He Sent the Army Home

A man is beating wheat at the bottom of a winepress.

That would have sounded ridiculous to the first people who heard it. You beat wheat in the open, on a high flat place, so the wind carries off the husks. A winepress is a pit cut into rock for stamping grapes — no wind, no view. There is one reason to work in a hole: you do not want to be seen.

This is the book of Judges, a few hundred years after Israel settled in the land and long before it had a king. When enemies overran them God raised up a rescuer — a judge, meaning a leader who fights for you, not a man in a courtroom.

The enemy this time was Midian. Every harvest they swept in with their animals and stripped the fields bare, until Israel was hiding in caves (Judges 6:1-6). The man in the pit is Gideon, trying to save enough grain to eat.

Then someone sits down under the tree above him.

1. God called him brave while he was hiding

The angel of the LORD appeared to him and said to him, "The LORD is with you, O mighty man of valour."

Judges 6:12

An angel is a messenger sent from God. "Mighty man of valour" is soldier language, what you call a proven fighter. It is said to a man crouched in a grape pit, hiding from raiders.

God is not flattering him and he is not being sarcastic. He is naming what Gideon will be once God is with him. Gideon does not take it that way.

If the LORD is with us, why then has all this happened to us? And where are all his wonderful deeds that our fathers recounted to us?

Judges 6:13

That is not a thank you. It is a complaint, and an honest one. Gideon grew up on stories of God rescuing Israel out of Egypt, and he is looking at a stripped field. The Bible records it without correcting him — worth noticing if you have ever thought the same and assumed you could not say it.

He is not the first to argue. Centuries earlier God told Moses to demand that the king of Egypt free Israel.

Who am I that I should go to Pharaoh and bring the children of Israel out of Egypt?

Exodus 3:11

Pharaoh was the title of Egypt's king, and Moses did not feel like a rescuer either. God never answers by listing the man's good qualities. He says "I will be with you" — the same answer Gideon gets (Judges 6:16).

Paul, writing to a church in the Greek city of Corinth, says this is a pattern rather than an accident.

God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong... so that no human being might boast in the presence of God.

1 Corinthians 1:27-29

To boast is to take the credit. God picks the unimpressive on purpose, so that afterwards nobody can point at the person and say they pulled it off.

2. The fleece was doubt, not a method

Here is the part most people have heard, usually for the wrong reason. Gideon asks for a sign.

I am laying a fleece of wool on the threshing floor. If there is dew on the fleece alone, and it is dry on all the ground, then I shall know.

Judges 6:36-37

A fleece is the woolly coat shorn off a sheep. He leaves it out overnight and asks God to soak the wool while the stone floor stays dry, which is not how dew behaves. God does it. Then Gideon asks for the opposite, and God does that too.

This gets preached as a way of finding out what God wants. Read the passage and that falls apart. Gideon already had a straight promise: "I will be with you, and you shall strike the Midianites as one man" (Judges 6:16). He is not seeking an answer. He is asking for the same answer again, twice.

He knows it, too.

Let not your anger burn against me; let me speak just once more.

Judges 6:39

That is a man bracing to be told off. He asks anyway, and God is patient with him. But patience with Gideon is not permission for everybody. Jesus was blunt with people who kept demanding proof.

An evil and adulterous generation seeks for a sign.

Matthew 12:38-39

The men asking were religious teachers who had already watched him heal people. They were not short of evidence; they wanted a performance. The difference is not the request but what sits behind it. Gideon is frightened and wants to be sure. They were stalling.

There is room in the Bible for frightened. A father brought his sick son to Jesus and said this out loud.

I believe; help my unbelief.

Mark 9:24

Both halves in one sentence, and Jesus healed the boy anyway. Bring God the honest version of your doubt rather than the tidy one.

3. Thirty-two thousand men were too many

Gideon finally gathers an army: thirty-two thousand men, against raiders too many to count. Then God says something no general has ever said.

The people with you are too many for me to give the Midianites into their hand, lest Israel boast over me, saying, "My own hand has saved me."

Judges 7:2

Too many. Not too few. Win with an army that size, God says, and Israel will believe the army did it. So everyone frightened is sent home and twenty-two thousand leave (Judges 7:3). Still too many, and after a test at the water only three hundred remain (Judges 7:7).

Thirty-one thousand seven hundred men walked away before the fighting started. That is God removing the one thing Gideon would have leaned on.

This exact danger had been named to Israel long before, while they were still outside the land.

Beware lest you say in your heart, "My power and the might of my hand have gotten me this wealth."

Deuteronomy 8:17

The warning is not about failing. It is about succeeding, and then explaining the success with yourself. Most of us know the small version — the test you prayed about and afterwards put down to hard work.

Paul learned the same lesson the hard way. He had some painful trouble he never names, and asked God three times to take it away. The answer was no.

My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.

2 Corinthians 12:9

Grace is a gift you have not earned and cannot repay. Paul is not promised that the weakness will be fixed. He is told it is the place where God's strength shows, which is harder than a rescue.

The three hundred won with trumpets, clay jars and torches, and the enemy camp turned on itself in the dark (Judges 7:20-22). Nobody could call that a military victory.

4. He said the right thing and then built the wrong one

After the win, Israel offers Gideon a crown.

I will not rule over you, and my son will not rule over you; the LORD will rule over you.

Judges 8:23

That is exactly right, and he means it. Israel had no king because God was meant to be their king, and Gideon refuses to take that place. Then, almost in the same breath, he asks everyone for their gold.

Gideon made an ephod of it... and all Israel whored after it there, and it became a snare to Gideon and to his family.

Judges 8:27

An ephod was a priest's garment, used when asking God for a decision. Gideon makes a gold one, sets it up in his home town, and people start bowing to it. A snare is a hidden trap. He turned down the throne and handed the nation an idol instead. The story does not excuse him.

It did not hold, either. Generations later Israel demanded a king anyway.

No! But there shall be a king over us, that we also may be like all the nations.

1 Samuel 8:19-20

They wanted what everyone else had. The question Gideon named — who actually rules here — was not settled by Gideon.

Much later, a crowd tried to force a crown onto someone who could have taken it.

Perceiving then that they were about to come and take him by force to make him king, Jesus withdrew again to the mountain by himself.

John 6:15

He had just fed thousands of people, and they wanted him as king on their terms: a leader who keeps the food coming. He walked away — not refusing to rule, but refusing to rule the way they wanted.

He emptied himself, by taking the form of a servant... he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross.

Philippians 2:7-8

Emptied himself means he let go of his rights, not of who he was. Gideon refused a crown and then made an idol. Jesus refused a crown, went to a cross, and is the king Israel never managed to produce. The whole shape of the story — the weak man, the shrinking army, the win nobody can claim — lands here, on a rescue that cost the rescuer everything and leaves nobody anything to boast about.

What to do this week

Say the complaint instead of swallowing it. Gideon's first words to God were "why has all this happened to us?" and God kept talking to him. Write down what you have been careful not to say to God, then say it.

Stop asking for one more sign about something you already know. If you know the right thing to do, name the day you will do it instead of waiting for a feeling.

Name out loud who did the thing that went well. The next time something works out this week, at school or work or home, say "that was not just me" to one person. That is the point of the three hundred.

Check what you have quietly set up to bow to. Gideon's trap was built out of a real victory. Ask what good thing has become the thing you would not give up, and tell God plainly.

The wheat was still in a pit and the army was still going home. God rescued them anyway, and made sure nobody could take the credit.