The Angel of the Lord Rebukes Israel at Bochim

In the disturbing opening pages of the book of Judges, after Israel had completed only a partial conquest and Joshua had passed from the scene, the Angel of the Lord himself made a journey from Gilgal up to Bochim near Bethel (Judges 2:1-5). There he confronted the assembled people of Israel face-to-face. "I brought you up from Egypt and led you to the land that I swore to give to your fathers... I will never break my covenant with you, and you shall make no covenant with the inhabitants of this land; you shall break down their altars. But you have not obeyed my voice. What have you done? So now I say: I will not drive them out before you, but they shall become thorns in your sides, and their gods shall be a snare to you." The whole assembly broke down weeping at the message, and so the place was renamed Bochim — "weepers." They offered sacrifices to the Lord and dispersed. The moment marks the formal transition from the Joshua-era conquest to the long, downward-spiraling cycle of apostasy, oppression, and deliverance that defines the entire book of Judges.

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