Judges 10:11-18: in context

Israel has fallen back into idolatry yet again, and when they cry out to God under their latest oppressor, God's answer is unusually raw, almost the response of a wounded party who has finally had enough. Did I not save you from the Egyptians, the Amorites, the Ammonites, the Philistines, all of them, and every time you cried to me I rescued you? Yet you have forsaken me and served other gods. Therefore I will save you no more. Go and cry to the gods you have chosen; let them save you in your time of distress. It is God saying, in effect, you wanted those other gods, so go to them now and see what they do for you.

And here the story turns on how Israel responds, because it is not with excuses. They say, we have sinned; do to us whatever seems good to you; only please deliver us today. And then, crucially, they do more than speak: they put away the foreign gods from among them and served the LORD. That is what real repentance looks like. It is not merely the words we have sinned; it is the removing of the idol, the actual putting away of the thing the heart had run to instead of God. And the last line is almost unbearable in its tenderness. After all the betrayal, after God had just said I will save you no more, we read that his soul was grieved for the misery of Israel. His compassion could not, in the end, leave them in their suffering.

Both halves of that examine me. My repentance is often all words, an apology to God that leaves the idol exactly where it was, still enthroned in my heart. Israel shows the difference: they took the false gods out. And when they did, they met a God whose stated no more dissolved in grief over their misery, whose love outlasted even his own exasperation. When I turn back to God, do I actually put away the idol, or only say the words, and do I trust that behind his discipline is a heart that cannot finally bear my misery?