Judges 3-5, 6-8, 13-16: Come Follow Me with Sam

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The (first) Reign of Judges

The time of judges was a strange disruption of government to the patterns of the time. While this isn't a western type democracy as we see it today by any means, it  seems much more egalitarian than the other forms of government at the general inhabitants disposal of the time.

This is also a very unique time in Israel's history. I already talked about how assuming that the ante-diluvian and the Israelites under Moses following the same type of church structure misses the mark. We can do the same thing when we think about periods of the nation of Israel. First was the period in the desert, then there was the reign of judges, then there was the reign of kings, then the split kingdoms, then the diaspora, the regathering, occupation under the Greeks and roman, and finally the Christian era. 

The way that the Israelites operated under the Reign of Judges seems to be resilient against general apostasy (somewhat more decentralized) but not especially good at keeping near-term apostasy away. Under the kings, it seems it all hinged on the righteousness or wickedness of one man and as it turned out, there was no real shining example of a 10/10 king. Then after the regathering, the righteousness of the people seemed generally distilled down to the law (all of the laws, scriptural or otherwise ) and the administration (pharisees, etc.)

One thing I am curious about is how the law of Moses differed during this time compared with the time of the pharisees. Theoretically this period would follow the law of Moses in a much more unadulterated format since it was closer to the issuing. 

Another thing to think about is that the people seemed overly dependent on their leaders and judges , and this caused them to sin to look for a king eventually. If the people could have overcome their desire to be led by and earthly ruler, how would the history be different?

In a sense, Mosiah was able to restore the reign of judges in the break off branch in the book of Mormon. Once again, the system was probably different (or Mosiah would have just made the argument: this worked well before, lets try the exact same thing again!) but I think we can get some ideas of how the reign of judges worked, and how it would have worked if it had continued (despite geographic, cultural and geopolitical differences).

What this all comes down to is that as you read, try to understand God had taken the Israelites out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery, and hand made them free, then refined them to the point that they were ready to take possession of the land. Now they were given liberty by God and were struggling to know how to keep it. Think about what you can learn about this as you read through the book of Judges.