Bible Study

After the uneventful rule of two judges, this chapter recounts another period of apostasy by Israel. They worshipped ...

Judges 10:6 the Baals and the Astartes, the gods of Aram, the gods of Sidon, the gods of Moab, the gods of the Ammonites, and the gods of the Philistines. Thus they abandoned the LORD, and did not worship him.

I do not know much about all these various gods and what was attractive about them. However, beside whatever benefits they may have offered in terms of prosperity, and fertility, they clearly offered the liberality of universalism. It was fine to worship Baals and Astartes, and all the various gods of the various regions: no conflict there.

But YHWH was another matter. Stern, dour, jealous: to worship other gods is to abandon the worship of YHWH. And to worship YHWH is to "have no other gods beside me."

I hear the same conflict today; even in our Quaker meetings, where the appeal of different gods remains strong. "Different faiths are simply different paths, starting from different points but leading up to the top of the same mountain," or so they say. Somehow, I doubt it, and I note that, odd though it seems, very often this liberality chokes at the mention of Jesus. Universalism repudiates the possibility that Jesus is "the way, the truth, the life," and the claim that "at his name, every knee should bow."

Jesus, in this respect at least, is like his Father: the exclusive worship he demands is a rock of offense upon which many stumble.

True to the general pattern of the book of Judges, in this chapter when the people sin by turning to other gods, God abandons them to the tender mercies of their enemies. Suffering oppression, the people cry out, but this time God answers with sarcasm:

Judges 10:14 Go and cry to the gods whom you have chosen; let them deliver you in the time of your distress."

Here is the test: Is your god more than an ideology, a theory, a yearning, in short, an idol? Is your god, in fact, a LIVING GOD, one with the power to save? YHWH is willing for you to put this question to the test.

Our God is a LIVING GOD, or He is nothing. He allows no “graven image,” He will not tolerate religious leaders to “take his name in vain” to manipulate the naïve faithful. However, our God is a LIVING GOD, so do not expect instant gratification; for he cannot be manipulated the way he could if he were just a figment of our imagination or a puppet to be manipulated by our religious magic.

The text says that the Ammonites "crushed and oppressed the Israelits that year. For eighteen years they oppressed all the Israelites." (v. 8) And then:

Judges 10:16 he could no longer bear to see Israel suffer.

There comes a point, sooner or later, when God becomes real and acts in our lives. Even though we have continually rejected Him, and even though we have pulled all this suffering down on ourselves -- he can not bear to see us suffer very long. Because our God is also LOVE, he acts in our lives, in our actual history, to deliver us from oppression.

I am thankful that God has this weakness, that he can not bear to watch us suffer, so he comes to us mercy.

The downfall of the house of Gideon centers on the question of kingship and revolves around the struggle between two of his sons: Abimelech (which is a Philistine name for king) and Jotham (Gideon's youngest son).

There is a lot of ugly stuff in this chapter:

+ Abimelech kills his seventy brothers "on one stone" (v. 8)
+ peace is ruined in the fued between the lords of Sechem (who have chosen Abimelech king) when they set ambushes on the mountain tops(v. 25);
+ Abimelech killed the people of Shechem, "razed the city and sowed it with salt" (v. 45)
+ the leaders when theTower of Sechem, but Abimelech and his troops set fire to it, "so that all the people of the Tower of Shechem also died, about a thousand men and women." (v.49)
+ he was about to do the same to the Tower at Thebez, but:..."a certain woman threw an upper millstone on Abimelech's head, and crushed his skull." (v. 59)

Just because these stories are in the Bible it doesn't imply God's approval. Indeed, after the rout of the Midians, God more or less disappears from Gideon's story. This absence is particularly dramatic in a story that began with God's manifestation in prophecy, angelic appearances and signs. God only appears in this one verse:

Judges 9:23 But God sent an evil spirit between Abimelech and the lords of Shechem.

This sorry story of the fall of Gideon's house is the result of the impertinent usurpation of kinghood by Abimelech. When Gideon's youngest son (the sole survivor among his brothers), hears that Shechem has chosen Abimelech to be king, he tells this anti-monarchial parable:

Judges 9:8 The trees once went out to anoint a king over themselves. So they said to the olive tree, 'Reign over us.' 9 The olive tree answered them, 'Shall I stop producing my rich oil by which gods and mortals are honored, and go to sway over the trees?' 10 Then the trees said to the fig tree, 'You come and reign over us.' 11 But the fig tree answered them, 'Shall I stop producing my sweetness and my delicious fruit, and go to sway over the trees?' 12 Then the trees said to the vine, 'You come and reign over us.' 13 But the vine said to them, 'Shall I stop producing my wine that cheers gods and mortals, and go to sway over the trees?' 14 So all the trees said to the bramble, 'You come and reign over us.' 15 And the bramble said to the trees, 'If in good faith you are anointing me king over you, then come and take refuge in my shade; but if not, let fire come out of the bramble and devour the cedars of Lebanon.'

The point of the parable is clear: useful people don't seek to Lord it over other people. Jesus put it this way,

Mark 9:35 "Whoever wants to be first must be last of all and servant of all."

When Abimelech tried to become king, God put an evil spirit between him and the very people who said that they wanted him to rule over them. So be it.

Judges 8 and 9 recount the downfall of the house of Gideon. What caused this? Not surprisingly, the flip side of his rise: Where Gideon was useful in the work of God because of his weakness, fear, and honesty before the Lord; he and his children became useless because of their strength, arrogance, and dishonesty.

The fall of Gideon's house centers around the question of kingship in Israel. During the pursuit of the Midian kings, two Israelite towns refused food to Gideon and his men. After his victory, Gideon had them slaughtered. God is not mentioned in this -- the slaughter is simply reported. Here we begin to see the rise of Gideon's arrogance. But, Gideon's arrogance is not yet overweening for Gideon is able to give the right answer in this exchange:

Judges 8:22 Then the Israelites said to Gideon, "Rule over us, you and your son and your grandson also; for you have delivered us out of the hand of Midian." 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."

Gideon’s answer upholds the pre-monarchial understanding of God's direct rule over Israel through the charismatic selection of "judges." Here, Gideon stands in the line of prophets against the notion of dynastic kingship. (See 1 Samuel 7)

The transition in the story comes with Gideon's death:

Judges 8:33 As soon as Gideon died, the Israelites relapsed and prostituted themselves with the Baals, making Baal-berith their god. 34 The Israelites did not remember the LORD their God, who had rescued them from the hand of all their enemies on every side; 35 and they did not exhibit loyalty to the house of Jerubbaal (that is, Gideon) in return for all the good that he had done to Israel.

These verses could be read as if the problem was that the Israelites were not loyal to Gideon by making his family kings. In fact, loyalty to Gideon meant rejecting kingship in favor of maintaining the direct rule of God. Gideon and the other judges (who were selected from among different tribes, often from the smallest families as inn Gideon's case), led Israel in overthrowing the oppression imposed on them by Canaanites, Midianites, etc., which were monarchies. The story of Judges is the story of a charismatic, fluid tribal society fighting for freedom against oppressive dynastic hierarchy and human over-lordship.

In the next chapter, we see Gideon's household fall because one of Gideon's sons abandoned the right side in this struggle.

This is my second-favorite of the Holy War stories in the Bible. (My favorite is the story of Elisha, told in 2 Kings 6.) Both follow the pattern of the paradigmatic Holy War account of Exodus 14:14, where, at the edge of the Red Sea, Moses tells the people, “The LORD will fight for you, and you have only to keep still," and, indeed, "Pharaoh's army got drownded."

In the last chapter, we saw how weak and fearful Gideon was. But buoyed by dramatic encounters with God, including the miraculous testing with the fleeces, Gideon raised a large army to fight the Midian oppressors. You would expect God to be pleased, but instead God responds:

Judges 7:2 "The troops with you are too many for me to give the Midianites into their hand. Israel would only take the credit away from me, saying, 'My own hand has delivered me.'”

In standard holy war fashion, God instructs Gideon to send away the fearful, and anyone else who just doesn't want to be there. (cf., Deuteronomy 20:2-8) Twenty-two thousand left, but ten thousand remained. That was still way too many. (Military strategists, of course, wouldn't think so; they were facing a force of 135,000, [Judges 8:10]).

Following God's instructions, Gideon had the troops go to a stream to drink:

Judges 7:5 "All those who lap the water with their tongues, as a dog laps, you shall put to one side; all those who kneel down to drink, putting their hands to their mouths, you shall put to the other side."

The number of those that lapped was three hundred; but all the rest of the troops knelt down to drink water. Then the Lord said to Gideon,

Judges 7:7 "With the three hundred that lapped I will deliver you, and give the Midianites into your hand. Let all the others go to their homes."

Could there be a sillier notion of warfare than selecting only the few really stupid troops who put down their weapons, got down on all fours, and lapped water from the river like dogs, while sending away the ones who stayed alert and at the ready? But that was God's choice. Gideon then armed them – not with swords but with pots, torches, and trumpets! Only then was God's army ready for a battle in which the victory would be credited to Yahweh alone.

Here is the wonderful story of Gideon’s victory:

Judges 7: 18 "When I blow the trumpet, I and all who are with me, then you also blow the trumpets around the whole camp, and shout, 'For the LORD and for Gideon!'" 19 So Gideon and the hundred who were with him came to the outskirts of the camp at the beginning of the middle watch, when they had just set the watch; and they blew the trumpets and smashed the jars that were in their hands. 20 So the three companies blew the trumpets and broke the jars, holding in their left hands the torches, and in their right hands the trumpets to blow; and they cried, "A sword for the LORD and for Gideon!" 21 Every man stood in his place all around the camp, and all the men in camp ran; they cried out and fled.

This is holy war -- the divine warfare of YHWH -- as it is supposed to be fought. It is fought by a few very ordinary, even silly and fearful people, armed with nothing more than lamps and trumpets. The victory is God's, who scatters the enemy by the might of his presence. The preparation is to divest ourselves of all the trappings of human power, to acknowledge our fear, and seek the living presence of the Holy One.

Midian oppressed Israel for seven years (which wasn't as long as the twenty year oppression by Canaan that Deborah had ended) but which was bad enough.

Judges 6:6 Israel was greatly impoverished because of Midian; and the Israelites cried out to the LORD for help.

So, God sent an unnamed prophet who explained that the root of the oppression lay in the fact that the people hadn't obeyed God's command that they "not pay reverence to the gods of the Amorites, in whose land you live."

Then, this prophet (or someone else called "the angel of the Lord")

Judges 6:11 came and sat under the oak at Ophrah, which belonged to Joash the Abiezrite, as his son Gideon was beating out wheat in the wine press, to hide it from the Midianites.

and said to Gideon: Judges 6:12 "The LORD is with you, you mighty warrior."

Gideon had good questions. They were these:

Judges 6:13 "But sir, if the LORD is with us, why then has all this happened to us? And where are all his wonderful deeds that our ancestors recounted to us, saying, 'Did not the LORD bring us up from Egypt?'

and

Judges 6:15 "But sir, how can I deliver Israel? My clan is the weakest in Manasseh, and I am the least in my family."

I like these questions; they strike me as honest. The first concerns God's timing. I've noticed about myself that if I don't have a encounters with God on a pretty regular basis, I begin to wonder if God is really there and whether my faith is really bogus. But, when I read the Scriptures, I see that the people of Israel go through lengthy periods (whether it be the twenty years of oppression prior to the Song of Deborah or the forty years of peace after it) or the relatively short seven years of oppression prior to this appearance of prophets and angels, when nothing particular seems to be happening. And then, when one thinks about the lives of most of the people who get mentioned in Scripture, they are lucky if during the course of their lives they are witness to one or at most two of God's mighty deeds.

Neverthless, I am like Gideon and ask, Why haven't you, God, been showing up on a more regular and timely basis? I expect to see your miracles at least once a week!

It would be reasonable for God to bat down such an impertinence. And maybe that is what the answer that Gideon received amounts to:

Judges 6:14 Then the LORD turned to him and said, "Go in this might of yours and deliver Israel from the hand of Midian; I hereby commission you."

Which, then, gave rise to Gideon's second question. When confronted with the alternative of waiting for God to act is God's own time, or of delivering Israel in his own strength, Gideon was forced to recollect that he wasn't strong at all, and he has plenty of doubts. These doubts come even after he has been confronted by a prophet (or an angel) and heared the word of the Lord coming directly to him and commissioning him (which you might think would be dramatic enough). Gideon needs the reassurance of a sign. And the angel gives him one:

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

That was pretty frightening to Gideon so he prays to God for protection. In response, God commissions him to tear down the local alter of Baal and sacrifice his dad's second bull. Gideon does this, but note his fear:

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

This, it seems to me, confirms that Gideon was right. He was the least of a small family. He was no “mighty warrior,” he was a lot like me, afraid of public opinion. The angel of the Lord had commissioned him, not because of his strength, but because of his weakness.

More on this tomorrow. For today it is enough to note that God values our patience and our weakness,,, and maybe our honesty, as well.