God had commanded Moses and then Joshua to be strong and courageous and not to be afraid of the enemy occupying the land that was their promised inheritance. God had promised to be with them through the conflict and to give them success if they followed in His ways. When Judah’s clan was chosen as the lead army after Joshua’s death, we see some initial success. Judges 1:4 tells us, “Then Judah went up, and the Lord gave the Canaanites and the Perizzites into their hand, and they defeated 10,000 of them at Bezek.” Haddon Robinson once introduced one of his sermons by saying, “Normal people do not lose sleep over the Jebusites, the Canaanites, or the Perizzites, or even about what Abraham, Moses, or Paul has said or done. They lie awake wondering about grocery prices, crop failures, quarrels with a spouse, diagnosis of a malignancy, a frustrating sex life, or the rat race where only rats seem to win. If the sermon does not make much difference in that world, they wonder if it makes any difference at all.”
The applicable part of this verse that speaks to me is “the Lord gave them” into their hands. Judah did what God called him to do in faith. It resulted in God giving them success. They didn’t take the victory. God gave it to them. In the same way, we will see over and over again in the book of Judges that the various tribes didn’t lose the victory over their enemies. God gave them into the hands of their enemies. Over and over again in the book of Judges, we will read about the Israelites abandoning God to worship, in many different ways, the gods of the various different brands of Canaanites. This would end up reversing the phrase. In Judges 6:1, the phrase shows up, not giving their enemies into their hands, but giving them into the hands of the enemy. It says, “Israelites did evil in the sight of the Lord, and the Lord gave them into the hand of Midian for seven years.” The gods of Canaan promised something that they could never deliver, but their appeal was unmistakable. The values, morals, and practices of the pagans were so severe that Israel would throw away their faith in the God that saved them to worship or value the gods of the peoples of the land.
In keeping with Haddon Robinson’s plea, let me end with Wilcock’s words, “The gods have not changed, for human nature has not changed, and these are the gods that humanity regularly re-creates for itself. What does it want? If it is modest, security and comfort and reasonable enjoyment; if ambitious, power and wealth and unbridled self-indulgence. In every age, there are forces at work that promise to meet our desires—political programs, economic theories, philosophical movements, entertainment industries—all having one feature in common: they are big enough to do things for us that we cannot do for ourselves, yet at the same time amenable to our manipulating them so as to get from them what we want.”[1]
[1] Wilcock, Michael. 1992. The Message of Judges: Grace Abounding. Edited by J. A. Motyer and Derek Tidball. The Bible Speaks Today. England: Inter-Varsity Press.