10 v.1-2 - So Tola's 23 years as a judge gets a mere mention. One hopes that our remembrance is not so fleeting.
10 v.9 That Israel were troubled 'greatly distressed' is presented twice in the book of Judges. Whilst the A V is different on these two occasions the Hebrew is the same and the gap in time between the two events shows a long standing judgement from God. [Judges 2:15 here]

11 v.24 The irony here is obvious. If Chemosh was such a powerful God how was it that he had not saved them from the hand of Israel? [Numbers 21:29 here]
11 v.26 So we are three hundred years into the tie of the Judges, that is two thirds of the way through if we accept Paul's comment that the period of the Judges was 450 years. [Acts 13:20] This is the only indication in the book of Judges of a time that we can use to work out how far we are on in the period of the Judges. Interestingly the Ammonites were expected to remember things which had happened over three hundred years ago.

10:10-16 Israel's response that they had sinned produced a response that required Israel to review their history and then to call to their false God's for deliverance. This is an indication that God seeks true repentance. Simply saying the words is not good enough.

The issue of Jephthah's daughter has strong echoes of the offering of Isaac.

10:6 And so Baal is being served again - so short a time after the work of Gideon.

ch 11 - Developing the parallels between Isaac and Jephthah's daughter. Isaac was a 'burnt offering' - whilst we conclude that he was willing the record in Genesis does not say so. However with respect to Jephthah's daughter we know that she was willing because she says so (11:36). Isaac represented Christ. Jephthah's daughter represents the ecclesia - the bride. We should state our willingness to give our selves - and then do it (Romans 12:1)

10:6 What a contrast from the call to Israel 'Hear o Israel, the Lord our God is one Lord' (Deuteronomy 6:4). Seven different  gods are mentioned. They could not even be faithful to one false god.

11:8 In saying to Jephthah that he could be head over 'Gilead' we have an indication that the Judges had only a local influence. So the land was fragmented and the influence of each Judge was only over a small part of the land

11:30,31 Jephthah vowed that whatever (Heb. asher  is a pronoun inclusive of all gender and number, human or not) would come to greet him would be sacrificed for (= as or like) a burnt offering.  It is important to realize that Jephthah is using a simile here.  He could not have entertained actual human sacrifice as a burnt offering because this would be abhorrent to Yawheh, and would make the vow of non-effect. 

The national god of the Ammonites was Molech to which human sacrifice was made.  It was this people and their deity that Yahweh, through Jephthah, sought to destroy. 

11:34 Under the Law of Moses, the burnt offering was the only sacrifice that was completely consumed on the altar.  This signified total surrender to God.  And so, it was with Jephthah's daughter who came out to greet him (which, of course, saddened him (11:35). 

11:36 His daughter, however, was compliant to the vow, which she obviously understood.  She was prepared, like the symbol of the burnt offering, to totally surrender her life to God.  In effect, she would become a Nazarite for life like Samuel would later become (1Sam 1:11).  She would never be able to marry.  She asked for, and received, some time to mourn this fact with her friends before beginning the vow (11:37-39). 

All of this was a matter of trust.

When Israel came into the land, it was by faith (trust in God) that they entered in, simply because they could not have overcome the enemy forces on their own. Without faith (trust in God) the analysis of the 10 spies would have been exactly right: "we are not able to go up against the people, for they are stronger than we!" (Num 13:31-33).

When they gradually grew and took a greater hold on the land, they were to rid the land of every foreigner that dwelled theirein (Deut 7:21-23). They would do this by faith (trust) in God who would fight for them because they simply would not have enough strength to do it themselves. God's destruction of the Midianites through the 300 men of Gideon is the best example of this [compare Deut 28:7, Judg 7:20-21 and then Lev 26:7-8, Judg 7:12).  But now because they had not trusted in God, they had not slain the foreigners, and were not in a very good situation. Their trust (faith) had come to be in idols of wood and stone.

When they cried out to God, He said this to them: "Go and cry out to the Gods which you have chosen; let them deliver you in your time of distress!" (Judg 10:13-14). It's only fair, isn't it, that God said this? After all, the people had put their trust (faith) in those Gods in times of tranquility and plenty, so why shouldn't they put their trust in those Gods when times really became tough?

In times of plenty, where do we put our trust (faith)? A deity, as described in Judges, is merely an object, idea, or group of people we put our trust (faith) in. In times of plenty there is nothing to test that deity, and therefore it is possible for the incompetence of that deity to remain hidden. So it is with those things in which we trust (put faith in, believe in, worship). In times of plenty we spend money on insurance, medical cover, building a nest egg of savings, car breakdown cover, life assurance, household contents insurance, we go for more training so that we can obtain a better job, or promotion. We trust in these things. Oh yes we do! I can prove it. Here's some logic for you.... if we didn't believe (have faith) that there would be some benefit in these things, we wouldn't have spent the money would we? A salesman has to point out a benefit before he can hope for a sale!

So in times of trouble, what do we get? We can't get hold of the insurance provider. When we do there's always some loophole which gets them out of paying. We find that our pension funds have been embezzled. We listen to the doctor as he tells us there's nothing he can do to help. We lose our job despite our training and best efforts to better ourselves. But we didn't realise this when we paid out the money during our times of plenty.

God relented after He had rebuked Israel, and He saved them anyway. They found by bitter experience that the deities they had been serving were worthless. They should have known that God was the only one who had proved Himself worth putting trust (faith) in. "Did I not deliver you from the Egyptians... and you cried out to Me, and I delivered you out of their hand?" (Judg 10:11-12). He is the only one worth putting our trust in too. We need to start doing this in the little things during the times of tranquility and plenty, so that when the difficult times come, He will not say to us "Go and cry out to the gods which you have chosen; let them deliver you in your time of distress!".

10:16 In putting away the strange gods the people were, at last, doing what Joshua  had called them to do – Josh 24:14 This is the end of the repeated use of ‘served’. Israel have now gone full circle from serving other gods to serving Yahweh.  This encapsulates the recurring cycle in the book of Judges.

Judg 10:1-2 - "Tola" (8439) means "worm, grub, maggot, crimson, scarlet" - Is this an echo of Christ? Psa 22:6 refers to Christ as a "worm" (8438). Jesus, though despised as a worm, was a means of salvation, overcame death, cleansed sinners and manifested the glory of God. The word "scarlet" (8144, 8438) is instrumental in the process of cleansing leprosy (Lev 14:6,52), is instrumental in removing the defilement of contact with death (Num 19:6), is used as part of the tabernacle covering and door (Exo 26:1,36), is used as a thread that brought salvation to Rahab and her household (Josh 2:21). Tola rose to "defend" [Heb. "yasha" (3467) means "defend, saviour, deliver, deliverer, save, salvation, rescue, to be open, free", etc.]. Tola was a man of  "Issachar" (3485) which means "he will bring a reward, reward" and was buried in "Shamir" (8069) which means "a point or thorn, pricking, thorn, brier" and perhaps echos the cruel piercing of the crucifixion. Tola's father was named "Puah" (6312) which can have various meanings such as "scattered, splendid, utterance" and perhaps suggests the disciples will be scattered and proclaim the gospel throughout the world (John 16:27,32;Luke 10:1-2). Tola's grandfather was named "Dodo" (1734) which means his "beloved, beloved, lover, friend" and perhaps suggests Jesus as the bridegroom (Rev 19:7-9;Rev 21:9-10).

Judg 10:3-5 - "Jair" (2971) means "enlightener" - Is this an echo of Christ? John 1:9 refers to the true light which lighteth. Jair was from "Gilead" (1568) which means "a rocky region, or a heap of witnesses" (Eph 2:20-22;1Pet 2:4-8;Mark 6:39-44;1Cor 15:3-8) and the New Testament equivalent of Gilead was Decapolis and the Greek equivalent of the Hebrew "Jair" was "Jairus" who had a daughter Jesus raised from the dead (Mark 5:20-43). We have 3 mentions of 30 (many feel 30 means fit for service - Jesus started his ministry at age 30). "Havoth-Jair" (2334) means "villages of Jair, life-giving, living-place, wooded", etc. and perhaps it suggests the life-giving crucifixion of Christ. Jair was buried in "Camon" (7056) which means "an elevation or full of grain" (Christ offered himself up to be the bread of life); Camon comes from a root (6965) which means "a place of raising up".

Some above gleaned from The Gospel in the Book of Judges by Ian Giles, pps. 59-62.

DIFFERENT

Everyone has something about them that is different. It may be skeletons in the closet, life choices they have made, the part of town they live in, the friends they have, or even birth defects that turn people away. Jephthah's difference was that he was the son of a prostitute. For that reason Jephthah's brothers kicked him out of the family. '"You are not going to get any inheritance in our family," they said, "because you are the son of another woman."' (Judg 11:2)

As far as we can tell, Jephthah had not done anything wrong; he was rejected because he was different. But the tables soon turned and Jephthah's brothers were soon begging to have him back again. They chose to forget that he was the son of a prostitute and instead remembered that he was a "mighty warrior." (v.1) When the Ammonites made war against Israel, they needed a leader and a mighty warrior like Jephthah.

If we look hard enough we can see something bad in everyone. There were even people who couldn't see the good in Jesus! But if we look again we can focus on their good points, qualities and potential. Let's choose not to reject people because of their differences, but to accept them, encourage them and celebrate the good things they can give.

11:39  So Jephthah’s daughter, in doing her father’s will, is a living sacrifice. Isaac typified Jesus. She typifies the ecclesia.

10:6,10,12 We saw – Judg 2:14– the repeated use of ‘served’ in the early chapters of Judges. After a number of chapters where the word is absent it returns marking the depths of the decline in Israel.

Judg 11:1-3  - "Jephthah" (3316) means "he will open, free, whom God sets free" - Is this an echo of Christ? John 10:9 refers to Christ as the door/gate and John 8:36 refers to Christ setting believers free. "Jephthah the Gileadite was a mighty man of valour" - "mighty (man)" (1368) and this same "mighty" is also a title used of Christ (Isa 9:6) and Gideon (Judg 6:12). His father "Gilead" [(1569) means "a heap of witnesses, or strong, rocky"] perhaps stands for Yahweh witnessing His son in this parable (Judg 11:10).  "The son of an 'harlot'" [Heb. "zanah" ( 2181) means "(literally) to commit adultery, harlot,whoredom, (figuratively) to commit idolatry"] perhaps reflects how mother Israel prostituted herself with idol worship (Judg 10:6-7) and compares with Christ (Matt 1:18;John 8:41) who was also conceived outside of marriage. "And Gilead's wife bare him sons" perhaps echos Yahweh's wife being the House of Israel (Jer 3:14,20) with faithless children being scribes and Pharisees. Both Jephthah and Christ were rejected by their brethren. Jephthah  fled his brethren and dwelt in the land of "Tob" (2897) meaning "goodness, to be good, good" and this may echo Christ's ascension to heaven. "and there were gathered 'vain' [(7386) means "worthless, empty"] men to Jephthah, and went out with him" perhaps suggests those who follow Christ are the base and despised of the world (1Cor 1:28-30).

Judg 11:5-11 - Jephthah's return home again from Tob perhaps echos Christ's return in a time of need to his brothers who previously rejected him (Psa 118:22-26;Gen 45:4-7;Zech 12:9-10). Jephthah (like Christ) is made head and "captain" [Heb."qatsiyn" (7101) means "a (deciding) magistrate, prince, ruler, guide and captain"] with the expounded Hebrew meanings more accurately revealing the mission of Christ. Jephthah prayed [at Mizpeh (4709) means "watch tower" perhaps inferring God is a witness watching over"] and gives credit to God for delieverance (Judg 11:11,21,32).  "I have not sinned against thee...the Lord be judge" (Judg 11:27) perhaps echos Christ not sinning ... though Jephthah was a judge, he acknowledges the true judge is God.

Prior to his making a vow, the Spirit of the Lord came upon Jephthah (Judg 11:29) so perhaps it shouldn't be viewed as a careless accident. An interesting question is does his daughter represent Isaac (i.e. Christ), the virgin daughter of Zion Christ meets at his victorious second coming (Isa 66:16-20;Zech 12:9-11), or perhaps both. In Jephthah's vow (Judg 11:31) there are some translation questions "and I will offer it up for a burnt offering" according to Clark's Commentary can be also rendered "or I will offer it up for a burnt offering" or "and I will offer him up for a burnt offering" with quite different meanings associated. It doesn't say his only child daughter was mourning death but rather a state of being unmarried (Judg 11:37) and she returns to her father (Judg 11:39).  

Some above is gleaned from The Gospel in the Book of Judges by Ian Giles, pps. 95-103.

10:16  The response to the appeal to repentance brings about a total about turn and the people, instead of serving false gods now ‘served the Lord’ contrasting the earlier use of ‘served’ in this chapter and chapter 3

So we might put the records together thus

Rabshakeh was the epitome of pride and arrogance.  Just the attitudes Yahweh hates (Prov 8:13).

V.3  We see that Eliakim has now taken over the running of Hezekiah's household from Shebna (Isa 22:15-20).

V.17  It was the custom of the Assyrians to displace the people they conquered and replace them with other conquered people (2Kin 17:24).

V.21 This was that time to keep silent (Ecc 3:7).

History will repeat itself when Gog (the latter-day Assyrian) will invade Israel.  He will have no regard for Yahweh, the God of Israel, and will suffer the same fate as Sennacherib and his army.  Christ will completely destroy them.

36:4,5,6,15  It is all a matter of confidence and trust. Rabshakah was waging a psychological battle for the minds of the people. Should they trust God or the might of the king of Assyria. Should they trust the God they could not see or the mighty man who they could see?

V.16 Rabshakeh attempts to soften, in the eyes of Israel, the Assyrian policy of weaking the vanquished by deporting them to other lands (2Kin 17:6). Come out, or surrender to me, then you may remain in quiet possession of your lands until you are led away to a land that is as fruitful as the land which was given to your forefathers.

The name Rabshakeh is an Assyrian title meaning chief cupbearer.  In the ancient Near-East, this was a very responsible position which held the trust and the ear of the king.  The cupbearer's job was to make sure that the king's food and drink was not poisoned. He did this by tasting the food and drink before the king ate or drank.  Thus, he literally blocked the death of the king. 

Another notable cupbearer in the Bible is Nehemiah (Neh 1:11).  This is even more remarkable since Nehemiah was a Jew serving a Persian king.                                                                                                                                                                                                                     Few Jews understood Aramaic at this time, and so the Jewish leaders asked Rabshakeh to speak in Aramaic rather than in Hebrew (v.11).  Soon, Aramaic would become the common language of the region, including that of the Jews.  It was the language that Jesus used, as demonstrated by His saying Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani? (Matt 27:46), and Talitha cumi (Mark 5:41), for example.

V.19 Sennacherib challenged Judah and Jerusalem in approximately 700 BC.  Rabshakeh made reference to the defeat of Samaria which took place twenty-one years earlier. 

The Northern Kingdom of Israel had been under attack from the Assyrians.  Salmaneser started attacking Samaria, but it was Sargon II who finally took Samaria in 721 BC after a three-year siege (2Kin 18:9,10). 

V.1 According to the Assyrian archives, Sennacherib took 46 cities and captured 200,000 inhabitants See also 2Kin 18:13).

V.19 Hamath was in upper Syria. It was the chief city of the Hamathites, a group that descended from Ham.  They were also closely related to the Hittites. The city was conquered at the same time as Arphad was taken. Sargon II took these cities in 720 BC.

Arphad was a city near Hamath.   

Sepharvaim was on the east bank of the Euphrates. 

v7 shows us the confusion that existed in the minds of the people between Baal and God. Baal had subtely been introduced into Jewish worship and was being worshipped as if he were the LORD. Hence the Rabshakeh's words "didn't Hezekiah take away His (the LORD's) altar?" when in fact he had taken away Baal's altar (2Kin 21:3).

1Pet 2:11. Believers are called to live as “strangers and pilgrims”. A stranger would be an alien resident, not unlike Abraham and his seed. Gen 23:4. A pilgrim is a resident foreigner, one who lives in a country that is not their own. It is the attitude of mind of believers to day, as well as in the 1st. century. A pilgrim has no political rights and should have no real interest in what happens in this place were he is living, his interest and hopes are in the kingdom to which he travels.

1Pet 2:21. The word follow epakoloutheo (1872) means more to accompany rather than to follow. If we accompany Christ on our daily walk, then He is with us at all times. What a wonderful comfort.

2:2 The ‘milk’ quotes Isa 28:9 making the point that those brethren to whom he wrote had already learnt the gospel and experienced God working in their lives. As a consequence they should appreciate that they should lead a different life – a life described in 2:1.

2:5 I speaking of the brethren as ‘lively (living) stones’ Peter highlights a fundamental characteristic expected of believers who form part of the house of God. They are not passive but active elements of that community. Where do we fit into this pattern?

2:1-2    Notice the contrast between lay aside ‘guile’ and ‘desire the sincere milk …’

Babies only grow if they take the milk offered to them, but sometimes they need to be encouraged. So it is with us (1Pet 2:2) On occasions we need to be prompted to take the sincere milk of the word. That’s part of the work of an exhortation on a Sunday. But there are 6 other days in the week, when we really must feed on the word of God.

Never go to bed hungry.

The household of Jesus constitutes a holy, royal priesthood (v.9). Those admitted to the kingdom will act as priests (Rev 1:6). And hath made us kings and priests unto God and his Father (KJV) is better rendered: and made us a kingdom, priests to his God and Father (ESV).).

CRAVE SPIRITUAL MILK

After describing the purifying and enduring effects of the word of God, Peter tells us what the result of this knowledge and experience of the word in our lives should be. "Therefore rid yourselves of all malice and deceit, hypocracy, envy and slander of every kind. Like newborn babies, crave pure spiritual milk, so that by it you may grow up in your salvation now that you have tasted that the Lord is good." (1Pet 2:1-3)

As well as getting rid of anything impure within us, we need to crave pure spiritual milk just like babies crave milk from their mothers. A newborn baby requires feeding every few hours, day and night. In fact, if a parent does not get that baby into a routine of feeding, waking and sleeping, it will want to snack constantly through the day. Any time it feels uncomfortable, a baby wants to drink from its mother, thinking that the milk will soothe its pain.

This is how we need to be with the word of God, the pure spiritual milk. It's not right to gourge ourselves on it once a day because the nutrition we could gain from it will be lost. Like a baby, let's feed regularly on the word of God throughout the day, even snacking if we can. Crave the word of God in every circumstance every day.

2:6-8 Peter, by inspiration, draws three areas of Scripture together here:-

Behold ... confounded Isa 28:16

The stone ... corner     Psa 118:22

A stone ... offence      Isa 8:18

The key stones of the building were not recognised by the Jewish leaders at any time in their history.