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Judges 2-4; 6-8; 13-16 Part 1 • Dr. Lori Denning • May 25 - 31 • Come, Follow Me
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What happens to a covenant people when they repeatedly abandon God, fall into oppression, cry out for deliverance, and then do it all over again? Dr. Lori Denning explores the Book of Judges as a cautionary tale of broken covenants, unexpected heroes, and the Lord’s unfailing faithfulness to a stumbling people.
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Hank Smith: 00:00:00 Coming up in this episode on followHIM.
Dr. Lori Denning: 00:00:04 I just launch off into singing and it, I start out too high so I'm like ahh and I'm just like oh my. And then I get about three or four verses in and you guys, I just blank. I mean just cold stone no idea. No words in my head, not one word. It's just gone. And I get everyone staring at you in school and they're all grad students who are known to be very forgiving and loving. No. And there is my professor and she's staring at me.
Hank Smith: 00:00:33 Hello my friends. Welcome to another episode of followHIM. My name is Hank Smith. I'm your host. I'm here with my cohost John who walks by the way Judges 5:10. John, have you been known to walk by the way?
John Bytheway: 00:00:46 For years, I thought my name was in the way because my dad would say, John, you're in the way. And then I learned that actually it's Bytheway.
Hank Smith: 00:00:53 It's Bytheway. John, we are privileged today to be joined by our good friend, Dr. Lori Denning. Lori, welcome back to followHIM.
Dr. Lori Denning: 00:01:03 Thanks. It's great to be back. I always have a great time hanging out with you guys.
Hank Smith: 00:01:07 This is going to be fun. We are in the book of Judges. This isn't a book I spend a lot of time in. John, have you? What do you think of?
John Bytheway: 00:01:18 The one thing I remember about the book of Judges is that there's kind of a pride cycle. We talk about the pride cycle a lot in the Book of Mormon, and the book of Judges has something just like that. The other thing I thought of was if anybody can make the book of Judges exciting, it's Lori Denning. I'm really glad she's here.
Dr. Lori Denning: 00:01:37 Hey, it is exciting on its own. You don't, it doesn't need any help at all. We'll see. You'll see.
Hank Smith: 00:01:43 Yep.
Dr. Lori Denning: 00:01:44 It does need a hat, but other than a helmet, but other than that.
Hank Smith: 00:01:47 She is known to bring a helmet if you go back to our days of, was it Philippians and Colossians and then Alma 29.
Dr. Lori Denning: 00:01:55 Yeah yeah. Talking about the Philistines. Nice. So I brought my Philistine hat. I wear it all the time. I mean, usually when I drive, right? I mean, it's kind of a driving, it says it all. But no, we know kind of what they wear that they have these leather or feather helmets. The Philistines are bad guys, right? From some reliefs, some carvings. So I made my own from Amazon. Here it is.
Hank Smith: 00:02:17 That looks fantastic.
Dr. Lori Denning: 00:02:19 Isn't it?
Hank Smith: 00:02:20 We... really does. It brings out your eyes.
Dr. Lori Denning: 00:02:23 It brings out my eyes. It's ... Well, I don't know that it's very protective if someone hit me with a stick. I don't think it would do very well. Maybe that's why the Philistines didn't last very long. This was their armor plan.
John Bytheway: 00:02:35 Nothing gets through these feathers.
Dr. Lori Denning: 00:02:37 And, you know, Goliath was like a famous Philistine, and so now it makes more sense with David and Goliath because if he was throwing that rock, it wouldn't have been very hard. The big head. No helmet. The feathers. But, you know, an arrow. Shoot here, David. Shoot here, right? Here's a little target.
Hank Smith: 00:02:52 Right there for you.
Dr. Lori Denning: 00:02:54 It's classy. But, John, that was for you since I do love a good helmet, so I brought my-
John Bytheway: 00:02:59 Thank you.
Dr. Lori Denning: 00:02:59 ... Philistine hat. There you go.
John Bytheway: 00:03:01 So glad.
Hank Smith: 00:03:02 Lori is an expert in not only ancient helmets, but also ancient text. Lori, what are we hoping to do today in this ancient book?
Dr. Lori Denning: 00:03:12 Well, Judges is an exciting book. It's one we don't talk about very much, probably because it's mostly a cautionary tale. But it is a story about covenant. So I think if I have to give it, it's one liner. It's a cautionary tale about what happens when we drift away from the covenant. So it's going to show a bunch of different people a spoiler alert. You already know the thesis of the story, we'll hit that. But I think it's really applicable as a covenant people to say this is what happens when you drift away. Here's my cautionary word. If you are teaching this for family or young children, there are scenes that are very graphic because it doesn't excuse itself. So it's going to show what really happens to them, but it is not something that maybe is ready for all audiences. The Come, Follow Me Manual does a great job editing out some stories. In your personal study though, just beware that they are not excusing their behavior. They're going to show it. Heads up. It is not for children in a lot of places. It also has a lot of satire. It has a lot of irony. It points out where they fail.
Hank Smith: 00:04:18 One of my favorite phrases is in the book of Judges though, Judges 3:17. Eglon was a very fat man. I have gotten a lot of mileage out of that through the years talking to youth. John, now Lori's been with us twice before, but there may be someone listening who didn't catch those episodes. What do we know about her?
John Bytheway: 00:04:40 We know that Lori got her PhD from the prestigious Claremont Graduate University. She teaches in religious education right now at BYU Idaho. She spends her days helping students dig into scripture history and big questions of faith. Before academia claimed her, she served a mission in Barcelona, which left her with a lasting love of Spanish cathedrals, Catalan bread, and the kind of stories that only come... I like this. The kind of stories that only come from knocking on strangers doors in a second language. That's not what they taught me in the MTC. Again, Lori, Hank already said it, but we're just really excited to have you because it's always fun.
Dr. Lori Denning: 00:05:21 I love our community here that we're all sharing the gospel together. From all around the world, I've worked at some of the correctional facilities, so hey guys, I know they listen. I just love that we're talking to all of our saints wherever we find them.
Hank Smith: 00:05:35 Yeah, we love them too. Thank you, Lori, for reminding us we are just one big family studying the book of Judges this week. Gratefully, we have Lori here because she has done quite a bit of work in this. I remember when I wrote a dissertation, John, it was like eating the same meal every day for years. You got to know that meal well. Lori, just real quick, tell us about your dissertation.
Dr. Lori Denning: 00:06:01 Yeah, so your PhD dissertation right as you go deep, it's narrow. And I worked on how the covenant pattern works in the women of the Samson story. So a lot of times, you know, Delilah in the Samson store, or maybe Samson, but we don't remember that it actually is for women. It starts with one of the heroes of the story, his mother. She holds the covenant and knows the secret about his hair. Then he has a wife and then he has a prostitute. He just goes down. He's terrible. We already told you, cautionary tale. And then Delilah, I track that through literary means and show how that covenant pattern works through the women of the story, that they're kind of the holder of the covenant or where the covenant could pivot, where all the signposts are, what will Samson choose. Every time a woman shows up, it's what will he choose?
00:06:43 And spoiler alert, he does a terrible job. Go through the Hebrew and there are a lot of experts in Judges and I'm one of them. No, there are two of us. Thanks for asking. I am proud of it. I think it's one of those things you spend a lot of time. I know you guys have done it too, but it's a privilege to be able to have the time and the energy and the support to be able to do a work like that. I'm very privileged to stand among giants. I'm just the newly minted, new shiny penny right now.
Hank Smith: 00:07:10 Congratulations. We're excited for you and we're excited to learn from you. Let's start in the Come, Follow Me Manual. We all know what it feels like to sin, feel bad about it and then repent and resolve to change our ways. But too often we forget our earlier resolve and when temptation comes, we find ourselves committing the same sin. This pattern appears frequently in the book of Judges. Influenced by the beliefs and worship practices of the Canaanites whom they were supposed to drive out of the land, the Israelites broke their covenants with the Lord and turned away from worshiping him. As a result, they lost his protection and fell into captivity and yet each time this happened, the Lord gave his covenant people the chance to repent and raised up a deliverer, a military leader called a judge. Not all of the judges in the book of Judges were righteous, but some of them exercised great faith in delivering the children of Israel and restoring them to their covenant relationship with the Lord.
00:08:04 These stories remind us that no matter what has led us away from Jesus Christ, He is the Redeemer of Israel and is always willing to deliver us and welcome us back as we return to him. So well written, turning us back to the Lord. I love it. All right, Lori, how do you start off a study of the book of Judges?
Dr. Lori Denning: 00:08:24 Ancient scripture mostly works through stories. We know that. Most of them are stories. There's sometimes some poetry and then some odds and ends and law and things that nobody reads and skips. But it mostly, mostly works through stories. That means that it doesn't always tell you what the theme is or the thesis or the point. Here's a trick. Judges does. Judges has a whole chapter that tells you in case you did not get what was happening, it has a whole chapter, chapter two, that actually is very brief and the Lord himself speaks. I think we should start there because it's going to tell us what the theme and the thesis and then the rest of the stories are just the judges themselves, these deliverers. Again, they're not judiciary like with the black robes and a gavel. It's not that kind of judge. They're more like deliverers, war leaders, people the Lord raises up and they're all a little different in their role.
00:09:14 Let's go to chapter two because the scholarly insight is that chapter two is the thesis. It's going to tell us everything we need to know of how it works and it's not very complicated. Of course, Come, Follow Me, put it in for us to read. Let's go there. What translations you guys reading these days?
Hank Smith: 00:09:31 I use an app that gives me a bunch. What do you use, Lori?
Dr. Lori Denning: 00:09:35 I'm going to use the New Revised Standard Version. It stays a little closer to the Hebrew, but a little simpler English. So if it, it's a little different than the one you're reading at home or online, don't worry about it, just kind of go with the flow, but that's the one that I've got and feel free to jump in there. Let's go to chapter two and spoiler alert. Here it is. Let's do verse one. Hey, John, since you've got that, will you read verse one? And again, don't worry about how to pronounce these names, just make them up because it doesn't matter. There's going to be a lot of names and just go with it. No one cares, and then just plow through because the Lord's going to speak here in a minute.
John Bytheway: 00:10:11 So Judges chapter two, verse one in the NRSV. Now, the angel of the Lord went up from Gilgal to Bochim and said, I brought you up from Egypt and brought you into the land that I promised to your ancestors. I said I will never break my covenant with you.
Dr. Lori Denning: 00:10:29 This is important. Here's the lay of the land and jump in here. I know Hank and John, you guys are experts, so jump in too. We're coming from Joshua. Joshua is genuinely very positive, you know, like they're victorious and they're doing things, but there's that note of, but what will you do? Because for me and my house, we're going to serve. Then you turn the page and you go to chapter one of Judges and it's victorious and land and things are given. There's some kerfluffles start immediately, but it goes downhill from here. It's a little bit of a surprise that you go from, Hey, the children of Israel finally get to the promised land. They finally inherited it. And then the next page, It was bad in Israel. And you're like, Well, how did it go so bad so quickly? So the first thing I want to note is this first verse makes sense when you realize that they struggled right off the bat.
00:11:20 Then the angel of the Lord, it's going to be the angel and then it's going to say that it was the Lord himself. So the angel of the Lord is going to speak and he's going to remind them. It's coming off these victories. They finally settled. We think it's going to be positive, but I've already told you it's not going to be. Then here's the Lord that's going to tell him this is the key. So did you catch what it was, John? The Lord said, I brought you up from Egypt and the land you were promised. And then he quotes something pretty straightforward. Did you catch it?
John Bytheway: 00:11:49 Yeah. I will never break my covenant with you.
Dr. Lori Denning: 00:11:53 Wow. That's pretty powerful, isn't it? That the Lord will never break his covenant. It's like, you guys, I am always here for you. So we're going to anchor this whole book with that phrase that the Lord will never break his covenant. But it does leave you to go, But what will you do? What will I do?
Hank Smith: 00:12:13 Yeah. The next verse is pretty sad .
Dr. Lori Denning: 00:12:16 Yeah, go for it. What does it say?
Hank Smith: 00:12:18 This is the NRSV. "You have not obeyed my command. See what you have done."
Dr. Lori Denning: 00:12:25 Yeah. And so you're going to get this instruction right out of the gate. Here's the claim and then the instruction. I've told you to tear down their altars. Tear down their altars. That's a word that we might not catch all the time because we think of the altar, let's say at the sacrament of the Lord's Supper, right? It's at the table. We come to the altar there, we come to the altar in the temple. They are going to other kinds of altars. They're going to these other gods. They're worshiping other things. And it's like, get rid of those altars. What kind of altars do you think we could see? Because I'm not really worshiping other gods during the weekday. So what do you think we could see in that? Any application, you guys?
Hank Smith: 00:13:08 Maybe the word for us wouldn't, like you said, Lori, wouldn't be worship. Maybe it's, where do I spend my time and my resources? I can tell you what you worship if you'll tell me where you spend your time.
Dr. Lori Denning: 00:13:21 Yeah. That's powerful, isn't it? Because sometimes it's doing silly things. We might be spending our time doing useless things, less important things. We should probably be focused on better things.
Hank Smith: 00:13:34 Years ago, President Oaks said, "We entertain ourselves to death, spiritual death."
Dr. Lori Denning: 00:13:42 That's pretty brutal, actually.
Hank Smith: 00:13:43 Yeah.
Dr. Lori Denning: 00:13:43 That's pretty tough, right? As I scroll, Wait a minute, you guys, I need to check my feed while we're doing this. Let me, I'll be back in a few minutes. We have a lot of distraction and I think their altars the things that they're spending their time on, he's saying, You need to get rid of them. Now, we're going to see that in some stories. So remember, the thesis, I will never break my covenant with you, but I need you to get rid of those things that are stumbling blocks to you. You can't leave them there. You will trip up on them. They will become a stumbling block. And we're going to see the story of Gideon and Samson and that's true for both of them where they start out great and they're strong and then they trip over it, whether it's pride or avarice or power or something. Those ideas are going to come up again. Let's keep going. John, do you have verse three?
John Bytheway: 00:14:31 Yeah. "So now I say, I will not drive them out before you, but they shall become adversaries to you and their gods shall be a snare to you."
Dr. Lori Denning: 00:14:42 I won't drive them out.
John Bytheway: 00:14:44 It's going to be your job.
Dr. Lori Denning: 00:14:46 You got it. I think it's like you're going to have to get rid of those things in your life. I won't leave you, I'll help you, but you have to get rid of those things in their lives. And then he uses an interesting word at the end, Their gods shall be a snare. I'm not an outdoorsy gal really, so I don't like hunt or something, but do you guys know what a snare is? I had to look it up.
Hank Smith: 00:15:07 Yeah, it's a trap. Sounds like a trap.
Dr. Lori Denning: 00:15:09 It's a trap. A little, you know, hoop or something of wire or string and then you put in a snack or whatever and then the animal, typically a bird, it's like a bird snare is this word in Hebrew. They step into it. So imagine this, this is going to be something in their lives that they say, you need to drive the adversaries, you need to drive the bad guys out of your life. Otherwise, you're going to keep stepping right in it and being trapped. And that's going to be true that they're not this overwhelming army that's going to come marching in and be like, Give up your covenants, Latter-day Saints and whatever, what are they going to do? Well, we step right in it. We just walk right up to it and keep stepping in it and then get snagged and go, Hey, I'm stuck. He's going to warn them and you're going to see that in these stories. What was the snare to each of them? They didn't get rid of the altar, they didn't get rid of it and then it trapped them. We'll talk about that in each of the stories.
Hank Smith: 00:16:07 Lori, that phrase, "I will not do it for you." I think there's a message there of righteousness is only righteousness if it is freely chosen. The Lord will never force Israel to be Israel because I think the moment he says, You're going to act this way, now they're just slaves.
Dr. Lori Denning: 00:16:24 Yeah, it always honors our agency. Whatever we decide, he'll honor that. He's not going to force you into doing it, but he is saying, I'm always here. Remember he started with, I will not break this. And then like you said, John, but they probably will. And you're like, yeah yeah, spoiler alert. They do. And so do we. Who are we in the story? Well, we're them. He's saying, But I'm always going to be there. So when you do step in the snare, when you do make those choices, when you do fail or just misunderstand, he's going to say, that's okay. Right? I am still right here waiting. I'm trying to make it hopeful because it's kinda just bringing me down. Yeah, they're going to snare you. So we're going to see the snare and then it says, The angel of the Lord spoke these words to all the Israelites.
00:17:07 So this is everybody. This isn't just the deliverers or just this group of people and they lifted up their voices and wept. Don't we all see that when we're close to the Lord, we're like, Oh, please don't let that happen to me or my family or my kids. Then they named the place, the weepers, Bochim. And that's where they sacrificed to the Lord. Can you imagine you're like, you drive around your hometown and you're like, Well, that was the place that I cried. And you're just like, this is a sad memory. We don't normally name them that way, but that's what's happening, right?
Hank Smith: 00:17:39 I named that place tears. Right?
Dr. Lori Denning: 00:17:42 Mine would be, I named that place snack food or something, but for them it was the place where they wept, the place where they realized what was going to happen. I don't mean to make light, but they're probably places in our lives when we look back in the course of our lives and we say, that moment. It's that moment that I wish I could remove or I could undo and that was the place I called Bochim. That was the place that I called the tears. Already sad. Thanks for bringing us down Hank.
Hank Smith: 00:18:06 Already sad. Yeah.
Dr. Lori Denning: 00:18:07 Already sad. Okay.
Hank Smith: 00:18:09 Good feeling gone. All right.
Dr. Lori Denning: 00:18:10 Yeah. Wamp wamp. So that's the thesis. So if you're ever like, Hey, when we come back to this thesis, what's happening in the story? Those are the underlying rules. The Lord won't leave them. They need to tear down the altars. Those other gods and things will become snares to them. And that's what we're going to see over and over again through these deliverers and these judges. It's going to be a message to us. If we want to be successful covenant keepers, what is this telling us that we need to do? There you go. Now, here's another thing that's going to happen. We call this Judges cycle. I think this is in Come, Follow Me. They suffer and then they cry out to the Lord. He raises up a deliverer and then they get delivered and then we're back around. It's actually kind of a funnel. They keep kinda going down and down and down and down through this cycle.
00:18:57 And the way literature works too, meaning the way that the narrative works or history is not a perfect slide. Like Deborah's pretty rad and there's some others, but it generally is a pretty steep curve down to Samson who's utterly terrible. I know people like him and VeggieTales makes him out to be a hero. And in Hebrews 11, it talks about him and some of these guys and their faith because the Lord uses them anyway, but they seem to make more mistakes than others. I think we can ask, Am I doing the same thing or am I finally making it stick? Am I really going to make the repentance stick? And they're going to not be that successful, but the Lord says, but you can, you can. And again, they're never armies in the story. It isn't armies that take them down. It's the snares and the altars of the other gods and the things that they don't clear out from their lives that they trip on.
00:19:55 I have a ridiculous story of how I didn't maybe pull down an altar when I should have. It's not a revealing story or anything like that because I don't want to tell those. But just a few years ago, I was traveling for my old job and I was on a flight to Kentucky. And you know the pressure in the cabin and things are up and down and so when I landed out of state, I noticed that my tooth hurt like down in my chin and I was like, wow, my tooth is really bothering me. And I just thought, well, it's this weird flight. And here's the thing, that tooth I had had an accident, so I chipped it really badly and so I'd had a root canal. There was no way I could be feeling that tooth. I was like, that's not it.
00:20:34 And then I'm out of state, I'm at a work site and so I'm visiting this site and I, every day I'm like, Oh man. And it was just pinpoint pain right at that tooth down in my chin and I'm like, that tooth is really bugging me. First I was like, it was the flight. Then the next day I was like, it's impossible because, you know, I've had a root canal so there's no nerve there. I can't be feeling the pain and it just got worse and worse so I didn't go in. Every day I talked myself out of what was happening with this tooth. You can see where this is going. I fly back and now it's pretty bad. It's very painful. It's extended down into my jaw so I go in and they're like, yeah, the root canal has failed, so there's an infection in there and it's gotten into the bone of your jaw. So they had to, you guys, pull the tooth.
00:21:22 So I was like Pirate Lori where I had, and in fact it was on our old videos. I was missing a tooth right in the front. And then you have to leave it for months while they do a bone graft and wait for the bone to heal and then still Pirate Lori. And I'm embarrassed because it's right in the front of my mouth and I've left it. But I was doing the same thing where I left the altar that I should have torn down. I knew there was a problem and I talked to myself, ah, it's the plane. Or, I had a root canal. It's impossible. And then when it really started to hurt, I should have gone in on first day and I probably wouldn't have had to have a bone graft and a pirate tooth. Now I have a replacement. You know, a year later, Pirate Lori is gone at much expense and pain, but I talked myself out of things that were happening. That's a little bit what happens in our lives with sin and with issues where we stumble. Well, this isn't so bad. There's no reason I have to stop doing this.
Hank Smith: 00:22:19 I loved when you said, I can't be feeling this pain. It's like, but you are. No, but I can't be.
Dr. Lori Denning: 00:22:26 It's really painful. I can have an ice cube and I'm holding an ice cube on one little spot on my chin. No, no, I don't have tooth pain. I can't be having it but you are.
Hank Smith: 00:22:36 Yeah, self-deception almost.
Dr. Lori Denning: 00:22:38 Yeah. It's not my wisest moment. And then I lived with a gappy tooth for months and years. It like took forever to heal and get all of it healed up. Luckily, it was something that I could repair, but there are things in our lives and issues that I think we leave that and we talk ourself out of it and we say, oh, I wish we'd done something, right, about it.
Hank Smith: 00:23:01 A long time ago.
Dr. Lori Denning: 00:23:03 I won't ask you to share your self-deprecating, dumb moment when you were Pirate Lori and lost a tooth because you were dumb, but I think we all do that a little bit in our lives with even more serious things. I just left it, I'll make up later, it's not that big of a deal, nobody knows, whatever the excuses with our covenant, lack of faithfulness there.
Hank Smith: 00:23:24 Elder Holland would say the journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step, so watch your step.
Dr. Lori Denning: 00:23:30 Watch your step or your tooth. Watch your tooth.
Hank Smith: 00:23:34 Watch your tooth.
John Bytheway: 00:23:35 I learn a lot from watching those mayday air disaster things. One of the things one of the FAA guys said once was that FAA, our flying regulations are literally written in blood. We've learned so much from the accidents we have changed procedures, we've changed things that happen in the cockpit are differently, checklists have changed, regulations have changed because we have learned those lessons painfully. In a way, you got to be grateful that the book of Judges is going to come out and say, don't do what we did. Like you said, Lori had a cautionary tale. The message and the misfortune, somebody called it.
Hank Smith: 00:24:15 I'm a witness of this. He watches these air disasters. I was sitting next to him on the plane.
Dr. Lori Denning: 00:24:21 Oh, on the plane? You can't watch them on the plane.
John Bytheway: 00:24:24 If I need to run up to the cockpit and knock and say, guys, guys.
Hank Smith: 00:24:29 Guys, I just saw this.
John Bytheway: 00:24:32 I think because I have friends that are airline pilots, I'm going to hear this, so I better say it. It is still the safest way to travel by far.
Dr. Lori Denning: 00:24:41 A lot of the scripture is usually cautionary tales or instances how to work through something, because of course that's where we are. We're working through these things in our life and you're like, Well, here's some instances that you can use to help you work through it. And you're like, Yeah, yeah. Otherwise scripture would be really short. They were great and they were happy and everyone lived in Zion.
John Bytheway: 00:24:59 Like 4 Nephi.
Dr. Lori Denning: 00:25:01 That's right. And grilled cheese sandwiches for everyone. Well, that would be my Zion, but you know, you pick yours. Heaven. Grilled cheese sandwich. That might also be my snare, but, yeah, okay. If you laid a grilled cheese sandwich in a little, a trap, I would be the one that put my hand in it. So careful on that. All right. Let's go back to our through line then. So after they lay out the thesis in Judges 2, the narrator really immediately begins to draw out the principle that will recur throughout the book, that God will deliver the people through the unlikely. Mostly, I believe the Lord uses someone unlikely so that they can't claim victory, that we always know it's the Lord. There seems to be a lot of examples of where the Lord picked the least likely. He picked the weak of the world and brought forth something amazing and that seems to be a pattern. I don't know if you guys can see that pattern anywhere. I can think of any other examples in scripture or in church history where the Lord picked the least likely the weakest of people.
John Bytheway: 00:26:07 Somebody with a sling, maybe a ruddy youth.
Dr. Lori Denning: 00:26:11 Ah, so David, right? He's the youngest, he's the youngest of the family, he's a shepherd. Shepherds are not known for their hard work. I mean, we have four year olds do shepherding. Good example.
Hank Smith: 00:26:21 Oh man, there's so many. You think of Abraham, he's not special and Lord's like, You're my guy. Then you got Mary of Nazareth.
Dr. Lori Denning: 00:26:31 Yeah. Unmarried teenager, you. In a small back town. You, you're it.
Hank Smith: 00:26:36 Yeah. Hannah, who has Samuel.
Dr. Lori Denning: 00:26:40 Samuel and what were you thinking was Sam, was it Enoch, you said?
John Bytheway: 00:26:43 Enoch. Yeah. I was like, why? I'm but a lad and all the people hate me. I'm slow of speech. Why am I thy servant, you know? And the Lord says, What? Walk with me. Yay, our theme this year.
Dr. Lori Denning: 00:26:57 Walk with me. I do love...That's a great example. I love that. I'm just a kid and I'm not a great speaker and everyone hates me.
Hank Smith: 00:27:03 Yeah. And you have Jesus' apostles. These are fishermen.
Dr. Lori Denning: 00:27:08 And Mary and Joanna, they're just working people, church history.
John Bytheway: 00:27:12 Church history, maybe we could call teenagers to be missionaries all over the world to go out and thresh the nations, right? The weak things of the world.
Hank Smith: 00:27:21 The Lord looks at Joseph and others and says, I chose you so everyone would know it was me.
Dr. Lori Denning: 00:27:30 Yeah.
Hank Smith: 00:27:30 When the Lord says it, it's beautiful. To anybody else, it's kind of insulting, but-
Dr. Lori Denning: 00:27:34 Yeah, you're like, Oh, thanks a lot. Yeah, that's true. And then we feel empowered when it's the Lord, thank you, because we're all that to the Lord. It's really true, Joseph, Mary, Hannah, Deborah, Emma Smith, all the people in our lives and we say, You know, we're just regular people doing our best and they do amazing, amazing things. I have a story. When I was in my master's program, I was part of a program where it was lots of different religious people that came together to learn about the scriptures. So it was at Gonzaga, Go Zags and so most, it's a Catholic school. So most of the students were Catholic. We had two of us that were LDS and some others from different Christian walks of life. When we all got on campus, one of the weekends, we had an extended weekend. We were, we are going to go to all the different churches that we all go to.
00:28:22 So we decided on three or four to go to. So I'm like, Me, me, pick me. So the first one we went to was an LDS chapel. I'm not from Spokane, so we picked one from the woman that was also LDS that happened to live in that area. I am so excited to take all of my cohort of these scholars to learn about Jesus Christ at the Latter-day Saint Chapel. So we pile in and you guys, it is packed. I mean, imagine a summer, a million people. It's like almost like stake conference where the expansion thing is open. It's just a regular Sunday. There are a thousand million kids. It's super loud. We're all in our best Sunday clothes and I'm a little bit nervous because I'm bringing my scholarly friends to an LDS service for the first time and what week was it going to be?
00:29:10 Trek week where the people reenact the trek coming across the plains. So it is like 8,000 two-minute talks from every youth and some of the ma and pa's and they all go, you've heard them like this. It was really great and I learned a lot and it was really hot. Amen. And then the next one, It was really great, but it was really hot and, um, we ate really great. Amen. 10,000 of those. Where's the Savior? I'm like, where are we returning to the Savior? Where are we going? And even all the hymns were the pioneer hymns. I was like, Oh. And I was just sitting down there cringing and cringing. We get done. We walk out. I'm like, don't really say anything. Again, kids are everywhere, the deacons are passing the sacrament- the guy passing the sacrament, I swear, waving the sacrament dish around in his hand.
00:30:01 It's outrageously loud. And I'm like, Oh, my dear friends are just not going to understand. We get in the car. And I don't say anything. And I turn around and go, well, what do you guys think? And I have that kind of President Uchtdorf moment where I'm like, oh, I'm going to have to make some excuses. And they're like, that was amazing. That was one of the most amazing things I have ever seen. It was like your own Moses story and your youth and there were so many youth and they were all like living it and they were living the Lord's hand in your lives were those little people and they were so strengthened. And I was like, yeah, it was awesome. It was so great. It was, everything about Trek is my favorite. You're so right. And I was going to excuse the lives of these youth just going, it was great. They reenact certain people from the plains and they would tell about those and they were like, you have the Lord working in your lives right there.
00:30:58 Here's how it all comes back to Judges. I know you're wondering. How does this come back? I discounted those little events. They weren't little events. And those people that they were reenacting or those teenagers lives, those were big pivotal moments. My friends saw that through those eyes. They saw the trek week as an amazing testimony to the Lord's hand in the lives of the saints. I saw it as something odd and weird and embarrassing and they saw it as a testimony to the Lord. That was the same kind of connection that we're having with Judges. It was the weaker person that gets chosen. The moments that you least expect can be those covenant fulfilling moments where the Lord works in our lives. It's hard to bear your testimony on trek. I know. It is, but there it is.
John Bytheway: 00:31:46 Well, it was really hot.
Dr. Lori Denning: 00:31:48 It's really hot. It was really hot. I'm sure that was their voice. I'm not sure if that was their voice, that was the voice that I imagined them all.
John Bytheway: 00:31:54 You nailed it. That was great.
Dr. Lori Denning: 00:31:55 It was really hot, but it was great. And you're like... Let's jump into a few of these stories and see how they work. Let's go to Judges 3. I'm going to start with just a few verses 7 through 11. It's not in Come, Follow Me, so this is for you extra credit kids that want to really jump into the book. And it's the story of Othniel. Othniel is our first judge. He's the cleanest example of this pattern that we pointed out with John of where the people fell away, they cry out for deliverance. The Lord raises up a deliverer, i.e. judge. This one's going to be Othniel and then he helps deliver them. That's the pattern. Now, he's the cleanest. I'm not saying he's the best. I'm not saying it's the most dramatic, so you might fly by it, but Judges wants to give you that perfect little example to start with so you can see the pattern. So that's it. Will one of you read for me Judges 3:7 and the first part of eight, and then it's going to get into a bunch of names that are confusing. So we'll just do the beginning of seven and first half of eight. Verses.
Hank Smith: 00:33:01 Okay. I've got it right here. Again, we're in the NRSV. The Israelites did what was evil in the sight of the Lord, forgetting the Lord their God and worshiping the Baals and the Asherahs.
Dr. Lori Denning: 00:33:15 So here's the pattern. You saw it though, that first line is critical and you're going to hear it over and over. In fact, it's going to be some of the last lines of all of Judges. The Israelites did evil in the sight of the Lord. And how did they do it? There's a verb there. They did something.
Hank Smith: 00:33:32 They forgot God.
Dr. Lori Denning: 00:33:34 They forgot. And they served other things. Fill in the blank for you, right? They served TikTok and a distraction time and they served money and power and they're going to follow all the bad things, right? They're going to fill in the blank for you of what you think that challenge is and I think that verse would be a little more powerful, but we see that Israel does evil. That's what's going to set it off pattern. Now the anger of the Lord was kindled against them and he sold them into the hand. Now what's funny about this name, it means Chushan of double wickedness is what that word means in Hebrew. It's a little narrative wink. They're going to be really bad here. They cry out. Let's read because there's going to be that pattern that we're looking for. So we've got that they did evil and then the Lord's anger was kindled and then verse nine and we're in chapter three still.
John Bytheway: 00:34:22 But when the Israelites cried out to the Lord, the Lord raised up a deliver for the Israelites who delivered them. Othniel, son of Kenaz Caleb's younger brother.
Dr. Lori Denning: 00:34:33 Boom. There it is. There's the tool. They have to do something. They have to cry out to the Lord. They forgot, but then those hard times push them back to remembering and they cry out and he raises up a deliverer, our judge. Now, here's something that you might miss on who this judge is. Did you see he's Othniel, son of Kenaz, but he is Caleb's younger brother. Do you guys remember who Caleb is?
Hank Smith: 00:35:02 Yes. Caleb was one of the 12 spies that came back from the promised land and said we can do this, he and Joshua.
Dr. Lori Denning: 00:35:10 That's right. He was the one that was like the good one. He was covenant faithful. He was one that came back, gave the good report. Not surprising. Othniel is a judge and he's his brother. This is the family that we're going to remember in the back of our mind that's covenant faithful. They're like, Hey, they were still faithful. So it's Caleb's brother, Othniel, and he's going to do it. Then something cool is going to happen in verse 10. John, do you have verse 10? And this is where something big's going to happen.
John Bytheway: 00:35:41 Okay, here we go. Verse 10. The Spirit of the Lord came upon him and he judged Israel. He went out to war and the Lord gave King Chushan-rishathaim of Aram into his hand and his hand prevailed over Chushan-rishathaim.
Dr. Lori Denning: 00:36:03 Did you catch the first part? They cry out, he calls the judge, the deliverer, and then something really important happens.
John Bytheway: 00:36:10 The Lord helped them fight their battles.
Dr. Lori Denning: 00:36:13 Yeah, the spirit of the Lord comes upon him. He's got this power now that he didn't have. You're going to see that phrase over and over. It's not that they're living so much in the Spirit that like every minute everything they do, but when they cry out, the Lord sends his spirit upon them and it will say that the Lord came upon them. Then it was, they speak for the Lord, they have extra power, they're able to overcome their enemies. There's the pattern. So he overcomes the bad guy, double wickedness, and the land rests. There's your story. So there's the whole thing in Othniel. Now the rest of the stories as you're studying these. You can find that story but they're also going to stretch it out. They're going to tell you more about where the snare happened, where the people were failing, where maybe even the judge struggles a bit. Each story is an example for us to look and then pattern it and say, well, I know how the pattern works, but in my own lives, what's happening with this next guy? What was their struggle? Because that might be my struggle.
Hank Smith: 00:37:13 Lori, let me get this right. The pattern I'm looking for is the children of Israel forget the Lord. His anger is hot against them. Something terrible happens. They go into some sort of like slavery. Then they cry to the Lord. The Lord raises up a deliverer. The spirit of the Lord comes on the deliverer, he delivers them and the land does rest. I bet we're going to do that how many times?
Dr. Lori Denning: 00:37:36 12 more times. 12 more times. There are 12 judges. By the end, they just stop and then the last couple chapters that you're going to skip because they're really terrible. There's no judge. In fact, they fall into civil war so they tear each other apart. Then we end on a really terrible note. Spoiler alert, not for kids. There are 12 judges, so that was number one. So we're going to hit it 11 more times. Let's do Ehud. Now, I have heard, little birdy told me that Hank, this is a story that you truly appreciate and you have some deep insight on the story of Ehud and Eglon. They could be twins. Ehud and Eglon.
Hank Smith: 00:38:11 Ehud and Eglon.
Dr. Lori Denning: 00:38:14 Do not name them that. Yeah. But let's take ... this is where the irony is going to get deep. It's almost farcical. So if you need something to do for the youth, I would probably tell this one.
John Bytheway: 00:38:23 Here it comes.
Dr. Lori Denning: 00:38:24 I mean, it's in the Bible. So it's important. Hank, tell us what you think is important about this one.
Hank Smith: 00:38:29 I did this for a talk called Five Temptation Killers. I'm sure you can find it on YouTube somewhere. It's going to be as worth as much as you pay for it. I loved this story, mostly because I was teaching young men sophomore boys. There's the story. Same thing. The children of Israel fall into some sort of sin and they become slaves to Eglon, the king of Moab. The children of Israel cried unto the Lord, so the Lord raised up a deliverer. This time his name is Ehud and he is left-handed and he's from the tribe of Benjamin. He makes himself a dagger. It's like a cubit long, so we're talking like an 18-inch knife. That's a knife. That's not a knife. That's a knife.
John Bytheway: 00:39:17 This is a knife.
Hank Smith: 00:39:18 And the best part of the whole thing is Eglon was a very fat man and so Ehud wants to free the Israelites so he finds Eglon where he is covering his feet. I'll let you figure out what that means. He says, I have a message from God to you. He takes the dagger with his left hand and thrusts it into his belly. Now that's gross enough, but verse 22, it gets even better. The haft, which is the handle, goes into the man after the blade and the fat closed upon the blade so that he could not draw the dagger out. He's like, Hey, where's my knife? And it says, the dirt came out, which I'm guessing is his guts.
Dr. Lori Denning: 00:40:04 His bowels released.
Hank Smith: 00:40:05 Yep. His bowels.
Dr. Lori Denning: 00:40:07 Here's what we call the irony stack. There are very few physical details about people in the Old Testament. It doesn't tell you what they look like. It doesn't tell you very much about them. But when it does, when it does, it is critical to the story. So Bathsheba is beautiful. David and Goliath, Goliath is really big and David's kind of small, right? That's going to be important to the story in a minute. And here it tells us something about Ehud. What did it say about him?
Hank Smith: 00:40:36 He is left-handed.
Dr. Lori Denning: 00:40:38 Yeah. And the Hebrew means it's bound in his right hand, is how they say it. So the preferred hand, the hand of power is restricted. Just like Israel, they're bound, they're restricted, they're imprisoned, they're right by the thing. So he is left-handed. Then here's the irony stack. Here's the next irony. He's from the tribe of ...
Hank Smith: 00:41:02 Benjamin.
Dr. Lori Denning: 00:41:03 Yeah, that might be important. It is. And here's what it means. Do you remember what Benjamin means the son of the right hand. So it's a left-handed man from the right-handed tribe. So it's stacking the irony that you're like, okay, he's not powerful. He's left-handed from this little tribe. Eglon's name, it keeps going. Eglon means little bull or calf. Think of it like the altars, you're going for a sacrifice. So he's the fatted calf. He's going to be slaughtered. Then Ehud hides the sword on his right thigh. That's where you wouldn't search a man who was right-handed, right, because you've got to, it's so big you got to draw it across, right? Or if you're Conan from your back, so it's kind of like guard isn't going to get there. Then he brings a tribute. So he's coming to bring tribute to King Fatman. That word is a Minchah, which is the word for sacrifice.
00:42:04 He's bringing a knife of the bound to the fatted calf and he brings a sacrifice and you're like, well, I wonder who's going to be this sacrifice. Maybe the guy called fat calf. Yeah, it is. And he brings this tribute and he delivers, it says, he comes and he leaves with his group and then he comes back. So he comes back and he says, because I have a word from God. And he doesn't lie. What's the word that he has? The sword. We say the sword, and so he stabs him. So the whole story is this ironic like twist and you're like, you can already see what's going to happen before it happens. The Lord's working with them, they're bound just like his left hand. It's trapped. He's the fatted calf. He's bringing a sacrifice to the guy called fatted calf. And then he brings a word from God and the word is the dagger. Cool.
John Bytheway: 00:42:55 It is cool. I just think there are so many little artifacts hidden in plain sight. You're showing them to us. They've always been there. Do we lose something when we go from Hebrew to English? I mean, would that have been easier to see those stack of little things in there in Hebrew? Yeah.
Dr. Lori Denning: 00:43:14 Yeah, yeah. Of course, because it's right there. Here's how that literary tool works. Here's why that works. It isn't just interesting. But it's the narrator's weapon in Judges that he's going to use this irony, how he brings the small and the weak person, how he's going to make it. The person that looks powerful is weak. The weak person is the powerful person. So this irony is going to keep coming because it's trying to tell you that, that even in your life when you feel like you're the weak one and you feel like the Lord doesn't recognize you or you feel like the little things that you do to keep your covenant, going to church on Sunday, reading your scriptures, being nice to the person that you don't want to when you merge on the freeway, they don't matter. You're like, none of this matters. And the book of Judges is saying it absolutely matters.
John Bytheway: 00:44:01 Everything matters.
Dr. Lori Denning: 00:44:03 Everything matters. So all this irony is showing it's topsy-turvy. It's the topsy-turvy kingdom of Christ where blessed are the peacemakers. Blessed are the poor in spirit. Blessed are those who mourn. Those are the righteous people, not blessed are the powerful. He's reinforcing those Christian virtues, the Beatitudes right here in Judges. So that's why that's cool I think is not just because it's clever, but because it's teaching us an important truth about the Savior in our lives, that when we bind ourselves in covenant to him, we use his power. We aren't little anymore.
Hank Smith: 00:44:42 And you were right about the pattern. They've got almost the same language. The children of Israel did evil in the sight of the Lord. The Lord strengthened Eglon. They served Eglon. The children of Israel cried unto the Lord. The Lord raised up a deliverer and at the very end of the chapter, the land did rest.
John Bytheway: 00:45:00 There's the cycle.
Dr. Lori Denning: 00:45:01 It's very cycle. Now it's very clear in the first few judges and it's going to be sometimes less clear because they're going to assume you get it now. So they're not going to repeat it every time. They're going to repeat parts of it. But they're, you're going to assume that you're like, okay, move on. Like we get it, we get it, Lori. Really obvious in the first few and then the next few, they're going to spend more time on parts of the story, elements of the story that it wants you to learn from. The next story is one of the real heroes and that is Deborah.
John Bytheway: 00:45:29 Yay.
Dr. Lori Denning: 00:45:30 Yay. Let's go to Judges 4 and 5. This is some of the oldest texts that we have and it's actually the story is told twice and that doesn't happen very often. So it's going to tell the story as a story, what we call narrative and prose, then it's going to tell it as a poem or a song in chapter five. Poetry is one of my favorite. It's the way that we tell heightened spiritual events, events that we want to enter emotionally. We want to slow down and see the Lord's hand. This one is going to be a victory song of the Lord's deliverance here in Deborah's song. We sometimes skim over them because it's weird and we don't really, it doesn't rhyme like English songs do, but for the Israelites, this was their victory hymn. This was Onward Christian soldiers and Faith of our Fathers. So let's go to four and let's see what happens.
Hank Smith: 00:46:21 Lori, I noticed chapter four, verse one, the children of Israel, again, did evil in the sight of the Lord, I'm noticing a pattern.
Dr. Lori Denning: 00:46:32 Yeah. It's a tough pattern. I think it's a good question though. When I was younger, I always thought the scriptures were about really nearly perfect people. Deborah, you're going to see is so good, but me, myself, I never felt that great. So it was like, these stories aren't about regular people. Then you read this here, oh, they did evil again in the sight of the Lord.
John Bytheway: 00:46:51 What was that first phrase we read? The Lord, "I will never break my covenant with you." Even with these people, he is still there, he's still reaching out. I love that these are shared in here because for me, it elevates the grace and the reach and the relentless pursuit of the Lord even more.
Dr. Lori Denning: 00:47:08 Yeah, I love that.
John Bytheway: 00:47:10 Some of these people, he really had to pursue them relentlessly.
Dr. Lori Denning: 00:47:14 Yeah, you're right. It gives me hope for myself though, because sometimes you look around and you say, these people have a, in my ward are so good. These students at BYU are so great. Like, how can I even measure up to them? In the last couple years, I've had some chances to teach at the correctional facility and people are in there for all different levels of really serious crimes. I'd say, well, what do you want us to come talk about if we do family home evening there? And they said, well, one of the challenges that we have when we make big mistakes like that is that we have a hard time feeling the Savior's love. We don't feel worthy and we don't have hope for ourselves, not in the Savior, but in ourselves, that we're just not good enough and we can't ever make it back.
00:48:01 There are times when we feel like I'm beyond the Savior's reach. I'm too far gone. I've made too many mistakes. I don't even have hope for myself. These stories, I think they show that there's no sin so great that God can't forgive it. His grace covereth all things. These stories of these people that are really struggling in Judges or in our lives are great testaments. And the Lord's like, no, don't take those out of the scriptures, you guys. That's the point, that we have a Savior that's so great that he can do all of these things so he can give us all hope and all grace. So yeah, don't take the stories out. Maybe edit them for the right audience. Don't take them out because that's our lives.
John Bytheway: 00:48:45 If Jesus is going to tell Peter and all of us to forgive seven times 70, like a metaphor for just keep forgiving, don't we think he's the same way then? Don't you think he's living up to his own advice? Sometimes I think that we think if you commit that same sin again, you're done.
Dr. Lori Denning: 00:49:07 Yeah. How many times am I going to do it? And you're like, well, we're going to find it 12 more times here. And he's going to forgive them every time.
John Bytheway: 00:49:12 And he's going to forgive them. I will never break my covenant with you. Yeah.
Dr. Lori Denning: 00:49:16 I will never break my covenant with you. And do we really believe that? And we say, no, at some point he's going to say, I'm done with you. I'm tired of you. I wish you'd figure it out. And he's going to say, no, no, don't you listen to that. The first thing he told us, "I will never break my covenant with you." And he's going to send us some help as well. I think that is a perfect segue to our next story because we learn about a prophet, someone that the Lord's going to send to help them so you're not alone in this quest.
John Bytheway: 00:49:49 A prophetess.
Dr. Lori Denning: 00:49:51 Oh, well, that's interesting. It is a prophetess.
John Bytheway: 00:49:54 Yeah.
Dr. Lori Denning: 00:49:54 The women are the best. The women are the best. Most of the stories are about men being naughty, women being great. Who has Judges 4... Let's actually do four and five.
Hank Smith: 00:50:08 Okay, I can get it. Back in the NRSV. At that time, Deborah, a prophet, wife of Lapidoth was judging Israel. She used to sit under the palm of Deborah between Ramah and Beth-el in the hill country of Ephraim and the Israelites came up to her for judgment.
Dr. Lori Denning: 00:50:29 Now, I'm going to say, love that she's an Ephraimite, one of my people, way to go Ephraim tribe. She is cool. It's a woman and it had an interesting couple things that it describes. Now, remember, we learned a scholarly tip and that was, if it describes something about them, it's going to be critical to the story. It doesn't just throw out details. So it says that in the time of Deborah and she is a what?
John Bytheway: 00:50:52 A prophetess.
Hank Smith: 00:50:53 A prophetess.
Dr. Lori Denning: 00:50:54 A prophetess. Yeah. Now that's not something we often think of where we're like women who are prophets, but that's what it says. So there it is. What does that mean that she's a prophetess?
John Bytheway: 00:51:05 I would go, wouldn't you Hank to revelation? The testimony of Jesus is the spirit of prophecy. If you have a testimony of Jesus, then where did you get it? Revelation and you are a small P prophet or prophetess.
Hank Smith: 00:51:22 I would say the same thing. She's as much of a prophet as any other prophet in the Old Testament. A messenger, someone called by God, deliver messages sent forth to teach the people. This is the way the Lord works with Israel. He sends them prophets and prophetesses. Prophetessi.
Dr. Lori Denning: 00:51:44 Prophet. Prophetism. There's something else though. She had another little moniker, a little title. Did you catch what it called her? She was the wife of somebody. Lapidoth.
John Bytheway: 00:51:58 Ooh, save that for your baby book. Yeah.
Dr. Lori Denning: 00:52:00 Well, there's a lot of baby book names in here. I know we've done a ton. So here's something we don't actually know what that means. The actual term in Hebrew is the woman of Lapidoth. They don't use a different word for woman and wife. It could be translated as a woman of torches or a fiery one. So you're going to see some themes with fire. We're not sure if that's what it means, but it does seem to call that out and maybe it meant something more to them. But I think if you see her personality, she's pretty bold. I like that we can call her a woman of torches or a woman a fiery one. She was judging. Then she sat there and the Israelites came up. Who knows how the story goes next? We'll go really fast and say what happens. She's going to be our next judge and she's going to have someone that she's going to call on to help her.
Hank Smith: 00:52:46 I love this just because there's an old video where someone says to a little boy, "Are you going to go on a mission?" And he says, "I'll go if my mom goes with me." She calls Barak and says, you're supposed to go to battle against Sisera. And he says, if you go with me, I will go. But if you're not going to go, I'm not going to go. So she says, I will go with you.
Dr. Lori Denning: 00:53:12 Yeah, sometimes we'll read it as a rebuke, like that Barak wouldn't even go until he had a woman go with him or whatever, but I maybe read that a little bit more nicely to Barak. I mean, he's not a super battle leader like these guys with chariots and things, so he knows this is pretty risky, but he does say something else, I'll go if the prophet can come with me. And I think that's a cool message to all of us. Hey, will you take this calling? Will you go in your life and change things up? Will you go? And you're like, if the Lord can go with me, if the prophet can go with me, I'll go. So I think that's a, it's a much nicer reading of Barak than he was like, I don't want to go. It's like, well, this is pretty scary.
Hank Smith: 00:53:56 Yeah. I'm scared, but if you'll go with me, I'll overcome my fear.
Dr. Lori Denning: 00:54:01 Yeah. That's one of the cool roles of Deborah that I think we can try to apply in our lives too. Are there times when we're called to do something that we need a prophet with us or we need a helper? In chapter five, she's actually called a mother in Israel. Here's something cool, you guys. It doesn't seem to be biological. She doesn't have any children and it's in the song. When she saves Israel, she's then called a mother of Israel. It's deliverance, faithful covenant, support, faith, power. Those are motherly words. Those are covenant words. She's birthing a nation. She is the mother, the supporter, the creator of Israel when she supports and strengthens them and delivers them. And again, she doesn't have any kids in the story. Her kids are Israel. So I think it's one of her best titles, Mother of Israel. I was thinking about who have I had in my life that's been the person that I say I'll go if they go with me.
00:55:06 I'll go if they'll help me. Maybe it's a mentor and it doesn't have to be a female. It could be anyone I think in the covenant that has helped us. And I was just thinking about, are there any people in my life that have really been that Deborah person that said, like Barak, well I'll go, if you can go. I don't know if you guys have people in your lives. Do you have anybody that popped into your head that you're like, man, that person, if they went with me, I would be great.
John Bytheway: 00:55:33 Hmm. My wife. When I travel and I'm nervous about presenting or whatever, if Kim's there she's like, You forgot this part. And not just that, it's true. I think of the theme that we have seen over and over again in the Old Testament, haven't we? I will be with thee. The Lord just saying, I'll be with you. And the Lord was with Joseph and the Lord was with Moses. He's just, I'll always be with you.
Dr. Lori Denning: 00:56:04 Yeah, it sounds like your wife is a mother in Israel. I had an interesting story. No one was saving me from doom, but I had been practicing for grad school. I learned how to do the Hebrew singing, that cantillation. And again, Hebrew isn't my natural skill. I thought I'd be really good at it, but I ended up being kind of bad at it. So I learned how to chant it. They chant it and they sing it. And so for one of my grad school classes, we had to teach a class, teach a whole three hour seminar. I had been learning it all semester to do that and show how that was called cantillation and show how that works. So I'd been practicing and practicing. And again, I'm not naturally musical anyway, so I don't know why I think that I can do this stuff.
00:56:42 I'm taking these lessons online, I'm practicing singing, my Hebrew art, so you're singing the Hebrew, I'm practicing, and I was doing, Genesis 21, which is part of the Abraham and Hagar story. I get to class. I get all the way to class and I'm doing it and I'm teaching what it means. I'm doing that part of the lecture, fine. No big deal, right? Here's what it means, here's how it works. We get through the part where I have to sing it and I'm like, okay, so now I'm going to sing part of it. I just launch off into singing and it, I start out too high. So I'm like. And I'm just like, oh my ... And then I get about three or four verses in, and you guys, I just blank. I mean, just cold stone, no idea. No, no words in my head, not one word.
00:57:22 It's just gone. And I get everyone staring at you in school and they're all grad students who are known to be very forgiving and loving. No. And there is my professor and she's staring at me and she's Jewish. And so I'm already doing her Jewish thing and so I'm already feeling intimidated and I just seriously blank and she can tell. Nothing. Here's what she did. She didn't say, you can do it, or she didn't say, go back a few verses. She just started to sing it. And the first couple times, you guys, I couldn't even hear it. I mean, I'm just like a cornered deer with deer in the headlights, like, what? And I can kind of hear the tune and she's like.
00:58:00 And then I'm like, Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. And then we sang it off tune together and we finished it. At the end, I just kind of had tears in my eyes. I was talking to one of the students afterwards and she goes, That was really beautiful how you cried at the end. I, you're going to think I cry all the time. And I was like, well, I wasn't crying from nerves or wasn't crying. It was so loving. I can't believe how much she just loved me to just go through those things that I had worked on so hard and I just totally botched. She didn't make me feel bad and she just sang along beside me. And I think that's Deborah. She doesn't tell Barak, she says, well, a woman will get the glory. She goes with him. She's like, okay, we can be victorious.
00:58:43 Now just know someone else is going to get the credit for this, but we'll do it. And Barak's like, deal. I was that person. I'll sing along with you. She didn't make me feel bad. She didn't call it out. And I'm like, that's a covenant mother, someone who just walks along the side of you until you pick up the tune again. Thanks, Tammi, for your being my Deborah.
John Bytheway: 00:59:01 Oh, that's so cool.
Dr. Lori Denning: 00:59:02 You know, if it was like saving me from the train tracks, it would be a more spiritual story, but my stories don't involve such deep things. It's learning to sing Hebrew in graduate school, not to discount it, it meant a great deal to me. I spent a whole semester working on it just to have someone so lovingly walk along with me.
John Bytheway: 00:59:20 Well, I've heard that some people have such a great fear of public speaking. I can't even imagine adding to that public singing in Hebrew.
Dr. Lori Denning: 00:59:34 I think there are people in our lives that do that. Deborah is a good example where we can be both Barak, the person who asks for the help and the person who helps. The Lord wants to show us that, look, when we're on our covenant path, we have people around us that can say, I'll go, if they go with me, if I have a companion, what's an eternal companion, a missionary companion, if my friends can serve with me, if someone will help me, if I don't have to go alone. I think we're all a little better if we don't go alone. And he says, no problem. In fact, I've got a prophet that actually speaks for the Lord and he will always be there with you. Whatever your life is, I'm going to send a prophet so that you can have a prophet with you.
01:00:14 And that's powerful. That's a pretty powerful message. She's not only cool, she's a good representation for us. Okay, here's your nerdy detour. Hold on. Fast forward if you don't want to do this part. There's a lot of mothering going on. So we've already mentioned that she's going to be a mother in Israel. Then Jael in the next chapter, so Deborah and Jael are going to kind of work together. Jael is going to serve as that, but we probably need to go over what happens in the story really quick before we show that mothering section. Hank, I believe you know how this story goes with Jael. Do you mind recapping it for us a little bit?
Hank Smith: 01:00:49 Oh, these are fun stories to tell when you're a seminary teacher.
John Bytheway: 01:00:54 It's a temple story. Sort of.
Hank Smith: 01:00:56 It's a temple story. If you bring a couple of things of lettuce and you can put them under a blanket that might kinda looks like someone's sleeping there and you can take your hammer and tent stake and kind of do a visual.
John Bytheway: 01:01:11 Oh man.
Hank Smith: 01:01:14 Barak is going to go out against Sisera. Sisera is running from the battle and Jael sees him and says, come in here. Come in the tent. Almost like, come in here, you'll be safe. She gives him something to drink, a little bit of milk. Then he says, hey, watch over the tent. If anybody's here, just say no. So he lays down and she takes a hammer and a tent peg, a big, strong tent peg. And, you got to marry a girl like Jael. She'll take you through the temple. She took a nail and pounded it through his head and he is in the tent. Sisera lay dead and the nail was in his temples.
Dr. Lori Denning: 01:02:08 I see what you did there with temple. Now, she is called in the poem blessed among women. Jael blessed among women the highest praise. The narrator is reaching for the highest praise for women that he can give. So he's, Deborah is a mother, highest praise. And again, not with children. That's also great. But what they're saying is something else is happening here that's important. Jael Is the person that stakes the evil general in the head and defeats the enemy. By the way, she's not even an Israelite. She's a Kenite. She's one of our neighboring cousins. He says, the narrator says of her blessed among women. Now, I bet one of you can think of another woman that has that same title, blessed is she among women. It's a weird connection and you're going to go, that's not what I thought. Who is that other person that's called blessed among women?
Hank Smith: 01:02:59 That's Luke chapter one, right?
John Bytheway: 01:03:02 Was it Gabriel that said it?
Dr. Lori Denning: 01:03:04 Yes. It's Mary the mother of Jesus. We often think of motherhood and there's nothing wrong with this. I'm not saying it's not this, but it's calm and quiet and shy. This is not shy. It's the same strength that is needed to be an actual mother and raise a child that it is to defeat an enemy and take him in and say, come my way. And then he goes, I want a drink of water. My favorite is like, well, I've got this milk. You're like, well, that's just going to make him sleepy, right? You're like, who doesn't want a large glass of milk after you've fought a battle already? So exhausting. So she drinks the milk. Now, here's the nerdy part. I said I was going to promise you. There's a lot of this mothering theming. So Jael takes him into the tent, he falls asleep, she covers him with a blanket, she gives him milk.
01:03:58 Do you see? It's between her feet. So it's almost like birth. He's here and it's mothering. So you're like, whoa, mother in Israel, Deborah, and Jael is going to be the one who takes him in this. And they praise her because she's an enemy in war, but it praises her for defeating the Lord's enemies for being that serious, not turning away and not softening it at all. This is something that we need to tear out of our lives, that we need to destroy. The strongest thing that women can do as well and men is to be bold in our covenants and to do the right things. Now, I'm not saying we're a proponent for death or anything like that. I think we're smart enough to see what's happening here, but we are saying, ladies specifically, you do not need to be timid. You do not need to be just waiting quietly in the background.
01:04:55 You can rise up. You can be like Deborah, the prophetess that's judging them and leading them into battle. You can be like Jael that's like, hey, enemy person and wipes him out. And then blessed are you among women. That's true femininity, right? Is guarding our covenants and doing the things anxiously doing the things the Lord asks us to do, not just waiting in the background. The Lord needs a powerful people and will you do it? Well, Deborah and Jael are like, step it up ladies. Which I find very cool. It's a violent world that they live in, maybe more violent than we live in today, but you see these themes of them defending the covenant, stepping in, pushing back and not just going, okay. Remember, they have to tear down the altars. They have to do something. You can't just let it exist in your life. They're doing it with a pokey stick or whatever they got at hand, so I like that.
Hank Smith: 01:05:51 Wow. These are wild scripture stories.
Dr. Lori Denning: 01:05:55 Well, they are fun and if you're teaching the 15-year-olds, you'll have some good material that you haven't had before. But then we hit Gideon. So Gideon is, they're two long narratives of stories and they follow almost the same beats. Gideon and Samson. We'll finish up this one on Gideon, but they're the longest they know the most about them and they're going to show, spoiler alert, a judge who starts out great or has some struggles but starts out and then fails and Samson's going to go even steeper. Gideon's going to follow that pattern and Samson's going to follow that pattern even worse. Starts out well. If I wrote a thesis for Gideon, before we read the story, it's this. Spiritual experiences aren't a vaccine for spiritual decay, that you have to always maintain your covenant. You have to keep going. It's why we don't go to sacrament once a year.
01:06:49 We renew our covenants weekly. It's stuff you have to do. You have to keep doing things. You can't just be like, I did it. I went once. All right, let's do Gideon. Let's jump over to chapter six, chapter six of Judges and we meet our next guy. Now, our next guy is an interesting one because again, it's going to do this same cycle. So now we've gone through this cycle with a few times and then we are going to land and pause on Gideon for a while. So it's been about seven years. The Midianites, a different group are being mean and they're oppressed and then the people are hiding. They're hiding in caves and in dens. Think of this, a little intro to chapter six. The same story, and the Israelites did evil in the sight of the Lord. I haven't heard that. Also, if you've ever seen Star Wars where it has the crawl where the yellow text flows up and it gives you, like, the background of the story, that's the background of the story.
01:07:47 They did evil and the Midianites and it was seven years and it's like this big story and then you zoom in right on Luke Skywalker. We're zooming in on Gideon. You're like, well, he's our next hero. And he is, but there's something interesting that's happening that he's doing. Do you guys remember what Gideon's doing when we first meet him? It's about verse 11, chapter six.
Hank Smith: 01:08:11 Thrushing wheat and hiding it.
Dr. Lori Denning: 01:08:14 Yeah. Wine press is a depression, right? It's a pit that you would put the grapes in and step in. I am not very agricultural, but what I hear is wheat is something you grow. When you want to get the little grains of wheat off the chaff, you need to be usually up high because they use wind. So they beat it and then they throw it into the sky, right? In the wind. So David's threshing floor where he builds the temple is up on the hillside. This is the opposite. So we should know that. I don't know that, but my wheat comes as the form of bread at the grocery store already made. He's afraid that as soon as they grow any crops, the bad guys come through and steal them and kill the people. We'll just scoop up your food. Now, an angel shows up and an angel in 6:12 gives him a little name. Let's go there and see if we can find it. An angel of the Lord appears to him and it calls him something. Do one of you have that?
John Bytheway: 01:09:12 So this is Judges 6:12 in the NRSV. "The angel of the Lord appeared to him and said to him, the Lord is with you, you mighty warrior.
Dr. Lori Denning: 01:09:24 Now, wait a minute. He's a guy hiding in a wine press. Does he seem very mighty or valorous to you?
John Bytheway: 01:09:31 Is this a sarcastic angel?
Dr. Lori Denning: 01:09:34 There's this theme of irony. So we had the irony with Ehud story. We had the irony with even the woman being called as prophetess. We have the irony of he's not very valorous. He's not very mighty. He's the least of these. Now let's pause for a minute. Whose story do we think this is? Is this story just for Gideon? No. We're Gideon. And then he even says, it was just, well, the Lord is with thee. He's like, this pretty snarky answer. If the Lord is with us, then why has this all happened to us? And where are all the wondrous and mighty deeds that happened to our ancestors because we're sitting here suffering. That's a pretty bold response to the angel of the Lord, sometimes known as the Lord, that you're like, where are you in my life? Because I hear all these miracles in other people's lives.
01:10:24 I see people cured of cancer and walk again. I read the miracles of the Savior, but not for me. Those things don't happen to me. Sadly, I think a lot of us are a lot more Gideon than sometimes the others. Where's the Lord in my life? Maybe we don't even disbelieve that it happens for other people, but we do wonder, where is he in my life? Where are the mighty miracles when I have to hide out just to make my lunch? And I go, all right, well, this is a guy that I can kind of understand. I wish I didn't, but there are times, I think, when we're having to hide when we don't see the Lord's hand in our life, and here he is standing right in front of him. Hey, mighty man of valor, and you're like, not very valorous. But I think the Lord knows something about him that he doesn't know about himself yet.
01:11:14 He calls him there and then he says, I'm the least. Again, that's that call. I'm the least people. That reluctance, the one is really a covenant signature. We're the least of people. Hey, do you guys remember why Israel is chosen as the Lord's chosen people? The Lord tells why he chooses Israel among all the nations. He says, beause you're the smallest. I chose you because you're the smallest of the nations because then you know who it was that was behind you that God can save the weakest, the smallest people. And here we saw it with Enoch, we saw it with all these stories and here we see it with Gideon. I'm going to choose the weakest guy, the smallest guy. He even says, I'm from the smallest tribe, and among the tribes, I'm in the smallest house, and among the smallest house, I'm the youngest in my family. I'm the weakest, dumbest guy you could pick for this job. And the Lord's like, you're just who I'm looking for. That's perfect. I can hardly wait.
