No King in Israel (12)

Last week, we looked at the historical circumstances in which God called Gideon to serve as his judge and deliverer of Israel. The Holy Spirit has given us ten verses of explanation to set up the situation, and I felt I would be unwise to ignore them.

This week, we look at Gideon’s call to service. Othniel judged because the Spirit of the Lord came upon him. Ehud judged because the Lord “raised him up” and Shamgar did his bit with the ox goad for reasons the writer of Judges does not disclose. Deborah judged because she was in touch with heaven and there was nobody else willing to do the job. The people came to her for guidance.

Gideon is the first judge for whom we get a fair bit of detail about his call to service. He won’t be the last. This is now the third appearance of the angel of the Lord in Judges, about whom we have written a fair bit already. It should be adequate at this point to say that identifying the messenger of YHWH with the pre-incarnate Son of God, the Word later to be made flesh, is pretty much a sure thing.

II. Twelve Judges in Chronological Order (continued)

5. Gideon (continued)

Judges 6:11-16 — A Call to Service

“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. And the angel of the Lord appeared to him and said to him, ‘The Lord is with you, O mighty man of valor.’ And Gideon said to him, ‘Please, my lord, 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.’ 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?’ 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.’ And the Lord said to him, ‘But I will be with you, and you shall strike the Midianites as one man.’ ”

Under the Terebinth

The Hebrew word translated “terebinth” (or sometimes “oak”) appears 13 times in 12 Old Testament verses. Interestingly, many of these references are associated with the sovereignty of God and his right to first place in the hearts of his people.

• Jacob purified his family at God’s command by making them put away the foreign gods they harbored so they could appropriately worship the Lord. Jacob buried their idols and earrings under a terebinth. This is the first time the word appears in scripture.
• A terebinth tree resolved Absalom’s rebellion, returning the kingdom to God’s chosen servant rather than David’s usurping son. No man of Israel caught up to the rebel and defeated him in one-on-one combat. Rather, his own pride and vanity did him in when his long hair caught in the branches of a terebinth, making him vulnerable to the javelins of Joab. God is sovereign. Don’t expect to outmaneuver him.
• The man of God sent from Judah to testify against Jeroboam’s idolatry rested under a terebinth after he had done his duty and fulfilled his mission. That rest became his undoing. The problem was not the terebinth, but his disobedience. In judging his servant, God demonstrates his right to be obeyed in every last detail.
• Isaiah associates the stump of a burnt terebinth with the remnant of Israel, which remains though God has purged the evil from the nation. God is in charge, and he always does what he says he will do.

So the angel of the Lord sat under a terebinth when coming to assert his authority over Israel and his ability to deliver them from their enemies. Why not?

At Ophrah

In the original division of Canaan, Ophrah belonged to the tribe of Benjamin. Why a family from Manasseh had made their home there is a minor mystery not discussed in the context, but it’s possible someone in Gideon’s ancestry had bought property from an impoverished Benjaminite that would not be released to his family until the next jubilee, assuming one was ever celebrated in Israel.

The point is relevant in that Gideon was not just the least in a lowly family, as he himself confessed, but also an outsider in another tribe’s historic allotment. He was truly an unexpected choice to save Israel. The writer of Judges attributes the fact that anyone at all was willing to follow him directly to the Spirit of God.

Mighty Man of Valor

“Courage is not the absence of fear, but rather the assessment that something else is more important than fear.” So said Franklin Roosevelt, and many have observed he was correct. The angel of the Lord calls Gideon a “mighty man of valor”. This is evidently not because Gideon was fearless, but because he persisted in doing the will of God despite his many concerns about his own inadequacy. We will see the evidence of his natural timidity and reluctance to proceed without full assurance from God repeatedly in this chapter. Yet he did what was necessary in his time.

I have simultaneously been reading about Jehu, who was the exact opposite, charging in like a wrecking ball to purge Israel of Baal’s influence in his generation. He required nothing more than an anointing from a prophet to go to work. Gideon needed more, yet the angel of the Lord was not wrong in calling him a mighty man of valor.

That may encourage those of us timid in the service of the Lord. He does not require that we feel confident or strong in obedience to his will, only that we do as we are told.

The Weak Things of the World

Does God use the weak things of the world to shame the strong? An apostle plainly says so, and that should be enough for us. However,  if we failed to accept his testimony, we could observe the principle at work repeatedly in the book of Judges. Everyone God chose to deliver his people from their enemies was either at a serious disadvantage or else notably flawed.

Othniel was Caleb’s nephew and son-in-law. What a challenge to be compared to one of the greatest of the great! Ehud was left-handed. Shamgar had nothing but an ox goad with which to deliver Israel. Barak was a coward who would not go to war without a woman’s encouragement. Deborah was a woman, at a huge natural disadvantage leading Israel in war.

The pattern will continue throughout Judges in every instance when we have significant information about the man God chose to deliver his people. Jephthah was an outcast son of a prostitute, driven out by his brothers so that he would not share in their inheritance. Samson, the final judge in Judges, had plenty of enthusiasm for the fight, but literally no judgment. If he is the exception to the principle on display, then his is the case that proves the rule.

So then, let the one who boasts boast in the Lord, not in the strength of his own flesh. That is Paul’s point, and it’s a good one.

Go in This Might of Yours

When the angel of the Lord tells Gideon to go “in his own might”, I suspect his tongue is firmly in his divine cheek. If we are to attribute any deliverance in all the book of Judges to God alone, this might be the classic case. It was accomplished by 300 men blowing trumpets and shouting at God’s direction and against all probability, and completed by a tribe (Ephraim) that wasn’t originally even asked to participate in the battle. Ephraim ended up quite annoyed by the oversight after God handed their enemies to them, driving them south right into Ephraim’s back yard. Until Ephraim got involved, the Midianites and Amalekites did all the hard work for Gideon and his men, killing each other in a darkened panic. So Gideon’s personal might was never required.

What was necessary was his obedience, which was more than enough. Perhaps that too is might of a sort.

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Unaltered photo courtesy איתן פרמן, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons