The lesson five here is our final lesson on the book of judges, recovering chapter 17 through 21, the epilogue, or epilogue is the double epilogue, we're going to look at these chapters, and I've entitled the lesson the dictatorship of relativism. This is going to become very evident why I've entitled it this way as we move through the story, and we see the inclusio that begins and ends of the section. But the expression, the coen of the phrase, dictatorship of relativism comes from Benedict XVI, who coined this phrase for the problems that we're dealing with in our own modern times, where everyone does whatever is right in their own eyes. And tolerance really is the only accepted virtue.
You have to tolerate people, and if what's right for them is right for them, and you can't say anything about it. There is no objective truth, there is no objective morality. I thought that was a good title for this, because it's exactly what we're going to see in this section. Now, chapters 17 through 21 here, it forms a whole unit.
It is an epilogue. We look through all of the major judges, the minor judges, of course, have just a few little verses for them, but we've progressed from the very beginnings, Othniel, all the way to Samson, Samson, of course, being the most airtime, he's the most popular, but he is the most frustrating. We talked about all that in lesson four. Now we're looking at a conclusion for this period that is just struggling so much with fidelity with God.
There's a cycle of sin and mercy over and over again, as we've been seeing all along. Well, now the epilogue is going to provide a lot more frustrating content here as an explanation of what's going on. So the epilogue is twofold. It's part one, part two.
And it really, if you go back to chapters one and two, you discover, three-member, that we have a twofold prologue. It opens up the book. The first section, the first part of the prologue, chapter one, verse one, through chapter two, verse five. And then the second part of the prologue is chapter two, verse six, through chapter three, verse six.
And you might remember that. And we talked about this, I think it's the second lesson now. The first chapter discusses all of the tribes trying to fight the Canaanites. And then going out to fight, loot Judah, just the one that leads them.
That's going to be important as we move forward here. Judah is the one, the tribe, the Kingly tribe, who leaves the attack against the Canaanites because this is the generation after Joshua dies. And they're having all kinds of problems and failures. They're not really completing the task.
And then you remember that the angel of the Lord, and the first verse of chapter two, the angel of the Lord, came out and chastised Israel for not following through with the plan. And they begin to weep. If you remember the story, they begin to weep at a place called Bohim or Bohim. I like the sound of the Bohim.
And that means weepers. And so there are a bunch of crybabies with no real contrition. And they're just kind of sad that they got chastised. I think is what's going on here.
I think it's evident that contrition is a compunction, is not really, really going down deep into their heart. So they cried, but then it talks about here in the second prologue, in the very, very beginning, how they were unfaithful, how they went and played the harlot after other gods. There arose another generation that did not know the Lord. God sends up judges.
And then they get worse and worse as they don't listen to the judges. And then the first verses of chapter three, it ends everything saying that God's abandoned Israel because Israel served these other gods. And they left all of the Canaanites and the Amorites and the Hittites and all these people got left. And there was a testing for them to see would they cling to God or not, but they didn't.
They made foreign marriages with these other peoples and it just got worse and worse. OK, you know, if you hopefully has a really, really quick summary of what's going on in that double prologue. Now you have, very strategically, a double epilogue. So you've got a double prologue, a twofold prologue, and a twofold epilogue here that concludes the whole book.
But there's a difference in emphasis. The prologue is emphasizing how Israel is meant to go conquer their foreign enemies, that the peoples that are attacking them and driving them into idolatry, how Israel, the tribes of Israel have to be united against the Canaanites and these other gods. Now we're seeing something is shifting here. So here's a quick little quote from your Catholic study by the way of saying, if earlier chapters underscore the threat that foreign aggressors pose to Israel, these final chapters show that Israel is also threatened by internal disintegration and collapse from within.
End quote. That is really, really significant. At the beginning of this book, they're having to deal with foreign aggressors and drive out these idolators out of the land and annihilate them. But we discover over and over again that they don't do this.
And they fall prey to their practices. And as a result, they're beginning to be an enemy unto themselves. There's internal disintegration. There's civil war.
We've already seen seeds of this. And we're going to see it take place in even greater disaster. So at the beginning, they should be united against a foreign enemy. But now they're an enemy to themselves, because sin has driven them to fight against each other.
That's what's going on here. That's the distinction between the twofold prologue and the twofold epilogue. Sin will cause you to fight against your brothers. It's a horrible reality.
So these events that are described in chapter 17 through 21 are pretty darn awful. All right, I'm just warning you, this lesson is a difficult one because you're just scratching your head thinking, how in the world could all of this happen? How could this be inspired? Scripshrew.
We've already seen some dark things, like Jephthah sacrificing his daughter, which I kind of think that is the proper interpretation. We discussed before how maybe he's consecrating his daughter to be a perpetual virgin. In the tabernacle, I think that's a stretch. But nevertheless here, you read these chapters and you're wondering what is happening.
It's super dark. There's absolute chaos across all society. Socially, morally, religiously, liturgically, it's super, super dark. And so what's going on is that these events are describing the overarching disease of sin that plagues this entire period.
And these events probably happen early on in the period of the judges, and various commentators will point this out. We know that because Phineas mentioned, for example, he's the grandson of Aaron. The grandson of Moses is mentioned as a Levi while shared that with you in a moment. So you've got the grandsons of these great leaders, and so a lot of people say, well, this seems to have been pretty soon after Joshua's death, right?
When that new generation arose that did not know the Lord, the opening verses of chapter three described that. This is kind of what's going on here. They're departing from the Lord very, very quickly. They're departing from this law.
So if these events happen at the beginning of the period of the judges, the question then becomes, why are they being described here in this epilogue? Why are they at the end of the story? I think it's because, and various commentators will point this out, because it really provides an explanatory summary of the problems of the whole era. You just mentioned that, right?
It's an overview, a summary of the whole era of chaos, chaos resulting from, well, an inclusion. That's what I want to say next, actually. All this chaos that is occurring here is plaguing the entire period of the judges. This give or take 300-year timespan.
Why is that happening? Well, an inclusio tells us why. Now, if you remember, an inclusio is a literary device where you've got a section of scripture to be a whole book, a section within a book, or an epistle, or what paragraph, or whatever it might be, where the beginning and the end has the same refrain or the same points. It could actually be the same verse, as is this case.
And that's what you discover. So chapter 17, the beginning of this conclusion of this epilogue, chapter 17 verse 6 says, in those days, there was no king in Israel. Every man did what was right in his own eyes. And the very last verse of the book, chapter 21 verse 25, it says, in those days, there was no king in Israel.
Every man did what was right in his own eyes. That repetition there is very significant. It's an inclusio. It's a book in.
Think of them as book in. And so all the disaster that's going on here in this section is a result of the fact that they have no king, namely God. I've emphasized this multiple times in past lessons. God is supposed to reign over them.
Gideon got that right if you remember. They wanted to make Gideon king, and he said, no, the Lord will rule over you. That's exactly correct. And of course, Gideon screwed it all up because he begins behaving like a king, and we discussed that at that particular point.
But God is supposed to be their king, and they've rejected God's kingship over them, and they're doing whatever the heck they want. They're doing whatever is right in their own eyes. And that's the reason why we have all this social moral, religious liturgical chaos, because they're not following God's law. It's moral relativism.
It's subjectivism. They're making themselves their own kings, and really, they're making themselves their own gods. So because of that, the scriptures are teaching us that when a society rejects God and does whatever they want, whatever is right in their own eyes, whatever they feel like doing, whenever they wake up in the morning, you're going to have this chaos. It is a very sobering, very instructive lesson for every single generation.
So when you read this stuff, and I would like to joke HBO's got nothing on the Old Testament, especially the Book of Judges, HBO can make a mini-series on the Book of Judges and be faithful to the text, and it would be just as scandalous as some of the things they might have when they're on their platform. But the point here is there's a reason for it, and it's supposed to teach us to cling to God, not turn away from God. And this is nothing new. This moral relativism, subjectivism, self-deification, if you really want to call it that, I think that's a good way to describe it.
Self-deification, wanting to be like God. There's a reason why I say that, because it goes all the way back to the beginning of salvation history. First, let's back up a little bit and just go to Moses. Moses in Deuteronomy chapter 12, before he dies, you might remember that Deuteronomy is Moses' last little Intestiment.
They're there at the Plains of Mount Nebo, the Plains of Moab across the Jordan River, and Moses is giving the law of Deuteronomy, because they just sinned at Balpeor. So he tells them in chapter 12, verse 8, you shall not do, according to all that we are doing here this day, every man doing whatever is right in his own eyes. Moses was dealing with two generations, to be precise, with a bunch of knuckleheads, not obeying him, and just driving him crazy. If his beard wasn't gray before the Exodus and guaranteed it was gray after the Exodus.
So they're driving him up the wall with all their disobedience and idolatry, and essentially he says, don't do that anymore, don't do whatever you want, whatever is right in your own eyes. There's God's law to follow. And then he lays it out, God's law to the Ten Commandments, and then of course the application of the Ten Commandments is the rest of the book of Deuteronomy. But it goes back even farther than that.
You need to go to the very beginning, the very first fall in Genesis chapter three, with Adam and Eve. You know the story very well, I'm sure, and especially if you've taken my Salvation History Course in Genesis course. What happens is Satan comes in, and he goes after Eve first, he undermines the role of authority that Adam should have as head of creation and head of humanity. He goes to her and he tempts her right in a variety of different ways.
The threefold can keep us and we can't get into all this right now. But at one point he says, just go ahead and eat it because God knows that when you eat it, you will be like God knowing good and evil. When many commentators have pointed out that the Hebrew knowing good and evil at verb has this connotation of determining good and evil. It's not just a simple issue of well, you're ignorant of what evil is, well then you're gonna know what it is afterwards in an experiential way.
It's more than that, it's determining it. To be like God means you can determine what is right and wrong, what is good and evil, what is true and false. That is what Satan wanted to do. He was envious of God.
And so he wanted to be like God and he fell. Saint Michael was faithful to God. That's why his name Michael means who is like God. Michael said, God is like God, no one's like God.
I'm gonna be faithful to God. And so he becomes the commander of the angelic hosts. Satan on the other hand wanted to be like God and call the shots. So the nature of Satan's temptation against Adam and Eve was very similar.
He says, you guys can call the shots. You don't need to subject yourself to God, break the yoke. Do whatever you want, whatever is right in your own eyes, a paraphrasing right, determine good and evil. This has been the lie of moral relativism has been around since the very beginning.
And we're dealing with it in a very bad way in our own era, our own culture in the modern times. For sure. You just look around and talk to people and they say they wanna do whatever they wanna do. They conflate free will with freedom.
Freedom means being free from sin. Free will means being able to choose sin or rejection. There's a lot to say there, but I think you're picking up what I'm putting down. But the whole point is that this section of judges, this epilogue begins and ends with a refrain.
They're doing whatever they want. They're doing whatever is right in their own eyes because they've rejected God's kingship. And that's the reason why we find such dark stories. So if you've read this section before, then you know what I'm talking about.
If you haven't read this section before, I'm gonna spoil it, we'll go through it in the next hour. But it is really, really bad. And so the sacred author is placing at the end of the book of judges to tell us all about stuff that we've read already with the major judges, even going back to that double prologue where the cycle of sin is described because of catechitical failure and because of their intermarriages with the Canaanites and their idolatry and so on and so forth. It's all because of relativism and rejecting God's law.
So that's kind of a longer introduction here, but it's really, really applicable. It's so applicable to us. And if we read the book of judges and we're scandalized, it means we're not paying attention to the events that are going on in our modern time. There are so many awful, awful things happening in our own modern times with human trafficking, with drugs, with violence, with political corruption, you name it.
There's nothing, Solomon says there's nothing new, and there's nothing new, there's none. So the evil that is occurring in the book of judges, it is inspired scripture because God has tried to tell us something to cling to him and to cling to his law with great love and affection and devotion and then things will be alright. But if we depart from God, then they're not gonna be alright. They're gonna be like the book of judges.
And I'm telling you right now, we're experiencing this. We're experiencing social and moral and religious and liturgical chaos because we're doing whatever we want. Feeling a little bit preachy right now, maybe my caffeine is starting to kick in a little bit, but this is an indictment on modern times as well. Alright, so with that, get off my soapbox here.
Let's understand the story of what's happening here in the first epilogue, which is chapter 17 through 18. We got two stories of Levites and priests, okay, because again, it's religious and liturgical and sanity happening. So the first one is, the first epilogue is chapter 17 through 18 with this. Levite, let's read here verses one through five.