Judges is crazy. This is a wild ride. So in preparation for this recently, I was reading this article, Dr. Paul Miller. It's titled The Moral Formation in the Book of Judges. And the first time I read that article, it's fantastic, by the way, look it up. Like, there's no moral formation in judges. Judges, everything goes absolutely crazy. When you hear the

book of judges, you probably think of this chaotic wild west. It's full of like blood and really

bizarre oaths and leaders who seem more like anti-heroes than saints. There's like human sacrifices.

All kind of like everything goes wrong in the book of judges.

And yet we can kind of look at it for some interesting ideas about moral formation.

Judges is one of the most neglected books in the Hebrew Bible and for good reason.

Hello. Hello and welcome back to Fairs. Come follow me, Old Testament year. I am Jennifer Roachleys. Today, we are talking about the book of Judges. Judges is crazy. This is a wild ride. So in preparation for this recently, I was reading this article, Dr. Paul Miller. It's titled The Moral Formation in the Book of Judges. And the first time I read that

article, it's fantastic, by the way, look it up. Like there's no moral formation in judges.

Judges, everything goes absolutely crazy. When you hear the

book of judges, you probably think of this chaotic wild west. It's full of like blood and really

bizarre oaths and leaders who seem more like anti-heroes than saints. There's like human sacrifice. Like everything goes

wrong in the book of judges. And yet we can kind of look at it for some interesting ideas about

moral formation. Judges is one of the most neglected books in the Hebrew Bible and for good reason.

I totally get it. We don't love thinking about these things. We tend to prefer another of the greatest hits, Moses and Joseph, even Isaiah, right? You would take even Isaiah

over judges. But here's the thing in that article that I remembered. Dr. Miller wants us to see

judges is actually really rich in like ethical insight. It's just not prescribed ethics. No one is saying, oh, read the book of

judges to find out how you should act. It's not a neat list of like do's and don'ts. It's

something that requires a lot more thinking from us. It kind of provides a mirror for humanity.

It shows us, like the community of faith, as a context for how we are formed, right?

Our community matters.

How we are formed matters.

In the book of judges, it's actually showing us how a community is deformed by their

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