Judges 8:33

ISRAEL FELL AGAIN INTO APOSTASY (Judges 8:33-35)

"And it came to pass as soon as Gideon was dead, that the children of Israel turned again, and played the harlot after the Baalim, and made Baal-berith their god. And the children of Israel remembered not Jehovah their God, who had delivered them out of the hand of all their enemies on every side; neither showed they kindness to the house of Jerubbaal, who is Gideon, according to all the goodness which he had showed unto Israel."

"Israel ... made Baal-berith their god" (Judges 8:33). "The worship of Baal-berith, as performed at Shechem (Judges 9:46), was an imitation of the worship of Jehovah, an adulteration of that worship, in which Baal was put in the place of Jehovah."[34] Just as the true worshippers in Israel recognized Jehovah as their covenant God, the apostates mentioned here made what they called a "covenant" with their false god Baal. "`Baal-berith' means `the covenant Baal.'"[35]

"Neither showed they kindness to the house of Jerubbaal, who is Gideon" (Judges 8:35). This reveals a fact often overlooked in the evaluation of human behavior. Unfaithfulness to God is man's failure to honor his RELIGIOUS DUTY. And once infidelity, or unfaithfulness, has been established at this highest center of man's obligations, all other obligations are also immediately made vulnerable and secondary to the vagaries of human caprice. This writer has often noticed that men forsake their wives and children or betray and violate business and other obligations after they had denied and forsaken their sacred obligations to their God and the Lord Jesus Christ.