10 And also all that generation were gathered unto their fathers: and there arose another generation after them, which knew not the LORD, nor yet the works which he had done for Israel. 11 And the children of Israel did evil in the sight of the LORD, and served Baalim: 12 And they forsook the LORD God of their fathers, which brought them out of the land of Egypt, and followed other gods, of the gods of the people that were round about them, and bowed themselves unto them, and provoked the LORD to anger. 13 And they forsook the LORD, and served Baal and Ashtaroth. (Judges 2:10-13 KJV)
Commentary
which knew not the Lord. Which did not regard the Lord, nor cleave to His religion. Bp. Patrick. Which had not been eye-witnesses of the before-mentioned miracles, and therefore were thoughtless of God, and careless of their duty towards Him. Dr. Wells.
The Jews were, at this period, mere children in moral and religious conduct: they were very inattentive to the history of past transactions, so that many of the very next generation after Joshua “knew not,” that is, considered not, and therefore acted as if they had not known, the wonders which God had wrought for Israel. The temptations to intermarry with their neighbors, and adopt their manners and worship, were too powerful for their unsteady and carnal minds: the beauty of the women of Canaan, the pomp and gaiety of their festivals, the voluptuousness of their impure rites, the hope of gratifying their curiosity by idolatrous divinations, the overpowering fears impressed on their souls by idolatrous superstition; their anxiety to conciliate the favor of those divinities, who were represented as the peculiar gods of the country in which they were newly settled; these and other similar motives demanded a strict and immediate discipline to counteract their influence, and to preserve amidst this backsliding and unstable people the main principles of religion and morality. Dr. Graves.
served Baalim: The idol gods or deified men of the Canaanites and other nations. The word Baal, in Hebrew, signifies “Lord,” and was applied as a general name to the idols of Syria, Palestine, and the neighboring nations. Bp. Patrick, Dr. Wells. “Baal and Ashtaroth,” Jg 2:13, the sun and the moon. Dr. Hales.
And they forsook the Lord God of their fathers, It has sometimes been asserted, that the repeated relapses of the Jews into idolatry, at various periods of their history, render the reality of the Mosaick miracles suspicious: for, according to those who thus argue, it is not credible that the witnesses of such stupendous miracles, or their immediate posterity, should have so soon forgotten the Divine power thus plainly manifested, or apostatize from a religion thus awfully enforced. But these reasoners entirely mistake the nature of this apostasy, and forget the character of the people among whom, and the period when, it took place. These relapses into idolatry never implied a rejection of Jehovah, as their God, or a doubt of the truth of the Mosaick Law. The Jewish idolatry consisted from the most part in worshipping the true God by images and symbols; or in worshipping Him in forbidden places, on high hills, and under groves; or in combining idolatrous rites with the Mosaick appointment, and joining together the worship of God and idols, none of which imply any doubt of the existence of the true Jehovah, but arose from their proneness to imitate the superstitions of the neighboring nations. Even when they gave way to that most flagrant species of idolatry, the worship of idols without God; yet even then they did not so much reject the true God, as conceive that there were intermediate and subordinate deities, with whom they had more immediate concern. In truth, the temptations to some or all of these kinds of idolatry were so powerful, from errors in opinion widely spread, and sanctioned by the Egyptians and Canaanites, and strengthened by the habitual attachment of the Jews to the idols, the symbols, and the rites of Egypt, as well as the sensual allurements of idolatrous worship, and the overpowering terrors of idolatrous superstition; that we have rather reason to wonder that the Jews, dull, sensual, and stubborn as they were, could by any system of discipline be corrected, than to doubt that such Divine superintendence and control was actually exercised, because they relapsed so frequently into their idolatries. Dr. Graves.
Served Baal and Ashtaroth. In a general way, probably, Baal and Ashtaroth mean the sun and moon; but in many cases Ashtaroth seems to have been the same among the Canaanites as Venus was among the Greeks and Romans, and to have been worshipped with the same obscene rites. Adam Clarke