Judges2:10–15

Spoilers who spoil — a verb the Torah never uses verbal / quotation — confirmed

Verse 14 doubles a root for effect: שֹׁסִים (H8154) handed to, and וַיָּשֹׁסּוּ (H8155) doing the handling — spoilers spoiled them. K&D notes both the alternation and the striking fact that “This word is not met with in the Pentateuch”: the vocabulary of the disaster outruns the vocabulary of the curse that predicted it. Cambridge identifies the noun with the Egyptian loan shasu, the robber Bedouin of the desert — the raiders are named with a word from outside the covenant world. The Verifier finds H8155 in only six verses in the entire canon, which is what licenses a verbal tier here: this is genuinely rare shared diction, not a common word coinciding. We make no claim about what those six passages mean together beyond the lexeme they hold in common.

Zechariah 14:2 · Isaiah 13:16 · Jeremiah 30:16 · 1 Samuel 17:53 · Psalm 89:41

basis: Verifier: shared Hebrew lexeme H8155 shâçaç — attested in only 6 verses canon-wide (RARE); Zechariah 14:2 additionally shares H622 ʼâçaph (187 vv, common, not load-bearing). No quotation is claimed in either direction; the confirmed link is lexical rarity only.

“They forsook the LORD and served the Baals and the Ashtaroth” — a fixed formula verbal / quotation — confirmed

The triple ʻâzab + ʻâbad + Baʻal is not a description Israel's historians reinvented; it is a set phrase. K&D lists the cluster by hand: “In Judges 3:7, Asheroth is used as equivalent to Ashtaroth, which is used here, Judges 10:6; 1 Samuel 7:4; 1 Samuel 12:10.” Cambridge makes the same point from the other side, calling forsaking-the-LORD one of the compiler's recurring formulae (Jdg 10:6, 10:10, 10:13). The Verifier independently confirms it: Judges 10:6 and 1 Samuel 12:10 each share all three lexemes with our unit, and 1 Samuel 7:4 shares ʻâbad, Baʻal and the rare ʻAshtârôwth. ⚙ The literary effect is that the Judges cycle and the Samuel narrative are told in one idiom — Samuel's generation confesses in the exact words Judges uses to accuse.

Judges 10:6 · 1 Samuel 7:4 · 1 Samuel 12:10

basis: Verifier: 1 Samuel 7:4 shares H6252 ʻAshtârôwth (12 vv — RARE) with H5647 ʻâbad and H1168 Baʻal; Judges 10:6 and 1 Samuel 12:10 each share the full triple H5647 ʻâbad (262 vv) + H1168 Baʻal (70 vv) + H5800 ʻâzab (206 vv). The rare lexeme carries the verbal tier; the three common lexemes alone would not. K&D names the same cluster independently.

“It became narrow for them” — the word that always precedes a cry verbal / quotation — confirmed

וַיֵּצֶר (yâtsar, H3334, “to press (intransitive)”) is rare — the Verifier finds the lexeme in ten verses. K&D renders our occurrence literally: “and it became to them very narrow,” i.e. “they came into great straits.” The same root, most of those ten times, sits at the moment before someone calls out: Jacob before the Jabbok (Genesis 32:7, with the same intensifier mᵉʼôd), Israel again under Ammon (Judges 10:9, also with mᵉʼôd), David at Ziklag (1 Samuel 30:6, likewise). Nehemiah 9:27 is the interpretive one: the post-exilic Levites use this verb while praying back over the very cycle our unit summarizes. ⚙ We take that as a reader's own inner-biblical commentary on Judges 2 — but the shared lexeme is the sourced fact, and the reading built on it is ours.

Genesis 32:7 · Judges 10:9 · 1 Samuel 30:6 · Nehemiah 9:27

basis: Verifier: shared Hebrew lexeme H3334 yâtsar — attested in only 10 verses canon-wide (RARE). Genesis 32:7, Judges 10:9 and 1 Samuel 30:6 additionally share H3966 mᵉʼôd (279 vv, common — the intensifier co-occurrence is noted, not claimed as evidence). No quotation claimed; rarity of yâtsar is the whole basis.

The curse clause activated — Leviticus 26 and Deuteronomy 28 as the engine of vv. 14–15 structural / thematic — confirmed

Three commentators, working independently, route this unit back to the same two chapters. K&D: “instead of the promise contained in Leviticus 26:7-8, being fulfilled, the threat contained in Leviticus 26:17 was carried into execution,” and “the hand of Jehovah was against them for evil, as He had said (Leviticus 26:17, 26:36; Deuteronomy 28:25).” Ellicott cites Leviticus 26:17 for “could not any longer stand” and Leviticus 26:17-36 with Deuteronomy 28:25 for v. 15. Cambridge cites Deuteronomy 28:48-53 and Leviticus 26:17, 36-39. Barnes traces “he sold them” to Deuteronomy 32:30. ⚙ The narrator is not merely reporting misfortune; he is filing an execution docket against a specific statute. But note what we are not claiming: the Verifier returned no shared-lexeme basis for these pairs, so this badge rests on convergent commentary attestation and thematic structure, not on a computed verbal link. Tiered accordingly.

Leviticus 26:17 · Deuteronomy 28:25 · Deuteronomy 32:30

basis: No Verifier lexeme basis was computed for these pairs; the recorded basis is convergent citation by four independent public-domain commentators (K&D, Ellicott, Cambridge, Barnes) identifying these as the covenant-curse texts being executed. Deliberately NOT tiered verbal: we have no shared-Strong's evidence, only commentary attestation and a shared legal pattern.

“As the LORD had sworn” — an oath the Pentateuch does not record flagged — verify source

Judges 2:15 says the disaster came “just as YHWH had spoken and just as YHWH had sworn to them” — נִשְׁבַּע, Nifal of shâbaʻ (H7650), whose root sense is “to seven oneself,” to bind by sevenfold oath. The commentators send us to the curse chapters, and then K&D admits the problem outright: “There is no express oath mentioned either in Leviticus 26 or Deuteronomy 28; it is implied therefore in the nature of the case, or in virtute verborum, as Seb. Schmidt affirms, inasmuch as the threats themselves were words of the true and holy God.” Cambridge simply cites Deuteronomy 28:48-53 and Leviticus 26:17, 36-39 without addressing the oath language at all. Gill takes a different route entirely, pointing to Deuteronomy 29:12 — the covenant-oath ceremony, where the one entering into an oath is Israel. ⚙ These are two incompatible solutions to one real gap, and neither of them is the text. We flag the link rather than pick a referent: the verse asserts a divine oath whose narration none of our sources can actually locate.

Leviticus 26:17 · Deuteronomy 28:25 · Deuteronomy 29:12

basis: Contested provenance. The Verifier computed no shared-lexeme basis for these pairs. K&D concedes that no express oath exists in Leviticus 26 or Deuteronomy 28 and supplies one by inference (in virtute verborum, after Seb. Schmidt); Gill instead proposes Deuteronomy 29:12, where the oath sworn is Israel's, not God's. The referent of 'as the LORD had sworn' is therefore disputed among the sources themselves, and is flagged rather than asserted.

Cross-Testament: the generation that did not know Him structural / thematic — confirmed

Ellicott hangs two New Testament texts on this verse. On “gathered unto their fathers” he lists Acts 13:36 alongside the Old Testament idioms; on “which knew not the Lord” he quotes Jeremiah 9:3 (“they know not me, saith the Lord”) and adds a comparison to Titus 1:16 — a text about people who profess to know God but deny Him by their works, which is precisely Gill's distinction between national and practical knowledge. Pulpit, from the same verse, turns to the Lord's Supper as the countermeasure “in keeping alive a perpetual memory of Christ's precious death until his coming again.” ⚙ These are real structural correspondences — the forgetting generation, the remembering ordinance — but they are not verbal links and cannot be. A Greek text and a Hebrew text share no Strong's numbers, so no verbal tier is available here in principle, and we do not manufacture one.

Acts 13:36 · Titus 1:16 · Jeremiah 9:3

basis: Cross-Testament (Greek↔Hebrew for Acts/Titus): shared Strong's numbers are impossible across languages, so no verbal tier is available in principle. Basis is Ellicott's own cited parallels at Judges 2:10 (Acts 13:36 for the burial idiom; Titus 1:16 and Jeremiah 9:3 for 'knew not the Lord') plus a shared motif of professed-but-unpracticed knowledge. Jeremiah 9:3 is Hebrew↔Hebrew but the Verifier returned no lexeme basis for it, so it too rests on commentary attestation.

The memory that does not fade — a work done, a supper kept ancient/widely-held

The unit's diagnosis is memorial failure: Pulpit writes that “The memory of God's great works gradually faded away, and with this memory their influence upon the hearts of the people.” Its remedy, in the same note, is sacramental — Pulpit turns from Judges 2:10 to “the value to the Church of the sacrament of the Lord's Supper in keeping alive a perpetual memory of Christ's precious death until his coming again.” ⚙ The grammar underwrites the move. Israel's loss in v. 10 is of הַמַּעֲשֶׂה — the work, singular, articular, one indivisible deed of deliverance — known by a verb that means to ascertain by seeing. Christ's answer to the same problem is not a stricter catechism but a table: something seen, broken, handed over, and repeated “in remembrance of me … till he come.” The Church's guard against becoming another generation that did not know Him is an act, not an argument. Cambridge notes that in both Law and Prophets the appeal is always to the Exodus “as the birth-day of Israel's religious life”; the apostolic appeal is to a greater exodus, kept the same way — by eating it.

Luke 22:19 · 1 Corinthians 11:26 · Judges 2:10

Sold, and the judges who could not keep them ancient/widely-held

וַיִּמְכְּרֵם (mâkar, H4376) is the merchant's verb — “to sell, literally (as merchandise, a daughter in marriage, into slavery).” Poole and Benson: “delivered them up, as the seller doth his commodities unto the buyer.” Pulpit hears in it, “Ye are not my people, and I am not your God.” Yet JFB insists from the same verse that “all these calamities were designed only as chastisements … for as they returned to faith and allegiance, He ‘raised up judges,’” and Henry adds the pivot the whole book turns on: “The Lord was with the judges when he raised them up, and so they became saviours. In the days of the greatest distress of the church, there shall be some whom God will find or make fit to help it.” ⚙ But every one of those saviours dies, and the refrain restarts — Maclaren calls it “da capo.” The book's own structure is an argument from insufficiency. Paul's synagogue sermon at Antioch runs the same sequence out loud — the judges, then Samuel, then Saul, then David — and then says that from David's seed God brought Israel a Saviour, according to promise. ⚙ Paul is using the book's own verb, raised up, and letting it land on one name instead of a rotation of names; we describe his argument here rather than quote it, since the sermon is not among this unit's sourced texts. That the judge-cycle points beyond itself to Christ is the apostolic reading, not our invention.

Acts 13:20-23 · Judges 2:14 · Judges 2:16

The One who brings out, and the hand that goes out with them novel

In v. 12 God's title is a Hifil participle, הַמּוֹצִיא — the One-bringing-them-out, permanently present tense. In v. 15, every time Israel goes out (יָצְאוּ, same root yâtsâʼ), the hand of YHWH is against them. Ellicott makes the contrast explicit against Joshua 1:9, where that hand went with them. ⚙ Here is a reading we offer as ours and mark as such: the covenant problem this unit exposes is that a God whose name is an act of deliverance has become, by their own choosing, the obstacle in every departure. Nothing in the passage resolves that. What the New Testament claims to resolve it is a Deliverer who goes out under the hand set against Him rather than beside those it protects — “smitten of God, and afflicted,” sold for a price, and abandoned outside the camp. We flag this as figural and as ours: none of the commentators in this brief draws the line from ham-môṣîʼ to the cross, and the link is typological, not verbal. It is offered to be tested, not asserted.

Isaiah 53:4 · Hebrews 13:12 · Judges 2:12 · Judges 2:15