1. Triumphant, and bearing splendid trophies of his triumph Gideon recrossed the Jordan. Whether he was the object of a great popular enthusiasm, and in what manner any such enthusiasm was expressed, we are not informed. But one thing is mentioned, and in it we see the reflection of the national sentiment. He was asked to accept the position of ruler. The word “king” is not used; but the reality signified by the word is formally and solemnly offered. And not for himself only, but for his family also. For the first time in Israel's history the idea of a hereditary dynastic government is articulated. These men were so dazzled by the splendour of human achievements that they ignored the Divine influence which was the source of them. Gideon's campaign was especially designed to avoid the danger of the people attributing to men what was really the work of God. Yet they regarded Gideon as the sole hero, and forgot to glorify God.
2. To his great honour, the patriotic virtue of Gideon was not moved by this great temptation. He was mindful of what they had forgotten; and to the invitation, “Rule thou over us, both thou, and thy son, and thy son's son also,” his prompt answer, in the true spirit of the theocracy, was, “I will not rule over you, neither shall my son rule over you: the Lord shall rule over you.” Considering that the love of power is one of the strongest passions in man, and that Gideon was the father of a large family of promising sons, whose advancement might seem a reasonable object of paternal solicitude, this refusal, solely on principle, to become the first monarch of the Hebrew state deserves to be ranked with the most illustrious examples of patriotic self-denial that history has recorded. Gideon's conduct here displays not only disinterestedness but faith of a high order. That his faith was not perfect is only another way of saying that he, like every one else, was not free from the weaknesses incident to humanity.
If you demand disinterestedness in the sense of gratifying no principle of one's nature, your quest is hopeless; it can't be found. A missionary is disinterested, though he is gratifying love. So was an Italian, who led a man into mortal sin, and then stabbed him, that he might straightway go to eternal damnation. Disinterested! he sacrificed himself for hate. The truth is, that disinterestedness, as it is called, is in itself neither good nor bad. Its quality depends on its motive, and on whether it terminates or not on self. The devil is as disinterested as Gabriel; but the one is prompted by hate, and the other by love to God.1 [Note: A. A. Hodge, in Princetoniana, 207.]
3. Gideon declined the kingship, but he did not retire to his farm like the Roman Cincinnatus. He did not continue to judge Israel under a palm tree, like Deborah. On the contrary, there are tokens, in the brief notice of his latter days, of a state and importance bordering on the regal, and tokens, it must be added, of a tendency to overstep the bounds of rule in the fear of God, and of that moral deterioration which too often follows great prosperity. The rich spoils of war became his; he made an ephod of the golden ornaments-“which thing became a snare unto Gideon, and to his house.”
4. Gideon's devotion to God appears to have been sincere and earnest. He desired to offer Him the choicest of the spoil. But, like many other good men, he appears to have been unable to worship Him except in a visible form, with the usual, in fact the universal, result-the gradual but certain deterioration of the moral and spiritual instincts of those who so worship Him. The making of the ephod was a pious work. Let us believe that it was the interpretation of a genuinely pious feeling. The connexion of the statement of the desire for the ear-rings with the refusal of the hereditary rule on the ground that Jehovah was the only Ruler over Israel, suggests that, in this desire, Gideon had regard to Jehovah's glory. He may have thought that, by devoting the spoil to a religious purpose, he was teaching the people that their homage was due to the Unseen King, that by Him the victory had been gained, and to Him its fruits should be dedicated.
But, whatever may have been Gideon's motives, the result of his action was deplorable. He made Israel to sin. Sin was the cause of all the evil that Gideon in his bravery had all his life been battling with; but, instead of going himself, and taking all his Ironsides and all his people up with him to God's house against sin, Gideon set up a sham house of God of his own, and a sham service of God of his own, with the result to himself and to Israel which the sacred writer puts in such plain words. Think of Gideon, of all men in Israel, leading all Israel a-whoring away from God!
Though an idol is “nothing in the world” (1Co_8:4), there is nothing in the world more real than idolatry. Putting something else in God's place, making a God of something else than God-that is a very real transaction.1 [Note: R. W. Barbour, Thoughts, 64.]
5. It is evident that in Gideon we have reached the climax of the period. We feel “all the goodness” of Gideon. There is a sweetness and nobleness blended with his courage, such as lifts us into a higher region; something of the past greatness of Joshua, something of the future grace of David. But he was, as we should say, before his age. He remains as a character apart, faintly understood by others, imperfectly fulfilling his own ideas, staggering under a burden to which he was not equal. There was much primitive grossness in his conception of religion, of war, and of government. Nevertheless the central, sovereign, animating power in the man's soul was an absolute conviction that, whatever came, he would do the will of the one true righteous God of heaven and of earth. That made his career glorious; for in so doing he was faithful to the highest light he had access to.
Be faithful unto death. Christ proffers thee
Crown of a life that draws immortal breath:
To thee He saith, yea, and He saith to me,
“Be faithful unto death.”
To every living soul that same He saith,
“Be faithful”:-whatsoever else we be,
Let us be faithful, challenging His faith.
Tho' trouble storm around us like the sea,
Tho' hell surge up to scare us and to scathe,
Tho' heaven and earth betake themselves to flee,
“Be faithful unto death.”1 [Note: Christina G. Rossetti, Verses. 115.]
