Judg 2:1 | KingComments | STEP | Judges 1 deals with the decay of the Israelites with regard to the peoples around them, the world. They have been unfaithful in taking possession of the land and have not driven out the enemies. Judges 2 is about decay with regard to God. They turned their back on God and began to serve the idols. This chapter provides a summary of the entire book. This summary shows that we are dealing with a kind of vicious circle, a cycle that keeps recurring in the following chapters. This cycle consists of the following steps: 1. The people leave God. 2. God uses enemies to awaken their conscience. 3. The people call to the LORD. 4. The LORD gives them in His mercy a judge to deliver them. Then the cycle starts again: 1. The people leave God. 2. God uses … and so on. In Psalm 107 we find something similar. We read first about need, then the call to the LORD, after which their salvation follows, after which He is praised. The chorus in that psalm is formed by the words “then they cried out to the LORD in their trouble” ( ). In general, the Old Testament uses the name “Angel of the LORD” to denote the appearance of God in a visible form. Only in the New Testament is God “revealed in the flesh” ( ). He has become visible in the Lord Jesus. When the Lord Jesus is born, God is visible to men. Those who believe in Him see God in Him ( ). The Lord Jesus is the incarnate Word ( ). The eternal Son has become Man ( ). Also in the Old Testament, God appeared to people in Christ. There He takes the form of an Angel. There are some Scriptures which make clear that ‘the angel of the LORD’ means God ( ). From what the Angel of the LORD says in those verses, it appears that He is none but God Himself. If we compare the first verses of Isaiah 6 with the quote of these verses in John 12, we see something else special ( ; ). Then we see that Yahweh, the LORD of the Old Testament, is the same as the Lord Jesus in the New Testament. If the context shows that “the Angel of the LORD” is an appearance of God, then this is in reality the Lord Jesus. “Gilgal” is of great strategic importance in the book of Joshua. It forms the base camp, the place from which the Israelites always go out to conquer the land. They always return to that place. Shortly after they entered the land of Canaan through the Jordan, circumcision takes place at Gilgal. By this deed, the reproach of Egypt has been rolled away ( ). The significance of circumcision for us is found in Colossians 2 ( ). In this verse we clearly see that for the Christian, circumcision is not a literal matter, but that it has a spiritual significance. We are not circumcised with a circumcision made with “hands” – that would have meant a literal circumcision – but we are circumcised “by the circumcision of Christ”. The latter does not speak of what happened to Christ when He is eight days old ( ), but of what happened to Him on the cross when He received God’s judgment on sin. On the cross in Him the flesh is judged with the judgment of death. Just as Israel has always returned to Gilgal to be remembered, as it were, to God’s judgment on the ‘I’, the nature of man, so we have to go back to the cross again and again to realize who we are by natural. There is no strength in us to conquer the land. The power for this can only be found in a dead and raised Christ. This means that the death of Christ must be applied every time, that is to say that we must condemn all kinds of manifestations of the flesh that may arise in us ( ). Gilgal represents the spiritual circumcision of the heart that precedes victory and gives the heart new strength to overcome in battle. Gilgal speaks of a constant self-judgment. We are called up to this self- judgment. If we do not, we will be judged by the Lord, that is, disciplined by Him. “But if we judged ourselves rightly, we would not be judged. But when we are judged, we are disciplined by the Lord so that we will not be condemned along with the world” ( ). The Angel of the LORD leaves Gilgal and goes to Bochim. Bochim means ‘weeping’. It is a place of tears. These are tears for lost blessings. Doesn’t it make us feel sad to see how the people have deviated from God and have left Him? Those who do not know this grief do not know where the Spirit of God dwells. Bochim reflects the character of the church in decay. It is presumptuous to assume that one possesses great power in our time. The days of Joshua and Gilgal have been days of power and joy, but they are over now forever. The spirit of Laodicea comes to light when we say that we are rich and enriched, while in reality we are blind, naked and poor ( ). But a place of weeping can become a place of blessing. Then we must take that place of sorrow, of humiliation because of our unfaithfulness. Then the valley of Baca can be made “a spring”, as it is so beautifully said in Psalm 84 ( ). The word baca is related to Bochim and means ‘tears’. The Lord Jesus is as it were in ‘Bochim’ when He stands at the tomb of Lazarus. We read of Him that He “wept” there ( ). Paul also knows this place ( ; cf. ). The LORD points out to Ezekiel people who live in ‘Bochim’. He says of them that they are “the men who sigh and groan over all the abominations which are being committed in its midst [that is in Jerusalem]” ( ). The Angel of the LORD makes a solemn declaration for the reason of His departure from Gilgal. This declaration makes a deep impression on the people. He begins by reminding them that He has freed them from Egypt. That the Angel of the LORD says that He did this, underlines that the Angel is God Himself. He goes back to the origin of their existence as a people. They are a slave people in Egypt, but God has delivered them from the power of Pharaoh. This shows His great love for them. If we know deviations in our personal lives, God will also always remind us of our deliverance from the power of sin. The main cause of any deviation is that we forget what salvation God has worked for us in the surrender of His Son on the cross. The reminder of the redemption from Egypt is mentioned more often in this book ( ; ). God does this to awaken His people. The Angel of the LORD also speaks about the land in which they now live. He brought them there because of the oath which He sworn to their fathers ( ). What He has promised, He has done. This is also a great certainty for us. God will live up to what He has said. He does this not because of our faithfulness, but because of what the Lord Jesus did. We are blessed with every spiritual blessing in Christ ( ).