Judges 2:2-12

2 You must not make any covenant with the people who live in this land. You must tear down their altars.' But you have not done what I told you. You have done just the opposite! ¹

3 So I tell you now that I will not drive these people out as you advance. They will be your enemies, and you will be trapped by the worship of their gods."

4 When the angel had said this, all the people of Israel began to cry,

5 and that is why the place is called Bochim. There they offered sacrifices to the Lord.

6 Joshua sent the people of Israel on their way, and each man went to take possession of his own share of the land.

7 As long as Joshua lived, the people of Israel served the Lord, and even after his death they continued to do so as long as the leaders were alive who had seen for themselves all the great things that the Lord had done for Israel.

8 The Lord's servant Joshua son of Nun died at the age of a hundred and ten.

9 He was buried in his own part of the land at Timnath Serah in the hill country of Ephraim north of Mount Gaash. ²

10 That whole generation also died, and the next generation forgot the Lord and what he had done for Israel.

11 Then the people of Israel sinned against the Lord and began to serve the Baals.

12 They stopped worshiping the Lord, the God of their ancestors, the God who had brought them out of Egypt, and they began to worship other gods, the gods of the peoples around them. They bowed down to them and made the Lord angry.

Judges 2:2-12 Meaning and Commentary

INTRODUCTION TO JUDGES 2

This chapter gives an account of an angel of the Lord appearing and rebuking the children of Israel for their present misconduct, Jud 2:1-5; of their good behaviour under Joshua, and the elders that outlived him, Jud 2:6-10; and of their idolatries they fell into afterwards, which greatly provoked the Lord to anger, Jud 2:11-15; and of the goodness of God to them nevertheless, in raising up judges to deliver them out of the hands of their enemies, of which there are many instances in the following chapter, Jud 2:16-18; and yet that how, upon the demise of such persons, they relapsed into idolatry which caused the anger of God to be hot against them, and to determine not to drive out the Canaanites utterly from them, but to leave them among them to try them, Jud 2:19-23.

Cross References

• 1. 2.2Exodus 34.12, 13;Deuteronomy 7.2-5.
• 2. 2.9Joshua 19.49, 50.

Footnotes

• [a]. [Some ancient translations] enemies; [Hebrew] sides.
• [b]. bochim: [This name in Hebrew means "those who cry."]