
Many of us have heard the story of Gideon. It can be found in the Old Testament in the book of Judges, Chapters 6 - 8. It's a popular story for Children's Church with the story of the fleeces and people lapping like dogs from the brook, so many people have heard of Gideon, if they were raised in the church.
Recently a reference came up in my daily reading regarding Gideon so I decided to reread the story and when I did, I discovered I really did not know the story very well.
What my understanding of Gideon had been that he was a guy just minding his business when God decided he was who he wanted to use to deliver the people of Israel. Why did the people of Israel need deliverance? Because they had done evil in the sight of the LORD and the LORD gave them into the hands of Midian for seven years.
The story of Gideon is relatable to us through the need for confirmation that Gideon needed to have with the two fleeces, one wet, one dry, to prove that indeed God wanted to use him. Then God does some more interesting stuff by thinning out the army to be used, not for any reason of Gideon but because God wanted to make the odds so great against Israel in the natural that there would be no way that Israel could boast of the victory. I have read and hear sermons that take the angle that God can use anyone so be prepared when He calls you from out of the blue.
Yet, that is not the whole story of Gideon, not even close.
Gideon was a judge in Israel. There were twelve judges in Israel in the time after the death of Joshua and proceeding the first King, Saul. I am not sure how they were determined to be a judge but I believe it was a continuation of when Moses selected, one man from each of the twelve tribes, to help him in matters of civil disputes.(Exodus 18).
Chapter 6 of Judges starts with this: The people of Israel did what was evil in the sight of the LORD, and the LORD gave them into the hand of Midian seven years.
The Midianites were Bedouin nomads who were raiding Israel and plundering their crops, along with the Amalekites, another nomadic tribe who have long been an adversary of Israel. In Exodus 17:8–16 the Amalekites ambushed the Israelites as they were journeying out of Egypt. These attacks resulted in the produce of the fields being plundered and leaving none to sustain Israel.
A condensed accounting of the call of Gideon from Judges 6:6-40...An angel came and sat under a tree on property owned by Gideon's father, Joash. Gideon was hiding some wheat from the Midianites in a winepress. The angel comes to Gideon and calls him a mighty man of valor. Gideon begins questioning the angel regarding the current vulnerable state of Israel and questioning if truly the angel got the right guy. You can read this in verses 11 - 27. Gideon, needing a sign that the angel was indeed an angel, brings meat, unleavened bread, and broth which he laid on a rock before the angel, who then touches it and it is consumed, allowing Gideon to believe it was an angel. So that night Gideon does the bidding of the angel, which was to tear down an altar to Baal and the Asherah pole beside it, build an altar to the LORD, then sacrifice his father's bull and another seven year old bull on the newly built altar to the LORD. In the morning when the people saw that the Baal altar and the Asherah pole were torn down, they were angry and upon finding that it was Gideon they wanted to kill him, but Gideon's father saves Gideon with some quick thinking, and the whole situation brought some attention and fame to Gideon, renamed Jerubbal. The meaning of Jerubbal is let Baal contend. That part of the story is in verses 25 - 35 of Judges 6.
So Gideon/Jerubbal starts feeling more confident that he is someone. That is my take on it yet the scripture does state that the spirit of the LORD clothed Gideon, and he sounded the trumpet. He starts blowing a trumpet and various groups begin to come and meet up with Gideon for war. But Gideon's doubts caused him to question God about IF God will save Israel by his hand and then we have the story of the two nights of the fleece being wet, then the fleece being dry, to convince Gideon AGAIN that God was indeed with him, verses 36 - 40, Judges 6.
So now we are to the place in the story that many people are familiar with, the thinning out of the army, first by sending anyone who was afraid home, then by observing the men as they drank from the water. The ones who knelt to drink were to go home, and the ones who lapped the water with their tongues, as a dog lapped, Gideon was to keep. It was 300 men. God had said that He was reducing the amount of men to prevent Israel from boasting, saying their own hand had given them the victory. The army is thinned out and Gideon needs one more assurance. He is told by God to go down to the Midian camp at night if he is still afraid, to overhear what the army of Midianites and Amalekites were saying and what Gideon would overhear would give him confidence that Gideon's small army of 300 men would indeed prevail ,verses 1 - 18 of Judges 7.
We read the defeat of Midian and the killing of the princes of Midian. Then Gideon and his 300 men army pursue the kings of Midian, who are fleeing with the remaining army of Midian. He does capture them, asks his young son Jether to kill the kings, Jether is too afraid to do it, so Gideon kills the kings himself. This account is in Verses 19-25 in Judges 7 and in verses 1 - 21 in Judges 8.
As you can see, the story contains much more than what a children's bible story can convey, as well as containing an ending that makes for some disappointment in the person of Gideon.
Regarding the ending, it's quite the downer if you want to champion Gideon. Don't we tend to do that? A human being seems to have some real mojo going for them and we are amazed, maybe mesmerized by them and their actions. Anyway, here is the ending of Gideon's story as related in the book of Judges...
In Judges 8:22 - 35 you read: After the winning exploits of Gideon, a man called by God and a man who led a small army to a great victory, is asked by the men of Israel to rule over them. Gideon answers what you could accept as being the right answer when he tells them he will not, that God will rule over them. But then he asks them something, requests something of these men; do they have any gold they will give him? As Ishmaelite's, they did in fact have gold earrings. The Ishmaelites' were primarily traders and they displayed their wealthy status by wearing gold. So this gold was collected as well as the jewelry worn by the kings of Midian and the collars worn by the camels (camels with gold collars?). It ended up being 1,700 shekels of gold, a shekel being roughly 11 grams of weight (18,700 grams), which is approximately 41 pounds in gold.
And what does Gideon do with this gold? He made an ephod with it and put it in his city. What is an ephod? In Exodus 25:8 there is the beginning of the instructions from God to Moses regarding making the sanctuary where God will dwell. The instructions moving forward in the book of Exodus include instructions for a breastplate of judgment, Exodus 28:15. This breastplate of judgment was to be in the style of a ephod. According to Mosaic law, there was to be only one ephod in Israel, worn by the High Priest. This ephod had the breastplate of judgment. There are opinions that Gideon set up the ephod he had made in his hometown as an idol to worship. I have also read that Gideon set it up to use at his own whim. Either way, the scripture tells us that all Israel whored after it and it became a snare to Gideon and to his family, Judges 8:27-28.
So that is the story of Gideon. But what about this Gideon? I have thought and pondered about him for days as I have written this. My habit is to write in the mornings and I have been really contemplating what brilliant insight I could add about Gideon and his humanity...but nothing bordering on brilliance has occurred to me. To finish this I believe I will circle back to why I thought understanding Gideon would be of interest today. And that is the current political climate and Christian support of candidates.
There are many similarities in this story of Gideon, and Israel, to the United States of America. We have been oppressed by evil flourishing, raiding our crops, and for years have been vexed by the raids, the raids against morality and life-affirming support of the unborn. We want a champion, a leader. We want morals and justice to prevail. (And yes, there is a moral standard other than what is in each person's mind. That standard is the Word of God, both in the written Word and in the person of Jesus Christ). Yet this is written with a caution, beware of following any human being. As we see in Gideon, he had some insecurity at the beginning, he had doubts. He did as he was instructed in a less than straight line. But what troubles me today as we enter this new era of more conservative governance is that we don't know the end of anything past the moment in which we live. Did you know that although Gideon refused to be King directly after the victory that afterwards he named a son Abimelech, which means my father is king. Interesting.
After the defeat of the Midianites the land had rest for forty years which is a good thing but we all know that time moves on and nothing stays the same. The book of Revelation is an accounting of segments of time that move us ever closer to the very last day of this planet and I would suggest that we take all leaders and those victories of those leaders with a dose of medicine from history past, and the history still to come.
Comments