Acts 13:19–20

He spoke of God, and of His ways, full and varied as they were. God had chosen their fathers. God had exalted them in Egypt, and had brought them out with great power. God also had put up with their behaviour in the wilderness. He destroyed seven nations in the land of Canaan and divided it among the tribes by lot. Then He appeared as a Giver. He gave them judges and prophets. He gave them Saul as king. After that He was known as a Raiser-up. He raised up David first, then David's seed — Jesus in the incarnation — and last of all He raised Him up in resurrection. He had also proved Himself a Fulfiller of promises. A Giver, a Raiser up, a Fulfiller of His promises — what an announcement they heard that day! If God is like this, all can and should rest on His word.

These nations were sunk in the most awful sexual immorality, and they practised the vilest evils. There are different reasons to believe that Satan had a special hold on them. God had put up with these nations for many centuries. In His mercy He waited before He drew the sword of justice. Now their wickedness had reached its full measure, and the time for judgment had come. The Lord called Israel to carry out that awful judgment.

God had driven out the nations who occupied the land of promise, for Israel certainly did not have the power to do this. It was God who planted Israel in the land. It was God who brought trouble on those who had seized the land He meant to give to Israel. Israel did use their swords in conquering the land, but it was not their swords that won the victory.

First, God's dealings from His choice of the fathers are tied at once to the exodus of the people from Egypt. Then comes His care of them in the wilderness, until He gave them the land to inherit. It is the Pentateuch and the book of Joshua in miniature, with Israel at the centre, loved for the sake of the fathers. The gospel confirms God's love to Israel; it does not cancel it.

In verses 19 and 20 there is a notable difference from the usual wording. The point is not that He gave the land by lot, though that is true in itself, but that He caused them to inherit their land… This connects the date of "about 450 years" with the carrying out of the promised inheritance.

In Acts 13:20 the King James Version reads that God gave them judges for about 450 years, until Samuel the prophet. This would not agree with the 480 years of 1 Kings 6:1. But there is a different reading in Acts 13, which editors of the Greek Testament and the Revised Version have adopted, apart from all questions of chronology. It reads, "He divided to them their land by lot, about 450 years; and afterwards he gave them judges." So the 450 years are not applied to the length of the judges. This period may be made up by counting from the birth of Isaac, because the promise was to the seed of Abraham, and Isaac was the child of promise.

He spoke of God, and of His ways, full and varied as they were… Then He appeared as a Giver. He gave them judges and prophets. He gave them Saul as king too. After that they knew Him as a Raiser-up. He raised up David first, then David's descendant — Jesus, when He came into the world as a man. Last of all He raised Him up from the dead. He also proved Himself a Fulfiller of promises. A Giver, a Raiser up, a Fulfiller of His promises — what an announcement they heard that day!

In the common text of 13:20, Paul marks the period of the Judges as about 450 years… But this cannot be squared with 1 Kings 6:1. That verse fixes the start of the Temple building — in the fourth year of Solomon — at 480 years after the Exodus… Now the earliest Greek manuscripts, along with the Latin and Egyptian versions, read the passage another way: "He divided the land among them by lot about the space of 450 years. And after that He gave them judges." So the years mentioned would come before the time of the Judges.

The "450 years" in Acts 13:20 looks like a round figure. It covers the time from the entry into the wilderness to the end of the reign of Saul… We must also remember that the Judges often ruled over only part of the people. So Ehud and Shamgar worked among the tribes in the south, while Deborah and Barak brought deliverance in the north.

If the oldest witnesses are accepted, it was in about 450 years that Israel was made to inherit this land, after the promise to "our fathers," that is, counting from the birth of Isaac as the starting point… It cannot therefore be assumed that Paul assigns a duration of 450 years to the judges, and so invalidates the date in 1 Kings 6:1 of 480 years from the Exodus to the founding of Solomon's temple.

Their unfaithfulness brought misery on them, and that misery moved the compassion of God. His mighty grace raised up deliverers by His Spirit among the fallen and wretched people… But Israel did not change. "And yet they would not listen to their judges." "When the judge died, they turned back and became more corrupt than their fathers." This is the sad history of the people of God. It is also the history of the grace of God, and of His compassion towards His people.

We read, for instance, that God gave the people of Israel judges (Acts 13:20), that is, certain men who became leaders and rulers of the people. But there was nothing in Gideon, Samson, or any of them to magnify the love of God. These servants in themselves had little moral worth. They did not make their office great by their own excellence. Instead, their office made them great.

Samuel, the first prophet (Acts 3:24; Acts 13:20), was also a judge over Israel (1 Samuel 7:6). He thought he could set up his sons as judges after him (1 Samuel 8:1), but their unfaithfulness ended that arrangement. The period of the judges was also short-lived by nature. The judges gave only brief relief to the misery of a guilty people. Israel had let the enemies of the Lord live instead of destroying them.