Our worst enemy. In certain ways, Judges 21 uncovers the real source of our sin. At the beginning of the book, Israel failed to implement the herem and was influenced by the Canaanites into idolatrous worship and apostasy. Throughout the cycles section, there was a progressive Canaanization of the cyclical judges, climaxing in the moral nadir of the self-absorbed, revenge-driven Samson. But in the final chapters of Judges, and especially in chapter 21, the Canaanites are absent. Thus Block concludes: “This book and the history of the nation that follows serve as eternal testimony to the grim
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