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Journey Through Judges: 50 Biblical Insights by Gary Inrig
The book of Judges describes a low point in the history of God’s people. It tells of a time of moral and spiritual anarchy when everyone ignored God’s life-giving laws and did what they thought was right in their own eyes. It is a story of disobedience and defeat. Yet the book also contains glimpses of the Israelites’ capacity for greatness—when they chose to trust and depend on God. Discover God’s great principles of life, and find out how we can lead powerful, productive lives in a society that is increasingly hostile to our faith.
This Journey Through series provides assistance to those who desire to spend time with God in His Word, book by book. The daily insights will help Christians discover the precious, life-transforming wisdom of the Bible, inspiring them towards a closer walk with God. Perfect for personal devotions.
This Journey Through series provides assistance to those who desire to spend time with God in His Word, book by book. The daily insights will help Christians discover the precious, life-transforming wisdom of the Bible, inspiring them towards a closer walk with God. Perfect for personal devotions.
162 pages, Kindle Edition
Published April 15, 2022
3 people want to read
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March 30, 2024
There’s nothing wrong with the occasional snack, as long as it doesn’t replace a healthy meal—right? Our Daily Bread is well-known for its freely distributed, snack-sized daily Bible reading notes. They give brief, anecdotal comments on a Bible verse from a different part of the Bible each day. They are no substitute for methodically and intentionally reading through the Bible—a proper meal.
Therefore, I was pleasantly surprised when I discovered the Journey Through series of Bible reading notes, which Our Daily Bread is now producing through Discovery House. Journey Through goes through whole Bible books with consecutive daily readings in a much more expository way. Each A5 booklet covers a whole Bible book, unless it’s a very long one (Psalms is covered in three booklets) or a very short one (Jude is included with 2 Peter, Haggai and Malachi share a booklet).
The readings for each Bible book are divided mostly into 30 or 50 daily readings. This is neat but it means that for Acts there is about half a chapter to study each day, whereas for 1 Peter, which has a whole 30-day booklet to itself, an average of only 3½ verses a day. Even for a book as tightly packed as 1 Peter, this feels just too slow and leaves you wanting to raid the fridge or fruit bowl afterwards.
Each day your allotted Bible passage (not included in the booklet) has about a page of explanation and comments, which are based on the New International Version. Generally, these are good, biblically sound and helpful. The right-hand page has two ‘Think Through’ questions, aimed at getting you to apply the teaching to yourself, along with a lined space for your own notes.
Journey Through Judges has 50 daily readings to cover a book of 21 chapters. This seems about right, though there is a big variation in the length of passages set for each day. For example, Day 1 has two verses, Day 2 thirty-four verses and Day 3 five verses. Day 49, on the other hand, has two whole chapters (78 verses) to be read. Granted that there is good reason for some variation (you really don’t want to linger over Chapters 19 and 20), this to me is too much.
The Bible passages are also sometimes divided into puzzlingly small sections in a way that doesn't seem to make sense. It takes a whole week to go through Judges 6, with one day’s reading consisting entirely of verses 25-26. This means we read of God telling Gideon to destroy his father’s idols and offer a sacrifice on a proper altar, without reading the next verse, which tells how Gideon obeyed. This inconsistent breaking up of the narrative into tiny sections I find unhelpful.
There are some difficult issues in the book of Judges, not least with the behaviour of some of the leaders whom God raised up to deliver his people. The writer deals helpfully with many of these, pointing us to how and why human leaders went wrong and how God graciously over-ruled their sinful shortcomings. There is some good application showing how we can avoid making the mistakes they made and be better Christians or leaders.
Some things do need further explanation. For example, in Judges 5:8 NIV has “God chose new leaders” but the writer plumps for the New Living Translation’s “[the people] chose new gods”, with no explanation as to why this version is preferred. There is one comment I seriously question. The writer says that Jephthah’s rash and terrible vow in Judges 11 has “one positive feature”: it sets a good example of taking a promise to God seriously. Surely Jephthah should have confessed the sinfulness of his promise and not made it infinitely worse by carrying it out. A promise to commit a sin should be confessed and renounced, never kept.
To me, there is one major short-coming: the book does not point us enough to Christ. Judges tells of leaders whom God raised up to deliver his people from oppression by enemies that resulted from unfaithfulness to God. As well as learning how to avoid their sins, should we not also be looking at how each of these leaders either points us to characteristics of a deliverer more perfectly seen in Christ or shows why we need a deliverer who will not fail as they did.
If you have more than 20 minutes to give to Bible reading each day, you would do well to supplement this book with Timothy Keller’s Judges for You (The Good Book Company, 2013).
Therefore, I was pleasantly surprised when I discovered the Journey Through series of Bible reading notes, which Our Daily Bread is now producing through Discovery House. Journey Through goes through whole Bible books with consecutive daily readings in a much more expository way. Each A5 booklet covers a whole Bible book, unless it’s a very long one (Psalms is covered in three booklets) or a very short one (Jude is included with 2 Peter, Haggai and Malachi share a booklet).
The readings for each Bible book are divided mostly into 30 or 50 daily readings. This is neat but it means that for Acts there is about half a chapter to study each day, whereas for 1 Peter, which has a whole 30-day booklet to itself, an average of only 3½ verses a day. Even for a book as tightly packed as 1 Peter, this feels just too slow and leaves you wanting to raid the fridge or fruit bowl afterwards.
Each day your allotted Bible passage (not included in the booklet) has about a page of explanation and comments, which are based on the New International Version. Generally, these are good, biblically sound and helpful. The right-hand page has two ‘Think Through’ questions, aimed at getting you to apply the teaching to yourself, along with a lined space for your own notes.
Journey Through Judges has 50 daily readings to cover a book of 21 chapters. This seems about right, though there is a big variation in the length of passages set for each day. For example, Day 1 has two verses, Day 2 thirty-four verses and Day 3 five verses. Day 49, on the other hand, has two whole chapters (78 verses) to be read. Granted that there is good reason for some variation (you really don’t want to linger over Chapters 19 and 20), this to me is too much.
The Bible passages are also sometimes divided into puzzlingly small sections in a way that doesn't seem to make sense. It takes a whole week to go through Judges 6, with one day’s reading consisting entirely of verses 25-26. This means we read of God telling Gideon to destroy his father’s idols and offer a sacrifice on a proper altar, without reading the next verse, which tells how Gideon obeyed. This inconsistent breaking up of the narrative into tiny sections I find unhelpful.
There are some difficult issues in the book of Judges, not least with the behaviour of some of the leaders whom God raised up to deliver his people. The writer deals helpfully with many of these, pointing us to how and why human leaders went wrong and how God graciously over-ruled their sinful shortcomings. There is some good application showing how we can avoid making the mistakes they made and be better Christians or leaders.
Some things do need further explanation. For example, in Judges 5:8 NIV has “God chose new leaders” but the writer plumps for the New Living Translation’s “[the people] chose new gods”, with no explanation as to why this version is preferred. There is one comment I seriously question. The writer says that Jephthah’s rash and terrible vow in Judges 11 has “one positive feature”: it sets a good example of taking a promise to God seriously. Surely Jephthah should have confessed the sinfulness of his promise and not made it infinitely worse by carrying it out. A promise to commit a sin should be confessed and renounced, never kept.
To me, there is one major short-coming: the book does not point us enough to Christ. Judges tells of leaders whom God raised up to deliver his people from oppression by enemies that resulted from unfaithfulness to God. As well as learning how to avoid their sins, should we not also be looking at how each of these leaders either points us to characteristics of a deliverer more perfectly seen in Christ or shows why we need a deliverer who will not fail as they did.
If you have more than 20 minutes to give to Bible reading each day, you would do well to supplement this book with Timothy Keller’s Judges for You (The Good Book Company, 2013).
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