The judges of Israel

Othniel

The first judge · Early in the era of the judges · Delivered Israel from Cushan-rishathaim, king of Mesopotamia · The land had rest forty years

Othniel, the younger brother of Caleb, was the first of the judges. When Israel forgot the LORD and was sold into the hand of a Mesopotamian king for eight years, the people cried out, and the Spirit of the LORD came upon Othniel. He went to war, God gave him the victory, and the land had rest forty years. He is the pattern judge, the clean example against which every troubled deliverer after him is measured.

And when the children of Israel cried unto the LORD, the LORD raised up a deliverer to the children of Israel, who delivered them, even Othniel the son of Kenaz, Caleb’s younger brother.Judges 3:9 (KJV)

His story from Scripture

Othniel first appears back in the book of Joshua as the man of faith who took the town of Kirjath-sepher and won Achsah, the daughter of Caleb, as his wife. He was of the family of Caleb, called the son of Kenaz, and Caleb's younger brother, a man already proven before the days of the judges began.

After Joshua and his generation died, the book of Judges tells us that the children of Israel did evil in the sight of the LORD, and served other gods. So the LORD gave them into the hand of Cushan-rishathaim king of Mesopotamia, and they served him eight years. Then the children of Israel cried unto the LORD, and the LORD raised up a deliverer, Othniel. The Spirit of the LORD came upon him, and he judged Israel, and went out to war, and the LORD delivered the king of Mesopotamia into his hand. And the land had rest forty years, until Othniel died.

His character, honestly

The text records no fall in Othniel, and that is itself worth noticing, for it will almost never happen again in this book. He is the model deliverer: a man of faith before he was ever a judge, raised up by God, filled with the Spirit, victorious, and then gone. Scripture gives him no speeches and no scandals, only the quiet report that he did what a judge was for. He is the standard, and the deliverers who follow will be measured against how far they fall short of him.

How God used him

Othniel shows that the power to save Israel was never in the judge but in the Spirit of the LORD who came upon him. Israel had earned their bondage, and nothing in them deserved rescue, yet God heard their cry and raised up a man. The forty years of rest were a gift of pure mercy to a people who had turned away. Even the best of the judges is only a channel; the deliverance is God's.

The cycle begins

With Othniel the book sets the pattern it will repeat again and again: Israel sins and turns to other gods; God gives them over to an oppressor; the people cry out in their misery; God raises up a judge and grants deliverance; the land has rest; and then the judge dies and the people sink back, worse than before. It is a downward spiral, not a circle, and by the end of the book Israel will be near ruin. Othniel is the first turn of the wheel, and already it tells us that the people cannot save themselves and cannot stay saved.

How he points to Christ

Othniel was a deliverer raised up when Israel had no hope and no strength, filled with the Spirit to win a battle the people could not win. He points to the true Deliverer, Jesus, on whom the Spirit rested without measure, who did not merely break the hand of one foreign king but broke the power of sin and death itself. Othniel's rest lasted forty years and ended at a grave. The rest Christ gives has no end, for he did not die and leave his people to fall again, but rose and lives to keep them forever.

A note on honesty: the book of Judges is one of the darkest and most candid books in the Bible, and it does not flatter its own heroes. The failures named above are the ones Scripture itself records. We do not whitewash them, because the point of the book is not how good the judges were, but how faithful God was to a people who could not save themselves, and how deeply they, and we, need the true Deliverer.

Related: Next: Ehud · The Kings of Israel and Judah · All the judges of Israel