W. Robert Godfrey

Never in the whole history of Israel has anything so vile happened as what happened in the city of Gibeah.

And who was born in Gibeah?

Saul.

It's like this whole book is written so that when we read later in the history of God's people that the people wanted Saul as king, Saul of Gibeah, Saul of Benjamin, everyone would cry out, no, not anybody from there.

How can you be so stupid?

And so in a certain sense, the book of Judges is a tract for the house of David.

I'm pretty sure its final form was written in David's day or at least under the successors of David.

This is all a way of saying you don't want Benjamin, you don't want Saul, you want Judah, and you want David.

But of course, it's a political tract from the hand of God.

It's God's saying.

It's David and it's Judah that are the tribe that I choose.

God had already prophesied about that through Jacob, talking about the rulership of Judah.

So God has known what he's doing always.

We can always come back to that as a settled, confident point we can make.

God knows what he's doing.

And what he's doing through this book is showing us how much Israel needs not only a king, but needs a king from Judah.

and specifically needs David of Judah to be king.

And so it's wonderful to see this big context.

Sometimes I think we get the idea that books in the Bible are just one book next to another.

They don't make a lot of difference how you read them.