Our lessons begin with the book of Judges, and carry us to chapter 21. The name of the book comes from the leaders that God raised up from time to time, and whose deeds are therein recorded. They were generally called to service in the time of a great national crisis, when the nation had gone into captivity. For that reason they are called saviours. The last of the line was Samuel. Comparing 17:1 with 18:1, 31 it would seem that the book was not written until about the time that there was a king in Israel. It may have been written by Samuel or Nathan.
The chronology of the book of Judges is not an easy thing to determine, from the difficult task of deciding whether these judges always ruled consecutively or whether some of them were contemporaneous. Oftentimes the judge was over some one locality or tribe in Israel. The book presents before us a sad, sad record of the transgressions of God's people; their constant lapsing into idolatry, and the effort the great Father put forth to restore them from it. The two stories of this awful idolatry are told in the latter part of the book. It is not a record which one delights to dwell upon.
Our readers should not take from Israel's back-sliding the thought even that one can do this with impunity. Nor should they take those whom God used for the deliverance of His people as examples that He has set before us to follow. He took the very best material at His hand, and this was sometimes very crude and rough, as in the case of Samson.
We have transposed to the reading of April 4 and 5 chapters 17-21, as they record events that occurred in the early part of the history of the judges. The real story of the book ends with chapter 16.