Is not Israel during the time of the judges like a dysfunctional family? In a dysfunctional family, to a greater or lesser degree, the big issue is the absence of well-functioning relationships. The communication in the home can range anywhere from civil but not all that meaningful to altogether antagonistic. There is a real absence of pulling together as family. And in some instances, depending on the degree of dysfunction, the family itself can be oblivious to the fact that it is dysfunctional. Others might see it, but not necessarily the family.
Is this not what Israel looks like during the time of the judges? Judges 6:25–32 puts this issue front and centre. God’s people want deliverance from the Midianites, from the enemy outside. But they are rather oblivious to the enemy that lives inside the camp. In their blindness, they continually fail to give the Lord his due, and they now even start to turn on each other as brothers. There was great dysfunction among the children of the Most High God. This grieves the Lord. He sees his people living so far below what he wanted for his children. And so he sets out in this passage to make clear that he and the peace he provides, cannot be experienced, enjoyed, when his people refuse to give him their heart.
25 That night the LORD said to him, “Take your father’s bull, and the second bull seven years old, and pull down the altar of Baal that your father has, and cut down the Asherah that is beside it