Wednesday Bible Study: G is for Gideon

 As I read the story of Gideon, starting in Judges 6,  I found I had a lot of unanswered questions.

First, 6:8- "The Lord sent a prophet to the people of Israel..."  So, who was it?  The only one brave enough to answer was a Rabbi who cited a source claiming it was Aaron's grandson Phinehas.  Which would have made him a couple of hundred years old at the time.  So the answer:  It doesn't matter, because the PEOPLE DIDN'T LISTEN.  How do I know this?  Here's what God said to the people through the Prophet:

Jdg 6:8  the LORD sent a prophet to the people of Israel. And he said to them, "Thus says the LORD, the God of Israel: I led you up from Egypt and brought you out of the house of bondage. 
Jdg 6:9  And I delivered you from the hand of the Egyptians and from the hand of all who oppressed you, and drove them out before you and gave you their land. 
Jdg 6:10  And I said to you, 'I am the LORD your God; you shall not fear the gods of the Amorites in whose land you dwell.' But you have not obeyed my voice." 

Just a little bit later, the Angel Of The Lord (AKA Christ pre-incarnate, visits our hero Gideon.

Jdg 6:12  And the angel of the LORD appeared to him and said to him, "The LORD is with you, O mighty man of valor." 

Jdg 6:13  And Gideon said to him, "Please, sir, if the LORD is with us, why then has all this happened to us? And where are all his wonderful deeds that our fathers recounted to us, saying, 'Did not the LORD bring us up from Egypt?' But now the LORD has forsaken us and given us into the hand of Midian." 

So either Gideon joined everyone else in not listening, or he's a bit slow on the uptake.  I lean a bit toward the former, because evidently he's STILL not listening:

...the angel of the LORD appeared to him and said to him, "The LORD is with you..."

...why then has all this happened to us?...

The Angel didn't say He's with all y'all, rockhead, he said he's with YOU.

My next question was, "So is Gideon just being really humble in asking God whether he's REALLY the one being called or not, or is he just a scaredy-cat?"  First I tackled this in light of what happened with Moses at the burning bush.  Gideon's questioning of God starts out a lot like Moses's replies to God at the bush:

Jdg 6:15  And he said to him, "Please, Lord, how can I save Israel? Behold, my clan is the weakest in Manasseh, and I am the least in my father's house." 

Jdg 6:16  And the LORD said to him, "But I will be with you, and you shall strike the Midianites as one man." 

Now I had often thought that Moses was trying to 'get out of the job' at the bush with all his excuses, but today I thought about that.  Moses thought as a young man he would deliver his people; all he got for his attempts was a murder charge and removal from a nice cushy life in Egypt.  He had 40 years hard labor to think about what he did wrong in his own power.  Moses was definitely humble.

Gideon?  Well, the commentators will disagree with me on what I'm about to theorize, but the commentators didn't have God speaking to them as He has to to me to get me to pay attention.  And ofttimes that involves a bit of snark.  And I think that God twice- at the beginning, and right before the battle- gets in a couple of Martin-style digs at Gideon's lack of bravery:

Jdg 6:14  And the LORD turned to him and said, "Go in this might of yours and save Israel from the hand of Midian; do not I send you?" 

So, I'm thinking, "What might?" And the commentators are unanimous in opining that he was strong to start with, and God was giving him more strength for the task.  Me, I think it was God's way of saying, "Get up, sissy-boy; I'm about to prove yet again I can save Israel with ANYONE."

Second spot?

Jdg 7:9  That same night the LORD said to him, "Arise, go down against the camp, for I have given it into your hand. 

Jdg 7:10  But if you are afraid to go down, go down to the camp with Purah your servant. 

Jdg 7:11  And you shall hear what they say, and afterward your hands shall be strengthened to go down against the camp." 

And so, they went down, since he was afraid (apparently), and he heard the most preposterous thing he could possibly hear:

Jdg 7:13  When Gideon came, behold, a man was telling a dream to his comrade. And he said, "Behold, I dreamed a dream, and behold, a cake of barley bread tumbled into the camp of Midian and came to the tent and struck it so that it fell and turned it upside down, so that the tent lay flat." 

Jdg 7:14  And his comrade answered, "This is no other than the sword of Gideon the son of Joash, a man of Israel; God has given into his hand Midian and all the camp." 

"The sword of Gideon", last seen threshing wheat in a wine press to hide from the very soldiers so scared of him.  If you never believed God has a sense of humor, you HAVE to read this story closer.  "Since you're such a chickenheart, I'll show you something so ABSURD- not just miraculous like the fleece and the dew, but flat cross-your-eyes crazy- that you'll have to believe you're going to win through Me."

So my answer- why can't he be both?  God doesn't expect us not to be afraid.  Just to trust Him.

Next question comes with the story about his father's idols.

Jdg 6:25  That night the LORD said to him, "Take your father's bull, and the second bull seven years old, and pull down the altar of Baal that your father has, and cut down the Asherah that is beside it 

Jdg 6:26  and build an altar to the LORD your God on the top of the stronghold here, with stones laid in due order. Then take the second bull and offer it as a burnt offering with the wood of the Asherah that you shall cut down." 

Jdg 6:27  So Gideon took ten men of his servants and did as the LORD had told him. But because he was too afraid of his family and the men of the town to do it by day, he did it by night. 

So here we learn a bit about dear old dad.  He was a leader of the people; we can infer that both because the man had (at least) ten servants willing to sneak behind his back to help Gideon, and from the fact, coming up in a bit, that a bunch of people came over to do the Baal thing at his place.  Dad was also at least partly a Baal worshiper, because in addition to Midianites, butterflies, and loud noises, Gideon was afraid of his family.  Of course, that God came in the night and told him to do it gave him the perfect excuse for doing it when he did; curiously, though, the inspired writer doesn't let him off the hook.  But my question comes with, what happened next:

Jdg 6:28  When the men of the town rose early in the morning, behold, the altar of Baal was broken down, and the Asherah beside it was cut down, and the second bull was offered on the altar that had been built. 

Jdg 6:29  And they said to one another, "Who has done this thing?" And after they had searched and inquired, they said, "Gideon the son of Joash has done this thing." 

Jdg 6:30  Then the men of the town said to Joash, "Bring out your son, that he may die, for he has broken down the altar of Baal and cut down the Asherah beside it." 

Jdg 6:31  But Joash said to all who stood against him, "Will you contend for Baal? Or will you save him? Whoever contends for him shall be put to death by morning. If he is a god, let him contend for himself, because his altar has been broken down." 

Jdg 6:32  Therefore on that day Gideon was called Jerubbaal, that is to say, "Let Baal contend against him," because he broke down his altar. 

So Joash pulls an Elijah on them; if Baal is so high and mighty, let HIM stop my son.  Thus Gideon gets saddled with the nickname Jerubbaal, which basically means, "Baal's gonna get you".  So my question is- was Joash a Baal worshiper trying to find a way to save his son? Or a closet Yahweh worshiper, afraid (like everyone else in the story) to let on to his townsfolk "peers"? Or was he a skeptic of the whole thing, and willing to run an experiment with his son as the catalyst?

Answer: who knows?  God's business to judge him, and not ours.

So with this whole plethora of unanswerable questions, I could have looked at all of them and more, and REALLY lengthened this post, Instead, I went to God in prayer- and asked, to my amazement:

"Lord, what question do YOU ask?"

And He asked, "Why did they so soon turn away?

You see, this might have been the least-sticking of all their repentances:

Jdg 8:33  As soon as Gideon died, the people of Israel turned again and whored after the Baals and made Baal-berith their god. 

As soon as... and worse than that.  Let me show you the difference between Gideon and the rest of Israel.  Let's go back to the Midianite camp and the "I had a dream" incident...

Jdg 7:15  As soon as Gideon heard the telling of the dream and its interpretation, he worshiped. And he returned to the camp of Israel and said, "Arise, for the LORD has given the host of Midian into your hand." 

Gideon:  "as soon as... he worshiped."

Israel:  "as soon as... (they) turned again..."

In fact, while he gave the glory to God, they tried to give it to HIM...

Jdg 8:22  Then the men of Israel said to Gideon, "Rule over us, you and your son and your grandson also, for you have saved us from the hand of Midian." 

Jdg 8:23  Gideon said to them, "I will not rule over you, and my son will not rule over you; the LORD will rule over you." 

(Note:  they would soon repent of this request as well- killing his 70 sons save the youngest, who hit them with a curse that destroyed a lot of evil people.)

But it was even worse than this:

Jdg 8:24  And Gideon said to them, "Let me make a request of you: every one of you give me the earrings from his spoil." (For they had golden earrings, because they were Ishmaelites.) 

Jdg 8:25  And they answered, "We will willingly give them." And they spread a cloak, and every man threw in it the earrings of his spoil. 

Jdg 8:26  And the weight of the golden earrings that he requested was 1,700 shekels of gold, besides the crescent ornaments and the pendants and the purple garments worn by the kings of Midian, and besides the collars that were around the necks of their camels. 

Jdg 8:27  And Gideon made an ephod of it and put it in his city, in Ophrah. 

Gideon made an ephod- to give the glory to God.  And Israel?

And all Israel whored after it there, and it became a snare to Gideon and to his family. 

Have you ever noticed the wide variety of things that Israel worshiped INSTEAD of God?  The calf that "just came out" of Aaron's fire; the two of 'em that Jeroboam set up at each end of Ephraim to set up his own private religion a la Henry VIII; The idols that the Danites set up in the city they conquered up north.

Or how about the Bronze Serpent that Moses was commanded to make?  The one that, if you were bit by the fiery serpents and then looked on it, you would live?

Numbers 21: 7 The people came to Moses and said, “We have sinned by speaking against the Lord and against you; pray to the Lord to take away the serpents from us.” So Moses prayed for the people. 8 And the Lord said to Moses, “Make a poisonous[c] serpent, and set it on a pole; and everyone who is bitten shall look at it and live.” 9 So Moses made a serpent of bronze, and put it upon a pole; and whenever a serpent bit someone, that person would look at the serpent of bronze and live.

And by the days of Hoshea, King of Judah?  

2Ki 18:4  He removed the high places and broke the pillars and cut down the Asherah. And he broke in pieces the bronze serpent that Moses had made, for until those days the people of Israel had made offerings to it (it was called Nehushtan). 

And the real joke?  Nehushtan means "a chunk of brass."

God's heart is broken over this.  They take the basest of material, the junk of the desert and pray to it.  And why?  Because they look at the other nations, the ones who take turns at oppressing them, and say, "Their gods help them be something we are not."  And instead of noticing that the ONLY time they succeed is when they are worshiping Yahweh, they try to be "more like them."  "If we only do it like THEY do..."

And I am not Gideon.  I am Israel.  I am more afraid of THEM.  I want to be like THEM, and wonder why I can't.

A while back, I asked if Gideon was afraid.  If he was, I want to be afraid like him...

Jdg 6:20  And the angel of God said to him, "Take the meat and the unleavened cakes, and put them on this rock, and pour the broth over them." And he did so. 

Jdg 6:21  Then the angel of the LORD reached out the tip of the staff that was in his hand and touched the meat and the unleavened cakes. And fire sprang up from the rock and consumed the meat and the unleavened cakes. And the angel of the LORD vanished from his sight. 

Jdg 6:22  Then Gideon perceived that he was the angel of the LORD. And Gideon said, "Alas, O Lord GOD! For now I have seen the angel of the LORD face to face." 

Jdg 6:23  But the LORD said to him, "Peace be to you. Do not fear; you shall not die."