Derek Thomas

He's a figure that you might want to consider as someone who needed help, unable to use his right hand.

And God places him in a position to restore what Eglon, the king of Moab, and Eglon the king of Moab represents.

It represents opposition, opposition to the kingdom of God, opposition to the people of God, opposition to the covenant of God.

I imagine in a society in which we live where there is confusion about what is right and what is wrong, what is good and what is evil.

how evil should be treated and so on.

We are here, as so often in the Old Testament in a theocracy, we are in a position of what we might call the just war.

It was the great Augustine, Saint Augustine, who wrote a treatise on the just war, what is needed for war to be just.

And without these principles, the war is unjust.

So there's just war and there's unjust war.

And

There's an ethical issue, of course.

God...

gives to his people, to the children of Abraham, the promised land.

And that promised land is currently occupied by a whole slew of clans.

We call them the Canaanites, but they're made up of all kinds of people.

Moab is to the east of the River Jordan, but

To occupy this land that God had given would involve water, inevitably so.

And without a belief that this is God's command, the whole thing becomes an ethically difficult issue to deal with.

There's a text, a recurring text, that the iniquity of the Amorites is not yet full.

God says this to Abraham, that the iniquity of the Amorites is not yet full.