This week we see the last of the judges, in the story of the family of Manoah.  These were yet another couple- Manoah and his wife – who couldn’t have children.  There are quite a lot of childless couples in the Bible who then are given a child by God, through his miraculous intervention.  Every child is a gift from God according to Psalm 127.  But some of them are noted especially.

Manoah’s son is one of these special cases.

The story begins with Mrs. Manoah.  She doesn’t get named, but she does get a visit from ‘the angel of the LORD’ (Judges 13: 2-5)

And that marks this family out as different from the other families in this time period.  The book of Judges covers the period when ‘there was no king in the land and everyone did what was right in his own eyes’ (21: 25).  Israel sinned; God sent them oppressors; Israel repented and God sent a judge to deliver them.  In this case things are different: Israel sins; God sent them oppressors; there is no repentance and yet before he is born the last judge is commissioned.  His whole life has one purpose: ‘he shall begin to deliver Israel from the hand of the Philistines’ (Judges 13: 5).

So the fact that the parents were childless and that this son is a special gift from God is worth remembering when you see the kind of life that Samson lived. 

He was to be dedicated, not from birth, but from conception!  He was to be a Nazarite and we find out about them in Numbers 6: 1-21.  There are certain regulations that a Nazarite has to fulfil: no alcohol, no touching of dead bodies and no hair cuts. 

These are the restrictions that the parents have to agree to.  The baby in the womb cannot be fed alcohol; the mother cannot touch any dead body.  That wouldn’t be too difficult today, but consider how difficult she would find making dinner from this point on!  Manoah would have to become a vegetarian and that was unheard of in a people who were trying to obey God.

All the baby had to do, so it seemed, was to not cut his hair, and when it came to it, not shave.

But Manoah wants to be sure he’s got that right, so he asks for a return visit from the angel.  There is no doubt in his mind that what is wife told him was true.  He just wanted to be sure of the details.  And so the angel returns (13: 8-14).

They don’t hear much about the son’s upbringing, just a repeat of the instructions about the pregnancy and the Nazarite vow.  And then the boy is born and is named Samson (13: 24-25).  Other sons are born, but we don’t hear about them until the end of Samson’s life.

There is nothing told about his childhood, but it was definitely a good family home.  So often we find parents bringing their children to be dedicated to God – either in a baptism or in a dedication service, and the parents answer the promises and that is as far as it goes.  There was no baptism, or dedication for Samson – he would have been circumcised when he was 8 days old, but that’s it.  But his parents dedicated themselves to God and I like that.  Let’s blame it on the parents!  The parents need to be dedicated to God if the children are going to turn out right.

And Samson is a good child and the Spirit of God is working in him.  But we do have to remember that this is Adam’s Family and Samson is descended from Adam, born in the image of Adam, so there is that self-will and that natural rebellion against God and in Samson that is demonstrated in his relationships with women.

And so the trouble begins (14: 1-3).  Samson sees a woman he likes the look of, so he wants her.  It doesn’t matter what her background is, or who her family is.  He likes the face, so he wants her.  His parents object, but he is a grown man and unknown to the parents God intends to use Samson natural desires to bring about his own purposes (14: 4).

So the marriage preparations begin as Samson’s parents have to arrange what they know is an improper marriage for their son.

Meanwhile Samson heads back into the Philistine town and takes a shortcut through a vineyard – remember that vow about eating nothing from the grape?  He then gets attacked by an unfortunate lion that wasn’t aware of the power of God – until it was too late.  Then there is a little scene of Samson’s first date (14: 7).  He seems to have had a good time!

Then on his way for the next date Samson sees the body of the lion with a swarm of bees in it, complete with honey. So he takes the honey and gives some to his mum and dad.

The recurring theme is that he doesn’t tell his mum and dad what he’s been doing, because he knows they won’t approve.  He doesn’t mention killing the lion because it was in a vineyard and they might want to know what he was doing there.  And he doesn’t tell them where the honey came from, because they might object to him touching the dead body of the lion.   The only thing Samson has got going for him now is his hair.  And the hair is important.

But anyway, back to the wedding preparations.  The custom was that the bridegroom didn’t just have one best man; he had a bundle of them. In Samson’s case he had 30 best men provided for him.  Weddings at that time lasted for 7 days, so they were full-blown affairs.  This was to be the wedding of the year.  But it was a soap wedding!

Remember soap weddings!  Nothing ever goes right.  No matter how much in love the bride and groom are; no matter how well the families get on with each other.  If there is a wedding in a soap then trouble is bound to happen before the day is over (that’s week in Samson’s case).

And Samson gives them his famous riddle with a bet that they can’t solve it.  This is how it goes – (14: 11-14).

It was so obscure that they couldn’t solve it, so they ask his bride-to-be for a little help (14: 15), the incentive being that if she doesn’t give them the answer they will kill her and her family.  You begin to get a picture of what the Philistines were like!

So eventually Samson gives in to the pleas of his bride and tells her the answer and so Samson has to get the 30 robes.  He does this by the power of the Spirit of God, as he goes to Ashkelon, a Philistine stronghold, and kills 30 men for their clothes.

After he hands them over he goes home a little annoyed and the wedding is off:  (15: 1-2).

And this annoys Samson just a little.  You can see he isn’t a man of patience and he is being used by God to do something that isn’t immediately noticeable when first reading the story.  The whole of Israel was intermarrying with the Philistines, so God was having difficulty separating them.  The way they were treating Samson was God’s way of splitting them apart.  And so, after being offered his sister-in-law in place of his wife, who was now married to someone else, he gets his revenge.

The problem is that they hit back and his wife and her family get killed anyway (15: 6).

And so Samson pays them back (15: 7-8) – this is Rambo, Terminator and John McClane, (Die Hard), all rolled into one

And then his own people hand him over to the Philistines, or so they think, but once again breaking his vow to not touch a dead body, Samson strikes again.

Some time later – we know Samson’s activities lasted for 20 years, because 15: 20 tells us – but we don’t know the periods between his activities; Samson decides to go to Gaza, another Philistine stronghold.  We can see he has no fear, but he also has no sense.  This time the girl he takes a fancy to is a prostitute (16: 1).

And word gets around that he is in town (16: 2-3).  He just isn’t an easy man to pin down.  This is Gaza – the capital city of the Philistines and Samson was trapped inside – for a moment!  Hebron was 38 miles away!

But he is a man who falls in love easily and so his most famous girlfriend comes on the scene (16: 4).  Much as he loved her, she was a Philistine and loved money more than she loved her man.  The Philistine lords – and there would have been at least 5 of them; one for each of the 5 major cities – offered her 1,100 pieces of silver each if she could find the secret of his great strength.

Several times she asks him and several times he lies, and yet he never catches on that she is out to destroy him.  And as with the first bride of Samson, he gives in to her nagging and tells her the secret of his strength.  Never once do you hear him ask the question: "Why, why, why, Delilah?".

He gets captured; his eyes are put out and he ends up bringing the house down, killing more people in his death than he did in his 20 years of trouble making.

Samson was a man of his times who lived and loved just like everyone else.  Everyone was compromising; everyone was intermarrying with the Philistines; everyone was doing it.

But it was Samson’s family life that began the fighting again between the Philistines and the compromising Israelites, so for once the family life of the hero is important.  He finally learnt the truth that: ‘With great power comes great responsibility'.

At the end of his life he prays his first unselfish prayer that his strength may be used, not for his own benefit, but for the benefit of his people.

Manoah’s family are one of the good ones.  He doesn’t get to see the death of his son, we know this because we read that Samson was buried with him (16: 31).  It is a good family, even though Samson never quite gets the right girl and never has any children of his own.

Sometimes God can use our families to demonstrate his power and if that happens to us we may not be aware of it.  A recurring phrase in the life of this family is ‘they didn’t know’.  Most of the time they didn’t know what was going on.  That matches Eastenders’ number one question: ‘What’s goin’ on?’

It may be that things happen in your family that you don’t understand, but who knows what God is doing!  All we do know is that He is working everything out for good, and in that we have to trust (Romans 8: 28).

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This particular episode is one of the really dark parts of the Bible.  The book of Judges began with God in control of what was happening, until Joshua dies.  And we have looked at some of the families of the twelve judges, but now the judges have come to an end and God has withdrawn from the scene because 'There was no king in the land and everyone did what was right in his own eyes' .  Life is bleak at this point and family life is not much better.

We begin with the story of a Levite who travelled from Bethlehem in Judah to the hill country of Ephraim and next time we have a Levite who travelled to Bethlehem in Judah from the hill country of Ephraim.

The story begins in a house in the territory of Ephraim.  It begins with a theft.  There was a collection of silver that was stolen.  It was an inside job!  Micah, the son, had stolen it from his mum, but when she put a curse on it he decided to give it back.  My favourite Arab curse is the one that says: ‘May the fleas of a thousand camels infest you armpits!’  Maybe that was the curse that Micah feared!

This is quite a family!  It is possible that Micah’s mum was a Philistine.  The amount of silver that she lost was the same amount that a Philistine woman would be given in her dowry when she got married.  But even if she was a Philistine, she named her son Micah, which means, ‘Who is a God like YHWH?’

We get that phrase (17: 6) ‘In those days Israel had no king; every man did what was right in his own eyes’, as a comment on this family.

It turns out that Micah, the thief, is a full grown man with a grown-up son of his own, so this isn’t some teenage rebellion.  Micah has set up a shrine in the house – his mum probably lived in a granny-flat!  He had set up a shrine with an ephod and made some idols to worship and installed his son as priest (17: 5).  I can take you to the Law of Moses to show you how many laws he had broken already, but if you just stick to the Ten Commandments you will see that the 2^nd one, about false images, and the 8^th one, about stealing, have been broken.

Yet this was religious family – religious in their own eyes!

When Micah returns the silver to his mum, in fear of the curse, she consecrates it to the LORD.  A touch of righteousness, until you read how she consecrated it to the LORD.  She decides to consecrate it to the LORD by giving it to her son to make ‘a carved image and a cast idol’ (17: 3).

And even then she only gives 200 pieces of her treasure of 1,100 pieces.

Then comes the Levite, who we discover at the end (18: 30) is called Jonathan.  He has left his home town of Bethlehem looking for work.  The tribe of Levi had no permanent home because they were the tribe of priests, but in a time when there wasn’t much worship of God there weren’t many jobs going.  But Jonathan happens to wander into Micah’s town and lands himself a job.  Micah’s son is sent back to look after the sheep and a contract is drawn up between Micah and his new priest.  Micah is delighted at this because he now knows that God will bless him (17: 13).

And then the tribe of Dan, who have been overlooked in the book of Judges - they were left in chapter one without their territory conquered – appear in the story of Micah’s family.  They send 5 spies to spy out the land for them, and on their way north these spies stay overnight at Micah’s B&B.  While they are there they recognise Jonathan’s accent as being from their territory so they ask him to ask for God’s guidance for them.  Jonathan, who is as spiritually blind as any priest in his day tells them to go because God has blessed them. 

So the spies go back and tell the rest of the tribe what has happened, so an army of 600 head north to take the land.  On the way they stop off at Micah’s place.  And in a bit of biblical comedy the 600 men keep a look-out at the gate while the 5 spies go in and steal the idols and the ephod!  When Jonathan catches them in the act they persuade him to go with them and serve the whole tribe instead of one little family.  As he is a priest for hire he agrees to this promotion and grabs the rest of the stuff – what one commentator called the ‘liturgical junk’ and became priest to the tribe of Dan, setting up a hierarchical priesthood that lasted until the exile (18: 30).

But Micah’s neighbourhood watch co-ordinator was not slacking and he had noticed the 600 look-outs (18: 22) so the neighbours, along with Micah, went chasing after the army and asked why they had stolen his gods and his priest.  Micah gets sent packing under threat and you have to wonder if he ever realises that the items stolen from him were only a tenth of the value of what he stole from his mum at the beginning of the story.

It ends with the comment again (19: 1):‘in those days Israel had no king’.

And the moral of the story….  Well there is no moral!  It was a time of amorality – not to be confused with immorality. 

Immoral people know right from wrong and they do wrong anyway; amoral people don’t know the difference.

This was a time when everyone believed their own thing; did their own thing and lived their own way.

Even in the church of the day things were bad.

It’s not too dissimilar to our own day.  There are a lot of things wrong within the church and there are plenty of things wrong outside the church and family life is no different today than it was back then.

The hope that we can draw from the story is that God does sort it all out and society does improve for a while under God’s leader – but not yet!

There’s more to come!

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This is the end of the book of Judges and it’s a gory story!  This is the story of a Levite (one of the priestly tribe), who lived in the north (Ephraim) and went down to Bethlehem, where he met a woman and married her.  Well, he didn’t!  They moved in together. They didn’t get married, but there was no king in the land, so everyone was doing what was right in their own eyes!

But all was not well in the family home and she left and went back to her parents.  It took him 4 months to get around to going after her, but go after her he does.

And all seems to be well – his father-in-law (which is how he sees him, even though they are not married), is happy to see him and after three days the happy (again) couple are ready to go back home.  But the girl’s dad is enjoying playing happy families so he persuades them to stay another couple of days.

When they manage to tear themselves away it is late in the day and this is that period in history when there was no king in the land, so everyone was doing what was right in their own eyes!  It wasn’t that safe to travel after dark.  One little insignificant family decision that will affect the life of the whole nation!

They decide against spending the night in Jebus, the city that became Jerusalem, because it was inhabited by pagans.  Instead they decided to stay at Gibeah.  These were good Benjaminites.  They would receive the traditional hospitality here!

The trouble was that everyone ignored them when they arrived.  All the usual rules about hospitality were ignored. 

Then, as they were settling down in the city square an old man on his way home sees them.  He’s from up north as well and he takes them into his house, because, as he says, ‘It’s not safe out here at night’.

And then there is a scene that compares only with the Sodom and Gomorrah story.  The local men come knocking on the door demanding sex with the male visitor – all of them.  This is what southern hospitality has degenerated to at this time.  Remember that this man was a priest!  These were the people of God!  There was an excuse for the men of Sodom – they were pagans!

What makes this worse is that the rules of hospitality were considered more important than the rules of family loyalty.

The house owner offers the men his own virgin daughter as well as the visitor’s concubine instead, because he wouldn’t break the rules of hospitality.  You wouldn’t want him for your dad!  If he was your dad you wouldn’t be happy if visitors came to stay!

What eventually happens is that the Levite throws his girlfriend outside and she is continually raped until she is dead.

And the next morning, after a hearty breakfast, the Levite opens the door to continue his journey home and she is lying on the doorstep dead.  And he tells her to get up!

Maybe that’s why she didn’t marry him!  Maybe that’s why she went back home to her dad!  He wasn’t the most considerate of men!

She was all cut up about the way he treated her.  And then it got worse, because she was then really cut up.

And the Levite uses these body parts as a form of public proclamation that he has been wronged.  Imagine receiving the package!  A head, or an arm, or a leg!  Complete with covering note!  “Please find enclosed….”

This is an event that stayed in the nation’s memory for centuries.  The prophet, Hosea, hundreds of years later says this (9: 9; 10: 9).

The whole of Israel turns out to respond to this tragedy – except the tribe of Benjamin – and the Levite gives them an edited version of what happened.  He doesn’t mention that he threw his girlfriend out to the baying mob to save his own skin!  Slight technical detail – easy to overlook!

The result is a major battle in which thousands of people are killed.  One little family tragedy that has major consequences because the wronged party goes to the press!

And the Levite fades out of the story, but he has left another family problem behind him.  The people of Israel had made a vow to not marry any of their daughters to any man from the tribe of Benjamin – the one tribe who supported Gibeah, because it was one of their towns.  There were only 600 Benjaminite men left and none of them were married.  So what do they do to keep the 12 twelve tribes together?  The solution is given in 21: 5-12 (You'll have to look it up yourself!).

Nice way of getting a wife, but there were still 200 men without wives, so they were told to go to the annual picnic at Shiloh and grab themselves a girl on her way home.

You really wouldn’t want to be a girl in the time of the judges!   This story started with a gang rape and it ends with one!  There was no king in the land, so everyone was doing what was right in their own eyes!

Which is very much life in soap land!  There are certain things that go on to which everyone turns a blind eye, because ‘everyone is doing it’; but then there are things that cause a scandal, like rape.  The BBC recently had a big complaint.  There have been a lot of complaints lately, but this one was for Eastenders, because it was shown that Tony was having an incestuous relationship with his step-daughter, Whitney.

There are certain things where we will draw the line.  But then it can be a question of interpretation as the Israelites discovered.  It was gang rape when the men of Gibeah took the Levite’s concubine, but it was an acceptable solution to a national problem when the men of Benjamin were allowed to kidnap girls from Shiloh.

A bit like trying to explain the difference between killing someone in peace time and killing someone in a war.

But ‘there was no king in the land’ and that is the problem when people are no longer considering God’s ways.

Family life is never easy, but it’s a lot harder when you keep God out of it!

And that is what you find about family life in the time of the judges.  When God is involved in family life it still has its problems, but there are blessings to be found; when God is kept out it goes wrong and there are no blessings to be found.

This whole incident was caused by a couple falling out!  You just don’t know what the results can be from one little argument.  In this case it was all-out war!

Next time things are going wrong in your home life take a moment to consider the consequences.  And offer the situation up to God for help.

It can’t do any harm – but it can prevent plenty!

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Many years ago the television programme, 'Roots' about someone tracing their ancestors back to slavery in America, started a trend in Family tree research that is still with us today.

Some people like to search back to see if they are descended from anyone famous, or rich; to see if there is any blue blood in the family line.

For the Jews it was important to keep family records because it was known that the Messiah was to be descended from the tribe of Judah.

And so in the gospel according to Matthew and in Luke, we have the family tree of Jesus.

There are famous people in the genealogy - famous if you have heard of them!  But there are some people of doubtful reputation as well: 4 women to be precise.

Going backwards, as you do when you are researching, we begin with ’the wife of Uriah’.  She doesn’t get named, but we know her name is Bathsheba.  She is included in the genealogy as the wife of someone else even though when she gave birth she was married to King David.  That is to remind us that David committed adultery and murder and it was through that relationship that Jesus was born.

David’s story will come up soon in Bible Soap and very entertaining it is too, but for now we see that of all the wives of David, and he had several, Jesus just happened to be born to this wife.

Not a good start to your family tree!

Going back a few generations we come to Ruth.  We are looking at Ruth in this episode, so her story will follow.

Then there is Rahab.  Rahab lived in Jericho and she was well-known in the town.  She was a prostitute!

Again not what you want to find in your family tree, especially if you are hoping to claim to be God’s anointed one – the Messiah.

Rahab was the prostitute who hid the two spies sent into the city by Moses and when the city is destroyed she is rescued and some time later gets married to Salmon.

Then, finally you get to Judah.  This is the important ancestor, because, as I said, you had to be descended from Judah to be in the right family line as contender for Messiahship.

Judah was married and he had 3 sons – we’ve looked at his story in an earlier episode of Bible Soap.  But Judah’s sons were not the type you would take home to meet your mum.  The firstborn dies before having children and he’s married to Tamar, so she gets married off to his brother (as was the law as we will see with Ruth), but he employs the earliest form of contraception and God strikes him down, so Tamar is widowed again.  Eventually, (the full story is in the earlier episode) she dresses as a prostitute and gets pregnant by her father-in-law, Judah.

And so to Ruth.  This is the story of the family of Elimelech .  

This was when there was no king in the land and everyone did what was right in their own eyes.

This is an interesting family.  The name, Elimelech, means ‘My God is King’, which indicates some kind of relationship with God for his parents.  Naomi means, ‘Pleasant one’, which is a bit bland. 

But then they name their two sons: Mahlon means ‘sick’ and Chilion means ‘pining’.  That’s like calling your kids ‘vomit’ and ‘homesickness’ isn’t it!

They live during a famine and so decide to travel the 50 miles east across the Dead Sea to Moab to seek their fortunes in a land that was semi-hostile to Israel.  It is never easy moving house, but here we have a family moving abroad so to speak.  Moving to a foreign land with a slightly foreign language and a totally foreign culture.  Everything was different in Moab, but unfortunately we don’t get to hear about their experiences there.  We do get the idea that they kept their own beliefs and their own way of life while there, as we will see later.

During the 10 years there Elimelech dies, then the two sons get married and then they die, childless.

The family now consists of Naomi and her two daughters-in-law: Orpah and Ruth.  Both these daughters-in-law are Moabites.  Moabites were banned in Israel from any involvement in the religious side of life.

This is an ancestor of King David and an ancestor of Jesus.  Not allowed to be admitted to the assembly of the Lord.

It’s a difficult family tree that Jesus has. 

But back to the family. 

Naomi hears, somehow, that the famine had ended.  Ten years later!  We don’t know that the famine lasted 10 years.  If it did then it was tough on those who stayed behind.  Remember Joseph?  There was a 7 year famine in his day and this one was 10 years, so it was worse.

But she decides to go back home to whatever family she has back there.  So she tells her daughters-in-law to go back to their parental home to see if they can get another husband to look after them.

It wasn’t easy being a single woman in those days.  You either needed a dad to look after you or a husband.

Naomi indicates something of the custom of the day that we have come across before.  If a widow dies childless, her husband’s brother is obligated to marry her and provide a son to carry on his brother’s name.  This is what happened with Judah and Tamar.  This was a common custom throughout the area.

This seems to be a good enough argument for Orpah and she goes back home.

But not Ruth.  She comes out with that statement that is used in weddings a lot: 1: 16-17.

Something about the way Naomi dealt with three bereavements has convinced Ruth that this God of Israel is a better God than her own god – Chemosh.  He was keen on human sacrifices!  But Israel's God was very different.  And she was convinced He was worth following. 

It is harder to convince your own family of the difference that God has made in your life, but Naomi managed it.

So they go back to Bethlehem where Naomi is met by the women who tell her she looks a bit weather-beaten after 10 years in the sophisticated culture of Moab.  And her reply is that she is not the woman who went away (‘Pleasant one’), she is Mara (‘Bitter’).

So, without a husband to provide for her, Ruth decides to go job hunting and she finds a field where she can join the harvesters.  They got back in town at harvest-time. 

It just so happened that she started working in a field belonging to Boaz, who was a relative of her father-in-law, (and so a relative of her husband).

And they don’t seem to have suffered too badly during the famine.  You would have to wonder how well Elimelech and his sons would have done if they had stayed at home – would they have lived longer?

Who knows?

What you can see is that God is working behind the scenes in this family.  Tragedies have happened – we don’t know why the men in this family died, but God is still at work.

This is not to discount the pain and grief that this family has gone through.  There were three deaths within a 10 year period and it was all the men, so it was a very difficult time for them.

Naomi doesn’t hide her grief at all and that’s how it should be in times like that – no pretending that it doesn’t hurt because God is in control!

Naomi knows that God is control, but it still hurts!

And now with Ruth’s job hunting and finding work with Boaz, God is at work in her life as well.  Boaz notices her – she’s a foreigner and maybe she stood out in the crowd of workers – but maybe she caught his attention because of his attraction to her.  You don’t hear much about physical attraction in the Bible outside the book: Song of Songs – but this could be one of those rare occasions.

So he makes sure that Ruth has a good dinner with him and she gets to take home more strawberries than anyone else – or whatever it was she was picking – strawberry picking comes to mind when you read this story!

Naomi realises then that Ruth needs to do something.  When it comes to affairs of the heart you can’t leave things for the man to do.  Nothing would happen!

As far as Naomi knew, Boaz was the nearest relative they had, so he should do his part and marry the widow.  Now, in this case the widow was Naomi, but given the choice between old and bitter Naomi and young and attractive Ruth….

Well Naomi could guess what the outcome would be, so she put Ruth forward as the one who should be married.  And so these instructions are carried out!

Ruth gets into Boaz’s bed and lies at his feet!  It was the custom apparently and it meant that she was asking him to marry her.  It must have been a leap year.

Anyway, it turns out that the reason Boaz hasn’t taken the responsibility on himself is because there is a relative closer than him who should have done the deed, but he seems to have been keeping quiet. 

So Boaz goes to the public meeting in the town and when he sees this male relative he calls him over and asks if he wants Elimelech’s land.  The man agrees to buy it until he discovers that he has to marry Ruth as part of the bargain.

He didn’t have a problem with Ruth – it was just the inheritance laws that said the property would stay in Elimelech’s name.

It’s interesting that the man isn’t named.  He is a distant relation of Jesus, several times removed, but he isn’t listed as an ancestor because he wouldn’t fulfil his family duty.

And so the wedding takes place.   And no problem conceiving!  Unlike so many of the others we’ve come across so far.

And so the story ends with a reminder of family solidarity.  This child has restored life to Naomi.  Although her husband is dead, this child is classed as his descendant and therefore her descendant.  And as the story was written some time later we get the link with King David.

Ruth, the foreigner has accepted the God of Israel as her God and so she joins the family of God and that 10 generation ban is lifted.

As Jesus said many years later: anyone who turns to him is accepted by him.  And if nothing else, that is a good lesson to learn from Ruth.

Of course, as Jesus discovered – no matter who is in your family tree, it doesn’t affect what you can do for him!

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Episode 19

Soap operas work because they reflect the society in which we live.  Coronation Street, for instance, shows life in the North West of England today.  To do a rerun from the beginning would not be as effective.  That would be more of a social history lesson.  You would be seeing life in the 1960s and it would be seen from the point of view of the scriptwriters more so than today. 

Today all generations are included in soaps where a generation ago there were no teenagers and very few children.  In the Bible the main characters are men, with the occasional appearance of women.  Sometimes there are children, but usually it is boys.  It is very rare that girls are mentioned. - reflecting the point of view of the writers.

The problem with Bible soap is that it is set in a time so different from ours.  This is still the time of the Judges when everyone did was right in their own eyes.  And in today’s episode we have the last two judges: Eli and Samuel.

The times were different.  But there are similarities.  We have reached what are traditionally known as the history books of the Bible. 

And the times were bad.  So bad that when a desperate woman prays in the Temple the priest/judge thinks she is drunk and when God speaks to a boy in his care - a boy he is raising in the ways of God – he doesn’t realise that it is God speaking.

But we have lived through times like that in recent decades.  And we are living now through times (spiritually) like Samuel’s day when God is heard speaking again.

So, with that in mind, our family today is the family of Elkanah with his first wife Hannah and his second wife Peninnah.

The connection to the past is given in his mini family tree.  He was from the tribe of Ephraim: Ephraim was one of the sons of Joseph and so that takes us back to Genesis where Adam’s family began.

This is one of those rare families in the Bible where it is said that the husband loves his wife.  Elkanah loved Hannah.  He loved her, but she couldn’t have children, as was quite common in biblical families.  And the reason she couldn’t have children is because God hadn’t given her any. 

That is a good way to view it.  Nowadays if a couple can’t have children they try all kinds of ways of producing them, because we know that it is every woman’s right to have children!  They are no longer a gift from God; they are ours by right!

Anyway, they didn’t know that in Bible times – they thought God was in control.

But they still took matters into their own hands and so Elkanah, who loved his wife, took a second wife, Peninnah, who was able to provide him with children.  Hannah must have been delighted!  This was actually allowed in the Law, if you look at Deuteronomy 21: 15.

It doesn’t show much patience on their part, but if you remember the families we have looked at so far patience isn’t high on their list of virtues.

But they were a good God-fearing family and every year they made the annual pilgrimage to Shiloh. They did this in a time when most of the nation had given up on God; so they were an exceptional family.

And year after year Hannah is treated as special by her husband, but is treated with contempt by his other wife.

She had twice as much food as the others, but she couldn’t eat it.  And Elkanah couldn’t see the problem!

Not much humility in this man!  Women who can’t have children do feel a sense of loss.  Men who can’t produce children feel their manhood is in question; women feel their womanhood is in question.  In the patriarchal society in which the Old Testament was written it is always the woman’s fault.  But most times this is put to the test as another wife usually manages to provide children.

So Hannah was feeling bad.

And she decided to pray, so she got up from the table and went to the sanctuary to pray.  And she makes a deal with God: give me a child and I will give him back to you.  He will be dedicated to you and he will be a Nazarite all the days of his life.  If you don’t know what a Nazarite is, look at Samson – they don’t cut their hair, shave, drink, or touch dead bodies!

She wasn’t praying a selfish prayer.  So many times women want babies for themselves, to fulfil their own needs.  But Hannah feels judged by God and wants to be justified – and she is tired of all the stick that Peninnah is giving her all the time.

To show what the times were like: Eli the priest is watching her pray and he doesn’t realise she is praying!  It has been so long since he has seen anyone praying, he thinks she is drunk!  But then he was also used to seeing drunken women at the sanctuary as well.

When did you last pray so intensely that people thought you were drunk?

Anyway, Eli apologises and sends her off with a blessing, and as the Bible sometimes gives maybe a little too much detail, when they got back home Elkanah and Hannah … well, you know what happened.  And the interesting phrase is that ‘the LORD remembered (Hannah)’ and she had a baby boy.  She prayed a specific prayer – not just for a baby, but for a boy – and God answered.

And good to her word she took Samuel to Shiloh where he was put in the charge of Eli the priest.  And so Eli blessed her and the result was three more sons and two daughters for Hannah.

And that is where that generation leaves the story.  We move on now to Samuel’s foster-family.  And I think he might have done a bit better if his mum had brought him up, but then he would have been in one of those step-family situations familiar to so many of you.

It’s one thing to have step-children when you only have one wife, or husband at a time, but if you all live together… could you imagine it! 

I imagine it would have been difficult for Peninnah who had been a bit merciless with Hannah if Samuel had been brought up in the family home.

We get a quick look at Eli’s family – there is no mention of Mrs. Eli, but the sons are quite infamous.

They were priests and they were in charge of the sacrifices, but they stole from the people and they stole from God, and even though at least one of them was married, that didn’t stop them going after other women. 

And the Bible makes a contrast between their sin and Samuel’s increasing righteousness.  And it does show that Eli is in despair over their lifestyle, but he is as ineffective as a lot of modern-day fathers.  God's judgment on his fathering abilities is that he did not restrain his sons.

And there is the fact that he put his sons before his God.  This receives a severe condemnation from God.

The funny thing is that Samuel grows up blessed by God in the sanctuary, with this bad example and yet he had never heard God speak! 

And then in chapter 3 God speaks to Samuel.  There is only Eli and Samuel in the place and when Samuel is woken in the night by God calling him he thinks it’s Eli.  Eli thinks Samuel is dreaming, and is a bit slow to catch on that this just might be God ….

And what a message he gave him!  God told Samuel that judgment was coming to Eli’s family and soon enough it happened.

We’ll skip ahead to the end of Eli’s family.  They died in battle with the Philistines and Eli dies when he is told the news and then one of his daughters-in-law dies having gone into labour through the shock and as she’s dying she gives her son a name that commits him to years of therapy before he gets sorted out: Ichabod – the glory has departed.  There was an older son who we hear about later - Ahitub who had a son called Ahijah (1 Samuel 14: 3).  He had another son called Ahimelech (1 Samuel 22: 9).  And the final son who the Bible doesn’t directly connect, is removed from office by Solomon (1 Kings 2: 27).  This was around 80 years later – Saul reigned for 40 years and David reigned for 40 years and Solomon came after that.

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