was still similar to Jesus in a practical and worldly way: to proclaim good news to the poor, to proclaim liberty to the captives, to set at liberty those who are oppressed, and to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.
He was a temporal Messiah, a worldly savior raised up to rescue God’s people from their worldly afflictions. Still, he and his efforts point our hearts toward the greater Savior who was yet to come, the one who would rescue God’s people from spiritual bondage and the oppression of Satan: Jesus Christ.
Previously, we talked about the plain judicial sense of ‘shafat,’ to judge or to enact justice. But there’s still a greater meaning behind its biblical use culturally. With the Near East peoples, the idea of ‘shafat’ was not limited only to the judicial sense but was broadly understood to cover the whole function of government, particularly in the body of one man.
See, civic authority in ancient Israel was not divided into three parts, like our American government: no chief executive or king, no legislative council or synagogue, and no arbiters of justice or judges. All authority and temporal power of government was consolidated into the body of one person.
During the time of the judges, when there was no real unity or regular cooperation or interdependence between the tribes, that one person, who was an elder, and his authority was generally restricted to only his town and its surrounding area. There would have been many of them everywhere, all across Israel. But the name ‘judges’ were the exception to this localized self-rule, because they united greater bodies of people, and their influence was wider across the land.
Ultimately, however, the true civil power remained in God’s hands as the absolute ruler of creation, even as it was being delegated to His chosen representatives. Although the Israelites had the codified Torah, the law of God, to be their rule and guide, and other contemporary peoples had an understanding of established civil law and case precedent, ordered society in the ancient Near East was not actually ruled by laws so much as by a person.
That person was the de facto arbiter of justice, the final decider concerning all matters, and the sole interpreter of codified law. Precedents mattered, but they were neither binding nor settled. His decisions and rulings were the final say before the people.
This idea of one-person rule, of benevolent authoritarianism, is deeply ingrained within our human psyche. It’s the basis for “might makes right.” At the core of things, mankind just wants someone to rule over them.
Like Loki suggests in the Avengers movie, we want someone else to have authority and to bear responsibility, and we are often so happy to surrender our freedom for it. That’s the real reason why the Israelites demanded Moses speak to the Lord on their behalf at Mount Sinai. That’s exactly why the people would soon demand Samuel give them a king to judge them.
This is why we usually find it easy to defer to the opinions and decisions of those with apparent authority: government officials, police officers, doctors, and yes, even pastors. We all know that we have a need for an ultimate absolute arbiter and judge to rule over us. It goes all the way back to Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden, and the Lord is that one judge.
Although we, through Adam, were given the dominion mandate over creation and were made in God’s image as his vassal representative to possess that drive and desire to rule, we all still know deep down in our souls that we need and have a ruler over us to keep our sinful nature in check.
We need a godly ruler over us—a divinely ordained ruler for us to submit to, and so to submit to the Lord. In Romans 13, it speaks of the divine appointment of temporal authorities and becomes part of why the divine right of kings and queens was such a hot and controversial topic during the Middle Ages, the Enlightenment, the Reformation, and up until our modern American era.
We want someone else to say what is right and what is wrong so that we may follow them instead of leading ourselves. We want someone else to decide so that we do not have to. We want someone else to blame, if or when it was the wrong decision, so that we can say, ‘It’s not my fault; they made me do it.’
We expect them to follow the same standards of righteousness and justice, which all people ultimately know to be true and are found in God’s eternal law written on the human heart. Although those ancient peoples had written laws, they were not ruled by them because a person cannot credibly cast blame upon a written-down, established, and generally agreed-upon codified set of rules.
Because they are impersonal, they cannot be bullied, coerced, or bribed, and they cannot be flexible or compromised unlike fallible men who interpret them. Written laws are unyielding and too much like God’s eternal holy law for us to really like. Instead, we might choose to call them unimportant, irrelevant, out of touch, outdated, or even relics of the past.
Sinful people prefer to have other sinful people ruling over us who affirm our sinful desires, calling them righteous and just when truthfully they are unrighteous and unjust. We want those who will let us do whatever is right in our own eyes, who will not hold us accountable. This is the system that we’re quite happy with—until we feel like our rights are being violated.
But from whence do our rights come? God or the whims of men? After the conquest, the people of Israel were satisfied and happy in their sinfulness until Kushan-Rishathaim came down and violated their rights as God’s people. To whom else but the Lord could they turn for aid?
Kushan-Rishathaim was not bound by, nor did he know or acknowledge their law because to his Aramean people, his word was law and was enforced by the power of the sword. But the Lord God was Israel’s sovereign king; His word was the Israelites’ law, and it is absolute and unchangeable, fully authoritative.
Whenever necessary, God’s appointed representative—Moses, the judges, the priests, kings, whomever God chose and called to that particular purpose and moment—would judge and rule the people on His behalf, applying God’s law to life for justice and righteousness.
Holding absolute authority as God’s regent, their time and power was limited. Doesn’t that description of the Israelite judge sound kind of similar to our American executive branch? To enforce the nation’s laws and constitution and to protect and defend it against all enemies, foreign and domestic?
Maybe we are even more like ancient Israel than we really think. Prior to the time of the kings, this power and authority moved from person to person as needed and was determined by God, from Moses to Joshua, and now Joshua to Othniel.
So in Scripture it says, ‘And he judged Israel.’ We understand it to actually mean that he ruled Israel. Although it’s rarely clear from scripture whether their authority was merely regional or over the whole twelve tribes, because of God’s favor, surely their judgments would have been accepted and sought out by those outside of their immediate sphere of influence.
The judge held authority, power, and influence over the people because the Lord was with him because God chose him.
Now, if you recall a few weeks ago, I mentioned how difficult it is to interpret the opening of the book of Judges. The book began by reminding us of the death of Joshua, moving to the people inquiring of the Lord, asking, “Who shall go up first for us against the Canaanites to fight against them?” To which God answered, “Judah shall go up; behold, I have given the land into his hand.”
Then the book rewinds a bit, rehashes the story of the conquest of Canaan, finally ending again with the death and burial of Joshua. The Lord’s declaration that Judah shall go up is a prophetic statement foreshadowing multi-layered fulfillment, emphasizing God’s plan and purpose in raising up a savior, Messiah, deliverer for the people of Israel.
Because immediately after that declaration, the story tells us of the tribe of Judah faithfully advancing the conquest of the land. Next, we have the first judge, Othniel, Caleb’s nephew, both of whom were from the tribe of Judah, being chosen by God to lead Israel as a savior.
Then later, we’ve got King David, God’s chosen king, the man after God’s own heart, also from the tribe of Judah, and he was the one who finally completed the conquest of Canaan so that both Israel and the land could know peace and rest during the days and reign of his son Solomon.
Lastly, we have Jesus Christ, David’s greatest son. He is the one who has rescued all of God’s people from our bondage to sin. He is the one who has secured our place, invites us in, and is leading us to the eternal promised land of the new heavens and new earth. He is the one who has conquered our hearts and claims us as His perfect bride.
So what we see by God raising up Caleb’s nephew Othniel as the first judge is a sign of His eternal plan of salvation at work in the world. The redemption of His people would come through a man of the tribe of Judah, the eventual woman’s offspring.
We witness God’s plan for our redemption—plan A, the only plan—working through history towards the final deliverance of His chosen people, Israel—His people who often remain unfaithful yet still continue to be loved and preserved by the Lord according to His will, His plan, and His good pleasure.
Othniel was born during the time of wandering in the wilderness. He knew Moses. He knew Joshua. He saw the Lord’s discipline upon his parents. He experienced the Lord’s faithfulness and grace. He understood that when the Lord disciplines His people, as a loving father disciplines his children, that He will also preserve them through that discipline and will later raise them up after the discipline. He will restore them, desiring that they’ve taken the lessons to heart and will change their ways going forward.
So Othniel, God’s chosen ruler, went out to war, and the Lord gave Kushan-Rishathaim, king of Mesopotamia, into his hand. Othniel crossed the entirety of the promised land, from the south to the north, to lead God’s people in battle against their oppressor. Othniel and the Israelites prevailed over the Arameans, and the Lord and His chosen were stronger than this foreign people from outside of God’s kingdom.
God is faithful to save His people, even rescuing us from the trouble that we bring upon ourselves. So the land had rest for forty years. Then Othniel, the son of Kenaz, died. After driving out these invaders from a distant land, the land had rest for forty years. They had eight years of foreign oppression followed by forty years of rest.
However, that rest was not a Sabbath rest. It was not a time of shalom or peace, but it was a time of quiet. It was a time when the Lord watched and waited to see how the Israelites would respond this time to His grace and mercy and deliverance.
During this time when they were not oppressed or troubled by their neighbors or foes, Scripture does not record that they turned from their evil ways, that they repented of their sin, or that their lives were changed or transformed. Yet still the Lord was kind and gave them quiet and rest.
The Israelites were disciplined by the Lord. The Lord sustained Israel through their discipline. Then the Lord restored Israel. But did they learn their lesson? No.
How about us? How about you? How about for yourself in your life? Have you learned your lessons, repented of your sins, committed yourself to living a repentant life of faithfulness and devotion to Jesus Christ?
Will you and do you share your testimony concerning what He has brought you through and has now raised you up to by faith in Him? Or are you even now living during a time of divine discipline when you are feeling afflicted because of your sin and are being called to correction?
Then turn to Jesus; cry out to Him, beg for forgiveness, repent, and plead for His aid because He is sure and faithful to respond on behalf of His people. Trust and believe that He will preserve you through it until the day when He finally delivers you.
But most assuredly, do not be like the Israelites who called upon the name of the Lord without being repentant or without living changed lives. The Lord may very well give you rest as common grace, like so many other people, but He will not give you peace.
You will not know true peace, shalom, until your faith and trust is fully placed in His Son. So what must we learn from this, the story of Othniel?
That the Lord our God and heavenly Father will discipline you and us as His adoptive children, but He will also preserve you, and then He will raise you back up. Othniel was raised up by God because even as the people around him forgot the Lord their God and served the Baals and the Asherah, kindling the Lord’s anger against them, he remembered and knew the Lord.
He saw the wonders of God, and he had heard God’s word from Moses. Therefore, his faith was able to sustain him even in the midst of a sinful people. So become like Othniel and study and know God’s word.
Get to know it and Him better and more intimately. Build and strengthen your relationship with Jesus through study and prayer, hearing His voice and talking to Him in turn. Remember that just as the Spirit of the Lord was upon Othniel, so too we have been gifted by the Holy Spirit dwelling inside us.
Trust and listen to the Spirit. Be empowered by His Spirit within you for whatever work God is preparing you for, whatever He is raising you up for. You and I are probably not being empowered to go out to war or to overthrow tyrants and autocrats by the power of the sword, but the Spirit will help us to prevail over His and our enemies, giving us the strength and wisdom to use whatever authority we possess in this life justly and with all righteousness.
Remember that Othniel was chosen, raised up, and elected to lead God’s people for their good by the Lord’s will and power. Although that Mesopotamian king was brought in as God’s discipline, Othniel was raised up for God’s restoration of His people.
Know and believe that God has also raised up a deliverer, the Messiah Jesus Christ, for you, and that He has saved you. Trust that even though the world, our country, and our lives seem to be filled with turmoil and strife, we live even now in the days of rest and quiet while the Lord watches and patiently waits to see whether we will produce fruit from our faithfulness, love, and devotion, or whether His children will need further discipline.
The stories of the judges, and especially Othniel, should always remind us of God’s love for us, that God shows His love for us, and that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. Even now, God is giving us, His people, the chance and opportunity to turn to Him in faithfulness because of His great love, and I pray that we do not disappoint our heavenly Father. Amen.