As we continue our study of The Book of Judges, we need to look at Naphtali and The Canaanites. We will look at how Naphtali coped with moving into a land that was full of pagan Canaanites.
How did they cope? Did they overcome the problems of their day?
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THE STAGE IS BEING SET FOR ISREAL TO HAVE KINGS
Our study of The Book of Judges has only just begun, but already we have determined that the time of the Judges was all about God setting the stage for the times that Israel would be ruled by Kings.
In those days of the judges though, Israel had no king.
Each man did what he considered to be right.
Notice that those words say each man did what HE considered right – not what God considered right.
A TIME OF GREAT DISOBEDIENCE
We have seen how so many of the blessed tribes of Israel forgot God’s command to drive the pagan Canaanites out of the Promised Land. They made the same poor judgements that we often make today. They could not accept that people in total moral depravity and constant sin and disobedience who worship other gods besides The One True God cannot exist among God’s people without exerting their influences and perverting the goodness that God has established.
No one seemed to grasp that a pagan nation will never be able to produce a godly nation.
The Israelites could not continue to exist side-by-side with paganism and remain God’s people. Neither can our own nation.
WHAT WAS THE STATE OF NAPHTALI?
How did the tribe of Naphtali measure up to this commandment?
Naphtali did not drive out those pagans living in Beth Shemesh or Beth Anath. The Canaanites living there, mostly Philistines, were like a deadly virus spreading through their lands. They were influencing weak and unstable Israelites to follow their pagan gods.
ALL IN THE NAME OF TOLERANCE
Though they had a clear understanding of what God had required of them; the tribe of Naphtali decided to be tolerant.
They did not drive the Canaanites out completely. Naphtali decided to chose to use these pagan people for forced labor instead.
These pagan descendants of Cain who had settled as different sects of Canaanites in this part of the land were blacksmiths and iron workers. The Israelites used their skills to improve their daily lives. They let them sharpen their weapons and tools for plowing up the harvest.
TRYING TO USE PAGANS TO PRODUCE GOD’S CROPS
The land at Beth Shemesh was a lush valley which was a good place for harvesting wheat. The Israelites allowed the pagans to sharpen their plowshares, then used such tools to produce their crops. These were the same crops offered up in Thanksgiving offerings later.
Do you think God would have been pleased with that?
It was the tribe of Nephtali which inhabited this rich agricultural location. The name Naphtali means “wrestling.” This tribe certainly fell into the act of constantly wrestling with the decisions of being faithful and obeying God or caving in to the wrong ways of living. The people of God living here certainly managed to live up to the name of their own tribe.