Judges 17:6, I Kings 11:9, ff

This week in our summer series, Retelling the Great Story, we will pause, as it were, to consider again our inexorable tendency to, as it says in I Kings 11:9, “turn away from the Lord.”

The two, brief readings are Judges 17:6 and I Kings 11:9-10.

The best way to approach the verse from Judges is to read a commentary on the whole book (your Bible may have a brief one at the beginning, as the Oxford Annotated versions of the Bible do). There you will discover the basic spiral of the people of Israel away from God.

Using I Kings 11:9-10, we can see how the people’s proposed solution to their own turning away and increasing immorality — the establishment of kings to rule over them — does not solve the problem. Kings, being people, can turn away from God, too.

Try to read Judges 1-16:31 and I Kings 1-11.