Anxiety-Driven Theology: pt 4

The book of Judges is one of the most brilliant and provocative pieces of ancient literature we have. It is a brutal theological mirror, showing what happens when God’s people become addicted to the very powers they were called to resist.

Old Testament scholar Daniel Block describes the central theme of Judges as the “Canaanization of Israel.”

That phrase will always punch me in the gut when I read or write it.

God called Israel to be a holy people in the land, a living witness to the surrounding nations of what life under YHWH could look like. But by the end of Judges, you can hardly tell Israel and the nations apart. Israel does not expand the worship of YHWH into Canaan as much as Canaan expands its violence and idolatry into Israel.

This is the fourth blog in a series exploring the Old Testament’s critique of idolatry, anxiety, and imperial power. In the first three blogs, I argued that Israel’s problem was never just external oppression, and that Egypt and Babylon represent more than hostile nations; they represent rival visions of security, provision, worship, and identity. Israel is repeatedly delivered from Empire while still craving the comforts Empire provides.

The story begins with Jacob’s family settling in Egypt during famine. What starts as temporary refuge slowly becomes assimilation. Israel adopts Egypt’s gods, embraces on Egypt’s systems and structures, and eventually finds itself enslaved by the very system that once preserved it.

Then YHWH sends Moses to lead Israel out.

But deliverance does not undo their imperial desires. In the wilderness, Israel repeatedly longs for Egypt’s food, Egypt’s predictability, and Egypt’s visible security. Then, at Sinai, while Moses is on the mountain, the people panic. Anxiety drives them back into familiar worship. They gather gold, construct a calf, and dress Egypt’s image in YHWH’s name.

That is anxiety-driven theology.

Israel is called to bear the image of YHWH, but under pressure, they mirror the image of the powers that formed them.

Judges shows what happens when that pattern is no longer a moment at Sinai, but a way of life in the land. In Judges, Israel no longer craves for Egypt from the wilderness; Israel becomes Egypt inside the land. The golden calf was a crisis, and in Judges, that crisis becomes culture. The book starts with deliverers who rescue Israel from outsiders. It ends with Israelites acting like outsiders toward one another.

Let’s dive in. 

First things first: the opening chapters of Judges function like a prologue. The book is not meant to be read as a flat chronology of Israel’s early years in the land. It is theological storytelling. It is history preached through blood, irony, satire, and tragedy.

Judges 1-2 gives us the overview. Judges 3 begins to show us the pattern in motion.

Israel worships the Baals and the Asherahs, assimilating into the pagan ecosystem of the land. They are then given over to a king named Cushan-rishathaim, whose name lands almost like a caricature: “Cushan of double wickedness.” He is not just a foreign king; he is a literary embodiment of the kind of human power Judges warns us about.

Judges is not simply telling us, “Israel needed better politicians.” It is exposing the danger of pagan kingship itself: domination baptized as strength, violence dressed up as security, power claiming divine authorization for itself. Scripture is not allergic to leadership, but it is deeply suspicious of the kind of royal power that turns human beings into tools and calls it “peace.”

YHWH responds by raising up Othniel, who is connected to Caleb, one of the last of the Joshua generation's golden age. The Spirit of YHWH comes upon him; he judges Israel, goes to war, and delivers the people. Cushan-rishathaim, the “doubly wicked” king, falls before the Spirit-empowered deliverer.

It is almost too clean.

The wicked king faces the faithful judge, and the faithful judge wins.

Othniel is the closest Judges gives us to a straightforward hero. He represents the clean version of the pattern: Israel rebels, oppression follows, Israel cries out, YHWH raises a deliverer, and the land has rest.

That clean version does not last.

Many people describe the book of Judges as Israel’s “cycle of sin.” Judges is not a cycle, though. It is a spiral.

A cycle returns you to where you started. A spiral takes you lower every time.

Israel does not simply fall, repent, and bounce back. Israel becomes progressively more conformed to the nations around them. Each rescue is followed by deeper compromise. Each deliverer is a little more complicated. Each victory carries more shadows. The people are not just repeating sin; they are being discipled by it.

Let’s look at Ehud.

Israel does evil again, and YHWH strengthens Eglon, king of Moab, against them. Even his name carries satire. Eglon means something like “little calf” or “calf-like,” which is fitting because the story paints him as a bloated ox-king headed for slaughter. Judges wants you to feel the mockery. This is imperial power with a full belly, sitting behind locked doors, fed by Israel’s tribute.

This time, YHWH raises up a much stranger deliverer.

Ehud is from the tribe of Benjamin, which means “son of the right hand.” But Ehud is left-handed. The irony is dripping. He is a left-handed man from the right-handed tribe. From the beginning, something about him is off, inverted, maybe even unsettling.

And unlike Othniel, the Spirit of YHWH is never said to come upon Ehud.

YHWH isn’t absent from the story. He raises Ehud up (3:15). But the narrator wants us to notice the change in tone. Othniel embodies Spirit-empowered deliverance. Ehud embodies secrecy, deception, hiddenness, and political assassination.

He gains access to Eglon by leading the tribute offerings, the payment of Israel’s subjugation. Then he returns with a private “message from God,” conceals a double-edged dagger on his right thigh, and drives it into the belly of Moab’s calf-like king.

The scene is darkly comic, violent, and grotesque. It is deliverance, yes, but not clean deliverance.

Already, Israel’s salvation is starting to come through methods that feel uncomfortably close to the world of its enemies. The good guys are not quite as clean as they were in Othniel’s story. The tools of rescue are beginning to look like the tools of empire: secrecy, manipulation, assassination, and blood behind locked doors.

The story celebrates Moab’s defeat and Israel’s freedom. But Judges is brilliant because it lets the victory feel both satisfying and unsettling.

Othniel gives us the golden ideal. Ehud gives us a complicated darkness. By the time we get to Gideon, that darkness gets really disturbing.

Gideon is riddled with anxiety, and by the end of his narrative, anxiety hasn’t just weakened him; it has formed him.

We first meet him threshing wheat in a winepress, hiding from Midian (Jud. 6:11). His brothers have been killed by Zebah and Zalmunna, and Gideon is the surviving son carrying fear, grief, and buried vengance. He is, quite literally, a kinsman redeemer (8:18-21).

YHWH repeatedly calls Gideon into courage (6:12–18, 22–24, 36–40; 7:9–11), but Gideon is a long way from Caleb, Othniel, and faithful obedience. At first, we think we are watching a timid warrior learn to trust God.

Gideon’s narrative is so much more unsettling than that.

Gideon is not simply afraid of Midian. He is becoming Midian. The man called to deliver Israel from pagan power begins to imitate that power.

After capturing Zebah and Zalmunna, Gideon asks, 

“What kind of men did you kill at Tabor?” They answer, “They were like you. Each resembled the son of a king.” Gideon replies, “They were my brothers, the sons of my mother!” (8:18–19).

Wow. What a line! The Midianite kings recognize kingly features in Gideon’s family. Remember, In Judges, kings represent pagan hunger for domination, security, and self-exalting power. Here, the kings of Midian look at Gideon and his brothers and see a familiar face.

Gideon may be fighting Midian, but Midian is staring back through him.

The motif intensifies when Gideon turns his violence inward. The elders of Succoth refuse to feed his exhausted men while he pursues the Midianite kings. They're cowards, sure, but Gideon’s response is brutal. Imperial even. After the victory, he returns, takes thorns and briars from the wilderness, and tears into the elders’ flesh. Then he destroys the tower of Penuel and kills the men nearby (8:13–17).

Does this sound like the justice of YHWH? Or like the savagery of the nations Israel was called to resist?

The hand YHWH used to break Midian turns around and crushes Israelite towns.

By the end of the story, Israel asks Gideon to “rule over us” (8:22)—language the narrator has not used of any judge before him. The people are anxious, and anxiety always looks for a throne.

Give us someone strong. Give us someone scary. Give us someone who can beat violence with more violence. 

Bigger and badder starts to feel like salvation.

Gideon gives the right answer: “I will not rule over you… YHWH will rule over you” (8:23).

But then he does the same thing Abraham did when he was anxious. The same thing Jacob’s children did. The same thing Aaron and the Israelites did. They remake YHWH in the pagan image they can control.

He asks Israel for the gold earrings plundered from Midian and uses them to make an ephod (a priestly garment associated with Israel’s worship). He sets it up where his father’s Baal altar once stood before YHWH told Gideon to tear it down (6:25–32; 8:24–27).

The story begins with pagan worship in Gideon’s backyard and ends with Gideon building a new idol in the same spot.

The author of Judges is a genius. Gideon does not reject YHWH with his mouth. He dresses pagan worship in Israelite clothing. Literally. An ephod. The golden calf was made from deliverance gold; Gideon’s ephod is made from victory gold. In both stories, Israel takes God’s gifts, melts them down, and turns them into something they can manage. Something that looks like empire.

Just like Israel mirrored the golden calf, Gideon mirrors the kings of Midian.

Israel wanted YHWH to displace Pharaoh. Now they want Gideon to displace the Midianites. Both times, they want to keep the empire, just get rid of the leader who abuses them.

We may think we are fighting a holy war against evil while becoming the thing we claim to oppose. Anxiety does strange things to theology. When we’re afraid, we reach for whatever promises survival, then baptize it with Christianese so we don’t have to call it idolatry.

Think of the culture wars you have been told to wage.

Think of the “spiritual warfare” lurking behind everything you dislike.

Think of the “blessing of God” allegedly at stake if you do not secure your freedom, your economy, your tribe, your culture, your religious preference.

I’m not saying every political concern is fake or every cultural fear is foolish. I’m saying that fear is a terrible theologian. It hands you a sword, tells you to call it righteousness, and convinces you to swing it at your neighbor.

So ask yourself: am I being discipled by YHWH, or recruited by Midian? Am I building the kingdom of God, or have I dressing up and fighting for the systems that make me feel safe?