Bible Characters: Gideon to Absalom

YE DID RUN WELL; WHO
DID HINDER YOU?

f E are not told to whom we are indebted for the Book of The Judges, but whoever he was, he was a master of the pen, and the story of Gideon is his masterpiece. A powerfully built, middle-aged man of Manasseh is busy beating out a few blasted ears of corn in a secret winepress. He beats the sheaves softly lest the sound of his staff should tell the Midianites where the wheat is. He stops his work to dry his face and to wet his lips, but all the water in the well would not put out the fire that is in his eye, for the fire that is in his eye is his hot heart rising to heaven against the oppressors of his people. ‘The Lord is with thee,’ the angel of the Lord appeared at that moment and said to Gideon, ’ for thou art a mighty man of valour. “” Gideon thought that the angel of the Lord was mocking at him in so speaking. The Lord with me! and I have not meal enough to make my children’s supper! I a mighty man of valour, when I am afraid to thrash out my few stalks of wheat on the thrashing-floor, but must hide myself in this hidden winepress! Call me not a mighty man of valour. Call me a God-forsaken coward! But the angel of the Lord only the more went on, ‘Go in this thy might and thou shalt save Israel.’

No sooner had the angel of the Lord taken his departure than Gideon threw down his staff and went into the house where his mother sat mourning day and night for the loss of her sons slain at Tabor, each one resembling the son of a king. And Gideon said to his weeping mother, ‘Awake, my mother, and sing to me the song of Deborah.’ And while she only the more sat and wept, her son took out and whetted his sword and sharpened his axe. ‘Sing to me,’ he said, ’ how Deborah and Barak arose and delivered Israel. Sing to me, ye daughters of Joash, of how the stars in their courses fought against Sisera.’ Night fell; and at midnight, behold ten men, and each man with a pitcher and a lamp in it in his left hand, and with his axe in his right hand, stole out of his house and met Gideon. Their meeting was beside the altar of Baal and in the grove of Baal, which was built and planted in Joash’s high place. For, how could Joash’s son think to cast out a single Midianite as long as that unclean altar and those unclean trees stood beside his father’s house? He could not. But at every blow of Gideon’s swift axe new strength came into his arm. At every tree that fell before his axe his courage rose. And the light of God’s countenance returned already to Israel in every star that shone down through the opening spaces in the grove of Baal. Why is your life in such bondao-e and fear and famine to-niaht? Why have you not been fed to-day and every day with the finest of the wheat? Why are you not satisfied every day with honey out of the rock? Arise in this thy might, and the Lord will make of thee also a mighty man of valour. Be sure of this, that thy sure way to deliverance and peace and plenty lies for thee also through that levelled grove and over that prostrate altar.

The dearest idol I have known,

Whate’er that idol be.
Help me to tear it from Thy throne.

And worship only Thee.

The worshippers of Baal never neglected their morning devotions. ‘Early will I seek thee,’ they could say to their god with truth and a good conscience. And thus it was that before Joash was up that morning the men of the city were gathered already round his door, shouting and demanding, and saying, — ‘Bring out thy son Gideon that he may die: because he hath cast down the altar of Baal, and because he hath cut down the grove of Baal.“* Many men who have not the courage to do a righteous deed themselves have the sense and the grace to be glad when other men do it. And sometimes you will see a father who is entangled in some evil or doubtful business, but has not the courage or the strength to cut himself and his house clear of it, a proud enough father when his son rises up and sets the whole household free. A vein of true humour ran in the Joash blood; for that morning the old man met the men of the city with a jest that scattered them all home, just as Gideon his son has enriched our literature to this day with more than one witty word and ready and racy answer. *For shame!“* said Joash, ‘for shame, sirs! Stand back, and go home. Let Baal redress his own wrongs. Baal is a god: and you are only my everyday neighbours. Let Baal arise, but go you home.** And Joash brought out Gideon and baptized him Jerubbaal before them all, saying, ‘Let Baal settle his own scores with my sacrilegious son.” Let her ladyship now save herself,’ said John Knox, as he cast the wooden idol overboard. ‘She is light enough; let her learn to swim.”* After that, we read, was no Scottish man ever urged with that idolatry. Gideon was a great favourite with Pascal. Gideon’s fleece had taken a great hold of Pascal’s imagination. You all know the fine story of Gideon’s fleece. Gideon was a humble-minded man. Not Moses himself was a more humble-minded man than Gideon was, or more unwilling to come out and be a great man before Israel. ‘Oh, my Lord, wherewith shall I save Israel .? Behold, my family is poor in Manasseh, and I am the least in my father’s house.’ But, had Gideon not been poor in Manasseh, and the least in his father’s house, God would have gone elsewhere for a leader to deliver Israel. And this is always the way of the Lord with men who are to do a great work for Him and for His people — ’ to that man will I look, saith the Lord, even to him that is poor and of a contrite spirit, and who trembleth at My word.’

And God said to Gideon, What sign shall I show thee to assure and to confirm thee that thou art he who shall deliver Israel? And the quaint fancy of Gideon fell on a sheep’’s fleece now wet and now dry when all around it was now dry and now wet. A strange, indeed a fantastic, request to make of God. But, all the same, Gideon made it and got it. ‘Is there humour in the divine mind?”* asked one of his congenial students at Dr. Duncan, instancing, at the same time, what looked to him like some examples of something not unlike humour both in creation and in providence. ‘It’s true and ifs no true,’ was the old doctor’s answer. And God did so that night; for it was dry upon the fleece only, and there was dew on all the ground. You have the whole story from ’ a pen that ennobles and idealises all that it touches.’ But you may not have read this addition from another pen, that Gideon’s mother took that so versatile fleece of his, and cut it out, and sewed it up with her own hands into a soldier’s mantle for her elect son: a mantle which he wore under his armour and next his heart in all his after-battles; and his men always witnessed that Gideon with his fleece on was full of hope when they were full of despair; and again, that he was full of a good captain’s caution and forethought when they would have gone headlong to their own destruction. How often I wish with all the world that Pascal had been spared to develop his Thoughts and finish his Apology. What lessons I could then have read you out of Gideon’s wonderful fleece! Pascal must have had something great in his mind about Gideon, for we see him taking down Gideon’s name in his notebook again and again. But, as we know, Pascal did not live to digest his rich notebook into the great book of his life.

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