Judges 8-12 - on civil wars and kids as collateral

The readings - Days 80 and 81 - Judges 8-12

Hooray! All caught up!

*one small note, because it may give insight into why I get behind in this thing. When I started this post (yes, the one link and that one line) it was around 10:45 p.m. and I was ready to go. I then spent the next two hours reading about pirates on the Internet. I will now type a sentence that is simultaneously genuine/heartfelt and bitter/sarcastic. Thanks a lot, Internet.

So... Judges, eh? Israel still generally sucks at remembering/following the rules, which by now shouldn't come as a huge surprise. However, what does come as something of a surprise (although maybe this shouldn't either) is how bad they seem to be at just getting along with each other. Once you get borders and factions involved in a nation, there's bound to be conflict, I suppose, but it just seems like the whole country is one or two tequila shooters away from ripping itself to pieces in a civil war.

Judges 1-7 - Times have changed. Or not.

The readings - Days 77-79 - Judges 1-7

I suppose there's something worth addressing, now that we're in the books of the Old Testament normally categorized under the heading of "history."

While these works contain decidedly more detailed and intentionally historical documentation of events, etc, and therefore ought to be treated as more accurately depicting events/people/places/etc than other portions of the OT (IE the Psalms or bits of the Pentateuch), there's something that still strikes as odd about using these books in the same way that we would use a modern history text.