No King in Israel (16)

The Hebrew word šāḥâ [literally, “bow down”; figuratively, “worship”] appears a grand total of four times in the book of Judges. That’s not a lot. But it gets worse. All but one of these four have to do with worshiping idols. The solitary exception, where the word refers to the worship of the God of Israel, is in today’s reading.

That’s a sad commentary on the state of Israel during the period of the judges. Accordingly, we may not expect to find out much about true, biblical worship in these pages.

Then again …

II. Twelve Judges in Chronological Order (continued)

5. Gideon (continued)

Judges 7:1-8 — Too Many for God

“Then Jerubbaal (that is, Gideon) and all the people who were with him rose early and encamped beside the spring of Harod. And the camp of Midian was north of them, by the hill of Moreh, in the valley.

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.” 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.

And the Lord said to Gideon, ‘The people are still too many. Take them down to the water, and I will test them for you there, and anyone of whom I say to you, “This one shall go with you,” shall go with you, and anyone of whom I say to you, “This one shall not go with you,” shall not go.’ So he brought the people down to the water. And the Lord said to Gideon, ‘Every one who laps the water with his tongue, as a dog laps, you shall set by himself. Likewise, every one who kneels down to drink.’ And the number of those who lapped, putting their hands to their mouths, was 300 men, but all the rest of the people knelt down to drink water. And the Lord said to Gideon, ’With the 300 men who lapped I will save you and give the Midianites into your hand, and let all the others go every man to his home.’ So the people took provisions in their hands, and their trumpets. And he sent all the rest of Israel every man to his tent, but retained the 300 men. And the camp of Midian was below him in the valley.”

Whittling Down the Troops

The story of how the Lord whittled down a volunteer army of 32,000 Israelites from four different tribes to less than 1% of its number is a familiar one. It also reads quite straightforwardly, and most readers will grasp the concept without a lot of commentary. We have already seen, not only in Gideon’s story but all through the book of Judges, that the Lord rarely chooses the most powerful, obvious leaders. Rather, he chooses men (and occasionally women) who are operating at some significant disadvantage. The Lord is well aware of man’s tendency to boast in his own strength. By choosing weak, unlikely leadership candidates, he eliminates that possibility and encourages dependence and faith, without which it is impossible to please him.

Here we find the same principle operates corporately as individually. 32,000 soldiers was way too many. It was probably still considerably fewer than the combined might of the Midianites, Amalekites and people of the East, but the numbers were close enough that God’s hand in the victory would not be impossible to deny, and obvious is what the Lord was looking for. He intended, at least temporarily, to turn the hearts of the people back to the worship of YHWH.

First, the Lord graciously permitted 22,000 fearful men to return home without shame, each lost in the much larger number of departures. More than twice as many left as stayed, so no man would be obviously humiliated by confessing to a little fear. Then the Lord devised a test to whittle down Israel’s army even further.

Testing for Alertness?

The way I have heard the story told, the Lord’s test selected for the most alert 300 men out of the remaining 10,000. 9,700 men knelt down to drink, probably putting their mouths in the water. These were evidently unconcerned about the possibility they might be attacked while in a vulnerable position, and were therefore unfit for service. The 300 that passed the test bent down only for a moment to put a hand into the water and lap out of their own palms, and were therefore more cautious than their fellows, for which the Lord deemed them worthy to serve. This is the conventional wisdom.

Perhaps this is the case, and the Lord was looking for the best of the best, or perhaps the test was merely a device that separated a large group from a much smaller one. The passage simply does not say. My thought is that choosing the bravest and most ferocious warriors for that final group seems like a 180-degree reversal of God’s reasoning at other times. In a group of 10,000 men drinking, the chances of any specific soldier being caught off guard and killed by enemies at a moment’s notice by a sword, arrow or spear approaches nil. The 9,700 who knelt did nothing unreasonable or unmilitary. They simply took the quickest and most efficient route to getting a drink, while the 300 took the more laborious route. Perhaps, like Gideon, these 300 were more fearful than their fellows, despite declining the offer to leave early. Commenter Danny Hickman agrees.

In fact, you will find considerable variation among the English translations of the explanation for God’s choice in this passage, reflecting an ambiguity in the Hebrew. Nobody really knows who got sent home or precisely why, only that the larger group left and the smaller group stayed. Either way, God’s purposes were served.

Judges 7:9-15 — Two Men in the Dark

“That same night the Lord said to him, ‘Arise, go down against the camp, for I have given it into your hand. But if you are afraid to go down, go down to the camp with Purah your servant. And you shall hear what they say, and afterward your hands shall be strengthened to go down against the camp.’ Then he went down with Purah his servant to the outposts of the armed men who were in the camp. And the Midianites and the Amalekites and all the people of the East lay along the valley like locusts in abundance, and their camels were without number, as the sand that is on the seashore in abundance. 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.’ 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.’

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.’ ”

The Fourth Sign

I mentioned the grace of God last week in putting up with Gideon’s fleece test, a request that at best shows Gideon’s fear and uncertainty, and at worst had him reasoning and thinking about his God like a pagan. Here, that grace is even more abundantly on display. Taking into account Gideon’s trepidation, God now provides him with an even better proof of his goodwill toward him and of Israel’s certain victory by giving him yet another sign, by my count at least his fourth. “Go down to the camp,” God says, “and just listen in to what the Midianites are saying.” So Gideon takes the Lord up on his offer.

So then, lying in the underbrush in the middle of the night behind a Midianite sentry post, or perhaps leaning up against the side of a tent eavesdropping on a couple of bedded-down Midianite soldiers, Gideon and his servant hear a remarkable tale. God has already put the fear of Israel in their hearts, giving some among them dreams of a devastating military loss. These are now spreading concern among their fellow soldiers. Remarkably, they are even aware of Gideon’s name.

Now, it’s quite possible news of Israel’s gathering under Gideon had spread to the Midianite camp in a perfectly ordinary, unmiraculous way. It’s also conceivable that God made this revelation to the Midianites in the dream. Either way, Gideon’s confidence suddenly went through the roof. He worshiped, and he returned to camp ready to inspire the troops.

Gideon Worshiped

Now, when Gideon worshiped, he obviously wasn’t at the tabernacle. He wasn’t offering a sacrifice. He wasn’t even at home doing his personal devotions. Yet Gideon worshiped. No wonder. And God heard, appreciated, and made a note about it for us in Judges.

This was not formal worship, to be sure. But equally, it was not the present-your-bodies-a-living-sacrifice kind of “lifestyle worship” taught in many circles today. There was a moment when Gideon, in the service of God and in full fellowship with him, was sneaking up on the Midianite camp. He was doing everything right, to be sure, but it would be a semantic stretch to call crawling through the underbrush “worshiping”. Then there was the moment right after Gideon worshiped when he returned in confidence to the camp of Israel, declared that the Lord had given the Midianite army into their hands, and divided his 300 men into three companies. That wasn’t worship either. In between, it was.

The Substance of Worship

What did Gideon’s worship consist of? There were more Midianites around the two Israelite spies than could possibly be counted — so he obviously didn’t stop to do a little impromptu orating. He definitely didn’t break into song. No, Gideon’s worship was a mere few seconds in time, almost surely all in his head (though perhaps he took the knee for a moment) and cannot possibly have consisted of much more than the ancient Hebrew equivalent of “Wow, Lord, you are absolutely amazing! I cannot believe you just did that.” Awe, reverence, astonishment, grateful appreciation, perhaps in equal parts — genuine, deeply felt and energizing.

But quick. Very quick.

It strikes me that Gideon’s manner of worship is precisely that of all godly women and more than a few quiet, godly men down through the last twenty centuries in church meetings all over the world ... except, perhaps, that we have an appreciably lengthier and more predictable opportunity to prepare our hearts and organize our thoughts. That, and our legitimate distractions are considerably fewer.

No matter how significant or insignificant our lives may appear to us, if they do not include regular moments of consciously entering into the presence of God to deliberately contemplate his greatness, we do not have much of an excuse, do we? Not from scripture anyway.