The Complete Tragedy

Emmanuel Baptist Church of Nipawin Sermons

Passage: Judges 10:1-16 | Message By: Jordan Lepine | Series: Prone to WanderToday, we are continuing our series on the book of Judges. I thought I would briefly recap where we are before we look into our text. We have seen that Joshua has passed away, and since then, the people of Israel have been returning to serving the Baals and the Astaroth idols. As a result of this, God gave the Israelites over for oppression. But each time the people cry out to God for help, he raises for them judges to help turn them away from that oppression and follow again after God. Unfortunately, this seems to be a cycle for the people, as it looks like when the next judge passes away, they go into idolatry. We have seen five judges so far in the book. That being Othniel, Ehud, Shamgar, Barak, and Gideon. We are about at the halfway point regarding judges in this book (just in case you were curious). We left off talking about Abimelech last week who was not a judge, but someone who tried to make himself king. Our passage today is Judges 10:1-16 as we continue our series. We are introduced to two new judges, Tola and Jair. Two more Judges Tola 1-2 So, we notice a few things here by reading these verses. The first thing is that not much information is given here about Tola. He is what we would call a "minor judge." Being referred to as a minor judge simply means that little information about him is provided in the text. We have already seen Shamgar, who was also considered a minor judge in the book, as the author dedicates only one verse to him in Judges 3:31. However, just because Tola is considered a minor judge does not mean he is somehow insignificant in this story. Tola's family line is mentioned here. He is the "son of Puah, son of Dodo, a man of Issachar." Tola was an Israelite. He has some deep roots within the Israelite community that the author wants to point out to us. “He is the only judge to have his family line traced back to the past three generations.” People knew of his past and his lineage, and now, people have someone who is their leader. Tola judged Israel in "Ephriam, “in the hill country of Shamir.” “Issachar's inheritance was located northwest of Manassah.” Tola was not living on the inheritance promised to Issachar, which could mean he wanted to help Israel during this time. Tola arose "After Abimelech." We are not exactly sure how long the time was between Tola and Abimelech, but the fact that the author mentions that could be significant here. Tim Fehr, who brought us the word last week, mentioned how Abimelech was a deceiver and seemed to kill anyone who did not follow him. He killed his brothers out of his desire to be king. The people of Israel could be hurting deeply from their past leaders and were waiting for someone to come and lead them. There could be some trust issues as Tola comes to judge them. Tola arose to "save Israel." We have seen these words of our past judges. Tola did not just fill a role while waiting for someone better. Commentators have argued over what exactly Tola came to save Israel from. Did Tola rise to save Israel from oppression or idolatrous ways? The text does not tell us, so we do not want to make any assumptions today. But what we can take away from the Tola is that Israel needed saving somehow. They needed a leader, and Tola did this for 23 years of his life. He passed away and was buried in Shamir. Jair 3-5 We now move on to our second judge mentioned in these few verses, Jair After Tola arose, another Israelite from Gilead (a part of the Tribe of Manasseh) named Jair. We notice that he is also considered a minor judge in the amount of verses given to him. However, also like Tola, he is not insignificant. The text mentions how powerful of a human being Jair was. He had 30 sons, which means he most likely had many wives. We saw this from our last judge, Gideon, who had 70 sons. Jair's sons rode on 30 donkeys,