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by Katie Erickson

“The angel of the Lord went up from Gilgal to Bokim and said, ‘I brought you up out of Egypt and led you into the land I swore to give to your ancestors. I said, “I will never break my covenant with you, and you shall not make a covenant with the people of this land, but you shall break down their altars.” Yet you have disobeyed me. Why have you done this? And I have also said, “I will not drive them out before you; they will become traps for you, and their gods will become snares to you.”’ When the angel of the Lord had spoken these things to all the Israelites, the people wept aloud, and they called that place Bokim. There they offered sacrifices to the Lord.” (Judges 2:1-5)

As we begin to dig into the book of Judges, I encourage you to take a look at my post from last week to familiarize yourself with some of the context of the book, and why it’s important that we study the book of Judges today.

Right before today’s passage from Judges 2, we see that Israel had just experienced some great defeats (Judges 1:27-36). Here, the angel of the Lord is giving them the reason for those defeats: they disobeyed God. As it says in verse 2b, “Yet you have disobeyed me. Why have you done this?” God had delivered them from Egypt into the promised land of Canaan. God had made a covenant with the people that He will never break. Sounds like God did a lot of awesome stuff for them, right? So you’d think they would be very grateful and thankful, right? Nope - instead, they disobeyed God’s commands.

Because of their disobedience, they must receive a consequence. That consequence is that God will not help Israel drive out their enemies, and he will allow their enemies to trap them (verse 3). Any time that we disobey God, we too deserve to receive a negative consequence, according to God’s natural law. Israel will reap what they sow, and so will we. We may not always see that consequence right away, but we will likely get one, unless God decides to show us His grace in that experience.

Are we happy when we get punished for doing something wrong? Not usually, and the people of Israel were no exception. In verses 4-5 we see that the people wept over this. They wept so much that they called that place Bokim, which literally means “weeping” in Hebrew. Their weeping doesn’t necessarily mean that they were sorry for disobeying God, just that they did not like the negative consequence that was happening to them.

Negative consequences are one way that God encourages us to repent from our disobedience to Him. Repenting is not just feeling sorry for what you’ve done, but it’s like turning around and walking the other direction, where you don’t commit that sin anymore. If nothing bad ever happens when we sin, then we’d just keep on sinning, right? That’s why God has to give consequences for our actions, and allow us to reap what we sow. We as humans need to learn to obey God rather than to obey our sinful selves and disobey God. That is what the book of Judges is all about, and I think all of us today can definitely learn something from it.

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