Judges 10:6 - Meaning and Application

While Tola and Jair were leading Israel, things went well. But after that, Israel fell back into idolatry, the sin that most easily trapped them (Judges 10:6). They did evil again in the Lord’s sight. They kept turning away from God, like a foolish and senseless people.

They worshiped many gods. They did not only return to Baalim and Ashtaroth, the idols the Canaanites had served, but also took up the gods of Syria, Sidon, Moab, Ammon, and the Philistines. It is as if Israel’s main trade was importing idols from every nation. This was both sinful and shameful, because no nation with any self-respect changes its gods so lightly.

A great deal of Israel’s wealth likely went into offerings for these foreign shrines. Their temples in Israel would have been expected to depend on the mother temples in those other lands. Priests and worshipers of these false gods would also have come into Israel and settled there, so strangers would drain Israel’s strength. If Israel did this to please nearby nations and win their favor, they were disappointed. Those same nations, by God’s just judgment, became their enemies and oppressors. People are often punished in the same area where they sin.

Even worse, Israel did not simply add these false gods alongside the Lord. They turned away from the Lord and served him not at all. Anyone who tries to serve both God and wealth will soon leave God altogether and serve wealth alone. If God does not have the whole heart, he will soon have none of it.

Then God sent judgment again by putting them under cruel enemies. If they had fallen directly into the Lord’s hands, they would have found that his mercy is great. Instead, he let them fall into human hands, and human mercy is often harsh. He sold them to the Philistines, who lived southwest of Canaan, and to the Ammonites, who lived northeast, both at the same time. So Israel was crushed between two grinding stones (Judges 10:8).

God had once commanded that if any city in Israel turned to idolatry, the rest of Israel should fight against it and destroy it (Deuteronomy 13:12 and following). They had once been very zealous about this, almost to an extreme, when they dealt with the altar set up by the two and a half tribes (Joshua 22). But now they had become so corrupt that one city infected the next with idolatry. Instead of punishing evil, they copied it and made it worse. So because those who should have carried out justice were themselves guilty, God brought the surrounding nations against them to punish their turning away from him.

The oppression by the Ammonites, the descendants of Lot, lasted a long time, eighteen years. Some think these years were part of Jair’s rule, since he could not fully reform and deliver Israel as he should have. Others think the oppression began after Jair died, which seems more likely. The part of Israel most affected by the Ammonites was Gilead, Jair’s own country, and it is hard to think that land would have suffered so badly while he was alive, at least if he had been fully protecting it.

The oppression was also very severe. The Ammonites vexed and crushed Israel. It was especially humiliating to be oppressed by such a weak and contemptible people. At first they attacked the tribes east of the Jordan, here called the land of the Amorites (Judges 10:8), either because Israel had become so like the heathen that they were, in a sense, like Amorites, or because by their sin they had lost their claim to the land and it could once again be called the land of the Amorites. Then, little by little, the Ammonites crossed the Jordan and attacked Judah, Benjamin, and Ephraim (Judges 10:9), three of Israel’s most important tribes.

This was the fulfillment of the warning that they would be defeated before their enemies and would not be able to stand against them (Leviticus 26:17, Leviticus 26:37). Their own actions brought this on them. They had turned aside from God, and so they came to be deeply distressed.