It's Not How You Start -- the tale of Gideon in Judges 6
- mww
- Feb 2, 2017
- 16 min read
“Great shot kid. Now don’t get cocky.”
Bible Study Ideas and Commentary for Judges 6:11-32
This lesson highlights the positives from an episode in Gideon’s early life, but we know the mess Gideon makes of himself later. Take from this that God uses imperfect people to accomplish great things as long as they follow His lead. But they can’t then think that they can coast through the rest of their lives . . .
Please Sir, if the Lord is with us, why has all this happened? (6:13)
Getting Started: Things to Think About
What Do You Remember about Gideon?
If you’ve watched the Bible Project video on Judges, you already know that Gideon and his sons turned out to be disasters. In other words, no matter what good things we say about Gideon in the lesson today, your group should know that not all will end well. And that’s kind of strange because I remember hearing good things about Gideon as a new Christian, even kinda romanticized as a hero (“a sword for the Lord and a sword for Gideon”). Ask your group what they think they know about Gideon, and then try to turn whatever main one into an icebreaker. If you need help with how this might work, take a look at the bottom of this post and I give some examples. I give you a full outline of Gideon’s life below. Interestingly, I never think about the event we’re studying in our passage! I always think about the fleece, or the “lapping like a dog” thing, or the torches and horns. Each one of those can make for a great wake-up conversation.
It’s Not How You Start . . . It’s How You Finish.
If your group knows that Gideon turns out to be a loser, use that as an icebreaker! Ask your group to name some people in the Bible who start well but then do a tailspin later in life. Here are some names that come to mind: Saul, David, Solomon, Hezekiah, and Judas Iscariot. Then ask this question: Do their failures later in life undo all the good things they did before? The answer is no. (And that might be good to talk about because everyone in your group will have worries about someone they know who is “backslidden”.) The good things that Gideon did, like what we are studying today, still matter. Illustrate it like this: have your group do something that you can cut off before they’re finished (like build a road out of blocks, or sing a verse of Amazing Grace, or draw a picture, or describe a pretend vacation). Just don’t let them finish! Here’s the point: if the road doesn’t go all the way to the end, does that mean the whole road is bad? No! The first part of the road (or the song, or whatever) is just fine, but it’s not complete. It’s not what it was supposed to be, and so it is very unsatisfying, even upsetting! God wants us to finish as well as we start. That’s the point of Jesus’ parable of the Two Sons (Matthew 21:28-32)—it doesn’t matter what the son said he would do, it only matters what the son ended up actually doing. Use this lesson to challenge your group members to keep running a good race with Jesus.
This Week's Big Idea: A Summary of Gideon’s Life
Gideon’s story fills Judges 6-8. We learn that Midianite and Amalekite nomadic tribes have been raiding Israel from the east and ravaging their farmland and herds. So God sends an angel to the weakest member of the weakest clan in Manasseh (Gideon) to deliver Israel from their oppressors.
(1) The Asherah Pole. The first thing God told Gideon to do was tear down a pagan altar in his hometown, which he did at night and in secret out of fear. (Our passage this week.)
(2) The Fleece. God’s Spirit then came on Gideon to raise an army to attack the Amalekites. While mustering the army, he gave God two “impossible” demands for a sign, which God gave. While it can be healthy to be cautious about God’s will, Gideon’s tests were arbitrary and faithless.
(3) Perhaps in response to Gideon’s doubts, God then weeded his army down from 32,000 to 10,000 by telling everyone who was afraid to go home. Then from 10,000 to 300 by a strange procedure that may have been totally arbitrary (Gideon had to “keep” the 300, implying they didn’t want to stick around).
(4) A Great Victory. The same pattern of trumpets and war cries as at Jericho was used at night against a huge Midianite army that was already nervous and quickly turned on itself in fright. Gideon’s 300 pursued the survivors across the Jordan.
(5) Problems with Ephraim. Gideon called on Ephraim to help with the mop-up, and they were upset not to be included in the battle. He chose to appease them rather than stir up civil war.
(6) Problems with Gad. When he asked Gad for help, they refused, so he would later destroy their fortifications.
(7) The Midian Kings. Gideon’s main goal was to capture the kings, without which the loose tribes probably would not be able to organize for a future attack. Gideon wanted to let his son kill them, but eventually did it himself. It seems that he was goaded into doing so by the kings themselves.
(8) The Ephod. Though Gideon said that God would be their king and not him, the end of his life had him acting like a king (a large harem, lots of money, royal robes, and this ephod). He requested the people give him gold to create his own ephod (remember reading all of that description in Exodus?), a priest’s robe and consulting device! All the people worshiped it.
(9) The Sons. One of Gideon’s sons would go on to murder his brothers in an attempt to become king. He would later die in an attack on fellow Israelites.
What we see in Gideon, as I have said, is that he starts well, but as his life goes on, he drifts away from God. Feel free to try to make value judgments on him if it helps you learn something from him. The truth is that we really don’t know if his heart was distant from God or he just made some bad decisions. Comfort (the “god of money”) seems to play a role for him and for many—he had wealth and power and didn’t want to rock that boat. But for our purposes in this lesson, we can focus on the beginning: a frightened, insignificant person called by God to do an impossible task that he had no business stepping into.
Bonus Idea: Who Are the Midianites?
We’ve seen this name pop up quite a few times in our readings. Midian was the son of Abraham by Keturah (Gen 25:2) who was sent away to the east. Joseph’s brothers sold him to a Midianite caravan (Gen 37:28), which was also called Ishmaelite, implying some sort of interrelation between the two groups. Moses fled Egypt to Midian (Ex 2:15), where he married the Midianite priest’s daughter. A Midianite (either Jethro himself or Jethro’s father-in-law—remember the confusion I mentioned last week about Hebrew terms for related-by-marriage?) named Hobab would be a guide to the Israelites in the wilderness (Num 10:29). But the Bible also blames Midian for leading Israel into Baal worship (Num 25). That’s why God commanded the Israelites to go to war with Midian (Num 31:3, described in Josh 13:21). We get the sense that by this time, Midian was a very large network of loosely-related tribes spread out over a great distance. In Judges, Midianites and Amalekites used their camels to raid Israel from distance across deserts, but when Gideon killed their leaders, their alliance disintegrated and the tribes never did pose a real threat to Israel again. At least once, however, Midian was a refuge for one of Solomon’s enemies (1 Ki 11:18).
As far as the Amalekites go, they were also a nomadic tribe from the Sinai wilderness (Amalek was the grandson of Esau) and probably joined forces with the Midianites simply out of proximity and common hatred for Israel. They might have been the ones to teach guerilla warfare tactics to them, having used them against Israel since the beginning of the Exodus (Ex 17).
Part 1: Unsure and Untested (6:11-16)
The Angel of the Lord came, and He sat under the oak that was in Ophrah, which belonged to Joash, the Abiezrite. His son Gideon was threshing wheat in the wine vat in order to hide it from the Midianites. Then the Angel of the Lord appeared to him and said: “The Lord is with you, mighty warrior.” Gideon said to Him, “Please Sir, if the Lord is with us, why has all this happened? And where are all His wonders that our fathers told us about? They said, ‘Hasn’t the Lord brought us out of Egypt?’ But now the Lord has abandoned us and handed us over to Midian.” The Lord turned to him and said, “Go in the strength you have and deliver Israel from the power of Midian. Am I not sending you?” He said to Him, “Please, Lord, how can I deliver Israel? Look, my family is the weakest in Manasseh, and I am the youngest in my father’s house.” “But I will be with you,” the Lord said to him. “You will strike Midian down as if it were one man.”
You’ll have to give a little bit of context, but make it quick; you have enough to explain just in the verses given! We have another reference to an oak tree; really not sure what the significance is. We do know the significance of the wine vat reference. Usually grain was threshed on the highest ground available so the chaff would be caught by the wind. Wine vats, on the other hand, were dug in the lowest spots available so all of the juice would run into them. Trying to thresh grain down there would imply that there was a real and common danger of being seen by the Midianites. See below for what the “Angel of the Lord” meant, but suffice it to say that by capitalizing “Angel”, this translation group is saying they believe it to be an appearance of God Himself. We intentionally have a fun little juxtaposition here: Gideon is the youngest person in the weakest clan of his tribe, yet he is called “mighty warrior”. This simply goes along with one of the main themes of the Bible: God uses the weak so that the strong cannot take credit for His actions. If anything, that is probably what went wrong with Gideon later in life—forgetting that he was insignificant and thinking highly of himself.
Certainly there was potential in Gideon. I put this in the same category as God choosing David—young, wiry, but later to grow up to be a mighty warrior and not a weakling. Gideon did not recognize his visitor (and he should not be blamed for that!) and instead responded cynically and honestly (powerful, but not disrespectful). Basically, he questions the relevance of God’s past activity—how did the time of Joshua apply to the Israelites today? It wasn’t helping them . . . The reality of the situation was that they were slaves to Midian. What was God doing now?
I think you can camp out here as an aside. Ask your group if they think God is doing enough to help the world today? Don’t things just seem terrible and getting worse? When was the last time God did a mighty thing to save His people? Let your group be honest—there are a lot of discouraged Christians out there right now. And there are three responses. (1) Realize that we still have it better than 98% of the world, so we don’t want to complain too much. (2) Realize that God is still working in powerful ways! Ask if anyone has recognized God’s hand in recent events. (3) And most importantly, realize that God works in a new way on this side of Jesus. I’ve used this Matthew West song lyric before: “Well, I just couldn’t bear the thought of people living in poverty, children sold into slavery, the thought disgusted me. So, I shook my fist at Heaven and said, “God, why don’t You do something?” He said, “I did, I created you.”
The Angel’s response to Gideon was the same that He would say to us today: do you think I’m not aware of the trouble My people are in? I’ve come to appoint you to do something about it. And if you do, I will give you all the strength you need to make it happen. Gideon, however, couldn’t see past his own weakness to the strength that God offered. That would make a good discussion, too . . .
Aside: The Angel of the Lord
We’ve talked about this before. “Angel” literally means “messenger” both in Hebrew and in Greek, so it would make sense that God would send His messages to people via angels. But there are some places in the Bible where “angel” becomes “the Angel of the Lord”. Those places, like the visit to Rahab in the wilderness, the burning bush, and Balaam’s donkey, involve speech that seems stronger than simply delivering a message from God. In those places, the angel may actually be referred to as “the Lord” or say things like “I say…” Consequently, many scholars think of appearances by “the Angel of the Lord” as God Himself in some sort of discernable form—a theophany. This should strike you as strange; after all, in our reading plan we recently read that no one can look at God and live (God covered Moses’ face). With that in mind, some scholars have wondered if in fact these are appearances by Jesus (or specifically the pre-incarnate Christ). That makes sense, but I rather think that the phrase “Angel of the Lord” rather than “the Lord” lets us know that God is not quite appearing as Himself in all His glory, which is how He can be seen. And as you might guess, that is why some translation choose to capitalize these occurrences of “Angel” to make it clear that they believe it to be God Himself. The final question is why God would ever need to appear Himself and not simply send an angel. Obviously the occasions are very important, but are they really more important than the times He sends an angel like Michael or Gabriel? I personally don’t think so. I really don’t know why God chose to appear to Gideon Himself. But I do know that there’s a really good reason.
Part 2: A First Step (6:25-27)
On that very night the Lord said to him, “Take your father’s young bull and a second bull seven years old. Then tear down the altar of Baal that belongs to your father and cut down the Asherah pole beside it. Build a well-constructed altar to the Lord your God on the top of this rock. Take the second bull and offer it as a burnt offering with the wood of the Asherah pole you cut down.” So Gideon took 10 of his male servants and did as the Lord had told him. But because he was too afraid of his father’s household and the men of the city to do it in the daytime, he did it at night.
We skip over a miraculous sign that God performed to quell Gideon’s nerves and then get to the point. Just a few verses after Gideon has complained that God is not defending His people, we find out that Gideon’s own father has built an altar to Baal! Why exactly is Gideon surprised God has not been fighting for His people? The KJV Bible translates the verse about the bulls differently—“even” instead of “and”—because some scholars believe there was only one bull (the word “second” can also mean “exalted”). Gideon was to use the bull(s) to tear down the altar and then build a new (“proper”) altar in its place, using the wood from the Asherah pole as fuel to offer said bull as a burnt offering. In other words, replace false worship with true worship; that would be a bare minimum expectation of a judge of Israel! But he was still afraid of the reaction of the people, so he chose to do it at night. By the way, this passage clarifies how wealthy Gideon’s family must have been. Your leader guide tries to applaud this as a baby step, however flawed. I suppose that’s okay.
Part 3: A Father’s Defense (6:28-32)
When the men of the city got up in the morning, they found Baal’s altar torn down, the Asherah pole beside it cut down, and the second bull offered up on the altar that had been built. They said to each other, “Who did this?” After they made a thorough investigation, they said, “Gideon son of Joash did it.” Then the men of the city said to Joash, “Bring out your son. He must die, because he tore down Baal’s altar and cut down the Asherah pole beside it.” But Joash said to all who stood against him, “Would you plead Baal’s case for him? Would you save him? Whoever pleads his case will be put to death by morning! If he is a god, let him plead his own case because someone tore down his altar.” That day, Gideon’s father called him Jerubbaal, saying, “Let Baal plead his case with him,” because he tore down his altar.
It is more than a little pathetic that the Israelites were prepared to search high and low and put to death the person who destroyed their pagan shrine. Based on the size of Gideon’s team, it would be impossible for him to keep everything a secret, and in short order he is found out. If anyone had a right to be upset, it was Gideon’s father, who altar was destroyed and prized bull was killed. But Joash turned out to be Gideon’s greatest advocate. The question is if that were intentional or not. There are several ways to interpret Joash’s actions. (1) Joash was very upset and fully expected Gideon to be dealt with harshly by Baal. Thus, “Jerub-baal” was a derogatory name. (2) Joash was already on the fence with Baal because Baal had done nothing for the Israelites during these years of oppression, so there was no love lost. Thus, “Jerub-baal” would have been intended as an insult against Baal. (3) Joash loved his son and was willing to change his beliefs simply to defend him (I know parents who have done this). (4) Joash was awakened by Gideon’s actions, realizing that Baal was a false god. Thus, “Jerub-baal” would have been more pro-Yahweh (or at least pro-Gideon; in these chapters the line between pro-Yahweh and pro-Gideon seems very thin). I go with the fourth option.
The purpose of this story is to illustrate how far gone the Israelites were—that they were completely oblivious to their own sin, not realizing that they were making up their own morality. It happens easily. We see it all the time today. Even people who claim to have strong convictions, when confronted by an “alternative fact” from a good friend or a family member, can quickly abandon any belief. Note that in this story it works both ways—Joash abandoned his false beliefs in the face of his son’s convictions (i.e. we can influence people the right way). But God chose to deliver them in spite of their failure and sin. God picked an unexpected person at an unexpected time to do the work. Gideon though God didn’t care any more about them, and Gideon was wrong. Is that a message anyone in your group needs to hear?
The Quicksource recommended this exercise, and I like it -- Get two Styrofoam cups with lids from the kitchen. Pour water in both, but pour a bunch of lemon juice into one. Put the cups on a table and ask for a volunteer. Tell him/her that both drinks are safe, but one tastes a lot worse than the other. Let him pick a cup and then say, “Do you want to go with your choice, or do you want to ask me for advice?” If they ask you for advice, tell them exactly what is in both cups. The point is that when we can get help from someone who knows the situation, we always should. God has not “thrown us to the wolves” in life; He is there with us willing to help us if we would just ask. Now, Gideon ended up asking God for all manners of crazy signs, and Jesus has told us that God doesn’t work that way any more, but God will not turn away the soul that has humbly come to Him for help and guidance. We had just be ready to say “yes” when the answer comes.
As to the background issue of this story—God vs. Baal and which deity can defend himself—I think a lot of people are like the Israelites of Gideon’s day. “If God is really God, then why doesn’t He just wipe out His enemies and end all wrongs?” Why doesn’t He just show Himself to be the King of the universe? Well, remember what we studied in Peter’s letter. Do not mistake God’s patience for weakness. God will defeat all of His enemies and destroy them for eternity, and He will do that without our help. But He will do that in His timing; once that battle is fought, there are no second chances. That understood, we should be grateful that God continues to work through His people because that means our loved ones have another day to repent of their sin and turn to Jesus for salvation.
Aside: Worship among the Arab Tribes
This might not be important at all, but I find it interesting. When Gideon killed the Amalekite kings, he took the ornaments off of their camels. Literally, they were “little moons”, meaning crescent-shaped. Many Arab people of that day worshiped the moon (whereas the Egyptians mainly worshiped the sun), probably because the daytime was so brutal to them. Though some Muslims debate this, the god that Muhammed eventually singled out as Allah was a regional moon god.
Closing Thoughts: Gideon's Life as an Icebreaker
The Serendipity Bible has some fun discussions on two of Gideon’s events:
The Fleece. If anyone brings up Gideon’s fleece, you can ask questions like these. (1) What do you think was the main reason why Gideon insisted on his strange fleece request? [] He lacked faith in God. [] He lacked faith in himself. [] He lacked faith in his countrymen. [] He was too afraid. [] He didn’t realize who he was talking to. (2) Why do you think God was patient with Gideon here? [] He saw Gideon’s potential and abilities. [] He appreciated the risks that Gideon took. [] He accepted Gideon’s tears. [] He accepted Gideon’s faith. (3) When have you used a “fleece” to seek direction from God and why? How do you feel today about asking the Lord for a sign? (4) What do you think is the hardest thing about God’s will? [] Figuring out what it is. [] Choosing from the options God gives me. [] Taking risks. [] Explaining my actions to others. [] Doing it once I know what it is.
The Small Army Victory. (1) If you were Gideon, what would you have thought when God reduced your army from 32,000 to 300? [] “You’ve got to be kidding!” [] “This is going to be suicide.” [] “This is going to be great!” [] “I’ll bow out myself.” [] “What’s God trying to prove?” [] “The Lord’s will be done.” (2) What does God’s philosophy of recruiting seem to be here? [] “I’m looking for a few good men.” [] “Too many cooks spoil the stew.” [] “The Commander is all you need in this army.” [] “My power is made perfect in your weakness.” (3) Why did the Israelites win? [] The enemy was sleeping. [] The Midianites were overcome with fear. [] God was on their side. [] They followed Gideon’s orders. [] They followed God’s orders. (4) What can you take away from this story for your life? [] I never have enough help. [] Sometimes I’m afraid to take on problems. [] I need to work on letting God be in charge of my life. [] I have found that when I am weak, then God is strong. [] If I’m faithful to God, the battle is really His.
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