John Bytheway: 00:00:02 Welcome to part two of this week’s podcast.

Dr. Dana Pike: 00:00:07 We’ll have to run through Ehud to get to Deborah.

Dr. Dana Pike: 00:00:10 In Chapter 3, Verse 10, “The Spirit of the Lord came upon him.” This is our first judge whom we’re skipping over really quickly, Othniel.

Dr. Dana Pike: 00:00:19 And you could ask yourself this question; we’re reading about judges. You said there were 12. How were they chosen? Who picked the judges? It’s not a lottery system, we never hear about elections. This is the standard feature.

Dr. Dana Pike: 00:00:32 And it’s not mentioned in the case of every judge, but several of them, this is our line, and it’s going to happen later with young Saul, as well, that we read the Spirit of the Lord came upon the person. They’re gifted with divine assistance, capabilities, people seem to recognize that and attribute it as gifts from the Lord to this person to help them out.

Dr. Dana Pike: 00:00:51 So, verse 10, “The Spirit of the Lord came upon him,” he judged Israel, he went out to war. There’s the judging that we end up hearing about, is the, “I’m a military leader. I’m going to help free my tribe, my neighboring tribes from the oppression of these neighbors who live around us.”

Hank Smith: 00:01:06 I wrote a talk called Five Temptation Killers, and I used this story from Ehud and Eglon, and I said, “Eglon represents addiction, and Ehud is you, and how do you stab addiction and get rid of it?” And Ehud escaped this Eglon, who was this Jabba the Hut type character.

Dr. Dana Pike: 00:01:25 Ehud does his thing and the land rests. This is Chapter 3, Verse 30. “Moab was subdued, the land had rest for four score years”: 80 years.

Dr. Dana Pike: 00:01:35 And then in verse 31, here’s our only information about a fellow named Shamgar; “The son of Anath who slew Philistines, killed 600 men with an ox goad and helped deliver Israel.” And we’re done with him and we’ve moved on to Deborah in Chapter 4.

Dr. Dana Pike: 00:01:49 And actually, chapters four and five deal with Deborah. Chapter four is the prose narration of these events, chapter five is poetry. And if you look at 5:1, then saying Deborah and Barak, the Israelite military leader with her, they sing a song. And hopefully, this reminds readers of Exodus, Chapter 15.

Dr. Dana Pike: 00:02:08 In chapter 14, “The Lord delivers them through the Reed Sea”; the Red Sea. They get to the other side, the Egyptians are destroyed. And they sing about it in Exodus 15, “Moses and the people … “

Dr. Dana Pike: 00:02:18 And then Miriam helps lead some of the women in singing; in that setting. Here, we’ve got Deborah and Barak singing praises to the Lord, recounting the events, describing the Lord’s power and how it was He who won the battle; this divine warrior motif that it’s God and the hosts.

Dr. Dana Pike: 00:02:38 He’s called “The Lord of Hosts.” And we sometimes think, “Yeah, that’s all the angels sitting around him.” That can be in some cases, but “hosts” is also a very common military term in the Old Testament or the Hebrew Bible; “The hosts came out in numbers to fight.”

Dr. Dana Pike: 00:02:52 And as we go through here, as I mentioned, this divine warrior, it’s God who’s fighting, it’s God who’s ultimately responsible for delivering Israel as it’s being portrayed here.

Dr. Dana Pike: 00:03:02 And there are a few little differences between what’s in chapter four and what’s in chapter five. I think Come Follow Me only included chapter four, but if you want to read the poetry … And I’d always say, if you’re reading biblical poetry, it’s much more enjoyable, and I think it’s more educational, to read it out loud and to read it slowly as poetry.

Dr. Dana Pike: 00:03:21 Here’s the narration. Chapter four, verse one, “The Israelites did evil in the sight of the Lord. After Ehud had died, the Lord sold them into the hand of Jabin, the king of Canaan.” He’s the king in Hazor, which is a major Canaanite city a little bit north of the Sea of Galilee. So in the Upper Galilee, as we call it. His general is Sisera. They’re oppressing the Israelites up in the north.

Dr. Dana Pike: 00:03:46 Anyway, verse three, “The children of Israel cry unto the Lord.” And he has, Sisera, this Canaanite general, has 900 chariots. 20 years has oppressed the children of Israel.

Dr. Dana Pike: 00:03:56 And now we’re in verse four. We’re introduced to Deborah, a prophetess. We’ve heard Miriam described as a prophetess; Deborah here; later on, in the book of Nehemiah, Noadiah, a woman we don’t know much about, is described as a prophetess; Huldah in Second Kings is called a prophetess; Isaiah’s wife is called a prophetess.

Dr. Dana Pike: 00:04:16 And for Latter-day Saints that often raises the question, “Well, they don’t have the Melchizedek priesthood. How can they be a prophetess?”, I mean, I would take it at face value that these women were blessed with the gifts of the spirit, and somehow are calling from the Lord to represent him and speak for him and serve his people, however that worked; formally institutionally. Perhaps different than how we’re used to thinking of a prophet nowadays, but definitely had a role to play at different times in Israelite history.

Dr. Dana Pike: 00:04:46 Chapter four, verse four; Deborah, the prophetess, again her husband’s name, she judged Israel at this time. Again, I’m thinking this is part of Israel for a particular period. Maybe there are other people already judging in other areas as well.

Dr. Dana Pike: 00:05:00 She sits under a tree, a Palm tree, and it became known as “The Palm tree of Deborah”, because that’s where she would sit regularly between Ramah and Bethel and Efram, the territory of Ephraim, and the children of Israel came up to her for judgment, to make decisions.

Dr. Dana Pike: 00:05:16 I mentioned earlier, this is the only time in the Book of Judges where we actually have a reference to a judge judging or deciding or arbitrating, dealing with cases that were brought to her. Maybe this happened a lot and we just don’t hear about it, but that’s always the question.

John Bytheway: 00:05:31 They sound more like military leaders in most of the book.

Dr. Dana Pike: 00:05:34 The depiction primarily has a military focus in the Book of Judges.

Dr. Dana Pike: 00:05:40 And this is what I find interesting in verse six; she sat and called Barack, who’s an Israeli military leader, and says, “Hasn’t the Lord God of Israel commanded you,” essentially, “Saying, ‘Go down to Mount Tabor, get thousands of men from Naphtali and Zebulun,'” these tribes up in the Galilee region, verse seven, “‘I will draw unto you … ‘” So this is, “I, the Lord,” right? “Hasn’t God said, ‘I will draw Sisera to you, and I, God,'” verse seven, “‘Will deliver him into your hand?'”

Dr. Dana Pike: 00:06:10 So she’s saying the Lord has spoken already, probably through her, we don’t hear about anybody else, and she’s saying, “How come you’re not doing this? Get with the program, assemble the troops, the hosts from these tribes, and get to Mount Tabor,” which is in the Jezreel or on the edge of the Jezreel Valley, again, where the Canaanites are controlling.

Dr. Dana Pike: 00:06:31 As many people have said, chariots in antiquity were kind of like tanks in modern warfare, right? These are powerful things. And if your horse is pulling your chariot through a group of infantry people, they’re going to get run over, they’re going to get hurt. It says 900 chariots. This is a pretty mighty military contingent that Sisera has.

Dr. Dana Pike: 00:06:52 How does Barak respond to what Deborah says? “If you go with me,” verse eight, “Then I’ll go. Otherwise, I’m not going. I’m not going to lead out here, because this looks hopeless. And if you, Deborah, go with me, Barak, then I have a sense that the Lord will be with us and he’ll do what he says you’re saying he will do.”

Hank Smith: 00:07:13 Right.

Dr. Dana Pike: 00:07:14 So she said, “Okay, I’ll go.”

Dr. Dana Pike: 00:07:15 But what does she say? Verse seven; “I’ll go, but you better know right now, the victory won’t be for your honor, for the Lord will sell Sisera into the hand of a woman.”

Dr. Dana Pike: 00:07:29 Now you might think, at this point, that Deborah’s going to be the one who’s the woman who’s kind of cheered on for the victory. But as we read through the chapter, we find out that there’s another woman involved as well.

Dr. Dana Pike: 00:07:43 The story unfolds. They go out, they meet in the valley, they fight. Verse 13; Sisera gathered all his chariots, the 900 chariots, they’re fighting in the valley.

Dr. Dana Pike: 00:07:53 Verse 14, Deborah says to Barak, again, her Israelite military leader, “Get up. This is what the Lord said he’s going to do. The Lord has delivered Sisera into your hands.” So again, this is attributed to divine intervention here. “Has not the Lord gone out before you?”

Dr. Dana Pike: 00:08:10 Verse 15. So, “The Lord discomforted … ” And if you don’t know that word, there’s a note that explains that’s Old English for “put into a panic,” right? So he caused a panic and the Canaanite forces are fleeing, and Sisera hops off his chariot to run away, to save his own life.

Dr. Dana Pike: 00:08:31 And then the next verse, 18, and the next few verses, are this fairly well known account where he runs to a tent. It’s Heber and Jael. Heber is out getting fast food or something, and Jael is home. And Sisera says, “Listen, I need a place to hide. Put me in here, and if anybody comes, tell them I’m not here.”

Dr. Dana Pike: 00:08:53 He’s exhausted from hours or a day of fighting. So verse 19, she opens up a bottle of milk. Again, this is probably an animal skin of goat milk or something. She says, “Here, have some milk. Maybe it’ll help you get even a little drowsier.” He lays down, he gets covered up.

Dr. Dana Pike: 00:09:10 And then in verse 21, Jael is her name, Heber’s wife, took a nail of a tent, so she takes a tent peg, and a hammer, or a club, as some people render it, in her hand and went to him while he’s laying asleep in the back of the tent, and drove the nail right through his head and nailed him to the ground.

Hank Smith: 00:09:29 Wow.

Dr. Dana Pike: 00:09:29 He was asleep and he never woke up, right? He was dead.

Dr. Dana Pike: 00:09:33 Barack pursued Sisera. Jael comes out to say, “Hey, I’ve already taken care of this.”

Hank Smith: 00:09:37 I love that.

Dr. Dana Pike: 00:09:38 And this is the woman who’s going to get the glory for killing the Canaanite general.

Dr. Dana Pike: 00:09:43 So verse 23, “God subdued, on that day, Jabin, the king of Canaan,” Sisera was the general, “Before the children of the Lord.”

Dr. Dana Pike: 00:09:52 Then we go into the poetic song in chapter five that kind of re-narrates, in its own poetic way, celebrates the victory.

Dr. Dana Pike: 00:10:01 So you might say, what can I get out of that narration in chapter four? What lessons could I learn?

Dr. Dana Pike: 00:10:06 The Lord says, “I’m going to help you if you go out and do your part,” Deborah encourages Barak, they go out and do their part, and the Lord comes through. I mean, this is kind of an underlying theme, but it’s worth highlighting over and over. The Lord’s going to follow through on what he says if we’re willing to participate with him.

Dr. Dana Pike: 00:10:27 You might think I’m trying to make something nice out of a story that doesn’t have anything nice, but that seems to be the principle, that the Lord brings about his purposes and will deliver you if you’re willing to work with him.

Dr. Dana Pike: 00:10:40 It may take time and there may be violence or challenges or hardships along the way, but Judges is going to tell us the Lord always comes through.

Hank Smith: 00:10:48 Yeah.

Hank Smith: 00:10:48 And then there’s also this idea from Barak in verse eight; “If thou will go with me, then I will go,” meaning, I know you’re inspired of God. I go where you go.

Dr. Dana Pike: 00:10:58 I’m feeling concerned and I need help and support, and you’re the person who can provide that, to represent that to me, which is not unlike when we get into chapter six with Gideon.

Dr. Dana Pike: 00:11:09 He needs reassurance multiple times. He’s depicted in chapter six and seven as quite fearful. That changes in chapter eight, and he seems to have overcome that with God’s help, but he’s a little … More than once needs a little extra help and reassurance along the way.

Dr. Dana Pike: 00:11:27 And that’s not such a bad lesson either; that if we feel the need for help and reassurance, it’s okay to say that. It’s okay to be honest and ask for that.

Hank Smith: 00:11:34 I like that, Dana.

Hank Smith: 00:11:36 So all of five is a song.

John Bytheway: 00:11:38 Dana, could you sing that for us just in Hebrew?

Dr. Dana Pike: 00:11:41 You don’t want me to sing. Thank you anyway for the offer.

Dr. Dana Pike: 00:11:47 When you get to chapter five, verse 31, it’s the last verse in the chapter, “Let all your enemies perish, oh, Lord. Let them that love him be as the son when he goes forth in his might,” it kind of flips the language, and we think the Him now is the Lord, right?

Dr. Dana Pike: 00:12:02 “And the land had rest for 40 years.” Again, there’s that narrative framework tacked on at the end to tell us some multiple of 40, right? In this case, it is 40.

Hank Smith: 00:12:12 I bet I know what’s going to come next.

Dr. Dana Pike: 00:12:15 Oh, well, then why don’t you read chapter six, verse one for us? So we’ll see if you’re right.

Hank Smith: 00:12:20 I’m guessing if there’s rest in the land, then they’re going to do something wrong. Let’s take a look.

Hank Smith: 00:12:24 Chapter six, verse one. “And the children of Israel did evil in the sight of the Lord, and the Lord delivered them into the hand of Midian, seven years.”

Hank Smith: 00:12:32 So it’s almost a, “Here we go again.”

Dr. Dana Pike: 00:12:35 We think it’s constructed or formulated that way purposefully to show the ups and the downs or the going around of the cycle.

Dr. Dana Pike: 00:12:43 So Midian is depicted in Genesis 25 as one of the sons of Abraham and Keturah. We know Jethro and Zipporah and their family, the Midianites, were Midianites.

Dr. Dana Pike: 00:12:55 But the Midianites are this group of people that are moving up and down out of Northwest Arabia, moving up along the Eastern side of the Jordan River Valley. Occasionally, they come into the Western side of the Jordan River into the land of Israel proper; the Jezreel Valley and other places, we hear about them.

Dr. Dana Pike: 00:13:14 So, yeah, Midianites is this shifting group of people over centuries. And the Amalekites, likewise. And for our purposes, that’s probably enough.

Dr. Dana Pike: 00:13:23 But chapter six, verse five, these people are like grasshoppers for multitude. They’re all over the place. And the Israelites in verse six are crying unto the Lord, as we know the cycle.

Dr. Dana Pike: 00:13:33 And in this case, it’s one of the few cases where we hear about a prophet. Chapter six, verse seven and eight, the Israelites cry to the Lord for help because of the Midianites, and the Lord sent a prophet unto them, “Thus says the Lord God of Israel”

Dr. Dana Pike: 00:13:45 Now this is going to be presented in first person again, the prophet speaking by divine investiture as if he is the Lord.

Dr. Dana Pike: 00:13:52 The end of verse eight, “I brought you up from Egypt, brought you out of the house of bondage. I delivered you from the Egyptians, brought you here and tried to drive out the people and give you the lands.” Verse 10, “I said unto you, ‘I am the Lord. I’m Jehovah, your God. Fear not the other gods of the people,’ but you didn’t obey me.”

Dr. Dana Pike: 00:14:11 “And there came an angel.” Verse 11. Now we’re going to be introduced an angel. It’s a messenger. Again, you decide if it’s a human or a divine. We find out as we go along.

Dr. Dana Pike: 00:14:22 We’re introduced to Gideon’s father, whose name is Joash. They’re living in the territory of Manasseh. It sounds eventually like this is a divine angel or a divine messenger, an angel in the sense that we think.

Dr. Dana Pike: 00:14:36 But here’s the verse that you started this videocast with Hank; “And the angel of the Lord appeared,” 6:12, “Unto Gideon, and said, ‘The Lord is with you. You are a mighty man of valor.'”

Dr. Dana Pike: 00:14:46 Gideon said to him, “Oh my Lord.” This is “Lord” not all in caps. So it’s, “Oh my Lord,” he’s talking to this divine messenger, “If Jehovah is with us, then why are we having all these problems?” So, “You’re saying the Lord is with us, but I’m not seeing it exactly.”

Dr. Dana Pike: 00:15:05 So this is an interesting little conversation that he has with the angel. “Didn’t the Lord bring us up out of Egypt? But now the Lord has forsaken us and delivered us into the hand of the Midianites.”

Dr. Dana Pike: 00:15:13 You can decide whether Gideon’s worldview is out of whack, or this is more rhetorical, like saying, “Yeah, well, if he’s really with us, we sure are having a lot of hardships with these Midianites.”

Dr. Dana Pike: 00:15:22 Verse 14; now it says, “The Lord looked on him and said … ” And there’s a challenge here; is this really the Lord talking to him, or is it the angel speaking as the Lord? It just says, “The Lord is talking to him.”

Dr. Dana Pike: 00:15:36 And it goes back and forth a little here, but Jehovah says to him, “Go in this, thy might, and thou shalt save Israel.” This is his call, so to speak, right? ” … Save Israel from the Midianites. Haven’t I sent you?”

Dr. Dana Pike: 00:15:48 And he said, verse 15, “Oh my Lord,” sounds like he’s talking to the angel again, “Wherewith?” Or, “How am I going to save Israel? I’m from this poor tribe, from a poor family. I’m the least in my father’s house.” Verse 16, the Lord, Jehovah, says, “Surely I will be with you.” That is meant to be very encouraging to him.

Hank Smith: 00:16:08 That’s Moses.

Dr. Dana Pike: 00:16:09 Yeah. A lot of people who get calls from the Lord to do hard things, right?

Dr. Dana Pike: 00:16:13 The promise; “Surely I will be with you. You shall smite the Midianites as one man.” And he said, “If now I have found grace, show me a sign.”

Dr. Dana Pike: 00:16:23 Now this isn’t the fleece, that’s not till chapter seven, but he’s already saying, “I’m a little anxious about this. I’m maybe a little doubtful, fearful. I need a little reassurance.”

Dr. Dana Pike: 00:16:33 So he is going to make a meal, if you will, puts it on the rock, the angel goes up in the fire, and he thinks, “Whoa.”

Dr. Dana Pike: 00:16:42 Verse 22. “When Gideon perceived that this was really a divine angel of the Lord, he said, ‘Alas, oh, Lord, God, for because I have seen an angel of the Lord face to face … ‘” And there’s this tradition throughout a number of biblical texts that to see God or an angel meant you might die. We’re going to hear this again with Samson’s parents as well in a few chapters.

Dr. Dana Pike: 00:17:04 Verse 22, Alas O Lord, God, Lord is not all in caps, but what is?

Hank Smith: 00:17:08 God is.

Dr. Dana Pike: 00:17:09 It’s the word God is all in caps. And this happens actually several times in Judges, and dozens of times throughout the Old Testament, and that’s your clue that in this case we said that The Lord all in caps, is a substitute title, the Hebrew word that’s pronounced is Adonai so that you don’t say Yahweh, right? So Lord in caps tells me it’s the divine name, but the practice became I’m going to say The Lord as a title for God, instead of the divine name itself.

Dr. Dana Pike: 00:17:40 Well, here we’ve got Alas O Adonai Yahweh. So rather than the translators, and it’s the same in modern translations as well, rather than saying O LORD, LORD, all in caps, they’ve put God in place of the divine name Yahweh, and capitalized it, so you’ll know that is the divine name. It’s Adonai Yahweh, O Lord, Yahweh, but the translators have put O Lord, God so that they don’t have to use their usual substitution, which is to put Lord all in caps.

Hank Smith: 00:18:17 Because it would say, O LORD, Lord.

Dr. Dana Pike: 00:18:19 O LORD, Lord-

Hank Smith: 00:18:20 Wow, yeah.

Dr. Dana Pike: 00:18:22 One all in caps one not, then that would look weird to people. And so again, there are all kinds of challenges in translating an ancient text for modern readers, right? And that’s just kind of a fun example.

Dr. Dana Pike: 00:18:33 An easy place to see this also is in Amos 3:7, a verse that Latter-day Saints like a lot, it’s the same situation, God is all in caps. Surely, The Lord, GOD, will do nothing, right? God is all in caps there, because it’s the same Hebrew, it’s Adonai Yahweh. Either way, Gideon is saying to the Lord, “Wow, I haven’t quite expected that. I’ve seen an angel and maybe my life’s in danger, I just wanted a little bit of a sign.

Dr. Dana Pike: 00:18:58 Verse 24, Gideon built an altar to the Lord, to Yahweh, Jehovah, and called it Jehovah Shalom, and it’s still there if you happen to be in that day. So Jehovah Shalom is one of the few times the word Jehovah is spelled out in English in the Old Testament, and Shalom most people will know, is the Hebrew word for peace that connects back to verse 23, which we just skipped over.

Dr. Dana Pike: 00:19:20 “The Lord said unto him, Peace be unto you”, don’t fear, you’re not going to die. So he builds an altar and names the altar Jehovah is Peace, because he’s promised peace or wellbeing, right, is another way to render Shalom.

Dr. Dana Pike: 00:19:35 Anyway, he’s given a charge, he is told to go throw down the altar of Baal, which his father has. This is the end of verse 25, “And cut down the grove that is by it,” this tree or this symbolic representation of a tree that’s meant to represent Asherah. So you’ve got an altar to Baal and a representation of Asherah, and he’s supposed to go cut these down. And he’s a little nervous about this, so he gets 10 of his friends and they go out at night, and they knock down the altar, they cut down the Asherah, and then the people get up in the morning in the town and say, “Hey, what happened? Who’s come in and messed up our altar and wrecked the Asherah?”

Dr. Dana Pike: 00:20:13 Verse 29, “Who has done this?” And word gets out obviously, that it’s Gideon, and so they say to his father in verse 30, “Bring him out, we’re going to kill him.” And his father, fortunately, stands up for him. Verse 31, “And Joash, the father of Gideon, says to all who sit around him, “Will you plead for Baal? Can’t he take care of himself? If somebody comes and wrecks his altar, can’t Baal do something about this? Who’s appointed you to come and act for him?” The middle of that verse 31, “Let him plead for himself, or contend for himself, because somebody cast out his altar.”

Dr. Dana Pike: 00:20:51 Verse 32, “Therefore on that day, they called him, Gideon Jerub-Baal, because saying let Baal plead against him.” So Jerub-Baal, the literary explanation is, let Baal plead, right? So as we read along, we’ve got Gideon and Jerub-Baal, two different names for the same person, that’s the origin of the name Jerub-Baal as is presented to us.

Dr. Dana Pike: 00:21:15 Verse 34, “The Spirit of the Lord came upon Gideon,” there’s our sign that the Lord’s going to be with him to magnify him. He calls people from Asher, Zebulun and Naphtali in verse 35, as well as Manasseh, so there were four tribes, but there are 12 tribes. Again, this seems to be a regional activity, not everybody together. And they’re ready to fight, but he’s still not quite sure he can do this.

Dr. Dana Pike: 00:21:41 So verse 36 Gideon says, “If you will save Israel by my hand, give me a sign.” Verse 37, “I’ll put the fleece out, the sheepskin, the wool fleece out on the floor, and if in the morning there’s dew on the fleece but the ground is dry, then I’ll know you really want me to do this and you’ll help me do it, Lord.” So what happens? It doesn’t.

Dr. Dana Pike: 00:22:05 Verse 39, Gideon said to God, “Don’t be angry, don’t let your anger be hot against me, I will speak unto you this once,” I mean, one more time.

Hank Smith: 00:22:13 One more time.

Dr. Dana Pike: 00:22:15 “Let me prove,” and so here’s Gideon saying, “Let me prove you this once with the fleece, let it now be dry only on the fleece but all the ground be dew.” So we repeat the sign with a twist, and God did so verse 40 that night. It was dry upon the fleece only, and there was dew on the ground. So Gideon now feels like, “Okay, the Lord showed me he’s going to be with me, let’s go,” and they gather to the spring of Harod, which is on the edge of the Jezreel valley, and this is the setup, right?

Dr. Dana Pike: 00:22:45 And you know the setup in Chapter Seven. This in an important chapter, Gideon ends up assembling thousands of men to fight against the Midianites, and what’s the Lord say to him? Way too many-

Hank Smith: 00:22:57 Too many.

Dr. Dana Pike: 00:22:57 … people. I mean, that’s a surprise, right? You’d want all the guys you could get I would think, right.

Hank Smith: 00:23:02 Usually you want to outnumber the enemy, yeah.

Dr. Dana Pike: 00:23:04 So the Lord says way too many people, and the question is why does the Lord tell him to get rid of some of the fighters, fighting men?

Hank Smith: 00:23:10 People won’t believe, they’ll think it was them and not the Lord, right?

Hank Smith: 00:23:14 Exactly.

Dr. Dana Pike: 00:23:14 Right.

Hank Smith: 00:23:14 Yeah.

Dr. Dana Pike: 00:23:15 He said, “I don’t want this to look like you did it yourselves, I want people to appreciate that I, the Lord, delivered Israel with you, but I’m the power behind this.” And so you can read that, and there’s the means he devises in Chapter five and following, right? That they put their heads down into the water to drink, that they lifted up into their hands to lap it out of their hands, and they separate 300 out of that into verse six and verse seven.

Dr. Dana Pike: 00:23:46 The Lord says to Gideon, “By the 300 men that lap, I will save you.” All right, so again, this is all presented as if it’s the Lord who’s doing the ultimate delivering as the ultimate power, “I’m going to save you from the Midianites.” And so Gideon still is a little nervous, and so that night he’s told to go down to the camp, to the Midianite camp, “And if you’re really worried, take your buddy with you.”

Dr. Dana Pike: 00:24:11 Verse 10, “If you fear to go down, take Purah, your servant with you,” and so he does, and the two of them sneak into the Midianite camp and overhear these two Midianites talking, “Well, I had a dream.” Verse 13, “When Gideon was come, behold there was a man that told the dream to his fellow, and said, “Behold, I dreamed a dream,” this is standard Hebrew grammar, right? We hear it in the book of Mormon as well. “A cake of barley tumbled into the host of Midian, and came into the tent and knocked down the tents.”

Dr. Dana Pike: 00:24:38 And this fellow says at verse 14, here’s the interpretation, “This is nothing except, it’s the sword of Gideon, the son of Joash, a man of Israel, and God is going to help him deliver the Israelites from the Midianites.”

Dr. Dana Pike: 00:24:50 So Gideon goes back and thinks, okay this is the fourth time he’s a sign of some sort, that God is going to be with him, right? So he gets everybody, his men together, the 300, they divide into three groups, and you know the story. They have trumpets, it says trumpet, the Hebrew word is shofar, this is the ram horn that they’ve turned into a horn to blow, in one hand and they have a clay pitcher with a torch in it in the other hand.

Dr. Dana Pike: 00:25:16 And what’s interesting here is, they don’t have any weapons. If you’ve got both hands occupied, you don’t have your sword, you don’t have your arrows, you don’t have your dagger, you’ve got the trumpet, the shofar, and you’ve got the pitcher as it says, the jar with the torch in it, the light, and that’s it. Whose going to do the fighting? Well, it’s God that’s going to do the fighting, as we read the stories.

Dr. Dana Pike: 00:25:35 So he says, “I’m going to blow the trumpet and break the jar and it’ll be light, and you do the same thing all at the same time, and we’re all going to shout.” The end of verse 14, the sword of, and sword of is in italics, because that’s not in the Hebrew text here. “It’s for Yahweh, Jehovah and Gideon.”

Dr. Dana Pike: 00:25:55 And then we get down to the end of verse 20 where they actually do this, and they all cry out, “The sword of the Lord and of Gideon.” Well, Gideon apparently doesn’t have a sword, but the point is it’s the Lord whose got the weaponry, the power, and all the host of the Midianites are afraid. They think there are way more than 300 Israelites, and they take off and Gideon and his men follow them and kill them along the way, and he’s victorious is the point of this, or God helps him to be victorious, and they to be victorious, them.

Hank Smith: 00:26:27 Well, I liked where you kept saying, you said, he needs reassurance, and the Lord gives him reassurance. He is someone so far, that his faith has a short shelf life, right? That he has these reassurances, he feels excited, and then it kind of wanes quickly I guess. That doesn’t seem to be a bad thing.

Dr. Dana Pike: 00:26:48 Yeah, yeah. It may wane, it may just… For him it wasn’t sufficient to keep going. I can remember going way back when I was in love with the woman who became my wife and I became her husband, I thought… I said, “Lord, I really love Jane, but is this a good thing? Is this what you want? Is this going to be productive for her and for me? Is it a good thing?” And I got a good feeling about it and a week or two later I’m in the temple and saying, “You know, I know I’ve asked this before Lord, but would you bless us in this relationship? Is this a good thing?”

Dr. Dana Pike: 00:27:24 I can’t tell you how many weeks I must have offered that same prayer, and the answer was always yes, but I just wanted a little more assurance. I guess I was nervous, fairly young, and I guess I’m not alone in having had some experience similar to that where people have said, “Lord, let me ask you one more time, what do you think about this? Are you okay with this?” So yeah, I get that, I get that.

Dr. Dana Pike: 00:27:49 Other lessons, the Lord is merciful and willing to work with him. He’s been chosen, so the Lord doesn’t just throw him out the door. He hasn’t done anything completely haywire way off the rails, he’s not out in the weeds somewhere. He’s trying to do what the Lord’s asked him to do, but he needs that extra assurance, that extra strength, and the Lord’s willing to work with him. I think that’s a great lesson.

Hank Smith: 00:28:11 I like Chapter six where he says, “Who am I, I am a nobody, but the Lord sees a mighty man of valor.” Well, that’s often how you might see yourself, “Who am I, I’m a nobody?” And the Lord said, “Oh, you just watch.”

Dr. Dana Pike: 00:28:24 I can make more of you than you can make of yourself, kind of a thing.

Hank Smith: 00:28:26 Than you can make of yourself, yeah.

Dr. Dana Pike: 00:28:27 Yeah. And we have other examples of that in scripture as well, we’ve already read Moses, but we’ll see others as well. I like the part we just read in Chapter seven. Ultimately, it’s the Lord who’s going to fight our battles and help us to be successful in our mortal life. Back in the ’70s maybe, Elder Hanks gave a talk on the sword of the Lord and of Gideon, and used this chapter.

Dr. Dana Pike: 00:28:48 But the sense that it’s the sword of the Lord and of Gideon, well, who’s the major power here? It’s the Lord, and if we bind ourselves to the Lord through covenant, and if we remain in that covenant relationship, and covenants are all about relationships and the way we’re talking here in the Bible, you’re in the relationship with Jehovah alone, or you’re bringing other gods into the relationship and messing up that primary relationship.

Dr. Dana Pike: 00:29:12 But here, in a relationship with the Lord, he’s got the power to deliver us. I mean, I have that trust that the Lord will overcome everything eventually. The passage in Isaiah that gets picked up in Revelation about dry every tear from our eyes. I mean, I accept that, so I trust that the Lord can deliver me even though we have challenges, and problems, and accidents, and hardships, and heartbreaks, and all kinds of things along the way.

Dr. Dana Pike: 00:29:36 So if I’m looking for applications, those are two that I need some reassurance, and I trust that God will ultimately deliver all of the faithful children of His here on the earth.

John Bytheway: 00:29:48 Just in the manual it makes a little comment about looking at Judges six through eight, it says, to receive the Lord’s miracles in our lives, we must trust in his ways, even when his ways seem unusual. All of us have gone through something where we’ve looked back and went, “Whoa, oh, I was really being helped or guided back then, and I didn’t realize it.” That’s how a faith-building pattern has been for me to look back and go, “Wow, I was being helped back then, I thought it should have come out like this, but it turned out being better.”

Dr. Dana Pike: 00:30:16 We’ve already mentioned this passage earlier, but let me just focus as we drive by here. Chapter 8:22 and 23.

John Bytheway: 00:30:22 The drive by scripture study.

Dr. Dana Pike: 00:30:23 Yeah, sadly. “The men of Israel said unto Gideon, Rule thou over us.” You’ve led us to victory, we’re successful, you’re the man. You rule over us, and we’ll set up a dynasty for your son and your son’s sons because of what you’ve been able to accomplish.” And he says in verse 23, “I will not rule over you, neither shall my son rule over you, the Lord,” this is Jehovah, “shall rule over you.” Gideon says, “This is not the time to start a monarchy, the Lord is still our King and we’re going to keep this religious/family-based kingdom of his going.”

Dr. Dana Pike: 00:30:57 Now, it doesn’t last for long. Already in the next chapter, somebody’s going to try the monarchy out. But so you think, “Yeah, good for you.”

Hank Smith: 00:31:06 I noticed that as soon as Gideon is dead, the children of Israel turned again and remembered not the Lord their God. So we’re back to our cycle here at the end of eight.

John Bytheway: 00:31:16 Yep.

Dr. Dana Pike: 00:31:17 Correct, yes. We get the program notes telling us the cycle continues. Chapter nine is a little bit of a detour, we hear about a fellow named Abimelech, he’s the son of Gideon who has 70 sons. And this fellow is the son of Gideon through a concubine and he decides he’s got his mother’s from Shekham and he’s got connections, and so he decides, “My dad doesn’t want to be king, I’d be happy to be king.” And here’s a warning as well.

Dr. Dana Pike: 00:31:45 This wasn’t part of the reading, but whenever somebody wants to be king, you have to step back and wonder.

Hank Smith: 00:31:50 Yeah.

Dr. Dana Pike: 00:31:51 So he gets some of the Shekhamites to help him and proclaim him king, and he thinks he kills all of his stepbrothers, the 70 sons, or at least 69 of the sons of Gideon, but one gets away. His name is Jotham, and he runs up on the mountain by Shekham, this is verse seven, chapter nine verse seven, and shouts out this parable, an anti-monarchy message and he’s saying, “If you make this guy a king, it’s going to come back to bite you.”

Dr. Dana Pike: 00:32:15 And it does in the story. The Shekhamites have problems because of this, and eventually Abimelech at the end of chapter nine is in military action, and a woman on a tower throws down part of a millstone, and it breaks his skull and he dies. And here’s, sad to say, but we’re living in a patriarchal society that looks at women sort of as second class in many contexts, so here at the end of verse 54, Abimelech who’s just had his skull bashed in, says to his armor bearer, “Take your sword out and kill me, so it won’t be said that a woman slew me. I don’t want to die at the hand of a woman.”

Dr. Dana Pike: 00:32:53 Now, Sisera, didn’t have a chance to say that back at the end of chapter four, when Yaal killed him.

Hank Smith: 00:32:59 He got taken through the temple.

Dr. Dana Pike: 00:33:01 Chapter 10 and 11 were not part of the suggested reading in Come Follow Me. Chapter 11 has a story that I love, because it’s a problematic account that’s related here. When I say love it’s not because it’s nice and warm and fuzzy by any means, but it’s thought provoking I think. And I often spend time with students on this, it’s the story of Jephthah the Gileadite, Gilead is the region east of the Jordan River valley. He’s the son of a harlot, we hear in chapter 11 verse one, so already we’re supposed to think his social status is lesser. And he’s not treated well by his family, but oh, there’s oppression and everybody knows Jephthah is a really talented guy in battle, so let’s get Jephthah to help deliver us from the Ammonites.

Dr. Dana Pike: 00:33:52 Verse 30, “And Jephthah vowed a vow under the Lord, under Jehovah and said, “If you will without fail, if you will certainly deliver the children of Ammon into my hands when I go out to fight them,” 

Dr. Dana Pike: 00:34:04 and again, with other help, then it shall be that whatsoever. Some translations render it, whosoever, comes forth from the doors of my house to meet me when I return in peace from fighting the Ammonites, surely that shall be the Lords and I will offer it up as a burnt offering.” And this has a fairly well known passage. So he vows this vow, “Whatever comes out of my house first, I give it to the Lord as a burnt offering.” And the Hebrew word really is Ola. It’s the word that’s used for burnt offering throughout Genesis, throughout Exodus, throughout the rest of the Bible. There’s no question what he’s talking about. So he goes off and he fights verse 32 and following, and everything’s grand. We don’t hear much about the fighting, but he’s successful in subduing the Ammonites.

Dr. Dana Pike: 00:34:45 Verse 34, Jephthah came to Mizpah unto his house. This is not the Mizpah north of Jerusalem, is another Mizpah over east of the Jordan river, unto his house and behold, his daughter came out to meet him with timbrels and dancing and singing. He’s all excited. Dad has come home. He’s in one piece, he’s healthy, he’s successful. She’s celebrating. And his response, verse 35, rents his clothes in distress and says, “Alas, my daughter, you have brought me very low. You are the one who troubles me. I open my mouth onto the Lord and I can’t go back.” Our standard explanation is that these folks were living in houses that had little courtyards and open areas into the house. They’re called pillared houses, three or four rooms, couple of rooms parallel in one in the back. And the chickens and goats and sheep would be wandering in and out of the house.

Dr. Dana Pike: 00:35:36 And we typically say, “He’s assuming that whatever animal comes out, I’m going to offer to the Lord. I don’t care if it’s the biggest or the best or what.” But in this case, it’s his daughter. And so she says, verse 36, “My father, if you’ve opened your mouth to the Lord do to me what you’ve promised him, but do me this little favor. Let me have two months to go out on the hills and with my friends and hang out and say, gee, I’m never going to be married. I’m never going to have children.” And that’s what happens. Verse 39. At the end of two months, she returned to her father who did to her according to the vow, which she had vowed.

Dr. Dana Pike: 00:36:11 Now it doesn’t say he actually killed her and burned her body as a sacrificial offering, but that’s the intent of the passage. Boy that makes us squeamish. And then so we some says, as well, maybe he really didn’t do it. It just says he did it. I think the authors are expecting you’ll believe that this is what he did. And so the question I always ask my students is did he do the right thing? Should he have kept his vow to the Lord? His daughter certainly supports him in doing that and she’s going to die. Which is more important, taking a human life as an offering or keeping your promise to God?

Hank Smith: 00:36:49 And to God who doesn’t want human sacrifice.

Dr. Dana Pike: 00:36:52 Let’s go back to Deuteronomy 23 for one minute.

Hank Smith: 00:36:55 Be more careful, Dana.

Dr. Dana Pike: 00:36:58 Well, that’s a lesson. Be more careful with what you vow for sure. And if you’re going to enter into a sacred covenant or make a vow, make sure you know what you’re doing for without a doubt. But look at there are a couple of passages we could read. We’ll only read this one, Deuteronomy 23 versus 21 through 23. John, if you have that, you want to read that please?

John Bytheway: 00:37:20 Yeah. When thou shall vow a vow onto the Lord, thy God, thou shalt not slack to pay it for the Lord thy God will surely require it of thee, and it would be sin in thee. But if thou shalt forbear to vow, it shall be no sin in thee, that which is gone out of thy lips thou shalt keep and perform, even a freewill offering, according as thou hast vowed unto the Lord thy God, which thou hast promised with thy mouth.

Dr. Dana Pike: 00:37:47 There’s a context for that passage as well. You could also read, we won’t look it up at Ecclesiastes, chapter five, verses I think it’s two through five. And Ecclesiastes probably doesn’t have quite the same authority as Deuteronomy does, but it says essentially the same thing. So my point is in the biblical tradition, Deuteronomy, Judges 11, Ecclesiastes 5, there’s this sense that if you make a vow, you better do it. So I’m still back to the question, did he do the right thing? Well, in their world, he feels bound by that. Now I am going to say, I don’t think he did the right thing. But in his culture, in his religious world, that was the expectation.

Dr. Dana Pike: 00:38:27 And even his daughter, as I said, is supportive of that. Lessons to be learned clearly be careful what you vow. In this case, we often say, he should have been more specific, whatever animal comes out, not whatever, whoever comes out from my door. Secondly, when we get to chapter 20, 21 at the end of Judges, if we get that far, it wasn’t part of the reading in Come Follow Me. The Benjaminites something horrible happens in Gibeah, a town in Benjamin. It ends up provoking a war is the only time we hear about all the tribes together. The 11 tribes get together and almost wipe out Benjamin.

Dr. Dana Pike: 00:39:04 And they have vowed a vow that they’re not ever going to give their daughters to the Benjaminites. So they have to concoct a couple of different ways to help keep the surviving Benjaminite men alive and have spouses for them so they can marry and reconstitute the tribe of Benjamin. And so they say on the one hand, we’ve made this vow. We can’t break the vow we’ve made, again, reflecting this mentality, but we’re going to find another way around it. And so I often wonder if it worked for them at the end of Judges. Why couldn’t it work for Jephthah in chapter 11 in the middle of the book of Judges. Find a way around this. You know what I meant, Lord, here’s my best heifer.

Hank Smith: 00:39:48 You know what I meant? And it wasn’t that.

Dr. Dana Pike: 00:39:50 Give it freely instead of my daughter. It’s thought provoking, but it’s worth considering the significance of the vows we make. And when we make a promise, are we that committed to doing what we have promised and following through, especially if we’re talking promises or vows that we’ve made to the Lord.

Hank Smith: 00:40:10 Absolutely. Yeah, it’s a story I’ve never even heard.

John Bytheway: 00:40:16 Hank, I’ve heard you joke about you don’t like cats, your wife loves cats. So you compromised and now you have two cats, right?

Hank Smith: 00:40:23 Yeah.

John Bytheway: 00:40:24 Maybe that’s what he meant. Whatever comes forth out of the doors of my house to meet me, let it be whiskers. Let it be whiskers, right?

Hank Smith: 00:40:32 Yeah. Please, please say. Does Jephthah, does he just fundamentally misunderstand the Lord’s character? He would say, “The Lord wouldn’t want me to do this, I know him.”

Dr. Dana Pike: 00:40:48 I think it’s an analogous situation in Genesis 19. And when we get later to Judges 19 and 20 or hospitality, which is a great principle in their world. Premier principle, that if somebody’s out on the street and needs a place to stay, you bring them into your house, you feed them, you put them up overnight, whatever. But in Genesis 19, and at the end of Judges, hospitality goes amuck. Just goes crazy where they’re willing to do anything to support the principle of hospitality, even when it’s the abuse of women. I see this as kind of the same, an example of kind of the same thing where, yeah, vowing a vow. You never break your vow. You keep it no matter what, but in this case, there had to be another way around this. Don’t follow through and commit what I consider to have been a greater sin by killing his daughter. Yeah.

Hank Smith: 00:41:38 Strength becomes a weakness when you take it too far. Let’s get to Samson.

Dr. Dana Pike: 00:41:45 13 through 16 is about Samson. And interestingly, chapter 13, really isn’t much about Samson at all. It’s about his parents and the divine interaction that relates to promises about his birth. It’s worth reading that carefully. Again, we’re talking in this case about Danites, but if we look at chapter 13, verse one, children of the Lord did evil, we’re back to the cycle. Here’s the formula. Again, in the sight of the Lord and the Lord delivered them into the hand of the Philistines 40 years. So the Philistines are non-semitic people living in the Southeast coast of the Mediterranean sea. They’ve been in the area probably only about 100 years or less by this time. Nonetheless, they’re moving from the coast up into the valleys.

Dr. Dana Pike: 00:42:29 The Israelites are trying to move into the valleys down towards the coast, because the land’s so nice. And the Philistines are bothering the Danites who get this little segment of territory off to the side of Judah, an angel of the Lord, verse three. And again, it’s the Hebrews messenger. You have to wait and find out is he a divine messenger or a human messenger, but comes and finds this woman who turns out to be the mother of Samson and said, “You’re barren, but you’re going to bear. You shall conceive and bear a son.” Verse four. Now, here’s the catch, “Beware, don’t you drink any wine or strong drink or eat anything unclean.” This is unclean according to the mosaic law, right. What’s ritually accepted, or not ritually accepted in law.

Dr. Dana Pike: 00:43:12 Verse five. You will conceive. No razor shall come upon his head for the child shall be a Nazarite from birth or from the womb. And he will begin, and here’s the qualifier, right, he will begin to deliver Israel from the hand of the Philistines. Now, Samson doesn’t succeed in accomplishing that, Saul doesn’t succeed in accomplishing that. This is an ongoing process, but he’s going to be part of that. And so she tells her husband, “Hey, I had this experience. This man of God, this messenger of God came and kind of looked angelic, divine. And he gave me this promise that we’re going to have a baby. And he’s supposed to be a Nazarite from the womb. When he comes out he’s considered a Nazarite.” So we could stop and say, what’s a Nazarite? You may recall back in Numbers six.

Hank Smith: 00:43:59 We talked about this just a little bit, but I would love for you just to, it was a way for non-Levites to commit themselves to the Lord. Is that right?

Dr. Dana Pike: 00:44:08 Yeah. In Numbers six, we’ve got as part of the Mosaic instructions, the Lord says, “If people want to put themselves in an extra sacred relationship with me for a certain time,” and it’s depicted there as relatively temporary. Latter-day Saints like to use the analogy of full-time missions. I’m going to commit myself full- with the Lord for a couple of years. And when I’m done, then I go back to regular life. There’s sacrificial offerings that are supposed to conclude the Nazarite vow. When you step out of that extra dedicated or set apart status of devotion to the Lord, it doesn’t mean you’re more or less devoted, but you’re putting yourself in a certain status and you agree not to do certain things, right. So the three things that are mentioned in Numbers six are you won’t cut your hair. You won’t drink wine or strong drink or eat any of the grape vine products. And you won’t touch dead people, which would render you ritually unclean. Those are the three that are mentioned. Here, we’ve got an unusual situation where Samson’s mother is told that Samson was a baby and through his whole life, whether he wants to or not is going to be a Nazarite and expected to be living by these restrictions. And in the accounts that follow it’s only the hair that really is the restriction that has the most importance attached to it. He touches the dead lion. He drinks wine, nothing seems to happen, but in his case, it’s the hair that’s the secret of his strength. That’s that connection to the Nazarite vow. Verse 24, the woman has a son. They call his name Samson. The spirit of the Lord began to move upon him. And we’re already from Samson baby to Samson, adult.

Dr. Dana Pike: 00:45:51 And chapter 14, he’s gone down to Timnah and sees one of the Philistine women and says, “Yeah, I want to marry her.” And true to his culture, he goes back to his parents and says, “Arrange this marriage for me. I don’t know much about her, but she’s good looking. And she’s a Philistine. So what, I should be marrying an Israelite in my culture that would be expected.” His parents say to him, “Aren’t there nice Israelite girls among the Danites that you could marry?” “No, I want her.” And so they make the arrangement and the story goes on, but this is his wife. He goes off. This is the story of the wedding feast that lasts for a week. And he tells a riddle and says, “If you can’t guess my riddle you’ll give me 30 outfits. And if you guess my riddle, I’ll give you 30 outfits of clothing.”

Dr. Dana Pike: 00:46:40 And the Philistines are saying, “Yeah, we don’t want to be in debt to this guy, but we can’t figure out the riddle he’s given.” Kills a lion and he goes back and sees it later. And the Carcass of the lion is this beehive, a swarm of bees and the honey. And it’s sweet. And that becomes the basis for this riddle that he tells at the feast beginning in chapter 14 verses 10 and following. And they can’t figure it out. So they press on his Philistine wife to get Samson to tell her the answer to the riddle so that she can tell them so that he’ll lose the wager instead of them losing the wager. And on the seventh day, it’s announced that they figured it out what, this is the end of verse 18, what is sweeter than honey and what is stronger than a lion. He’s upset.

Dr. Dana Pike: 00:47:24 For the Lord, again, it’s attributed to divine action. The spirit of the Lord comes upon him and he goes down to Ashkelon, one of the major Philistine cities kills 30 people takes their outfits and brings them back and said, “Here, paying the wager.” Well, of course they’re upset. They’re upset because 30 Philistines have died in the process. He leaves there and goes back to his home for a while. His father-in-law gives his wife to a Philistine guy. He comes back later and finds out. He’s upset. This is all high drama here. And you’re supposed to be thinking what’s with this guy? How did he get to be a judge and have the spirit of the Lord come upon him? Or in chapter 15 and he catches 300 foxes and took, it says fire brands. It’s torches, right. So he ties two foxes together, their tails together with a torch in the middle.

Dr. Dana Pike: 00:48:11 So you got 150 pair of foxes running around with torches, through all of the fields. And they burn the corn. As it says in verse five. I hope by now, after Joseph in Egypt, everybody knows corn in King James means grain. It’s not corn on the cob like we think of it. So wheat and barley were the two most common grains in the ancient, near Eastern world, in the biblical world. And so it burns down there’s stuff. And by the way, it burns some of the olive trees in the vineyard. So now the Philistines are upset because of what Samson’s done. He was upset because of how he was treated, right. This is just this round and round. So he goes to a place and this is worth commenting just briefly in, over in Judah. And verse nine, the Philistines went up and pitched in Judah and spread themselves in Lehi.

Dr. Dana Pike: 00:48:55 The Hebrew word is Lehi. It means Jawbone. It’s the name of the place. And we find out why it’s called that as we go along. But the men of Judah say to Samson, “Listen, we don’t want the Philistines beating up on us because of you. So we’re going to tie you up and turn you over to them. We won’t hurt you, but we’ll give you to them.” And that’s what he agrees to. Verse fourteen’s, he’s come to Lehi. The Philistines shouted against him. The spirit of the Lord came mightily upon him. He broke the flax bands with which he was bound. Verse 15, and he found a new jawbone, of an axe. He found a Lehi of an ass, a donkey, and put forth his hand and took it and slew a thousand of the Philistines with it. And Samson said with a jawbone of an axe, heaps upon heaps, probably heaps of bodies, right.

Dr. Dana Pike: 00:49:41 With a jawbone of an ax, have I slain a thousand men? It’s like, well, all in the day’s labor, right. A thousand guys have lost their lives here. And I want to pause here. I always do this with students. I was coming out of a family therapist office one time and I happened to see this on the wall. And again, it’s not a funny context, but it’s a clever use of this scripture. So this is what the sign said on the wall in this therapist’s office, “Samson slew 1000 Philistines with a jaw bone of an ax.” Judges 15. Every day, thousands of relationships are destroyed with the same weapon, with a jaw bone of a donkey in a relationship. Right. So, okay.

Hank Smith: 00:50:21 Keep your jaw closed, John. I’m glad I didn’t use that as your adjective today.

Dr. Dana Pike: 00:50:28 The chapter 15 ends with, he’s thirsty. He says to the Lord, “Don’t let me die of thirst. I’ve been trying to defeat the Philistines.” So God creates a spot in the valley there, and water comes out and he names it the spring of calling out. Right. The one who calls out for God’s help. So this is about the only time where Samson actually, as its depicted. We always have to say that, where he calls on God for help. The rest of the time, this is just Samson doing his own macho thing. And again, this picture is much different from some of the other judges, right. 

Dr. Dana Pike: 00:51:03 He doesn’t call other tribes for help. He doesn’t call anybody for help. He’s just doing his own thing, not all that successfully in the long run. And then the rest of the 16, then, is about Delilah. It never actually says that she marries him or that he marries her. It never actually says, is she a Philistine? But we assume she’s a Philistine, and he loves her. And this is the first time and the only time, this is Chapter 16, Verse 4, came to pass after all these escapades, that he loved a woman in the Valley of Sorek, whose name was Delilah. And it’s really the only time we hear about Samson loving somebody, other than himself.

Dr. Dana Pike: 00:51:39 The Philistine leaders say, “We’re going to do this scenario again, like with his wife at the first. Find out from him how he’s so strong and what we can do to defeat him.” And so three times, “We’ll give you a lot of money if you help us out.”

Dr. Dana Pike: 00:51:52 And so three times she asks, and he makes up something and says, “Samson, the Philistines are on you.” And he hops up and breaks the bands. She keeps pressing on him. After the third time, finally we’re in Chapter 16, Verses 15. “How can you say I love you when your heart isn’t with me? You’ve mocked me. You’ve lied to me these three times.” Verse 16, it came to pass when she pressed him daily with her words for who knows how long and urged him. His soul was vexed unto death.

Dr. Dana Pike: 00:52:21 He just said, “What’s the point of living? This is just more than I can take.” So he tells her, Verse 17, all his heart explains the Nazarite vow, can’t cut my hair. If I do my strength is gone. She realizes that he has told her all her heart.

Dr. Dana Pike: 00:52:37 So she rings up the Philistines, as if she had a phone, and said, “He’s told me all his heart. I know this time this is the truth.” And so they come, and she helps, and they cut his hair off that night. And he jumps up, and he’s got no strength, and the Philistines gouge out his eyes and take him down to Gaza, where he had ripped the gates out and taken them away. And he’s put in the prison house, helping to push a grinding stone around to grind the grain. His hair starts to come back, and after a while they’re having a big party at the Temple Dagon, a grain god. And hey, what happened to that guy named Samson? Let’s bring him in, and let’s make fun of him. Let’s mock him. Let’s see if he’s as strong as he used to be. And so they tie him up to the two central pillars that are holding the upstairs up, and you know the story.

Dr. Dana Pike: 00:53:25 This is Chapter 16, Verse 28. Samson calls out, “Lord God.” Here we have him calling to the lord again. “Remember I pray just this one more time. Give me strength to avenge myself against the Philistines, who’ve gouged out my eyes.” He’s tied up. He exerts his strength. Verse 30, and he pulls down the pillars. All the people fall down from upstairs and onto the people that are downstairs. And the dead, which he slew at his death, were more than those that he slew in his lifetime. So he kills, what, 2 or 3,000 people here at the end. And that’s the end of the Samson story.

Dr. Dana Pike: 00:54:01 And so we can ask the same questions. What lessons could you possibly learn out of that, Doctrine & Covenants Section 3, Verses 3 and 4. “Remember, remember that is not the work of God that is frustrated but the work of men”, people. “For when a person may have many revelations, powers to do mighty works, yet if they boast in their own strength and set at not the councils of God and follow after the dictates of their own will and carnal desires, they must fall and incur the vengeance of a just god upon themselves.” For me that connects with Samson. Samson is a tragic figure. We’re going to have lots of tragic figures in the Bible, but here’s one. Blessed from birth with strength and opportunity, promises, a calling. And at least, again, the way he’s depicted in Judges, the carnal, the worldly, the … I do my own thing. I don’t care so much about other people, especially about women, even about Israelites. Definitely I don’t care about Philistines, right? Just kill a few here, kill 1,000 there, whatever. Or it’s a portrayal of a sad, tragic person, follows after his own will and carnal desires, must fall. And he fell literally under the load of the second floor of the temple.

Hank Smith: 00:55:12 Yeah, I was going to say marry well. To go back to Chapter 14, when his parents said, “Maybe you could marry in the covenant. How about that?”

Dr. Dana Pike: 00:55:19 We’ve seen this, but many of the lessons in the Book of Judges and elsewhere are negative examples. Hopefully we’re learning from negative examples that have been provided for us.

Hank Smith: 00:55:29 I think the manual talks about strength comes from your covenants. Samson lost both his physical strength and his spiritual strength, because he violated his covenants.

John Bytheway: 00:55:39 I like what you brought in, though, about section three, because that’s the loss of the 116 page manuscript. And it was a mistake, and it was wrong, and the Lord taught a lesson there. Here we’re looking at this. All right, what can we be taught here? That’s a great footnote. I’m going to put that at the end of this story. Otherwise you’re kind of like okay, nice story. What do I do with that?

Dr. Dana Pike: 00:56:01 It doesn’t say, and thus we see, right? We’re supposed to be able to extract the moral to the story, but it takes a little time to think about it. And different people, depending on what they bring to this story, are going to see different things, resonate with different things. But there are some life lessons to be learned.

Hank Smith: 00:56:19 Judges finishes with saying a couple of times, “In those days there was no king. Every man did that which was right in his own eye.” That just sounds like Samson. Do what’s right in your own eyes. Samson, that’s kind of his motto in life, I’ll do what I think is right.

Dr. Dana Pike: 00:56:34 Yes, yes. Tragically, you see the outcome of that kind of approach to life, where covenant community doesn’t seem to be valued, where personal commitments to covenants does not seem to be valued. I mean you could argue, did he want to be a Nazarite? Did his parents raise him saying, “Hey, God says you’re going to be a Nazarite?”

Dr. Dana Pike: 00:56:53 Sometimes people grow up in Latter-day Saint homes and say, “This isn’t for me. I’m going to choose a different way.” And they may not be so wild and crazy as Samson turns out to be, but people choose different paths. On the one hand, it’s easy to knock Samson. On the other hand, I’m going to try to have a little respect for a person who chooses to go another direction for whatever reason they choose. I’m glad that we believe in a spirit world, and I hope he has had plenty of time to reflect and repent and to come around, according to as we understand things. Fortunately that’s not the end of life.

Hank Smith: 00:57:32 There’s very little humility. If you maybe put Samson next to Gideon, Gideon, who needs reassurance, Samson seems to need zero reassurance. Yeah, he runs his own show. So there’s an important lesson there.

Dr. Dana Pike: 00:57:47 As we mentioned, that’s the end of the Judges stories in the Book of Judges.

Hank Smith: 00:57:51 And then you said there was an appendix, right?

Dr. Dana Pike: 00:57:53 Chapter 7, yeah. That’s what it typically gets called. Chapter 17 and 18 narrate a story, and then 19, 20, 21 narrate another story, and that’s the end. But very much in this case religious perversion, we would say. So you can read about all of that, and along the way multiple times, as you’ve already noted and including the very last verse of the Book of Judges, 21, Verse 25. In those days there was no king in Israel. Everybody did what was right in their own eyes. There’s no human king, and that’s the setup for the monarchy that’s coming in 1 Samuel. But there’s also not a whole lot of allegiance to the heavenly king, Jehovah, either.

Dr. Dana Pike: 00:58:35 And so you’ve got these despicable accounts, I mean just terrible accounts of people doing terrible things to other people, are designed, I think, as we’ve said before, we need a human institution to help with our challenges but also designed to show us that, if we leave Yahweh, Jehovah, our heavenly king, look what becomes to us?

Hank Smith: 00:58:57 Things spiral.

Dr. Dana Pike: 00:58:57 And there are some scripture passages and teachings that say, It’s one thing if you just don’t live well. But if you make covenants to live well, and then you turn against the lord and violate your covenants, one, you, your life is often worse. And two, your judgment is more severe, because you’re violating the promises, divine promises that you’ve made to a divine being. So bad things have happened, and again, this illustrates over and over that Deuteronomistic principal that’s also in the Book of Mormon. If you keep the commandments of the lord, you’re obedient, you’re faithful, you’ll prosper in the land, and God will help you. And if you don’t, he won’t. And I know that’s really black and white and can be fudged all kinds of ways, but there is an underlying principle there that really has something to teach us. And it shows up again and again in the scriptures.

Hank Smith: 00:59:49 I’ve heard it called the doctrine of retribution. It shows up in the Book of Mormon a lot. I was thinking, as we’ve been looking at these chapters, about the idea of the god of the Old Testament seeming harsh. And I’m going, well the people seem pretty harsh too. So he was dealing with them in the same measure of harshness they were dealing with each other, perhaps.

Dr. Dana Pike: 01:00:10 It is a hard book. And again, as I said, most of the lessons we learn are from negative examples, some positive. In talking about divine justice or divine retribution, what have you, could I read this quote? I found this when I was doing an article on Micah. It just expressed nicely. It’s by a fellow named Daniel Simonson writing a commentary on the Book of Micah.

Dr. Dana Pike: 01:00:31 Consider prophecies in Micah about bad things happening in the future, and I just like the way he expressed this. I’m sure you probably have thought about this, but this is his statement. “A god who is never angry would be a god who has no compassion and no empathy for those who suffer at the hands of others. God’s anger is the other side of God’s love and concern. To be in a relationship with a god who truly cares about people and what they do means running the risk that god may sometimes be angry. The good news is that the anger is never the last word.” And when I read that, I really stopped and thought.

Dr. Dana Pike: 01:01:11 I said, “Yeah, I mean I get angry at other people for doing bad things to my kids or my grandkids or whatever.”

Dr. Dana Pike: 01:01:16 And he doesn’t use the word, covenant, but he says, “to be in a relationship with a god who cares about people.” We can easily say to be in a covenant relationship with God involving sacred promises, understand that when I other people break those sacred promises, there’re going to be consequences. It would be nice to say God never gets upset. He never gets angry, whatever. But the way at least scripture and prophets depict God, we have plenty of examples where this is the case, that God’s justice is going to come into play, or the principal of justice comes into play. And even in the Book of Mormon, in Alma we’re taught that mercy can’t rob justice. Now Jesus provides a way to meet the demands of justice, but everyone does not take advantage of that opportunity. So again, a god who’s never angry would be a god who doesn’t have compassion or empathy for those who suffer at the hands of others. And the Old Testament has plenty of examples of stories of people who suffer at the hands of others.

Hank Smith: 01:02:15 Before we let you go, let me ask you a question. Here you are. You’re a Bible scholar, one of the best I know and a believing Latter-day Saint. How have those two worlds come together for you? I think our listeners are interested in … Here is someone highly educated, well studied. I think our listeners would be just a little bit interested in that story. I know you come from New England, convert to the church.

Dr. Dana Pike: 01:02:40 I was 12 when my family joined the church. So I studied the Hebrew Bible, ancient Jerusalem studies in school. I learned lots of tools, theories, approaches, how to deal with this, how to think about that, that would be part of anybody’s Biblical studies program. Some people come out of that thinking wow, I never heard of this before. I guess it’s true, and I was believing the wrong thing, so I’m out of here. Some people come through and say, and hopefully this is me, “I see some valuable tools here. I don’t have to take the whole perspective.” I had professors who were agnostic. I had professors who were atheists. I had professors who were believing Jews. My main professor, Jeff Tige, would put on his yarmulke every time we opened the scriptures and read, because that was in his faith tradition, a sign of respect for the holy word of God as he had it and accepted it. What’s helpful, what’s important to me, I mean thinking about redactors, thinking about other kinds of things. I didn’t grow up thinking about that.

Dr. Dana Pike: 01:03:43 I learned about those kinds of things, perspectives that people have and putting the text together, or the text isn’t perfect. It’s got corruptions in it as it’s been transmitted. I mean there’s a whole host of different things to think about in relation to studying any scripture text, even modern, almost 200-year-old scripture texts like the Doctrine and Covenants. There’re questions we should be asking ourselves. I guess in my personal experience, my faith is what is the most important thing. My wife and I have said this to each other. Our relationship with the Lord is the most important thing in our life. You’re next as my spouse, and then everything else proceeds out from there, the kids, the grandkids, occupation, ward callings, what have you. But first and foremost, it’s the Lord and me in that covenant relationship that I’ve mentioned now, it feels like 100 times in this broadcast. And everything grows from that. Listen, I know people who went to graduate school and lost their faith. For me, academics, the academic approach has a lot of value. But it’s not an either or. Doctrine and Covenants is full of this.

Dr. Dana Pike: 01:04:48 Take from the best books and study history and geography and learn languages and all these things, learn even by study and by faith. The Doctrine and Covenants is full of divine injunctions to see what’s in the world and to have the Holy Spirit as your guide to choose what’s good and helpful and productive, beneficial and to separate between what’s good and what’s not and to choose the good and to reject the rest. I’ve tried to have that as my course in life and am grateful to the blessings that have come to me because of that.

Hank Smith: 01:05:22 You have certainly inspired me for many years, and I’m sure have inspired many today with your depth of knowledge and your faithfulness. Both of them are incredibly impressive.

Hank Smith: 01:05:35 Well, we loved it. We are so grateful that we’ve got to spend time with Dr. Dana Pike today. Wow. What a great day. We want to thank our executive producers, Steve and Shannon Sorensen. We love you. And our sponsors, David and Verla Sorensen. And we hope all of you please join us next week on another episode of followHIM.