Judges 1-2: God apparently can't handle a few chariots

So, chapter 1 is all about the Simeonites and ... Judah-ites? ... killing more Canaanites. I really thought conquering time was over, but I guess not. Whatever. Hundreds of thousands of more people die or are enslaved.

Funny, apparently in all this fighting "the LORD was with them," but also they were unable to conquer the plains, because the Canaanites had chariots fitted with iron. So,

Chariots > God

Good to know.

Then God shows up to gloat some more over how great he is at keeping promises. God is so ridiculously proud of himself over this whole clusterfuck.

All the Israelites go their separate ways. A generation later, after everyone who was around for all the conquering was dead, no one knew about God and "did evil in the eyes of the LORD." That didn't take long.

This next part is just weird. God is pissed that they're worshipping other Gods, even though he already knew that this was inevitably going to happen, presumably because he himself set it up that way. So God helps out their enemies, and they lose a bunch of battles.

Then, just to make it confusing (cause what kind of bible story would this be if it weren't confusing?), God "raised up judges, which delivered them out of the hand of those that spoiled them." So he's trying to help them out? Why? If he's so concerned about their wellbeing, he wouldn't have made them lose all their battles in the first place. I still think God has multiple personalities. Also, judges? What the fuck does that mean? The footnote says it could also be translated as "leaders."

Anyway, it doesn't work. The people ignore their new leaders and continue worshipping their other gods. Apparently this goes on for several generations, with God playing for both teams for some reason. Eventually God becomes not just angry, but "very angry," and decides that he's not going to help the Israelites at all anymore.