W. Robert Godfrey

They're having fewer and fewer children.

Children were a sign of the blessing of the Lord in the Old Covenant, and that's shrinking away.

And this does help us understand Jephthah.

You see, Gideon had many children.

Jephthah had one daughter, and he killed her.

That's

Spiritual decline, you see.

And Samson had no children and killed himself.

So this is the pattern of spiritual decline that we're going to see here in the book of Judges.

And all of this, you see, is very intentional.

But if you don't see the big picture, you might not notice that.

And you might say, well, why is this crazy Samson in this story?

He does one bad thing after another.

Yeah, it's showing the spiritual decline of Israel.

Because for most of the book, the Judges are better than the people.

And God established the office of judge to save the people, deliver the people.

But by the time we get to Samson, his life is spiritually indistinguishable from the life of the people.

He is Israel.

He's not really the savior of Israel.

He is Israel, revealing in his life, in his weakness, in his failure, all of the weaknesses and growing spiritual failures of Israel.