This, truly, is a gloomy and humiliating record. Joshua's sword was sheathed. Those bright days in the which he had led Israel's compact host to splendid victories over the kings of Canaan, were passed and gone. The moral influence of Joshua and of the elders that survived him had passed away, and the whole nation had rushed, with terrible avidity, into the gross moral evils and abominable idolatries of those nations whom they ought to have driven out from before them. In a word, the ruin was complete, so far as Israel was concerned. Like Adam, in the garden; and Noah, in the restored earth; so Israel, in the land of Canaan, utterly failed. Adam ate the forbidden fruit; Noah got drunk; and Israel bowed before the altars of Baal.
Thus much as to man. But, thank God, there is another side of the picture. There is what we may call a bright and beauteous "_Nevertheless_;" for God will be God, no matter what man may prove himself to be. This is an unspeakable relief and consolation to the heart. God abideth faithful. Here is faith's stronghold, come what may. God is always to be counted upon, spite of all man's failure and shortcoming. His goodness and faithfulness form the resource and the refuge of the soul amid the darkest scenes of human history.
This soul-sustaining truth shines out with remarkable lustre in the very passage from which we have just given such a depressing quotation. "Nevertheless, the Lord raised up judges, which delivered them out of the hand of those that spoiled them." But mark the following words, so illustrative of the individuality of the book of Judges: "And when the Lord raised them up judges, then _the Lord was with the judge_, and delivered them out of the hand of their enemies _all the days of the judge_: for it repented the Lord because of their groanings by reason of them that oppressed them and vexed them" (Judges ii. 16, 18).
In these last quoted words, we have the great root principle of the book of Judges--the divine secret of the ministry of the Baraks, the Gideons, the Jephthahs, and the Samsons, the record of whose ministry occupies so large a portion of this most interesting section of inspiration. Israel had failed--sadly, shamefully, inexcusably failed. They had forfeited all claims to the protection of Jehovah's shield. They were justly given over into the ruthless hands of the kings of Canaan. As to all this there could be no possible question. "Nevertheless" Jehovah's heart could feel for His poor, oppressed, and groaning Israel. True, they had proved themselves naughty and unworthy, yet His ear was ever ready to catch their very earliest groan; yea, we are even told, in chapter x., that "His soul was grieved for the misery of Israel."