The first 2 chapters of Samson’s story are kind of fun and exciting. These last 2 chapters about his life are just hard to digest. The time between Judges 14:20 and Judges 15:1 is at least a few months and some believe it was up to a whole year. His wedding feast occurred during the barley harvest which is in the early spring around March/April and coincided with Passover. He returned for his bride at the wheat harvest which is mid-May to mid-June.

This week, we begin heading into perhaps the most colorful judge of all, Samson. In fact, his story covers Judges 13–16. Yep, he’s a doozy alright! He is also the last judge in the book of Judges. One of the pastors I listen to said “he was a he-man with a she-weakness”, and that he was! This section of the book of Judges also leads us into the last sin cycle in the book but certainly not the last sin cycle in Israel’s history.

This week’s lesson is a hard one. Our minds do not want to go to the places that this week’s lesson will end up taking us and yet, it is in the Bible and is therefore beneficial for our instruction.

We will continue our lesson about Gideon for one more week and one more chapter. If you recall from last week, Gideon and his army of 300 engaged in psychological warfare by attacking the Midianites in the middle of the night and confusing them to the point of causing them to kill one another. When we finished last week, 120,000 of the 135,000 Midianite army was dead, so there’s still 15,000 men left who are alive.

In our last lesson, we learned that Israel had 40 more years of peace in their land following the defeat of Sisera. Now enters the next generation. Then Israel did what they always did, they fell back into apostasy. So the Lord brought up against His own people, the Midianites, the Amalekites, and others from the east to besiege them. God loved them enough to discipline them.

Judges 4 introduces us to one of my favorite characters in all of Scripture, Deborah. While this book is disturbing, it is also exciting in many places. The 2 chapters we will be studying this week are exciting. It’s hard to see a nation that was once united under the God of the Bible, fall repeatedly into sin and repeatedly into splintering their allegiance.

In last week’s lesson, we left off at Judges 1:19. Remember that in the first 2 chapters of Judges, we are simply reviewing the book of Joshua. Upon their arrival in the Promised Land (under the leadership of Joshua), the tribe of Judah was successful in capturing Gaza, Ashkelon, and Ekron, but they could not drive out the inhabitants of the valley because the enemy had chariots. Hummm, is it that they could not or they would not? I tend to think the latter.

Let’s talk about separation of Church and State. President Thomas Jefferson was the one who coined this term to the Danbury Baptist Convention in 1802. The Baptists in Danbury, Connecticut felt that their rights of religious freedom were being threatened.