Israel cries out to God – Help me but stay out of my life! (Judg 10:6–16)

While not all difficulties are an indication of sin, sometimes God brings circumstances into our lives to call us to our senses. Like the prodigal son in Jesus’ parable in Luke 15, our struggles may awaken us to our need of God and lead to some honest stock-taking. In the Book of Judges, this seems to be a repeated pattern. Israel sins and worships other gods, the Lord allows them to be oppressed by other nations until they recognise their need of Him, and He saves them through a judge. The story around Jephthah opens with this pattern, but it is noteworthy that Israel takes 18 years to turn to God for help.

Despite their words of repentance (the first time in the book!), God’s response is unexpectedly harsh (10:11–14). In effect He is saying, ‘You have forsaken me and now you want my help? Go to the gods you worship, let them deliver you!’ Why is God so unyielding? Doesn’t He care? We discover the reason when Israel continues to plead with God and only then gets rid of the foreign gods and serves the Lord (v.16). In other words, Israel wanted God’s help but not His ongoing presence in her life.

Many people turn to God in the way one calls the AA service when the car breaks down. When illness strikes, or they face losing their job or someone they love, even non-Christians may cry out to God. ‘Please God, help me!’ they say, but they only wish to have their specific need fixed, and do not want God to intrude on other areas. As Christians, we are not immune to this temptation to compartmentalise either. We may want God to fix our financial difficulties, our relationship with our children or our internal insecurities, but resist change and God’s conviction in habits that enslave us to sin.

What is God’s response to all this? Many translations suggest that He simply could not bear His people’s suffering (v.16), but the Hebrew expression is more ambiguous. It literally means ‘His [God’s] spirit was short because of Israel’s misery.’ The same phrase describes Samson being vexed to death by Delilah’s nagging (Judg 16:16) and Israel’s despondency in their slavery (Exod 6:9). Like a parent who keeps rescuing a recalcitrant child from the consequences of his actions, God’s pity was perhaps mixed with frustration and impatience with a people who would not give themselves to Him unless absolutely necessary.