Judges 10 Bible study: His soul was grieved

Judges tells Israel crying to the LORD at 3:9, 3:15, 4:3, 6:6 and 6:7. The last time is here: "The children of Israel cried to the LORD, saying, ‘We have sinned against you’" (10:10). After the LORD's answer, "Go and cry to the gods which you have chosen" (10:14), the book never again says the children of Israel cried to the LORD.

Judges 3:9 · Judges 3:15 · Judges 4:3 · Judges 6:6-7 · Judges 10:10 · Judges 10:14

The chapter opens where Abimelech's story ends: "After Abimelech, Tola the son of Puah, the son of Dodo, a man of Issachar, arose to save Israel" (10:1) (tap save). "He lived in Shamir in the hill country of Ephraim" (10:1), and "He judged Israel twenty-three years, and died, and was buried in Shamir" (10:2) (tap judged). "After him Jair, the Gileadite, arose. He judged Israel twenty-two years" (10:3). Of Jair the chapter tells his family: "He had thirty sons who rode on thirty donkey colts. They had thirty cities, which are called Havvoth Jair to this day, which are in the land of Gilead" (10:4). Then "Jair died, and was buried in Kamon" (10:5). In these five verses no enemy is named and no battle is told. Here they close the part of Judges that began with Abimelech (9:1); 10:6 opens the next.

Judges 10:15→leads toLuke 15:18-20

Israel said to the LORD, "We have sinned! Do to us whatever seems good to you; only deliver us, please, today" (10:15), and "They put away the foreign gods from among them and served the LORD" (10:16). When "the tax collectors and sinners were coming close to him to hear him" (Luke 15:1), Jesus told of a younger son who left for "a far country" (Luke 15:13) and, in his need, said, "I will get up and go to my father" (Luke 15:18). He would say, "Father, I have sinned against heaven and in your sight" (Luke 15:18), and "Make me as one of your hired servants" (Luke 15:19). "He arose and came to his father" (Luke 15:20). Jesus doesn't cite Judges 10, so setting the two side by side is a reading, resting on what both passages state: people who have turned away say they have sinned, put themselves in the hands of the one they sinned against, and come back. Some hear in the father, who "was moved with compassion" (Luke 15:20), what 10:16 shows of the LORD. Others note that the end of 10:16 is read in more than one way (see the honest question), read the parable as Jesus' answer to those who said, "This man welcomes sinners, and eats with them" (Luke 15:2), and don't look from one to the other.

קָצַרqatsarsay qa-TSAR

Brown-Driver-Briggs: "be short". Strong's: "to dock off, i.e. curtail". "His soul was grieved for the misery of Israel" (10:16): in Hebrew, vattiqtsar nafsho, literally, his soul was short. It is not the verb of 2:18, "it grieved the LORD because of their groaning", which is nacham. The same words, a soul that is short, come again in Judges only once, of Samson: "his soul was troubled to death" (16:16). Elsewhere they are in "The soul of the people was very discouraged" (Numbers 21:4), and in "my soul was weary of them" (Zechariah 11:8). Numbers uses the verb of the LORD's hand: "Has the LORD’s hand grown short?" (Numbers 11:23).