Week 2 February 2026, Devotion Part 2

And Othniel the son of Kenaz, the brother of Caleb, captured it; so he gave him Achsah…as his wife.  Joshua 15:17

Admittedly, “Othniel and Achsah” do not roll off the tongue as readily as Abraham and Sarah, or Boaz and Ruth. The latter’s equally widowed sister-in-law, Orpah, went back to her Moabite people at Naomi’s urging. On Miss Winfrey’s birth certificate the name chosen by her parents was misspelled, so the name Oprah stuck for the talk show host. People doing memory drills with alphabetized biblical names, avoid Orpah for that reason. Othniel as Israel’s first judge fares better. Naturally, Abraham or Adam are first out of the gate. Achsah could never have qualified for any A-list, since her name came up briefly only related to Caleb’s gift of the Negev. The epitaph connected to her at one time flourishing “south land” recorded in Isaiah 30:6, would have broken his daughter’s heart. “An oracle about the animals of the Negev: ‘Through a land of trouble, dryness, and distress, of lionesses and roaring lions, where there is no water, a land of vipers and darting snakes, they carry their riches on donkeys' backs, and their treasures on the humps of camels, to a nation that cannot benefit them.’”  Egypt’s help indeed was “vain and empty,” but in vain God had pleaded with apostate Israel to seek His. He withheld the rains to chasten them and Achsah’s crucial upper and lower springs had dried up.

While Joshua lived, his people walked in his ways, after he died at the age of 110, they fell away. Enemies rose up to plunder and oppress them. When they cried to the Lord, He sent judges to deliver them, but the vicious cycle always resumed. This pattern began when Othniel became Israel’s first judge. The villainous King of Mesopotamia wreaked havoc on the public for eight years, quite true to his name Cushan-rishathaim, “Doubly wicked Cushan.” With the “Spirit of the LORD” upon him, Othniel won his war against him and the land had rest for forty years (Judges 3:7-11).  Part 2 of 2

Comment: While back home for my dad’s 90^th birthday, I asked for the Bibel given to my parents for their wedding.  The inscription read, “As for me and my house, we will serve the Lord,” quoting Joshua 24:15.  Inside, not a single verse was underlined.  My heirs will find that I journaled extensively in my several wide-margin Bibles, supplying exact dates and times to round out my autobiographical legacy.  I love them too much to saddle them with piecing it all together, and shall suggest they ship off the lot to Sweden where they excel at recycling.  Most families have a front row seat “as is” at the events that shape them in good and bad times. In our own flawed humanity we have all kinds of things in common with those ancient Israelites in conquered Canaan, eager to corrupt them. We fall in love with God and with the world and when things fall apart, we fall for the Egyptian fix that is “vain and empty.”  Peter is hinting at an instant kind of revival in Acts 3:19, where repentance results in “times of refreshment from the Lord’s presence.”  The restored intercessor may then well start with, “Give me my family.”  Joshua 15