Thus says the Lord, the God of Israel: I led you up from Egypt and brought you out of the house of bondage. And I delivered you from the hand of the Egyptians and from the hand of all who oppressed you, and drove them out before you and gave you their land. And I said to you, ‘I am the Lord your God; you shall not fear the gods of the Amorites in whose land you dwell.’ But you have not obeyed my voice.
Judges
6:8-10
The story
of Gideon, told in Judges chapters 6-8, is one of the better known stories in
the Bible because it appeals not only to children but to all of us who aspire
to rise above our circumstances in order to serve God and our communities. But
in these few Reflections I would like to focus more on the background to the
story.
Judges
chapter 6 opens with a blunt statement of fact: ‘The people of Israel did what
was evil in the sight of the Lord, and the Lord gave them into the hand of
Midian seven years.’ What was the ‘evil’ they had done? The answer becomes
clear as the story unfolds: idolatry. And, almost certainly, sexual immorality
that so often accompanies idol worship in the Bible.
The
punishment was severe: the Midianites together with the Amalekites overpowered
Israel, repeatedly taking or destroying their crops and livestock and leaving
behind only wasteland.
As a
result, many of the Israelites had retreated into mountain caves. The first
time we read of Gideon, however, he is not hiding in a cave but secretly threshing
wheat in a wine press in the hope that the invaders would not find it.
The hopelessness
of the situation was not lost on the Israelites and they turned to God for
help. But the help they got was not what they wanted! God sent a prophet to
point out their sin. The prophet’s message is the passage at the start of today’s
Reflection.
What
fascinates me is that the Israelites seem to have done nothing in response to
the prophet’s message. I do not know just how commonplace idolatry was in
Israel at the time, although I assume that it was widespread and not limited to
the area where Gideon lived, but perhaps it is best to limit our speculation to
why the people in Gideon’s local community did nothing. Or why Gideon himself
did nothing.
After
all, there was one very obvious thing that Gideon and his neighbours should
have done: to tear down the pagan shrine where they lived!
I will resume this
theme tomorrow.
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2013.
Scripture
quotations are from The Holy Bible, English Standard Version® (ESV®), copyright
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