 Yes, good morning. And before we begin today's class, which would be on judges, I very briefly wanted to talk about the assessments. So for those of you who are online, and for those of you who will be later watching the same video on the e-platform, probably on September 1st or 2nd, or even 3rd, depending on, you know, when the technical team is available to help me with this, I will post your assessment one, all right. And like I had explained in the very beginning for the online students and for the e-platform people, it will be a multiple choice question paper of just 25 marks, all right. So from the day that I post the question paper, you would have seven days to finish it. So all that will be mentioned when I post the assessment one, I would give the instructions as well. So you will also have the date of submission. And one thing that you would need to note, if you are an online student, you know, I have no control over the software. So it closes, it shuts down, you know, the link which allows you to do your submissions closes on the date which has been specified. So and it cannot be changed. So especially for e-platform people, if you are unable to finish your assessment one within the given time limit, you would not get a past certificate at the end of the course, simply because the software will show that you have not completed it, all right. So for you, especially for the e-platform students, this would be a very serious thing, you know, having to redo an entire course just because you would a little late in your submission of your assessment one. So those who are on Google Classroom and who will be submitting their assessments online and also for the e-platform students, please, you would be given seven days exactly to finish the objective type questions. And please do it within that time. Do not leave it for the last one hour or the last remaining two hours because who knows, you know, due to the time difference, I mean, with some confusion, you know, due to the time zones, you may miss out. So try and see to it, you know, if you can just finish it off one day earlier, that would be a big help. Okay. So e-platform students and Google Classroom students, try and finish it off maybe one day earlier so that there would be no confusion regarding time zones and time of submission and all of that. But it's just an objective type. You would just have to take the answers. All right. So these are the instructions for the online students. All right. We will begin with our book of Judges. So in the book of Joshua, we see that Joshua gives his fable speech and he finally tells the people, as for me and my house, we will serve the Lord. Now, you have to make your decision. Each of you, each of your families has to decide, will you follow the Lord or and enjoy the blessings, you know, which can result from that or do you, you know, choose the side of evil? So that's a choice which each person had to make. And unfortunately, we see the decision which was made by most of the people when we come here to the book of Judges. We see that the people fall away from God and they no longer stay faithful to him. And we see the sad results of that here in the book of Judges. Yes. There's a question here. How would we be assessed? And I was told for the Google Classroom students, there would be separate place where the question paper would be posted. So all of those details will be provided to you in the stream page. All right. You know, the stream page where I usually put the link for your class. I will put all of the instructions most clearly over there. So you will not have any hassles because I'm also doing this for the first time. And I'm not very clear with all the technicalities. So I will make sure that you have all the all of the details and only then, you know, will your seven day countdown begin. So you will not be affected in any way. I promise you that. All right. So all the details will be put there in the stream page so that you will know how you are to access it and what you are to do. So those details will be provided. All right. Okay. Coming back to Judges and the fall into sin which we see over here in this chapter in this book. We see that it was almost 450 years of a sinful, rebellious lifestyle. Where do we get that figure from? That's actually found in your Acts chapter 13 verse 20 where you have Stephen talking about, you know, his is going over all the past of the Israelites, even as he's talking to these leaders who want to kill him. So even as he's talking to them going over all their past history, he makes mention of even this dark period of the judges and he says for 450 years, you know, they chose to live in sin and disobedience. So that is how we kind of get an approximate figure that this time of the judges probably lasted for 450 years. And so as the judges were coming and serving one after the other, they probably would have maintained written of whatever was, you know, of the events which took place during their time. So over the years, all these records would have been carefully maintained in some storage place. So finally, when Samuel comes along, when he becomes the prophet, at that time he probably would have, you know, edited and compiled all of these records and turned it into a book of judges. So the most, you know, probable explanation is that Samuel would have been the writer of this book. So he would have taken all those written records and then under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, he would have put the whole thing together in a particular order including only those portions which the Lord is directing him to include finally in the, you know, in the final document or rather we would say final scroll because he would have put the whole thing into scrolls. So we say that Samuel is most probably the one who would have been the editor and compiler of the book of judges. And they say that this probably might have taken place 1086 to 1064 BC. That would have been the time when this particular book would have been compiled. Key personalities, of course, we have many of them. The more familiar ones are, you know, Gideon, we also are familiar with Samson, Deborah, many of them, many people probably would know these are the, and of course, we have many others, Jeff Dyer and Othniel and Ehud and all of those other people as well. Now coming to the genre that is used in this particular book, of course, we have narrative history because a lot of history is narrated. We also have some passages where you have poetry being mentioned. So there are poetic passages as well. And we see another form of writing, another form of ancient writing seen here. And those are riddles. Where on earth do you think in this book of judges, do we have these riddled passages mentioned? Any guesses? Exactly. Okay, so if you were to go to the ancient Near Eastern writings and look at those writings, you would have certain writings devoted to riddles. So that's the kind of writing format that they have used over here in the book of judges, wherever they were had to mention these riddles. So these are the kind of writing patterns that we see in the book of judges. Why was this book written? To make it very clear to future readers, to make it very, very clear to all future generations that if they choose not to obey the Lord, punishment will come. Judgment will happen. There is no way of avoiding it. So the author, even as Samuel would be editing and compiling this book, he would have had one main purpose, that all the future generations which are reading this scroll would remember that if they refused to follow the Lord, there would be consequences. The protection of God would be removed from upon them which will expose them to a lot of harm and danger and warfare and a lot of struggle. So that of course would have been one of the main reasons why this particular book was written. And one thing that people would have understood if they are reflecting carefully on what has been recorded is that the real danger is not the wars which they had to face. The invasions from the local people who came and invaded their property and stole their crops and burnt their houses. The actual danger was not that the greater danger was what they were storing inside their hearts. Because of what was inside their hearts, all of these troubles came upon them in the first place. There would have been no burning of houses. There would have been no stealing of crops. They would have lived in peace and enjoyed the protection of God if what they had stored inside their hearts was good and in line with God. So they made a choice not to follow him. They made a choice to start going after evil. They chose to go into idolatry. They decided what they're going to put inside their life. It was a choice which they consciously made and that opened up their lives and their homes to all the misery that came in. So one thing that we see about the Book of Judges, the danger over here is not the external things. The external things can come and become a serious factor which can destroy you utterly only if the inside is not kept in shape. If the inside is in good shape, difficulties will still come, trials will still come. But there is a God of Gods who will keep an edge around you and will only allow a certain amount of strife to enter at a time and he will help you resolve it. He will give you the strength to deal with it. So how you are on the inside is vital. That will determine what will happen with the external things that come into our lives. So that's a very important learning and sadly the people in the Book of Judges, the people of that time, never seem to really understand this principle. They continue to do whatever they wish to on the inside and they hope that things would become fine outside and it really doesn't work that way. That's not how God has established his spiritual principles. So that's a sad thing that we see. In your textbook there was one comment that I saw and I kind of liked it. They were trying to make a comparison between Joshua and Judges and this is what was written in your textbook. It said in Joshua, Israel took the land from the Canaanites but in Judges the Canaanites took the land from the Israelites and it's a very sad thing. God's plan for them was the first, never the second. The second thing where the Canaanites took the land from them and that is what would happen. If what you are putting on your inside, if how you're maintaining your heart and your spirit and your mind, that is up to us. We get to decide, we have free choice what we want to do with that. And there are three types of Judges that we see being mentioned here in this book. Most of them are warrior Judges. God basically appoints them as judge, not so much to sit in a court and do judgment but rather judge in the sense they are the ones who will go out and wage war and they will try to win back some of the land which the Philistines or the other people have occupied. So they are the warrior judges like Gideon. Gideon would be a good example of a warrior judge. A second type of judge that we see would be a priest judge which is what we see in the last judge who comes along, Eli. Eli is a priest and he also serves as their judge. So an example of a priest judge would be Eli and of course you have a prophet judge because Samuel is the one who is appointed as the first prophet and so from there the prophets begin. So a prophet judge would be Samuel and so we see all these three types of judges kind of being mentioned in in this list of judges. We have a question coming up. She would be a prophetess judge. Okay, you mean in that sense. It's just that, yes they were, yes very true. It's a good point to bring up. They were prophets who were hearing from God and conveying God's message to the people all along but Samuel is considered the first prophet in the sense he was officially appointed in the way Moses was appointed. Moses was considered their prophet, their first prophet because Moses says another prophet will be sent to you who is like me later on. He says, so in that sense Samuel becomes the first prophet who's almost functioning like their main leader, almost functioning like their main ruler. So Deborah of course was a prophetess but her influence would have been in the river whichever area she is living in. So the people who would be immediately staying in those places would come to her to see God's guidance and all of that. Okay, so yeah and we see Jesus later on assuming all of these roles. He will be a warrior one day in the book of Revelation. He is a priest. He is a prophet. He is definitely a king. We see that as well. So all of these roles are actually completely ultimately fulfilled in Jesus Christ and the judges over here in this particular book are just kind of human representations of what Jesus will one day do more completely, what he will accomplish in a more perfect way in the future. So yes, we have another question coming up. Over here in the book of Judges, who is being called Father, we'll kind of deal with that later because it's not part of today's topic. But do remind me later because I tend to forget and I will take it up with you. This is a question not related to our topic today. So we at the moment, we will not get into it. Let's get into the structure of this book of Judges. We could maybe say that chapters 1 to 3 or at least half of chapter 3. So chapter 1 to maybe halfway through chapter 3 can be section 1 where we are kind of given an introduction to the condition that the people are in right now. We discover that they have not completely conquered the whole land the way they were ordered to. They were ordered to kill all these seven people groups that God has declared judgment upon. They were supposed to wipe them out of the land, take over the land, establish themselves over there and start living for God in those areas. But the people did not do that. They lacked the faith, they lacked the spiritual maturity and so they were scared to fight. They were scared to conquer. They didn't have the strength to conquer because they didn't have the spiritual backing. They lacked in spiritual maturity and as a result of that, we see that the large portions of the land was still left unconquered. As a result of that, the locals gradually began to get more powerful and they were able to take back those territories. So there was a lot of confusion caused simply because the people had not done what they had been asked to do in the first place. If they had finished conquering and wiped out those seven people groups, the seven nations, things would have been very different for them. So in these first three chapters, we are given an introduction to what condition the people are in right now and then from the latter part of your chapter 3, we see this whole cycle beginning where they rebel against God and because they have rebelled against God, God removes his protection from them. They are exposed to the evil one and all the problems that he brings in. So they get conquered by people, they get subjected by people, their crops are all destroyed by fire, all of that happens. Then the people remember God and they say, Lord, please help us, please deliver us and God sends along a judge and so they are happy during the lifetime of the judge because the judge is a godly man and he wants them to follow in God's footsteps. They kind of listen for a little while. Once the judge dies, they again forget the Lord and they go back into their sin and the whole cycle repeats once again. So we see this happening again and again in the book of Judges. A total number of 14 judges are mentioned here in our book of Judges. We don't know whether the entire lot are mentioned. Maybe there are a few judges who are not mentioned. We do not know but anyway, these are the 14 judges that God wanted included over here in this particular record. So 14 judges are mentioned here in the book of, in this particular book. Then chapter 17 to 31 can be the next section maybe. In chapter 17 to 31, we are given some specific examples of how the people had fallen, how far they had fallen, how terrible their condition had become. So we see some examples of that in this last section. We see the tribe of Dan, which almost completely goes into idol worship. We see one tribe being almost killed by all the other tribes. That is the tribe of Benjamin, which is almost wiped out and just 600 men are left in that tribe. We see all of these things happening in this last section. So one main thing that comes to our minds even as we look at this book of Judges is that the people did not follow the spiritual instructions which were given to them. What was told to them in the book of Deutronomy, if you remember when we were covering the book of Deutronomy, I actually read out a list of verses where it talks about how important it is for parents to bring up their children in the ways of God and tell them all that Yahweh has done for them so far. And what did these parents do? They have not bothered teaching those things to their children. There were so many verses in Deutronomy again and again reminding this generation which is going to step into the promised land. What does Moses say to them? Your fathers could not make it. They sinned and they were punished. But you have a new fresh chance. You are going to be stepping into the land. You are going to be conquering it. So teach all these things to your children but then they did not do that. And because they did not do that, we see this present condition which we see over here. So there are some important verses which actually reflect on that. So maybe we could have one student over here read out Judges chapter 2 verses 7 to 11. And if you could please follow in your Bibles. Those of us who are here, when someone is reading, please focus on what is being read so that you absorb what is being said. Judges chapter 2 verses 7 to 11. So here it says that during the lifetime of Joshua and of the elders who outlived him, who had seen all the great things the Lord had done with their own eyes, they saw the great miracles that God did and these people were supposed to convey to the future generations what they have seen with their eyes or the things which they have experienced. But they failed to do that. Because they failed to do that, it says in verse 10, another generation grew up who knew neither the Lord nor what he had done. What was wrong with these parents? Why on earth did they not talk about these things with their children? And why did those children not convey it to their next generation? And that is the same problem that we are seeing even today. I really see that in so many homes and it troubles me a lot. A lot of parents are under the impression that if they sent their children to the Sunday school for half an hour that is somehow supposed to build them up and turn them into spiritual giants. Half an hour sitting over there in Sunday school is not going to make much of a difference. They may learn some new things which they had not known before but the training would have to be done by the father and the mother. And especially the attitude of fathers nowadays distresses me. They really think that their main goal in life which God has put them on this earth for is to go and earn as much as possible. And the mother somehow in her busy schedule she needs to tuck in this extra little bit of spiritual mentoring of the children. No, it is a serious responsibility of both the parents. There is a generation growing up today who neither know the Lord nor what he has done. And that is a very, very sad state of affairs. So I am only stressing on that because all of you sitting over here are young people and please when you build your marriages, remember just sending your kids to school is not enough. They need to be trained. They need to know who the Lord is or the Lord can be for them in their personal lives. Then they will stand for him, then their eyes will stay on him and then they can grow up into something strong and some people who can serve a purpose, who can accomplish something and fathers should take it as seriously as mothers. Okay, yeah, that's just something that I wanted to get off my chest. So here in Judges we see the very sad consequences of this poor parenting which was done by the previous generations. Yeah, this is a question which has come up here and let me just take a look at that. Why do the people keep going back to the Baals and the Asha's in the OT? Because it's so much easier to worship the Baals and the Asha's. You know, you're supposed to perform certain rituals and certain sacrifices and shell out a whole bunch of money and if you do that, you're told that your crops will grow better. You are told that your cattle will not become sick and that is so much easier even if it means having to shell out hard earned money on those priests who are going to be doing those Baal rituals and all of that. And the Asha's, the added advantage with worshipping the Asha, Asherah pole and the whole other whole Asherim setup is that you can also indulge in immoral behavior. So the Baals and the Asha's were catering to the flesh, catering to the sinful nature which is there inside each one of us. On the other hand, Yahweh is saying, no, kill the flesh, listen to me, focus on me, keep my ways so that my blessings can be released upon you and that takes much more commitment and so that is the main reason why they were going back because they looked at the other nations worshipping the Baals and getting stinking rich. So their idea was that if they are getting rich by worshipping the Baals, even our crops can be taken, we don't need Yahweh to protect our crops, the Baals can take care of our crops. As for the Asherim and all of that, that encourages immorality, it supports what we are doing. So all of these things, the flesh nature enjoyed these religions and which is why they kept going back because the following the Lord is always tougher but following the Lord leads not just to some blessings here on earth but eternal blessings down the line because you and I are going to be alive over here for maybe 98 years or 100 years. After that, I doubt maybe some of us will even make it up to 110 years but after that we have thousands and thousands of years in the next life. I mean this is just a small portion and are we preparing for that? We are not meant for 110 years of life, we are meant for billions of years for infinity, we'll be alive forever. So we need to plan for that future because it's going to be grand and so that should be our eyes should be on that. The people of Israel of course were focused on the few 100 years which they will be alive on this earth. Yeah, this is a question about human child offerings. I'm not sure whether that had already come in during the time of the judges probably had given human nature but it gained greater prominence later on in the future ages. At this point of time, I am not very sure, I would probably have to do a reading of the cultural background during this particular period of time but it was not that prominent yet. So yes, human sacrifices were done later on and probably to the Baal so I'm not sure to which gods but it gained prominence later, okay, so not at this particular point of time. Yes, now coming to the story of Dan and what the tribe of Dan did in the book of Judges, maybe we can have one person read out Deuteronomy chapter 7 verses 1 and 2 where you kind of get an idea of what God had originally wanted from the instructions to the Israelites. Okay, over here it's given, it's very clearly told that God's judgment is going to be coming down upon these seven people groups which are mentioned over here. So when they go into the promised land, these are the people whom they would be attacking. These are the people whom they are supposed to wipe out, not the other people groups. There's no mention made about the other people groups. Dan on the other hand goes and occupies the territory of a bunch of people who are living in a peaceful state. They had no right to do that. Okay, so they occupy territory which is not been given to them by the Lord, so which is why God is very angry with them. If we can look at Judges chapter 13 verse 1. Yeah, if someone could read out Judges chapter 13 verse 1. Okay, so the people of this tribe, they were the land which was given to them. On one side you would have the tribe of Judah living and on the other side you would have the Philistines living and they were spiritually in such a bad condition that they did not have the strength to fight the Philistines. So they thought we are stuck in this small, you know, narrow region and we're unable to conquer most of it because we are spiritually too weak to conquer the giants. I mean they were not giants of course. The Amorites were not giant, Philistines were not giants but I mean the giants, the people over here were not giants. Let me do it correctly. Yeah, the people living in this particular territory of Dan were not giants in size but they were Philistines who were powerful in warfare and these people did not have the spiritual strength to be able to go and conquer those territories which belongs to them and so they thought why don't we go to another place which is peaceful and attack the people over there and take over that particular portion of the territory. So therefore they go against God's will and they settle in a place which is not allotted to them and I have not written down the scripture reference for it, for this passage. My goodness, that's really bad. So sorry, I'm so sorry, maybe I'll put it in the stream page for those of you who are online and then for the others I can look it up, you know, in my Bible and tell the others. So the tribe of Dan chooses to go and attack a people group whom God has not told them, given them any instructions about and they take over their land even though they have not been authorized by God to do that. So that is something they were not supposed to do. Coming to chapter 4 and we can maybe briefly talk about Deborah and Barak. In the notes, this is what I have, it says here that Deborah was probably the only judge in the book of Judges who ruled over all of Israel in the sense her influence was over all parts of Israel. Okay, that's not something that I had really registered in my mind earlier. So it looks like people came to her from all of the tribes for consultation and so she had a large amount of influence and over here in chapter 4, we see that they're having a lot of trouble from the king of Canaan and his commander in chief. The commander in chief of the Canaanite army in that area was Caesar and Caesar had an army of 900 chariots which were fitted with iron. We see that in chapter 4 verse 3 where it talks about how this particular army was very powerful because they had chariots which were fitted with iron which means they can go faster, they can last longer and so it would be more difficult to kill someone who is sitting inside such a chariot and moving at a greater speed. They would be able to throw arrows at the people who are on foot, the soldiers who are just on foot. So therefore the Israelites found them very difficult to attack and so at that time Deborah is instructed by God to ask Barak, the son of Ahinoam, that would be in your verses 6 to 7. So she tells him that God wants you to take 10,000 men and go and fight against Caesar. So Barak is very afraid to do that, he does not want to face those iron chariots, wooden chariots using iron fittings. So he's not he's scared to deal with that and so he says if you go with us then we will go otherwise we will not and Deborah says because you're not willing to listen to what God has said and you're asking for human support and help, you will not receive much honor out of this undertaking, instead the praise will go to someone else. So we see all of that happening in verses 1 to 7 and then in verse 15 it talks about how finally Barak, he works up the guts to go and it says that the Lord routed Caesar and all his chariots and army by the sword. There are no details given about how Barak and his people win that battle, it just says over there that they were able to completely kill all of those soldiers and Caesar gets down from his chariot and he runs from there. Those are the details which are given. But then in the next chapter, chapter 5, there is a song which Deborah and Barak sing and in that song you have some more details about exactly how the battle took place, what exactly happened during the battle. So if you were to go to the next chapter, chapter 5 and if you would look at verses 19 to 21, there you have some additional details. Maybe we could have one person here read out Judges chapter 5 verses 19 to 21. So here we have these 10,000 people whom God wants to go and fight and on the other side you have how many chariots were there? 900 chariots fitted with iron and so God made arrangements on how he is going to defeat these people and so we see a very similar incident to the Red Sea happening over here. So what happens is all these people they come over here to the near the Kishon River. They are somewhere on the banks of the Kishon River. All of these, yeah I have to finish this in the middle of something. So yeah, so they come to the banks of the Kishon River and they are waiting for, they are making plans to attack the Israelites. So what God does is he causes the flooding of the river. So somewhere like we were talking about yesterday, all these, you know, about the rivers coming up from the mountain areas and then you have mudslides which can block the water. On the other hand, if there's a mudslide which has been there and which has kept the waters blocked for a long time and then suddenly the blockage is removed, you can imagine how much water would rush down into the valley. So that is what happens over here in this particular case. The Kishon River was flowing along nicely, calmly, peacefully and suddenly somewhere up in the mountain regions, some particular blockage was opened up and so the waters come rushing down and the river floods and that entire bank is flooded and here you have this heavy wooden chariots with iron fittings. So which means they are now extra heavy because of the iron fittings and they all begin to sink into that slush and they can no longer move about very easily. So there they all are wondering, my goodness, you know, all this slush and all this flooding where on earth did it come from and even as they're kind of wondering what to do, you have the 9, the 10,000 Israelites coming over there with their swords and they're able to just literally kill these people because they're sitting over there like sitting ducks, nowhere to go. I know they're stuck in that position, not anticipating what would happen and so without much difficulty, these people who are just foot soldiers who have no chariots are able to defeat powerful people who actually had chariots. So they couldn't just, you know, take their chariots and go racing off. They could not because they were like stuck in the mud because of the and that is why they sing in the next chapter. They're so amazed by what God has done and they say, from the heavens, the stars fought from their courses, they fought against Caesar, they're just basically talking about how, you know, heavenly forces have opened up the rains and because the rains came down, you know, so maybe up there in the mountainous areas, maybe there was a serious flooding because there were heavy rains or something. We do not know the actual, you know, geographical details but God causes a flooding of the river and the river is able to, you know, make the army helpless, the Philistine army helpless and so they are able to get their victory and just like Deborah had told, we see that Barak does not get the full glory for the, you know, for the victory because Caesar is not killed by Barak but rather by a lady who uses trickery to defeat him. So we see that later detail. I did not touch upon the Gideon story because that's something that most of us are familiar with. Another two interesting ones would be Jeff's story that also is rather significant. The Samson story of course is also very familiar. So those are some of the main things that we see in the Book of Judges. So any questions that anyone would like to pose at this time, we have about five minutes if you have any questions. Yes. Yeah, Dave, what do they do in the next chapter? They grieve. So the people, I mean, you know, in, I think in three or four places in the Book of Judges where you have the wording which says there was no king in those days and everyone did what they felt was right in their eyes. So they would just follow their emotions. So when they decided to massacre the Benjamites, they were just following their anger, the rage that they are feeling in their hearts. So they go out and they attack them and then after killing most of them, now they are regretting what they have done. So yes, there is a grief which comes because you have done something very stupid without, you know, following God's guidance. So they grieved because of their own mistake and they were proud to be Israelites, they were proud to have 12 tribes and now they were a little worried that one of the tribes is going to become extinct very soon and then, yeah, they resort to other terrible foolish methods to try and recover from that situation. So there's a lot of foolishness that we see over here in the Book of Judges and it says that everyone did whatever they felt was right in their own eyes. Judges 17, 6, 18, 1, 19, 1a, the first part of 19, 1 and 21, 25. In these four places, it mentions this wording. Everyone did as he saw fit, whatever he thought was right in his eyes, he just did without any guidance from the Lord and which is why the Book of Judges 10 turns out so bad because there is no guidance, no turning to the Lord for his counsel. All right, which was killed, you mean? They were not one of the 12 tribes but they were big enough to call themselves a tribe but they are not one of the tribes created by God and, you know, God made future promises, covenant promises. So the covenant promises were for these 12 tribes but then there are other groups and clans which could have used the word tribe for themselves but the official ones were these 12 tribes. They were not following the Lord's instructions clearly at that time so they did whatever they felt was all right but we would have to really look into that context of that whole passage to really decide whether what was being done was godly or not. Yeah, so I, yeah, you wanted to ask something so how much of it was approved by God? So that, you know, so yeah, okay, for those of you who are like watching online, I mean they're asking about, you know, the massacre of the Benjamites which took place and what they tried to do after that to again increase the population and they resorted to kidnapping and all of that so all of that was not directed by God and so some students were just expressing their thoughts on that. Okay, the question over here is why were the Benjamites excluded from the Israelite tribes later? Were they excluded because Benjamin and Judah were considered as one unit so they continued to be part of the 12 tribes so the northern Israel was the, you know, the other 10 tribes and then these two Judah and Benjamin together formed the land of Judah and because the Judahite population was larger in number, the entire southern Israel was called Judah but it doesn't mean that there were no Benjamites living among them. Benjamites continued to hold on to their identity so they were not made extinct or anything. We'll close at this point but further questions, you know, if anything important we can deal with it even in the next class so those of you who are online, you can post your questions in the stream page and those of you who are here, we'll see. Let's just close with the word of prayer. Lord, we just thank you so much for the short few lessons that we could learn from this book of Judges. Thank you a lot that you are a God who gives us second chances again and again and we pray Lord that you would help us not to be like the people who are living in the time of the Judges but rather we would make use of the second chance that you give us and not go back into sin, that we would be grateful for the deliverance that you have shown, for the mercy that you have shown and we would be willing to stay faithful to you. Thank you Lord, in Jesus' name, amen. Thank you so much for actively participating in the class, you know, in the chat and we'll meet again next class.