Transcript
CJ (0:00)
Foreign.
Shelby (0:05)
Hey, this is Shelby and CJ we're walking you through the Book of Judges. We're in chapters seven through nine today. A lot of action in the first six chapters that we've covered in a lot more to come today. So we left off our reading yesterday with Gideon. We're going to kind of wrap up his story today. Right, C.J.
CJ (0:24)
that's exactly right. So we left off with Gideon and the fleece, and now we're at the cusp of battle where he's going to actually secure salvation from those who are oppressing Israel. But again, being Gideon, he's still a little cowardly. So they're on the cusp of battle, and God says, well, you know, you're afraid and you have a lot of troops. So I actually want to whittle down all these troops you have. And I only want to save Israel using a really, really small number of soldiers, so. So that I get all the glory. And so you guys don't think you did it yourself. So what started out as 22,000 soldiers is whittled down to 300, which is
Shelby (0:59)
wild, by the way, from 22,000 down to 300.
CJ (1:03)
But again, Gideon's still afraid. So he sneaks down to the camp. God instructs him to sneak down to the camp of the enemies. And he overhears someone recount a dream they had where they were destroyed. And someone says, oh, that must be Gideon. So I think this probably puffs up Gideon, and he feels like, okay, I can actually secure a victory for the people.
Shelby (1:22)
Okay, so then, does everything turn out all right? Is Gideon, like, confident and ready to go into battle now?
CJ (1:28)
Well, they win the battle. He routes the enemies. But then there's sort of some internal conflict between Israelites, the Ephraimites, another tribe of Israel. They are bothered that Gideon didn't invite them to come down and take part in the battle. So then Gideon, he goes and he's chasing these remaining Midianites. And a few of the Israelite cities are unwilling to give him food and help him out because they don't really know where the battle is going to go. Is Israel going to win or the Canaanites going to win? And they want to be in the good graces of the Canaanites just in case. So they're sort of hedging, right? And then finally, Gideon captures these two men, these remaining Midianites, who are fleeing from him. And we find out that Gideon is mad at them because they also killed his brothers at some time past. So it started out as Sort of a pure victory for the Lord. We see that Gideon has some personal motive. And this idea of personal motive or mixed motives is going to be a theme that we're going to continue to see in the Book of Judges, too. So just something to keep in mind. So then again, he's a coward, so he tries to get his son to kill these remaining two commanders. And the commanders even say, you're going to have a boy kill us. You should do it yourself. So again, Gideon's true colors are coming out. And then, because Gideon finally secures this victory, Israel says, hey, you should be our king. But Gideon, like a good man. So at least in this way, he's acting rightly. He's saying, no, I'm not going to be your king. But that. That moral victory is soon squashed because then he asks Israel for some of the loot that they've gotten from the battle. And he takes some of the gold earrings as part of the spoil from the Midianites to create this thing called an aphod, which I think we talked about in Leviticus and we've probably talked about in previous episodes, and it's only reserved for the priests. And he crafts this golden aphod, which should maybe remind us of the golden calf in Exodus. So we know where this is probably going. This is probably not going to be a good thing. And it says that all of Israel stumbled after this, this little aphod, meaning that even though he destroyed an altar from an idolatrous shrine, I should say, at the beginning of his story, and he constructed an altar for the Lord at the beginning of his story, by the end of his story, he's sort of doing the same thing. He's reconstructing this means of idolatry, which sort of shows that even though he saved Israel, Israel's sort of in the same place they were before. So that's. That's where we're at so far with Gideon.