was destroyed the people demanded the death of Gideon, and you know that at this day, though Baal is a false god, and in their hearts they confess it, they would murder us if we said anything against him: they went therefore to Joash and told him to bring forth his son that they might slay him. These, my children, were not the Midianites nor the Amalekites, but our own nation. At the very time when the heathen were upon us we turned from the Lord to Baal, and sought to destroy the man who could have rescued us. Thus we have ever done, and we are surely a race accursed. But Joash secretly contemned Baal, although until now he had not ventured to say anything against him. It made him bold to see how his son and his servants had over-thrown the altar and burnt the idol which lay there charred and unresisting. He stood up before the altar, and facing the mob which howled at him; asked them why they should take upon themselves to plead for Baal: "If he be a god, let him plead for himself, because one hath cast down his altar." The charred logs never stirred; there was no sound in the sky; Joash was not struck dead; Baal was proved to be nothing. That was a sight to see that morning: the ashes smouldering in the sunlight, the raging crowd, Gideon and his fellows behind Joash, and Joash calling on Baal to avenge himself if he was a god as his worshippers pretended. Ah, if that had been Jehovah's altar! When Nadab and Abihu offered strange fire before the Lord, fire came down from the Lord and devoured them. When Miriam spoke against His servant she became a leper; and when Korah, Dathan, and Abiram blasphemed, they were swallowed up in the pit. But Baal could not move a breath of heaven on his behalf. What kind of a god is he? A god who cannot punish those who insult him is but a word.
As for Gideon, he grew in strength. Nothing happened to him because he had thus dared Baal. He went about his work daily; no judgment fell on him, and nobody dared to meddle with him.
Soon afterwards the Midianites and Amalekites, who had withdrawn for a while, overspread the land again, and pitched in the valley of Jezreel. Gideon having suffered nothing for his insult to Baal, had become bolder. Moreover, his tribe, the Abiezrites, had seen that he had suffered nothing. Thus it came to pass that when the Spirit of the Lord came upon him; and he blew a trumpet, all Abiezer followed him. Not only so; he sent messengers through Manasseh, Asher, Zebulun, and Naphtali, and they came up to meet him, the very people who a few months before would have stoned him. They thronged after him, and now professed themselves believers in Jehovah. They were not hypocrites. They really believed now, after a fashion, that Baal could not help them. Their fault was that they believed one thing one day and another thing the next. That has always been the fault of the people. Your grandfather did not despise them for their instability. So far as they were not stable to Baal it was good, and he pitied them as they flocked to his standard, hoping that he could deliver them. He blew the trumpet, and at the simple blast of that trumpet in each village and town the nation seemed to rise as one man, such strength was there in its tones. These men had been idolaters, and it might have been thought that to turn them all would have taken years of persuasion; but no, at the simple sound of the trumpet the religion of Baal vanished.
Gideon was now at the head of a great host; he had been favoured with visions from the Most High; the angel of the Lord had appeared to him; he had burnt the image; and yet now, when the army was round him, fear fell upon him again, and he doubted if he could save Israel, or if God would keep His promise. So it always was with him, as I have already said. He therefore prayed for another sign, and the Lord did not rebuke him, as a man would have done if his promise had been mistrusted. Gideon's test was strange; he did not pray that he might see the angel again, for the thoughts that came into his mind were always strange, not like those of other men, and were unaccountable even to himself. That night the fleece of wool on the ground was wet and the earth was dry. He prayed yet again, and still God was tender to him, for He knows the weakness of the creatures He has made. This time the fleece was dry and the earth was wet, and Gideon thereupon rose up early with all the host, and moved towards the host of Midian, till he came in sight of them as they lay in the valley by the hill of Moreh.
But the Lord would not have so many to do His work, and most of them were afraid and useless. He therefore commanded Gideon to send away all who were frightened, and ten thousand only were left. These ten thousand were still too many, for most of them were impatient, not able to restrain themselves, and likely to fail, either through fear or foolhardiness, in the stratagem the Lord designed. He therefore commanded Gideon, when they were all thirsty, to bring them down to the water. Nine thousand seven hundred were in such a hurry to reach it that they dropped on their knees to drink, but three hundred were collected and patient, and were content to lift their hands to their mouths. The three hundred were kept and the rest sent home. That night God, the ever merciful, had promised Gideon to deliver the Midianites into His servant's hands, and had confirmed His promise by miracle, but nevertheless He directed Gideon to go down to the camp, so that he might hear a man's dream and its interpretation, and be further strengthened in his faith. Gideon went down and listened at a tent door; and when the dream was told, how a cake of barley bread tumbled into the host of Midian, and came unto a tent and smote it that it fell, all fear departed, and he rose up and went back to the three hundred, and cried to them, "Arise; for the Lord hath delivered into your hand the host of Midian."
Forthwith he divided his three hundred into three bands, and each man took an empty pitcher and placed a torch inside it. In the dead of the night they marched to the camp, this little three hundred, and placed themselves round it. Then Gideon broke his pitcher and showed his torch, and all the others did likewise, and shouted, "The sword of the Lord, and of Gideon."
The host cried and fled, for a terror from the Lord descended on them,
and turned their own swords against them. When they were defeated all
Israel went out after them, and there was great slaughter, and Oreb and
Zeeb, two princes of Midian, were slain.
As soon as the victory was achieved, and while he was yet in pursuit, the men of Ephraim turned upon him and abused him because he had not taken them with him to fight the battle against the Midianites, but never had they lifted a finger to save themselves before Gideon appeared. When, however, he had caught and destroyed Zebah and Zalmunna, the two Midianitish kings, and had chastised Succoth and beaten down the tower of Penuel, Israel came to him and asked him to rule over them, but he would not. He cared not to be king. He remembered with what difficulty he had believed the angel and the promise, the sickly faintness which had overcome him on that night before the Midianitish overthrow. Whatever he had done had not been his doing, but the Lord's; and how did he know that the Lord's help would continue? The thought of being king, and of having a set office, perhaps without the Lord's assistance, was too much for him. He was right in his refusal. He was one of those men who can do much if left to themselves, and if they are supported by the Most High, but who shrink and tremble when something is expected from them. "The Lord shall be your King," he said. He trusted that God would speak to the nation as He had spoken to him, and without any leader would guide them aright. That is not the Lord's way. But though Gideon would not be king, he desired some honour, and he asked that he might have the ear-rings of the Midianites who had fallen. Therewith he made an image, a thing forbidden. It stood in his house, a record of what the Lord had done for him; and yet this very record became a snare, and Israel fell to worshipping it, and Jehovah was displaced by the testimony of His own love for us.
Your grandfather is now dead. Abimelech reigns in his place, and has slain all the children of Gideon save myself. Israel has returned to Baal; its strength has departed; before long we shall be subdued under the Philistines. Excepting in our own house, there are none that have not gone a-whoring after Baal; the memory of the battle by the hill Moreh is clean forgotten; and soon the memory of my father will also disappear, and it will be as if he had never lived. To think that the vision of the angel in Ophrah and the night in the valley of Jezreel should end in nothing!
* * * * * *
That night Jotham died.
Fourteen Hundred Tears Later.
"The time would fail me to tell of Gideon, … who through faith … out of weakness was made strong, waxed valiant in fight, turned to flight the armies of the aliens."—Epistle to the Hebrews.
Three Thousand Years Later.
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