When God’s People Settle for Less
Lessons from the Opening of Judges
The book of Judges is gritty and earthy. It exposes some of the most gnarled branches on Israel’s family tree. At times it is violent and often unsettling.
At this point in their history, Israel has received the law, wandered in the wilderness, and entered the land under Joshua’s leadership. And yet, across these twenty-one chapters, we are told that “everyone did what was right in his own eyes” (Judges 17:6; 21:25). That dark refrain explains much of the book’s grisly character. But it is against that backdrop that the Lord’s faithfulness shines all the more brightly.
Judges 1:1–2:6 provides a remarkably helpful window into the whole book. In these opening scenes, we are confronted with three realities that explain much of what follows: a problem, a longing, and a faithful God.
The Problem: Partial Obedience
The problem that emerges immediately in Judges is partial obedience that leads to full corruption.
After Joshua’s death (Judges 1:1), the people inquire of the Lord. Judah is sent first. There are real victories. Adoni-Bezek is defeated. Cities fall. The Lord is with Judah. But as the chapter unfolds, something becomes clear: Israel is not fully obeying the Lord’s command to drive out the inhabitants of the land.
The conquest of Canaan was not vague religious enthusiasm. It was a call to specific obedience. In Deuteronomy 91, the Lord made clear that Israel was not receiving the land because of its own righteousness, but because of the wickedness of the nations and because of the Lord’s covenant promises. The conquest was not political expansion or ethnic aggression; it was divine judgment carried out by the Lord through His people (see Deut. 7:1–5; 20:16–18).
Adoni-Bezek himself recognizes this. After his defeat, he confesses, “As I have done, so God has repaid me” (Judges 1:7). Even a pagan king sees that what is happening is an act of divine justice.
Yet the broader pattern of Judges 1 is not wholehearted obedience, but compromise.
Judah begins well, but “could not drive out the inhabitants of the plain because they had chariots of iron” (Judges 1:19). Benjamin fails to drive out the Jebusites. The house of Joseph experiences success, but spares a man who goes on to establish another pagan settlement. Manasseh, Ephraim, Zebulun, Asher, Naphtali, and Dan all fail in various ways. Dan is even pushed back by the Amorites in a strange “reverse conquest.”
Judges 1:28 summarizes the situation plainly: “When Israel grew strong, they put the Canaanites to forced labor, but did not drive them out completely.”
The failure was not a lack of strength. Israel was strong enough to subdue their enemies. The issue was obedience. They replaced God’s clear command with pragmatic management. Instead of driving the Canaanites out completely, they chose to profit from them.
It is like cutting out only part of a cancer—just enough to say you did something. In Judges, that cancer will come roaring back.
This presses a searching question upon us: Where have we settled for partial obedience while congratulating ourselves on visible success?
It is possible to be busy, productive, and even admired as a Christian, while quietly tolerating sins God has plainly forbidden. We may repent of the sins that embarrass us, while excusing the ones that benefit us. We may confess anger without addressing the bitterness beneath it. We may admit impatience while remaining slow to forgive. We want the blessings of obedience without the cost of full obedience.
Judges confronts us with the sobering truth that obedience in part is disobedience. And the cost of partial obedience is always higher than we expect.
The Longing: A King Who Will Not Fail
From its opening verses, Judges creates a sense that something is missing.
Joshua is dead. There is no clear successor. The tribes act largely in isolation. There is fragmentation—military, spiritual, and communal. Israel is no longer functioning as one covenant people under unified leadership.
In Judges 2:2, the angel of the Lord asks a devastating question: “You have not obeyed my voice. What is this you have done?” That question hangs over the entire book.
There are glimmers of hope. Othniel obeys. Achsah is resourceful. Judah leads, at least partially. But nothing is stable. Success is mixed with compromise. What looks like compassion becomes the seed of future corruption. Victories are undercut by disobedience.
Judges will later say explicitly, “In those days there was no king in Israel.” But the opening chapters already whisper what the book will eventually shout (see Judges 17:6; 18:1; 19:1; 21:25).
We are meant to feel the instability. The absence of strong, faithful leadership is palpable. And that sense of fragmentation may feel uncomfortably familiar. We live in a world of divided loyalties, competing voices, fractured authority, and constant confusion.
Judges teaches us that when we drift from joyful submission to the Lord’s rule, disorder follows. Not always immediately. Not always dramatically. But inevitably.
The book is not merely cataloging Israel’s failures. It is awakening a longing in us—not simply for better leaders, but for a king who will not fail. A king who will not compromise. A king who will conquer sin and lead his people in righteousness.
God’s people cannot save themselves. Judges makes that painfully clear. But it also prepares us to see that salvation must come from the Lord Himself.
The Faithful God
In the midst of compromise and instability, Judges presents us with a faithful God.
First, God still speaks. He answers in chapter 1. He confronts in chapter 2. He warns and explains. The Lord has not withdrawn His word from His people. That alone is mercy.
Second, God is still with them. “The Lord was with Judah” (Judges 1:19). “The Lord was with them” (Judges 1:22). His presence does not rest on their perfection, but on His covenant promise.
Third, God disciplines them. In Judges 2, He declares that He will not drive out the remaining nations. They will become “thorns” and “a snare” (Judges 2:3). This is not God abandoning His covenant, but God chastening His people.
The Westminster Confession of Faith wisely observes that God sometimes leaves His children for a season to manifold temptations and the corruption of their own hearts, in order to humble them and drive them to a closer dependence upon Him.2
God’s action in Judges 2 is not the withdrawal of love, but an expression of covenant faithfulness. He exposes remaining corruption so that His people will stop trusting in themselves and cling more closely to Him.
And then there is the great promise: “I will never break my covenant with you” (Judges 2:1). That promise does not rest on Israel’s obedience. It rests on God’s faithfulness. And that covenant faithfulness reaches its fullness in Jesus Christ.
Where Israel needed a king, God sent His Son. Where Israel compromised, Christ never did. Where Israel failed to obey, Christ obeyed fully and perfectly.
Jesus is the King Judges makes us long for
He conquers sin rather than tolerating it. He rules His people in righteousness. He secures salvation not because we are faithful, but because He is.
The promise of the gospel is not partial salvation or fragile standing. It is strong, covenantal grace. All who repent and trust in Christ are forgiven and brought into God’s covenant forever.
Judges opens with a people who are strong yet compromised, victorious yet unfaithful. But it also opens with a God who remains faithful to His covenant even when His people break theirs.
If salvation depended on our full obedience, none of us would stand. But because salvation rests on God’s covenant faithfulness in Christ, there is hope—even for compromised, partially obedient people like us.
Not because of your righteousness or the uprightness of your heart are you going in to possess their land, but because of the wickedness of these nations the LORD your God is driving them out from before you, and that he may confirm the word that the LORD swore to your fathers, to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob. (Deut 9:5 ESV)
Westminster Confession of Faith 5.5 “The most wise, righteous, and gracious God doth oftentimes leave for a season his own children to manifold temptations and the corruption of their own hearts, to chastise them for their former sins, or to discover unto them the hidden strength of corruption and deceitfulness of their hearts, that they be humbled; and to raise them to a more close and constant dependence for their support unto himself, and to make them more watchful against all future occasions of sin, and for sundry other just and holy ends.”