Wednesday Bible Study: Picking through Judges part 5

God has been pretty adamant with me about how He wants the story of Gideon told.  My instincts are chronological order, dig out the obscure, and apply.  God, it seems, has apply at the front and chronological in the "If it suits the purpose" file.  Today, we're going to deconstruct the state of Israel itself at the time, so we can see just how far off the plan they had drifted at this point.

FIRST,  Israel was a people who refused to listen.  When they got around to crying out, God sent a prophet, because this time, THIS time, they needed to know WHY it was happening.

Jdg 6:7  When the people of Israel cried out to the LORD on account of the Midianites,
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."

 But not one word follows about the RESPONSE of the people.  But we can deduce from the response Gideon gave the Angel of the Lord....

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." 

"Why, then, has all this happened to us?"  And this, from our deductions last week, was one of the better families left in Israel.  Which tells us that they paid scant attention to the prophet.  And when you see it that way, you can see why the admonition not to fear was next to fall...

SECOND, They were a fearful people.  And again, we have multiple examples.  Let's start with the state of Israel at the start of the story...

Jdg 6:2  And the hand of Midian overpowered Israel, and because of Midian the people of Israel made for themselves the dens that are in the mountains and the caves and the strongholds.
Jdg 6:3  For whenever the Israelites planted crops, the Midianites and the Amalekites and the people of the East would come up against them.
Jdg 6:4  They would encamp against them and devour the produce of the land, as far as Gaza, and leave no sustenance in Israel and no sheep or ox or donkey.
Jdg 6:5  For they would come up with their livestock and their tents; they would come like locusts in number--both they and their camels could not be counted--so that they laid waste the land as they came in.
Jdg 6:6  And Israel was brought very low because of Midian. And the people of Israel cried out for help to the LORD.

They were hiding in caves dug in the mountains.  One thing our pastor brought up in this vein is what Gideon was doing when the Angel of the Lord visited..

Jdg 6:11  Now the angel of the LORD came and sat under the terebinth at Ophrah, which belonged to Joash the Abiezrite, while his son Gideon was beating out wheat in the winepress to hide it from the Midianites.

Point here being, wheat was supposed to be beat on the top of a hill so the wind could blow the chaff away.  The winepress, built for drainage, was the last spot, outside of the bottom of a well, you'd want to beat grain.  And one more example....

Jdg 7:2  The LORD said to Gideon, "The people with you are too many for me to give the Midianites into their hand, lest Israel boast over me, saying, 'My own hand has saved me.'
Jdg 7:3  Now therefore proclaim in the ears of the people, saying, 'Whoever is fearful and trembling, let him return home and hurry away from Mount Gilead.'" Then 22,000 of the people returned, and 10,000 remained.

Two thirds of the "brave warriors of Israel" took advantage to high-tail it out of the battle.

THIRD, They were divided by pride.  The commentators mentioned that there was "a certain group of the tribes that were allied to Judah, another group allied to Ephraim, and of course, then there were the tribes on the other side of the Jordan".  The original call for troops brought that first group...

Jdg 6:34  But the Spirit of the LORD clothed Gideon, and he sounded the trumpet, and the Abiezrites were called out to follow him.
Jdg 6:35  And he sent messengers throughout all Manasseh, and they too were called out to follow him. And he sent messengers to Asher, Zebulun, and Naphtali, and they went up to meet them. 

So the battle, after the army gets trimmed to 300, goes through the lands of the second group, and Ephraim captures two of their leading princes, whose names were (translated) were "The Raven" and "The Wolf".  But that wasn't enough for them....

Jdg 7:24  Gideon sent messengers throughout all the hill country of Ephraim, saying, "Come down against the Midianites and capture the waters against them, as far as Beth-barah, and also the Jordan." So all the men of Ephraim were called out, and they captured the waters as far as Beth-barah, and also the Jordan.
Jdg 7:25  And they captured the two princes of Midian, Oreb and Zeeb. They killed Oreb at the rock of Oreb, and Zeeb they killed at the winepress of Zeeb. Then they pursued Midian, and they brought the heads of Oreb and Zeeb to Gideon across the Jordan. 

 Jdg 8:1  Then the men of Ephraim said to him, "What is this that you have done to us, not to call us when you went to fight against Midian?" And they accused him fiercely.

"Why didn't you call us out in the first place?" they whined in Ephraim.  I'm saving Gideon's answer for another accusation against Israel, so let me move on to the next....

FOURTH,  they were just like Meroz in the last story, only too willing to let the work of the Lord pass them by...

Jdg 8:4  And Gideon came to the Jordan and crossed over, he and the 300 men who were with him, exhausted yet pursuing.
Jdg 8:5  So he said to the men of Succoth, "Please give loaves of bread to the people who follow me, for they are exhausted, and I am pursuing after Zebah and Zalmunna, the kings of Midian."
Jdg 8:6  And the officials of Succoth said, "Are the hands of Zebah and Zalmunna already in your hand, that we should give bread to your army?"
Jdg 8:7  So Gideon said, "Well then, when the LORD has given Zebah and Zalmunna into my hand, I will flail your flesh with the thorns of the wilderness and with briers."
Jdg 8:8  And from there he went up to Penuel, and spoke to them in the same way, and the men of Penuel answered him as the men of Succoth had answered.
Jdg 8:9  And he said to the men of Penuel, "When I come again in peace, I will break down this tower."

Now we were in Gadite territory- the lands beyond the Jordan- and they felt even less need to be co-operative than the Ephraimites.  Difference being, apparently God felt no more desire to make object lessons of an evil people, so he let Gideon do it, and that leads to our next accusation...

FIFTH, they had a heart for vengeance, which belongs to the Lord.  Observe the fates of transgressors at the hands of the now-bold Gideon:

Jdg 8:11  And Gideon went up by the way of the tent dwellers east of Nobah and Jogbehah and attacked the army, for the army felt secure.
Jdg 8:12  And Zebah and Zalmunna fled, and he pursued them and captured the two kings of Midian, Zebah and Zalmunna, and he threw all the army into a panic.
Jdg 8:13  Then Gideon the son of Joash returned from the battle by the ascent of Heres.
Jdg 8:14  And he captured a young man of Succoth and questioned him. And he wrote down for him the officials and elders of Succoth, seventy-seven men.
Jdg 8:15  And he came to the men of Succoth and said, "Behold Zebah and Zalmunna, about whom you taunted me, saying, 'Are the hands of Zebah and Zalmunna already in your hand, that we should give bread to your men who are exhausted?'"
Jdg 8:16  And he took the elders of the city, and he took thorns of the wilderness and briers and with them taught the men of Succoth a lesson.
Jdg 8:17  And he broke down the tower of Penuel and killed the men of the city.

He whipped the elders of insolent Succoth with briers, to "teach them".  Penuel he was less gentle with.  Here begins the kinslaying that will mark many chapters of Israel's history going forward.  But, he wasn't exactly done with vengeance.  You see, a story heretofore hidden in our tale is that the Angel came to Gideon because he was the last of his brothers alive; the others had been killed in a raid earlier, by the Midianite kings on Mount Tabor:

Jdg 8:18  And he said to Zebah and Zalmunna, How were the men whom you killed in Tabor? And they answered, As you are, so they. Each one resembled the sons of a king.
Jdg 8:19  And he said, They were my brothers, the sons of my mother. As Jehovah lives, if you had saved them alive, I would not kill you.
Jdg 8:20  And he said to Jether his first-born, Up! Kill them! But the youth did not draw his sword, for he feared, because he was still a youth.
Jdg 8:21  And Zebah and Zalmunna said, Rise and fall upon us. For as the man is, so is his strength. And Gideon arose and killed Zebah and Zalmunna, and took away the ornaments on their camels' necks.

And now, the worst sin, before we close this section...

SIXTH, They gave no mind to God- not even Gideon, really.  Now, let's go back to that answer Gideon gave to Ephraim.  Did he say, "The Lord Himself told me how to muster this army, and when to call you in"?  No, but he SHOULD have.  Instead, he played on their damnable pride...

Jdg 8:2  And he said to them, "What have I done now in comparison with you? Is not the gleaning of the grapes of Ephraim better than the grape harvest of Abiezer?
Jdg 8:3  God has given into your hands the princes of Midian, Oreb and Zeeb. What have I been able to do in comparison with you?" Then their anger against him subsided when he said this.

And the victory made no difference.  See if you can pick out the two sins here:

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

Of course, the obvious one is "Israel went a-whoring".  But let's take this a step backwards.  An ephod was the breastplate of the High Priests and the Levites  Gideon was committing the same sin Saul and Hezekiah would commit later- usurping the role of the priests and Levites.  Not that he didn't have a reason.  I'm going to give a sneak peak at (what I assume) will be the next part of the story, to explain why he would entertain such a notion.

Jdg 8:30  Now Gideon had seventy sons, his own offspring, for he had many wives.
Jdg 8:31  And his concubine who was in Shechem also bore him a son, and he called his name Abimelech.

Abimelech will figure heavily soon, but for now, I want to focus on Shechem.  This was a city in Ephraim's lot, but given to the Levites.  As they had no inheritance of their own, each of the other 11 tribes were required to give them so many cities, in which to do the Lord's work.  But who's work was Shechem ACTUALLY doing?

Jdg 9:4  And they (the elders of Shechem)gave him (Abimelech)seventy pieces of silver out of the house of Baal-berith with which Abimelech hired worthless and reckless fellows, who followed him.

And just WHO is Baal-Berith?

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.

Baal-Berith means "Baal of the Covenant".  In other words, the Levites of Shechem would abandon their Covenant with the God of Israel to serve a perversion of that very concept!  With the Levitical order in so much contempt, you can see why Gideon might want to bring back even a corrupted priesthood to lead the people back to God; but the people weren't listening, and his own dedication to the cause will soon ebb away.