Judges 3 Bible study: The LORD raised up a savior

The chapter opens with the nations still in the land: "Now these are the nations which the LORD left, to test Israel by them" (3:1) (tap test). It names them: "the five lords of the Philistines, all the Canaanites, the Sidonians, and the Hivites who lived on Mount Lebanon" (3:3). And it says what the test was for: "to know whether they would listen to the LORD’s commandments, which he commanded their fathers by Moses" (3:4). The LORD had said it in chapter 2: "that by them I may test Israel" (2:22). Then two verses tell what Israel did. "The children of Israel lived among the Canaanites, the Hittites, the Amorites, the Perizzites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites" (3:5). "They took their daughters to be their wives, and gave their own daughters to their sons and served their gods" (3:6). Joshua had warned against exactly this: "and make marriages with them" (Joshua 23:12). Joshua 23's honest question follows what came of it.

Judges 3:9→leads toLuke 1:71

The LORD "sold them into the hand of Cushan Rishathaim", and "the children of Israel served Cushan Rishathaim eight years" (3:8). When they cried to the LORD, "the LORD raised up a savior to the children of Israel, who saved them" (3:9), and later, "the LORD raised up a savior for them" (3:15). Looking back, the Levites pray, "you gave them saviors who saved them out of the hands of their adversaries" (Nehemiah 9:27). When John the Baptist is born, his father Zacharias, "filled with the Holy Spirit" (Luke 1:67), says that God "has raised up a horn of salvation for us in the house of his servant David" (Luke 1:69), "salvation from our enemies and from the hand of all who hate us" (Luke 1:71), so "that we, being delivered out of the hand of our enemies, should serve him without fear" (Luke 1:74). Gabriel had told Mary that God would give her son Jesus "the throne of his father David" (Luke 1:32). Luke doesn't cite Judges, so setting them side by side is a reading. Some hear in Zacharias' words the pattern of this chapter: God raising up one who saves his people out of the hand of their enemies, so that they serve him rather than those enemies (3:8, 3:14). Others hear in them God's promises to David's house and to Abraham (Luke 1:69-73), with no look back to the judges.

יָשַׁעyasha'say ya-SHA

Brown-Driver-Briggs: "deliver, save". Strong's: "properly, to be open, wide or free, i.e. (by implication) to be safe; causatively, to free or succor". Verse 9 has it twice: "the LORD raised up a savior to the children of Israel, who saved them" (3:9). The first is moshia, the form the WEB gives as "a savior", and it comes again for Ehud: "the LORD raised up a savior for them" (3:15). In the WEB, Judges says "a savior" only in these two verses. Of Shamgar the chapter says, "He also saved Israel" (3:31). The book's summary used the same verb: "The LORD raised up judges, who saved them out of the hand of those who plundered them" (2:16). Looking back, the Levites in Nehemiah pray, "you gave them saviors who saved them out of the hands of their adversaries" (Nehemiah 9:27), with the verb twice again.