Reflections on God and Money: An Idol In Israel (5)

Then the men of Israel said to Gideon, ‘Rule over us, you and your son and your grandson also, for you have saved us from the hand of Midian’. Gideon said to them, ‘I will not rule over you, and my son will not rule over you; the Lord will rule over you’. … [He] went and lived in his own house.

Now Gideon had seventy sons, his own offspring, for he had many wives. And his concubine who was in Shechem also bore him a son, and he called his name Abimelech. And Gideon the son of Joash died in a good old age and was buried in the tomb of Joash his father, at Ophrah of the Abiezrites.

Judges 8:22-32

Gideon had stuck his neck out to reject idolatry, replace the altar to Baal and Asherah and deliver his country from foreign oppression. Unfortunately, he ended up establishing a new kind of idolatry so that as soon as he died the people turned back to Baal and Asherah!

In return for delivering them from foreign raiders, Israelites not only wanted to make Gideon their king but for him to establish a royal dynasty, so that his sons would rule after him. Gideon refused this offer. At first glance, his reasons seem noble, ‘the Lord will rule over you’, but the truth was that Gideon wanted status, honour and privilege in order to live like a king but without the responsibility.

To have 70 children, Gideon needed to have many wives. Not only was this just like the kings of other nations, and just the sort of behaviour that Israel’s later kings indulged, but it was contrary to the behaviour that Moses set out for any king of Israel. Moses guidance is recorded in Deuteronomy 17:

When you come to the land that the Lord your God is giving you, and you possess it and dwell in it and then say, ‘I will set a king over me, like all the nations that are around me’, you may indeed set a king over you whom the Lord your God will choose… Only he must not acquire many horses for himself… And he shall not acquire many wives for himself, lest his heart turn away, nor shall he acquire for himself excessive silver and gold…

Gideon also accumulated ‘excessive silver and gold’ and other valuable goods and no doubt used some of that wealth to maintain his harem. Moreover, he named one of his sons Abimelech, which means son of a king or father of a king, and which may have also been used as a royal title as well as a personal name.

But worse of all, Gideon made his home town, Ophrah, a centre for worship to rival the Tabernacle that was at Shiloh. He did this by setting up a new kind of idol, one that was recognisably ‘Jewish’ and so probably did not seem like idolatry at all!

I will explain what I mean tomorrow.

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Friday 25 October 2013

An Idol In Israel (5)