Week 16 – 1/11/26 – The Period of the Judges

In this week’s lesson we discuss the period of the Israelites history before they had a king and were ruled by judges. We talked about what the author’s intent is in how he writes this book, and how we often have a view of the Judges that comes from what we learned in Sunday School, and maybe not what the text actually says. Many of these Judges were not godly people, had serious character flaws, and even though God was using them to accomplish His purposes, they didn’t completely understand who God was or what He wanted for His people. The Israelites kept turning to the other nations gods and were influenced by the culture around them.

In the resources below, I’ve posted a short overview of the book of Judges by the Bible Project, and then there are a series of videos in which Disciple Dojo goes through and reads the Baal Cycle, and not only does he explain the story and what these Canaanites believed about Baal, but also how the Bible interacts with, plays off of, and repurposes a good deal of that story. The Israelites were caught up in Baal worship and the Bible tells its readers in many places exactly why that’s wrong. Enjoy.