Lest Israel Vaunt Themselves

The angel of the LORD found him hiding in a winepress, threshing wheat where the raiders would not see it, and called him a mighty man of valour. Gideon's first words to God are an argument, his next are an excuse, and then he asks for a sign, and then another, and then another. God gave him every one. Then God took his army away from him, thirty-two thousand down to three hundred, and sent him against a hundred and thirty-five thousand with trumpets and clay pots. This is the story of what God does with a frightened man who keeps asking.

Threshing in a winepress

Seven years of Midian. Every harvest, the raiders came up "as grasshoppers for multitude" and stripped the land, and Israel "made them the dens which are in the mountains, and caves, and strong holds" (Judges 6:2). Then: "there came an angel of the LORD, and sat under an oak… and his son Gideon threshed wheat by the winepress, to hide it from the Midianites" (6:11). You thresh on a hilltop where the wind can take the chaff. You do not thresh in a winepress, a pit in the ground, unless you are afraid of being seen. That is where the angel found him, and what he said is almost funny: "The LORD is with thee, thou mighty man of valour" (6:12).

Gideon's answer is the honest one, and it is the question every suffering believer has asked: "Oh my Lord, if the LORD be with us, why then is all this befallen us? and where be all his miracles which our fathers told us of… but now the LORD hath forsaken us" (6:13). Where are the miracles our fathers told us about. He is not rebuked for it. "And the LORD looked upon him, and said, Go in this thy might, and thou shalt save Israel from the hand of the Midianites: have not I sent thee?" (6:14). This thy might. He is standing in a pit. And he says what Moses said at the bush: "my family is poor in Manasseh, and I am the least in my father's house" (6:15). And gets the answer Moses got: "Surely I will be with thee" (6:16).

The fleece

He asks for a sign, and gets one: fire out of the rock. He pulls down his father's altar to Baal by night, "because he feared his father's household," and the Spirit comes on him and he blows the trumpet and thirty-two thousand men gather. And then, with the army already raised, he asks again. "Behold, I will put a fleece of wool in the floor; and if the dew be on the fleece only, and it be dry upon all the earth beside, then shall I know that thou wilt save Israel by mine hand, as thou hast said" (6:37). It is so. He wrings a bowl of water out of it. And then, because a wet fleece on a dry floor could just be wool doing what wool does, he asks for the reverse: "Let not thine anger be hot against me, and I will speak but this once… let it now be dry only upon the fleece, and upon all the ground let there be dew. And God did so that night" (6:39-40).

People have made the fleece a method, and it is not one; Gideon had already been told three times, in words, what would happen. It is not a model of how to find God's will. It is a picture of how patient God is with a man who believes and is still afraid. He asked to be told again, twice, and was told again, twice, and the text records no anger at all. Augustine and Ambrose both saw more in it than a nervous farmer: the dew on the fleece alone, then on all the ground with the fleece dry, as Israel first and then the whole earth, the grace that was hidden in one nation and then poured on everyone. Whether or not Gideon knew that, he got his bowl of water, and went.

Too many

Too many. Thirty-two thousand against a hundred and thirty-five thousand, and God says it is too many, and gives the reason: lest you say your own hand saved you. So the fearful are sent home, and twenty-two thousand leave. Ten thousand left. Still too many. Down to the water, and the ones who lap "as a dog lappeth," with a hand to the mouth and eyes up, are kept, and the ones who kneel and put their faces in the stream are sent home. "By the three hundred men that lapped will I save you" (7:7). Three hundred. Against a hundred and thirty-five thousand. And that same night God, who knows exactly who He is dealing with, says: "But if thou fear to go down, go thou with Phurah thy servant down to the host" (7:10). If thou fear. He did. He went down with his servant and crept to the edge of the enemy camp and heard a Midianite telling his friend a dream about a barley loaf knocking over a tent, and the friend saying, "This is nothing else save the sword of Gideon" (7:14). And Gideon, hearing his own name in the mouth of a terrified enemy, "worshipped" (7:15), right there in the dark at the edge of the camp. One more sign, unasked for. God gave it anyway.

Trumpets and pitchers

"And he divided the three hundred men into three companies, and he put a trumpet in every man's hand, with empty pitchers, and lamps within the pitchers" (7:16). No swords are mentioned. A trumpet in one hand and a clay jar with a torch inside it in the other, which leaves no hand for a weapon. At the changing of the watch, on three sides of the camp at once, three hundred jars smash, three hundred torches appear, three hundred trumpets sound, and three hundred men shout, "The sword of the LORD, and of Gideon" (7:20). "And they stood every man in his place round about the camp" (7:21). Stood. They did not charge. "And the three hundred blew the trumpets, and the LORD set every man's sword against his fellow, even throughout all the host" (7:22). Israel's three hundred never drew a blade. Midian destroyed itself in the dark, and the sword of the LORD was the only one used.

Afterward, they offered him a crown. "Rule thou over us, both thou, and thy son, and thy son's son" (8:22). And the man from the winepress said the best thing he ever said: "I will not rule over you, neither shall my son rule over you: the LORD shall rule over you" (8:23). He had learned what the three hundred were for.

Where this lands

God found a man in a hole and called him mighty. He let him argue, let him ask for a sign and then two more, and gave every one. Then He stripped the army down until no one could take the credit, told the leader he could bring his servant if he was afraid, and gave him a victory that needed no sword but His. Paul, centuries later, said the principle out loud: God chose "the weak things of the world to confound the things which are mighty… That no flesh should glory in his presence" (1 Corinthians 1:27-29). Lest you say, mine own hand hath saved me. That is why the three hundred, and why the pitchers, and why Gideon.

And the light was inside the clay until the clay broke. Paul again: "we have this treasure in earthen vessels, that the excellency of the power may be of God, and not of us" (2 Corinthians 4:7). A torch in a jar is no use to anyone. It has to be broken to be seen. The One who came after Gideon was a Light in a clay body, and on a Friday the vessel was broken, in the dark, on a hill, and the whole camp of the enemy came apart, and He never drew a sword. The LORD shall rule over you. The man in the winepress got that right, and it is still the answer to every crown anyone offers a servant of God.

Related: I AM, Open His Eyes, The Fear of the LORD, and Prayer. Scripture from the King James Version, linked to BibleHub; the words of God are marked in gold, the words of Christ in purple.