Bob Barney – The reason there is a parallel with Ancient Israel and America is BECAUSE WE ARE the descendants of Ancient Israel!
Exclusive: Scott Lively sees Old Testament parallels to prominent figures today
By Scott Lively
I have written many times on the parallel of Israel’s republic (detailed in Joshua and Judges) with the American republic. Most tellingly, the political logjam preventing ratification of our U.S. Constitution was only broken when holdouts in New Hampshire were persuaded by Pastor Samuel Langdon’s 1788 sermon “The Republic of the Israelites an Example to the American States.” And if that Scripture-based history explains how we became a republic, it can also explain why ours has survived no better than that of the Israelites.
We have just celebrated Easter, the Christian version of the biblical Feast of First Fruits (Leviticus 23:4-14), in which Jesus “has been raised from the dead, the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep” (1 Corinthians 15:20). On Easter morning I was blessed to receive what seems to be a gift of insight from the Holy Spirit on one of the great mysteries of the Bible: the rationale behind the sacrifice of Jephthah’s daughter in Judges 11.
A few weeks previously, our weekly livestreamed chapter-by-chapter Freestyle Bible Study addressed the story of Jephthah. Like most Christians, I had always been mystified by Jephthah’s strange vow that forced him to (later) sacrifice his own daughter as the price of military victory over the Ammonites. On that day I had prayed for insight on that strange passage but did not receive it.
However, on Easter morning as I was preparing for that day’s Bible Study on Judges 19, I began looking for evidence in the book of Judges of the keeping of the biblical feasts during that era. Such evidence is very sparse and mostly just implied, such as the references to Levites who travel the land, for example in the story of Micah and the Danites in Judges 17-18. Repentant sinner Micah recruits a wandering Levite, Jonathan, grandson of Moses, to be the personal priest of his household.
When a band of Danite warring adventurers later visits Micah and hears the voice of the young Levite (who was already familiar to them) they essentially poach him for themselves, and continue on their way to Laish, inhabited by Sidonians, which they conquered and renamed Dan. “The Danites set up idols for themselves, and Jonathan son of Gershom, the son of Moses, and his sons were priests for the tribe of Dan until the day of the captivity of the land [when the Ark of the Covenant was stolen from Shiloh by the Philistines]. So they set up for themselves Micah’s graven image, and it was there the whole time the house of God was in Shiloh” (Judges 18:30-31).