There would seem to have been two calls addressed to Gideon; or, if not, there are two accounts of the one call. In any case the narratives must be treated separately.
i. The First Call
The Book of Judges is one continuous exhibition of God's providential prevention of the destruction of true religion. Whenever the Hebrew conquerors amid their Canaanite vassals had become supine, when their relation to Jehovah had grown slack, and their religious enthusiasm feeble, when selfishness, comfort, and luxury were their supreme ends in life, they in their turn became weak, the Philistines and their other enemies fell upon them, made forays into their land, seized parts of it, until by misery they were compelled to return to their loyalty and to their God, Jehovah.
1. In the defeat of Sisera the last attempt of the old inhabitants of the land of Canaan to recover their sway was put down. The next event is wholly different. It is the invasion of the tribes of the adjoining desert. The whole of Southern Palestine lay at the mercy of the Midianites-hordes of barbarians who lived by pillage and rapine. The unity of Israel was broken, and its unhappy people were a helpless prey in the clutches of their fierce and merciless tormentors. The one thing the children of Israel were so slow to see was that their unity as a people depended on the purity of their faith. As soon as they began to be taken in the toils of idolatries, some lost their soul to Baal, some to Ashtaroth, and some to Melech; and in the very multiplicity of these base types of worship the unity of the nation was lost. Israel was “greatly impoverished”; they made dens in the mountains, and caves and strongholds, leaving the fertile vales to the marauding hosts of the desert.
2. In the midst of the distress of Israel a cry went up to the Lord from some of them; and the Lord answered by an unnamed prophet, whose mission was to remind them that they had been long in idolatry, in disobedience, and in disregard of the Lord's commands. But to Israel's cry there was another answer. When repentance was well begun and the tribes turned from the heathen rites which separated them from each other and from Divine thoughts, freedom again became possible, and God raised up a liberator. And just as in the other invasions and oppressions, so here, the deliverer is sought in the locality nearest to the chief scene of the invasion. Overhanging the plain of Esdraelon, where the vast army of the Midianites was encamped, were the hills of Western Manasseh. It was from a small family of this proud tribe that the champion of Israel unexpectedly arose-Gideon, son of Joash of the tribe of Manasseh, who resided at Ophrah, in Gilead beyond Jordan, the most heroic of all the characters of this period.
3. It was whilst Gideon was brooding over the wrongs of his family and of his country that the call came upon him. The scene was long preserved, and the manner of the call carries us back to the visions of the patriarchal age. Gideon had succeeded in getting together a quantity of wheat, which was to be food for himself and his family. Having saved it from the raids of the Midianites, and kept it from the searching eye of the robber, he brought his grain to the winepress that he might thresh it ready for use. He was in this act when the angel of Jehovah appeared to him. Gideon's position and occupation brought out most significantly the low and unhappy condition into which Israel had fallen. He was threshing wheat, not in the usual place and manner-but “by the winepress, to hide it from the Midianites.” Poverty and subjection are here. His family, as we learn from his own lips, is the poorest in Manasseh, and he himself is the least in his father's house. The times can never have looked darker or drearier to any human eyes than to the youngest son of Joash the Abiezrite, working in fear and poverty, while the shadow of a cruel and seemingly invincible oppression rested on his unhappy land. Yet to this soul with darkened faith, heir to national despair and family misfortune, came the great vision of God and duty-the only vision that can lift any soul above such circumstances as these, and set it in the broad highway of hope and service. “The Lord is with thee, thou mighty man of valour,” said the messenger of God. Gideon's reply proves how sore his spirit was. Whether the messenger was an angelic visitor or a human prophet matters little: in any case, he represented God to Gideon's mind. And yet he took up the authentic word, and doubted it. “If the Lord be with us, why then is all this befallen us? The Lord hath forsaken us, and delivered us into the hands of the Midianites.” After the manner of men, this seems to be a very sensible reply. He could not see God in the affliction. He was unable to recognize the Almighty in the poverty and suffering through which they were passing. Great and valiant and mighty as Gideon was, he was but a man.
4. Gideon was not going to accept a mere religious phrase in place of a Divine fact: He had too profound a conviction of God's power to believe He could be present without interfering to suppress unrighteousness. He desired a sign; but his wish was a note of habitual caution, not of disbelief. He would do anything that God commanded him, but he absolutely refused to act for himself. He would be sure that the Lord was with him at every turn. This is not cowardice; it is that true discretion which is the better part of valour-to attempt nothing without the Lord. The sign was granted. For, when he laid his prepared kid and unleavened cakes upon the rock, the angel of the Lord put forth the end of the staff that was in his hand and touched the flesh and the unleavened cakes, and there rose up fire out of the rock and consumed them. This circumstance betokened, not rejection of the gift, but its acceptance in a higher sense; the present becomes a sacrifice. Gideon no longer hesitated or questioned. He rejoiced in the merciful visitation; accepted its message; closed with its call; and worshipped the Lord, who had so graciously come to him: “Then Gideon built an altar there unto the Lord, and called it Jehovah-shalom”-“the Lord sent peace.” The altar, with its title, testified to the faith and gratitude and gladness of this man, called to the service of the Lord. It was his significant acceptance of that high service, and his solemn pledge to go through with it, depending on his Mighty Master, and confident of a happy issue by His all-sufficient help.
Don't allow your heart to hold or to utter such a thought as that you do not trust God. Though you feel weak in faith, don't give way to distrust, don't permit it in yourself. How often is that call given as a needful one, “Be of good courage,” “Be strong”! Hold fast the beginning of your confidence without wavering; for He is faithful that hath promised. You know that He is worthy of being trusted, that His love may be trusted safely, that there is no safety but in trusting in Him. You know all this,-and you know that now, in this life of trial, He is trying our faith. After having shown us what He is to us, what His heart is toward us, in the gift of Jesus, He will prove our faith and strengthen it by sorrow and suffering. In Jesus He has shown us the way to glory, the only way; and what is that way? Sorrow, and grief, and death, suffered in the spirit of confidence.1 [Note: Letters of Thomas Erskine of Linlathen, i. 283.]
He by whom God is known, perceiving how He governs all things, confides in Him as his guardian and protector, and casts himself entirely upon His faithfulness-perceiving Him to be the source of every blessing, if he is in any strait or feels any want, he instantly recurs to His protection and trusts to His aid-persuaded that He is good and merciful, he reclines upon Him with sure confidence, and doubts not that, in the Divine clemency, a remedy will be provided for his every time of need-acknowledging Him as his Father and his Lord, he considers himself bound to have respect to His authority in all things, to reverence His majesty, aim at the advancement of His glory, and obey His commands-regarding Him as a just judge, armed with severity to punish crimes, he keeps the judgment-seat always in his view.2 [Note: Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, 129.]
ii. The Second Call
There now follows what seems to be a second version of the call of Gideon and the building of the altar. Jehovah calls Gideon first of all to destroy the altar of Baal which belongs to his father and the sacred post (asherah) that stands beside it; to build on a designated spot an altar of Jehovah, and offer upon it a certain bullock as a dedicatory sacrifice. He does so by night. When the sacrilege is discovered and its perpetrator detected, the townspeople demand that he be put to death. His father Joash persuades them to leave it to Baal to avenge the outrage done him: “If he be a god, let him plead for himself.” The oracular words of Joash, who as the custodian of the holy place was naturally the priest of Baal, explain the name Jerubbaal.
There may be difficulties in the details of this narrative, but it faithfully exhibits the twofold call to Gideon which forms the framework of the rest of his history. The first call is the mission-almost of a prophetic character-to strike a decisive blow at the growing tendency to Phœnician worship in the central tribes of Palestine. He was sent, first and foremost, to recover a lost ideal. Israel had lowered to the level of the rest of the surrounding nations. Her people had broken down the barriers, intermarried, abandoned what was distinctive in her own religious life, borrowed the ritual of idolatry from this tribe and the other, and so stood discrowned and dethroned, her power lost, her glory diminished and destroyed. The second call is that by which in later times Gideon has been chiefly known-the war of insurrection against Midian.
1. Gideon began his work at once where it is hardest-among his own people and in his father's house. His father had an altar to Baal: it must have meant for Gideon a more painful struggle of conscience to initiate the work of reform so near home. The Midianites were a cruel foe, but Baal and the Asherim were deadlier and more cruel foes. The Midianites inflicted physical woes, but idolatry struck at the soul of the nation. Gideon's sword was drawn first against the spirit of idolatry. At no time in his career was the strength and independence (or, rather, God-dependence) of his character revealed as at this moment. It was an unpopular deed he was told to perform; one that demanded the noblest kind of heroism, and the probable result of which would be alienation from his friends. He knew the risks and took them. The word of the Lord was in his soul: “Peace be unto thee, fear not.” It was either death for him or life for the Kingdom of God.
Once for the least of children of Manasses
God had a message and a deed to do,
Wherefore the welcome that all speech surpasses
Called him and hailed him greater than he knew;
Asked him no more, but followed him and found him,
Filled him with valour, slung him with a sword,
Bade him go on until the tribes around him
Mingled his name with naming of the Lord.1 [Note: F. W. H. Myers, Saint Paul.]
2. Having first, then, cast out the beam from the eye of the nation itself, Gideon was free to deal straightly with evils outside its own life. This was the second part of his work, and the preface to this second chapter was a new vision, which marked a further stage in the progress of his own religious insight. But Gideon began to be nervous again. Beheld from afar the battle seems grand and exciting; but when it is imminent, when the enemy is right in view, and the raw, undisciplined material needs to be ordered and arrayed, the stoutest heart will quail, the boldest and strongest faith will have its shrinkings and fears. Is it to be wondered at that, with the thousands of Israel's chivalry waiting for his word, ready to fight but for the most part men “who before knew nothing thereof,” Gideon, also an untried soldier and ignorant of methods of warfare, invested suddenly with a tremendous responsibility, should pause, should retire from the noise and glare of the host, and pour out his heart before the God whose call he had obeyed? He had yet to arm his own inward faith for victory. He would venture to ask God for proofs of His helpfulness. Gideon asked God once more to confirm his call by a simple sign. He put a fleece on the middle of an open threshing-floor, and in the morning it was quite wet, while the soil all around was dry. The next night the miracle was reversed, the soil being wet all round and the fleece perfectly dry Then Gideon at last is at the disposal of God.
Gideon's action here again arose, not from cowardice, but from his innate aversion to taking risks. It shows an absolute distrust of his own personality, an abandoning of all confidence in anything within himself. He was a thoughtful man, who had difficulties other men had not. But now, having again been granted a sign, his mind was made up. He believed he had been called of God to fight his country's battles. We never again read of a sign asked. He knows whom he is trusting. Henceforth he is-
One who never turned his back, but marched breast forward,
Never doubted clouds would break;
Never dreamed, though right were worsted, wrong would triumph,
Held we fall to rise, are baffled to fight better,
