possession of the land, the people served the Lord as long as Joshua and the elders who survived him were alive; but when Joshua was dead, and that generation (which was contemporaneous with him) had been gathered to its fathers, there rose up another generation after them which knew not the Lord, and also (knew not) the work which He had done to Israel. On the death and burial of Joshua, see at Jos 24:29-30. “Gathered unto their fathers” corresponds to “gathered to his people” in the Pentateuch (Gen 25:8, Gen 25:17; Gen 35:29; Gen 49:29, Gen 49:33, etc.: see at Gen 25:8). They “knew not the Lord,” sc., from seeing or experiencing His wonderful deeds, which the contemporaries of Joshua and Moses had seen and experienced.
In the general survey of the times of the judges, commencing at Jdg 2:11, the falling away of the Israelites from the Lord is mentioned first of all, and at the same time it is distinctly shown how neither the chastisements inflicted upon them by God at the hands of hostile nations, nor the sending of judges to set them free from the hostile oppression, availed to turn them from their idolatry (Jdg 2:11-19). This is followed by the determination of God to tempt and chastise the sinful nation by not driving away the remaining Canaanites (Jdg 2:20-23); and lastly, the account concludes with an enumeration of the tribes that still remained, and the attitude of Israel towards them (Jdg 3:1-6).
Verses 11-12
Jdg 2:11-12Repeated Falling Away of the People from the Lord. - Jdg 2:11-13. The Israelites did what was evil in the eyes of the Lord (what was displeasing to the Lord); they served Baalim. The plural Baalim is a general term employed to denote all false deities, and is synonymous with the expression “other gods” in the clause “other gods of the gods of the nations round about them” (the Israelites). This use of the term Baalim arose from the fact that Baal was the chief male deity of the Canaanites and all the nations of Hither Asia, and was simply worshipped by the different nations with peculiar modifications, and therefore designated by various distinctive epithets. In Jdg 2:12 this apostasy is more minutely described as forsaking Jehovah the God of their fathers, to whom they were indebted for the greatest blessing, viz., their deliverance out of Egypt, and following other gods of the heathen nations that were round about them (taken verbatim from Deu 6:14, and Deu 13:7-8), and worshipping them. In this way they provoked the Lord to anger (cf. Deu 4:25; Deu 9:18, etc.).
Verse 13
Thus they forsook Jehovah, and served Baal and the Asthartes. In
