Mythic Stories of the Judges: Gideon

Embark on a mythic journey through the Old Testament book of Judges with us! 📖 The complex story of Gideon challenges conventional perceptions, revealing Gideon's struggles with abdicated responsibility and the allure of personal glory. 🗡️ When the full story is taken into account, Gideon's narrative serves as a cautionary tale of the flawed hero in the Bible. 🛡️ Join us as we unravel the mysteries of this unique book, nestled between the conquest of the Promised Land and the rise of the Israelite Monarchy. 🌟 

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Chapters

• 0:00 An Unexpected Detour to Thermopylae
• 9:05 Unpacking the Symbolism in Judges
• 15:00 The Story of Gideon: Beyond Sunday School
• 28:29 Gideon's First Task: The Proper Sacrifice
• 36:51 Gideon's Fleece: A Test of Faith
• 41:02 The Battle Strategy: Reducing Forces and Trusting in God
• 1:02:05 Gideon's Transformation: From Humble Beginnings to Questionable Actions
• 1:18:08 Abimelech's Rise and Fall: The Consequences of Gideon's Inaction
• 1:30:51 Reflections on Gideon: The Flawed Hero and His Legacy

Transcript

Gideon

J.R.: [00:00:00] And it seems like an appropriate response from God would be, dude, you broke a pot. 

David: I just asked you to drop a vase. 

J.R.: That's all I wanted you to do. Problem would have been solved, 

David: We're sitting in the same room. That's always a treat.

J.R.: Yeah, there you go. Back in our hometown. Back sitting in Tallahassee. Sitting at our mom's house. 

David: Yeah. 

J.R.: Mom! Meatloaf! 

David: Mom doing our laundry? 

J.R.: Yeah. It's nice. Nice morning, man. So, yeah. Good to see the family. We're in town for catching an FSU game. That'll be fun. <Yeah.> But yeah. It's always better to do this face to face. 

David: Yeah. Hopefully maybe a couple episodes done. We always get ambitious about, maybe knock the whole series out. 

J.R.: Yeah. Let's get 10 of these episodes done and then we get done two. 

David: Yeah. 

J.R.: You know, we might get done two. We'll see where it takes us. 

David: Yeah. Hopefully we'll get through a couple here. So jump right into our topic, I was thinking about, and this relates to our topic today. There's a tie in here. So I was thinking [00:01:00] about when we were in Delphi and we were headed to Meteora, I remember going to that souvenir shop, a bookshop. The guy was really nice and he said, Hey, where are you guys headed? And we said, well, we're headed off today to Meteora. I think it was a couple hour drive.

J.R.: Yeah. Yeah, it was like three or four hours and it was kind of boring territory. It's like you're in the mountains of Delphi, which is gorgeous. But then as soon as you get out of the mountains, it is just a flat plain and it's three hours across this. You can see the mountains way off in the distance, but it was just a long, boring drive.

David: We had seen pictures of Meteora. And I remember driving through this just flat plain thinking, I think we may have taken a wrong turn. 

J.R.: Yeah. Yeah. I thought we might be lost. 

David: This looks nothing like the destination that we saw in pictures, but it got us there. <Yeah. No.> But one of the neat things was the guy said, well, if you're going to Meteora, he said, you ought to stop by Thermopylae.

J.R.: Yeah, yeah, yeah. 

David: And both of us just looked at each other and we thought, Oh yeah. <Really yeah.> That's on the way? 

J.R.: [00:02:00] Yeah. I've seen the movie. 

David: So yeah, we actually, and it was just right off the highway and yeah, sure enough that we saw a little hill there where one of the generals commanded the troops where maybe Leonidas. Is that the king? Leonidas? 

J.R.: I think that's right. Yeah. 

David: And of course, so Thermopylae just real quick is the narrow pass in Greece where the Persian army got bottlenecked and a group of 300 Spartans <Right.> basically, I think held them at bay for three days. 

J.R.: Because they held them in a pass and at the time, and you can really see this even today, the jagged mountains are on your right. And while at the time they, they made it clear that it was the sea was to your left and there is, the sea is backed up now. So it's not a ...

David: So, the shoreline would have been a hundred yards closer than it is today. 

J.R.: Right. And so you're in this little narrow pass and it is this little kind of rocky outcropping flat area that kind of shoots through there and, and yeah, that was the bottleneck where the 300 defended against Persian army. <Yeah.> [00:03:00] Because they couldn't surround them, right? So yeah, it's that famous story. And it felt like a little bit, we pulled up, it felt a little bit like a tourist trap. 

David: Yeah. 

J.R.: Yeah, because it was kind of just a dirt parking lot and a kind of a janky little museum. But the museum was actually really cool. I mean, , they showed us a little video. 

David: Yeah. 

J.R.: Very helpful. And then we went and kind of hiked up in there and saw the hot springs. And yeah, anyway, it was very cool. 

David: They had a big statue. If I remember of a Spartan warrior, right. To kind of commemorate the spot. Yeah, it was definitely worth, it was a treat to be able to get off the beaten path and find that when we weren't planning it. <Right.> And that happened a lot to us on our travel days. 

J.R.: Yeah. It's like, yeah, I don't know if I would have traveled two hours to go see it, but since it was on the way, it was like, ah, it was just kind of a big bonus. And I immediately, went home back to the States, and had to watch 300 once again. Oh yeah, had to watch it again. Well, I'd seen it, you know, and it was, it was actually cool, but I appreciated the movie 300 the second time I watched it. The first time I watched it, it was kind of, [00:04:00] you know, it's a weird movie, you know.

David: I thought the same thing. 

J.R.: It's a little bit dramatic, it's a little bit, I don't, I don't know, it's kind of creepy, and the, camera shots were strange and anyway, but the second time I watched it, it occurred to me. It's like, Oh, they're trying to visually capture the idea of a myth. <Yes.> You know, and so they're showing this weird, dramatic, what we look at is like, why are they being so dramatic about this?

<Yeah.> And why are they, you know, the spray painted abs, and why are they kind of going over the top with all this visuals? And it's like, because that's what mythology is. It goes over the top with the description of things so that the reader captures and understands the deeper meaning. <Yeah.> Yeah. And I think, we kind of have that in Judges. 

David: Yeah, actually I was, I thought the exact same thing this morning. We didn't even. 

J.R.: We didn't plan that. 

David: We didn't plan this, but I actually thought the same thing. So I had my same experience, I had the same experience. When I watched 300 the first time, I didn't really like it. [00:05:00] I thought, man, this is so over the top. This is a famous battle. They didn't need to create monsters and the Persian King. <Yes.> Xerxes or Darius, I forget, <Right, Darius. Yes.> was larger than life. But then I saw probably the same thing you did which is an interview with the director who basically said Well, we're really trying to pull the mythic story out of that. And the more I thought about that it made sense then why they shot it the way they did but then I thought, this morning, I thought, that's what I think Judges is doing, and it may be a helpful way for people to try and understand that, <Yeah.> Thermopylae, 300 was an actual historical event. <Right.> But it had such greater mythic overtones and the movie tried to capture that. 

J.R.: Right. And if, you're a historian watching that movie, you're rolling your eyes thinking, come on Xerxes wasn't 12 feet tall. <Yeah. Yeah.> You know like you said, they're monsters and 

David: And you could get hung up on, well, there were no monsters there. 

J.R.: Yeah. Why they have to make this into a [00:06:00] comic book.

David: Yeah. 

J.R.: And this was an actual historic event. Let's be historically accurate. And I think, you're exactly right. The director is sitting there saying, no, I'm trying to visually capture the narrative myth. <Yeah.> And transport us there in that aspect. And I think you're exactly right. When we talked about Judges, we sat up until midnight last night talking about Gideon. And I do think that there's something about Judges that has this mythic quality. And there's these kind of strange - listen, we said this from the beginning: when you read Judges. There are plenty of times where you're saying, what in the world is this part of the story? <Yeah.> I do not remember this and there's all these strange little quirky qualities to the book that when you sit down and read it you catch. And it's almost like I don't know what to do with this. So you move on. Let me move on to Samson, you know? At least I know that story. <Yeah. Yeah,.> But what we were talking about last night is when you have these little quirky qualities, it's an invitation to dig. And what you and I were coming up with last night, we were like, man, there are so many threads to be pulled. So many ties together through [00:07:00] these oddball quirky. We were saying last night, look, we're going to have to figure out how to keep this podcast to under four hours. I don't know. 

David: This is, this is definitely qualifies a long form three hour podcast, but don't worry. We're going to try and keep it.

J.R.: Yeah. Yeah. Don't turn off yet. Yeah, that's right. 

David: Although here's a pro tip. Okay. I've learned this recently. If you're listening to a long podcast and you increase the playback speed to like, <Yeah.> one and a quarter. 

J.R.: Sure. Sometimes. Got it down to 45 minutes. Yeah. <Yeah. So, anyway.> And you can listen a lot faster than you can speak.

David: Yeah, exactly.

J.R.: So, yeah. You can actually pick it all up. Don't do that with Ben Shapiro, but you can do that with other podcasts, right? <Yeah. Yeah.> Ben Shapiro is permanently on 1.5 anyway, so. 

David: Yeah. So I think the movie 300 is actually a great example of what we're actually encountering here in Judges, which is we're hearing retelling of these stories that emerged from this time period of the judges. But you can also see them overlaid with some of these mythic [00:08:00] characteristics and ideas, right? That is meant to enhance, it's meant to actually to invite you to dig deeper. 

Yeah. And we tend to get hung up on. Well, what are they saying? Did that really happen? Or what does this number mean? and that's not what those are trying to do. They're trying to invite you to dig deeper and see the threads. <Right.> And yeah, we have that experience last night where our challenge today is going to be to not go into every little thread that we were pulling on last night because it's fascinating once you start seeing those.

J.R.: And I think I said last night, it's like, it says here Gideon had 70 sons, 70 sons? <Yeah.> You know, this is not, he's not, this isn't the time of, Methuselah and Adam, you know, they didn't live three, five hundred, a thousand years, right? <Yeah.> These are normal lifespans and the guy had 70 sons. Anyway, we'll get to that later so yeah that that's meant to be an image of something rather than necessarily a literal interpretation.

David: Yeah, it's meant to communicate something more than maybe the actual number of sons that he had.

J.R.: Right, and maybe he did have 70 sons It does say that [00:09:00] he had several wives. So it is possible, but that's not the point of it. <Right.> Don't get hung up on it. 

David: Right. Well, that leads us into, we'll talk a little bit more about how to understand Judges and maybe some of this mythic language that we're talking about, which is this idea of numbers. And we've talked about this in other episodes, especially the number 40, right? You know, when you encounter the number 40 in the Bible, it's telling you something, right? And it's not just conveying how many 24 hour days something happened. 

J.R.: Yeah. it's the division between two distinct time periods and , the often difficult journey across that division. And so again, we go back, you go back to the flood, 40 days, 40 nights, you go back to the Israelites in the wilderness for 40 years. And there's a lot of forties in Judges also a lot of uh, peaceful time, you know, after the first judge, it was a 40 year time of peace after Deborah is 40 year time of peace. After Ehud, there's an 80 year time of peace, which is just a doubling of 40. <Right.> It's like, what are the chances of this, right? 

David: And I think [00:10:00] there was even one where there was 20 years.

J.R.: Yeah, after Samson, there's 20 years. 

David: Which is kind of half of 40. <Right.> And each one of those time periods, then, is meant to convey, it's not a calendar marking off, here's how long there was peace. <Right.> Maybe that's an approximation. But it's meant to convey, Here's the peace that was ushered in by this judge, but it also conveys kind of the end of that time, right?

Because I think yesterday, I think we were joking because year 41 then comes, and what does that mean? There's no more peace. So 40 also is anticipating something on the other side of this time period. 

J.R.: Right. You're leaving something behind anticipating what's to come. Yeah. And it's that journey in between.

David: Yeah. 

J.R.: Right. And it's why scholars , try to take the literal numbers of Judges and they have problems fitting it together, saying, well, there's too much time here. <Yeah.> The, the time in between <Yeah.> the promised land, Joshua and the monarchy is too much time. And it's like, well, because it's, we're not necessarily talking about literal time; [00:11:00] we're talking about symbolic time. <Yeah.> Symbolic time of peace. 

David: Yeah, I've seen commentators try to finagle how all these events happened with the time periods that they're talking about in Judges, how it all crams into basically a period of, I think of 150 years or something. And it's, there's a lot of finagling going on unnecessarily. 

J.R.: Right, 'cause you're just missing the point of it. 

David: Yeah. You're missing the point. 

J.R.: Yeah. 

David: So that's kind of this idea of 40, you see that number often in Judges. <Yeah.> Another number you see a lot is 30 sons. A lot of people had 30 sons and you of course mentioned Gideon had 70 sons, right? But you see these multiples of 30 and we'll see that today with 30 with 300 with the number three, right? Even 30,000. So there's something to that number going on with 30. 

J.R.: Yeah. What's the significance of 30? What's, or, or, Because I'm thinking of, three days in the tomb, I'm thinking ...

David: Yeah, 30, so the best explanation I heard was that 30 is [00:12:00] basically something like a full measure. So if you have 30 sons, you had a full family. You had a full, complete family. 

J.R.: Yeah, you did. 

David: And the number ...

J.R.: Trust me, my family was full at two. <Yeah, okay.> Two kids and it was full. 

David: Well, according to the Bible, you fell short by about 28. <That's right.> But when something is numbered at 30, it was to convey like, this was how would you say it?

J.R.: Completion? 

David: It was kind of a, yeah, maybe a completion of your family or a completion of a clan. Or it was a large enough, we might say today it was a quorum, you know. There were enough people that whatever this counts. Something like that. <Okay.> And if you think about it, another number is 70. So Gideon had 70 sons. <Right.> And I think you'll see that number elsewhere in Judges also, which the number 70 is an assembly. 

J.R.: Okay. Yeah. Cause, you know, I just think of seven. It's a derivative of seven. So seven is the perfect number, you know, actually seven is a covenantial [00:13:00] number. I kind of learned that recently. We don't have to go there, but yeah, seven being intuitively you're like, well, seven is the perfect number. So 70 must be some kind of perfection. But you're saying it's an assembly. 

David: Well, yeah. All throughout the Bible, when you see the number 70, you're talking about the gathering of an assembly. And, of course, the divine assembly that we've talked about before. <Sure.> The table of nations. The 70 nations. <Yep.> Right? And so, this number 70 became synonymous with the gathering of an assembly. 

J.R.: Okay. Well, that's going to make sense later when we talk about Gideon's 70 sons. 

David: Yes. So, we'll encounter that with Gideon's 70 sons.

J.R.: Okay. Yeah. That makes sense. I like that. Okay. 

David: Another one , I think you pointed out that the number 11 or again, a variation of 11 <Yeah, sure.> occurs. And we were thinking that 11 is basically one shy of 12, which that wasn't our big insight because that's just math.

J.R.: Right. Right. But no, it's an incomplete 12. 

David: It's an incomplete 12. 

J.R.: Right. And so [00:14:00] 12 would be the 12 tribes, the 12 disciples. There's something complete about the idea of 12. And with the repetition of the number 11 throughout Judges is, yeah, a not so hidden meaning, maybe that ... 

David: Conveying an overarching theme of the book of Judges, which is that Israel is incomplete at this time.

J.R.: Incomplete. They're falling short. <Yes. Right? Of the intended 12 tribes and so when you see numbers like 22,000 or something as simple as 11 what you're seeing is a derivative of 11, that's sort of conveying this idea of incompleteness.

David: Yeah. Yeah. And a lot of that is just the story of Judges is Israel is forming, but it's not quite there yet. And it's a rocky road to get there. <Yeah. Yeah. That's right.> So those are some of the things. There's a lot of other numbers there, but and if you read Judges through, you'll see these same numbers repeated and it's a clue to pay attention to what's going on because they're trying to tell you something.

J.R.: Right. No, they definitely [00:15:00] are. 

David: You ready to start talking about Gideon? 

J.R.: Uh, Yeah, let's do it. 

David: Well, everyone knows the story of Gideon if you went to Sunday school. <Sure.> But you want to kind of, Yeah, 

J.R.: The Sunday school version? Okay. So what I remember about Gideon is what he was called by God to overcome their oppressors, the Midianites. And Gideon had a little bit of a weak faith. And so he had to kind of test God. He's like, okay, prove to me that this is what you want me to do. So lays out the fleece and I forget how it worked out, but basically he laid out the fleece and the ground was wet and the fleece was dry or the fleece was wet and the ground was dry.

David: Yeah, that's right. 

J.R.: Yeah. So he had this test for God and he got up and the test was proven, but he wasn't satisfied with that. And he turns around and he says, okay I believe the first time it was the fleece was wet and the ground was dry. And so he's like, okay, I want to flip flop this. Let's go, let's, let's mix it up. Now I want you to have the ground to be wet and the fleece to be dry. And he wakes up the next morning and there it is. So that was [00:16:00] always the Sunday school example of a weak faith, right? So he had a little bit of a weak faith, but he got over it. <Yeah.> God proved himself.

David: Not even this - I would say in some versions I heard not even necessarily a weak faith, just a kind of a verification, a testing of God. 

J.R.: Yeah. So it's sort of testing out God: are you sure this is what you want me to do? And so then of course he gathers up his men. He has too many and he has, what, 32,000 men? And he tells some of them to go home if you're scared. <Yeah.> A big group of them leave, 10,000 of them leave. And I wouldn't have remembered these numbers, by the way, if I hadn't just read it. So I am including the numbers. If you don't know the numbers, don't feel bad because I didn't, I had to look it back up. And there, again, there is significance to all these numbers, but 10,000 of them go home. That leaves 22,000. There's our 11 derivative, at least 22,000, that are there. And then he does this weird thing about have them all drink water. 

David: Yeah. That's what I remember. [00:17:00] <Yeah.> Sunday School. 

J.R.: Yeah. And, the way they drink water matters. That narrows 'em down to 300. So with those 300, he goes out to fight the Midianites. He surrounds them. The big wild military tactic is that he's gonna, they all have torches, they're hidden under what, the pots? 

David: The clay jars.

J.R.: Yeah, the clay jars. Yeah. And when I give the signal, we're going to break the clay jars. They're going to see all these torches, they're going to hear the shattering of the clay jars. And we're going to let God do his thing, right? And of course the Midianites get up and freak out and they start killing each other for some unknown reason. They start slaughtering each other and nobody had to raise a finger or pull out a sword to do anything against the Midianites because they did it to themselves, right?

David: Yeah. 

J.R.: And there's this big victory. And so therefore Gideon is a hero in the faith, right? Yeah, end of story. 

David: End of story. 

J.R.: Yeah, let's hand out the lemon cookies and the grape juice. 

David: Truly mythic [00:18:00] story. They surround the enemy with 300 and they break the jars and yell. And don't they sound the trumpets as well?

J.R.: Oh, yeah. Yeah, they blow the trumpets. Yeah. 

David: They blow the trumpets. Yeah. Victory achieved. Everyone goes home and lives happily ever after. 

J.R.: Yep, there you go. Brilliant. 

David: So that's probably the version that a lot of people have heard. Or if it comes to mind, unless you've just been reading through Judges, you go, yeah, that's pretty much the story, isn't it?

J.R.: Right. 

David: Well, I think as you and I were studying the story of Gideon, I don't know, I think I actually have a much think I have a much different picture now, <Yeah.> of what happened and what's going on both before and after the events that you just talked about. 

J.R.: Right, our thesis of Judges in general, is that Judges is this interim time between Joshua and the promised land. <Yeah.> And the monarchy. And it's this kind of lawlessness, right? And the judges represent individuals rising up to establish law in a lawless land, right? 

David: The heroes, yeah. 

J.R.: Right, the heroes. We tie it [00:19:00] into the hero. 

David: That's the hero story. 

J.R.: But, and we're clear about this, they all do it imperfectly, right? Deborah is the closest to the ideal. <Yeah.> But then we kind of, we kind of step down over and over until we get to Samson, who's really a bit of a mess. 

David: Yeah. 

J.R.: And so Gideon is not quite the perfect hero that the Sunday school story might represent. <Right.> And it's more, than just weak faith at the beginning and testing God. 

David: Yeah. 

J.R.: It's like, yeah, there's a pretty clear narrative through this story when you read chapters six through eight the beginning of Gideon all the way to his son Abimelech.

David: Which actually is chapter nine. So it's six through nine, right? 

J.R.: Yeah, carry that story through and you are gonna see a little bit different picture of Gideon, right? He has his heroic moment. He does have his faith in God. He is used by God, but overall, he's not the ideal judge. He's not the ideal image of the hero, <Right.> that we want to believe. 

David: Which he more actually resembles [00:20:00] the, you could say the realistic and relatable idea of the biblical hero, which is the flawed hero, right? 

J.R.: Yeah. Yeah, sure. 

David: And I think sometimes, well, we talk about, we joke around the Sunday school version. Sometimes you're left with the image of, here's a hero. What a great guy he was. <Right.> And, that's not the full story. So let's start, yeah, let's start pulling this story apart. <Yeah. > Alright, so let's start at the beginning with the story of Gideon. 

J.R.: Okay, the real story. 

David: The real story. 

J.R.: What was the VH1 show, Behind the Music? 

David: Yeah, there was, I was thinking, yeah, was always a tagline of: now we're gonna tell you the real story <Right.> behind the legend.

J.R.: You think you know, what Def Leppard was really about. Now, we're gonna tell you the real story. All right, so here's the real story of Gideon. We'll start off in chapter 6 and we start off with that famous line I told you; they say this seven times <seven times, ok.> in book of Judges: "The people in Israel did what was evil in the sight of the Lord." Right?

<Yeah.> "And the Lord gave them over [00:21:00] to the hand of Midian for seven years." So, we're back to that idea, we're doing evil in the sight the Lord after Deborah and Barak, we can't remember it, we can't hold on to their leadership, and we're going to go back to doing our own stupid thing. <Yeah.> So, here we are, back to the same old, same old, and the Midianites are oppressing the Israelites.

David: Yeah, and I believe Midian is south of what we think of Israel. <OK> Yeah, so Deborah, I think was up North. The Canaanite, the king of Canaan? <Yeah.> Take him down. So now we're going to move, basically, we're going to move to another part of this forming nation of Israel. And we're going to look at another group of people that are oppressing them.

J.R.: Right. Right. That's right. 

David: And I think we can't read through all this because it's like four chapters long, but basically you get the idea, if you skim through the first part of Judges chapter six, that they're trying to raise their crops, they're trying to harvest and that's going to play into the story a little bit. And because [00:22:00] of the Midianites raiding their fields, the Israelites basically have to live in caves up in the mountains. They have to kind of sneak down, harvest some crops, pull them back up, hide out. So that's the situation we find when Gideon comes on the scene. 

J.R.: Right. Yeah. The first mention of Gideon, Gideon was beating out wheat in the wine press, which is not where you beat out wheat, right?

David: Yeah, that would be a little detail easy to miss. 

J.R.: Yeah, yeah, you don't beat out the wheat in the wine press. And it says that he was doing it to hide it from the Midianites. Okay, so that's, the first mention we get of Gideon is that he is kind of processing this wheat in the wine press to hide it. And so right, at the beginning we've got this idea of Gideon's people being oppressed, that the wheat is being stolen from them. Their crops are being raised and he's in hiding. So we got this small picture of this guy, kind of hiding in a corner. <Yes.> That's where we get introduced.

David: And there's so many threads through here, we're not gonna have time to get to them on this. But [00:23:00] one of the threads you will see is, pay attention how often Gideon is found at night in the shadows hiding somewhere.

J.R.: Right, making himself small.

David: Yeah, yeah making himself hidden and he actually will say that here in a minute.

J.R.: So that's our introduction to the person of Gideon and then immediately we kind of have this angel that shows up to him and calls him, " mighty man of valor." Right? That's the way he addresses him. And Gideon of course, pushes back on that idea. And it's like, what did you, who are you talking to? <Yeah. Yeah.> Turning around, looking around. It's like, what are you talking to me? 

David: Yeah. 

J.R.: Right. and he says, why are you calling me this? I am of the tribe of Manasseh, the smallest tribe, I'm of the least of my father's house. So he's like, I'm in the weakest tribe. My clan is the weakest. And I'm the least in my father's house. So why in the world are you calling me man of valor? 

David: Yeah. So there's that interesting contrast there where the angel said, and it's also interesting the angel Lord says, mighty man of valor, when he's hiding out in the wine press, right? 

J.R.: Yeah, it's almost like are you taking a stab at me? 

David: Yeah [00:24:00] There's almost I think he almost probably took that as a little jab. Like if you found me hiding in the closet and you said hey brave man, what are you up to? 

J.R.: Right? Or you say something stupid and I go, "yeah way to go there Einstein." Yeah, I'm not actually comparing you to Einstein. <Yeah.> yeah, so there's a maybe a little bit of a stab there that he took I don't know.

David: Right, and right off the bat we see Gideon diminishing himself, right? you get an insight into how Gideon views himself. Man, I'm having to hide out in this wine press, right? I don't have a great family reputation. I'm the least, maybe he was the youngest of a bunch of brothers or something like that. <Right.> And so yeah, when this angel shows up and says, "Hey, mighty man of valor." He's like, man, quit making fun of me. 

J.R.: <Yeah.> Gimme a break. <Yeah.> Right? so anyway, so there's this little conversation between him and the angel. 

David: Let's talk about the angel for a second. 

J.R.: Okay. Yeah. 

David: So one thing to pull out of here is the angel Judges six, verse 11 says "The angel of the Lord came and sat down under the oak." Okay. So now that's interesting because this is the second time [00:25:00] you see an appearance of a judge-like figure under a tree, right? 

J.R.: And it's like one of those things that, why do you mention that? Why do you mention that it's under an oak or why do you mention that it's under a tree? Because I'm sure there were trees everywhere. <Yeah. Yeah.> You know, but you're right. It's a representation of something. 

David: Yeah. So Deborah judges under the palm of Deborah. So probably a very large prominent palm and that was the recognizable place where she passed judgment. <Right.> Or, you know, we talked about bringing order out of chaos. That's kind of what the judges do. 

J.R.: Right. 

David: And so it's interesting then not to be missed is this big tree here. It talks about it in terms of like, it's probably a big tree that everyone knew about. And so it's not uncommon throughout the Old Testament and actually in mythology in general of large trees were sacred places, right? And in the Bible you see that play out in terms of, they become this kind of place of judgment. 

J.R.: Well, I mean, okay, so a [00:26:00] tree has got its roots in the earth and it reaches toward the heaven. <Yeah.> And so there's this image of sort of the mountain, the tower, right. Sort of this rising up, this connection of heaven and earth.

David: Yeah. 

J.R.: And we're not just coming up with this, this will actually play out a little bit later in this story. 

David: Yeah. 

J.R.: But yes, you're right. The image of the tree. <Yes.> You don't wanna miss that. 

David: Yeah. So that's one of the things I wanted to point out before we move on. So the angel of the Lord shows up under this tree. And so there's one more thing about this angel that I want to point out. So it says the angel of the Lord, and I think when we hear that, we go, okay, an angel showed up. <Right.> But in the Old Testament, there's something a little bit more going on. when it specifically calls out the angel of the Lord, you very quickly see the person all of a sudden communicating with the Lord himself, <Yeah.> And you see that here where in verse 11, the angel of the Lord shows up under the oak. And then verse 14 says the Lord turned to him and said, "Go in strength," right? So all of a sudden he's talking to God here, And that's, an important pattern that you see [00:27:00]throughout the Old Testament. 

Which leads you to believe, or I would say would lead us to believe that when an angel of the Lord shows up, it's actually the physical manifestation of God. And in the New Testament ... 

J.R.: Which would be Jesus.

David: Would be Jesus. 

J.R.: So was he conversing with Jesus? 

David: Yeah. 

J.R.: Yeah. 

David: And so I would say what he saw, the angel Lord under the tree what he saw was Jesus, <Yeah.> appearing in the Old Testament.

J.R.: No, I think that holds you see this several times an angel of the Lord appeared. And then you hear that the conversation is him speaking directly to God. 

David: Yeah, 

J.R.: And when he tests God when we get to that fleece story that we talked about it says Gideon asked God. 

David: Yeah.

J.R.: It says that Yahweh.

David: Throughout the next several verses, he's conversing with God, right? Not just an angel. 

J.R.: Right. And you're like, what happened to the angel? 

David: Yeah. What happened is the angel just disappeared. 

J.R.: Yeah. And it's, it is, it's a foreshadowing of this is an angel of the Lord, but yet somehow it is the Lord. And so with [00:28:00] the New Testament lens, we look at that and say, yeah, that makes perfect sense. <Yeah.> Jesus is God. He's just the physical, human manifestation of God.

David: Yes. Right. So one more verse here and then we can move on because verse 22, I just saw this said, " Gideon realized that it was the angel of the Lord, he exclaimed, Alas, sovereign Lord." so all of a sudden there, he's talking to God again. "I have seen the angel of the Lord face to face." Now that doesn't make any sense to say, seen the angel of the Lord face to face if you just saw an angel. 

J.R.: Okay. So the angel of God or Yahweh or Jesus, however you want to say that going forward, tells him basically, I need you to tear down your father's altar to Baal. And so, so the first interaction is not the fleece. This is not telling him to destroy the Midianites, although he does say that God's about to use you. The first instruction and this is kind of often overlooked, or at least I don't remember this in the Sunday School story, is tear down your father's altar to Baal.

There's a little strange detail, [00:29:00] several of them right at the beginning when he tells him to tear down the altar to Baal. He says in verse 25, he says, take your father's bull and the second bull, seven years old. Which like, that's a weird, a little bit of a strange detail and it's like, what does that mean? Take two bulls and in a moment he's going to sacrifice a second bull after he creates the altar to God. But it's this kind of weird things like, it's a strange detail that might be intended as a sign, I think. And the first bull it clarifies is his father's bull, right? It says, take your father's bull, Joash. And then the second bull, and in some other renderings I kind of read in, said that it's not a seven year old bull. It is a bull that's been fattened for seven years. 

David: Okay, so it's like a fully grown ...

J.R.: Yeah, and again, it's this idea of seven. It may not be literal seven years that they've been feeding this bull, but it is a bull that is completely fattened, which means a bull that is prepared for sacrifice. And so, a commentary that I was reading was that [00:30:00] this might be, the first bull is his father's bull. The second bull might be the town's bull. The town has been feeding this bull, preparing it for sacrifice to Baal. 

David: Okay. 

J.R.: Yeah, so he says, take these two bulls, use your father's bull to pull down your father's altar. 

David: Yeah. 

J.R.: And then we're going to sacrifice the second bull. 

David: Okay. 

J.R.: Yeah, so anyway, it's an interesting idea because, well, I'll come back to this in a second. Remember this, but it's another symbol of using the pagan and repurposing it for the holy. <Yes.> Okay. Because in the very next verses, it says, tear down the altar, but use the stones. Use the stones to create another altar. 

David: So he repurposes the stones to Baal.

J.R.: Right. So we're repurposing the bull from Baal to something holy. We're repurposing the stones from the altar to Baal to create an altar to God. And it says that specifically use the wood of the Ashtoreth pole that you've cut down and use it to fire the altar. 

David: Yeah. So everything that was set up for [00:31:00] pagan worship to Baal suddenly becomes, you could say, sacrificed to create a proper sacrifice to God. Because it actually says, there's a phrase in verse 26 that I want to point out because the angel Lord says in verse 26, "Then build a proper kind of altar to the Lord." <Oh, okay. Yeah.> So it's that idea of take what was given to Baal. And now make a proper sacrifice to Yahweh. I'm going to teach you basically how to make a proper sacrifice.

J.R.: Okay. Yeah. Which is a cool concept when you read it in this Old Testament story. But if you imagine me saying, Hey we just bought this church of Satan. We have this church of Satan up the road. They've gone bankrupt. We've acquired their building. Let's open a church there. You'd be like, Ah, that might not be the best idea. Let's reuse the bricks. Let's reuse all the elements of this. 

David: First, let's get a priest to ...

J.R.: Right, yeah, throw a little holy water on it. And [00:32:00] then let's repurpose it and paint the walls and let's have church there. You'd kind of think, ah, that's probably not the best idea. That seems a little creepy, right?

David: Yeah. 

J.R.: And it is, I think, in the modern context. But in the ancient context, I think what it's saying is, overlay the pagan. We've said this before. A lot of the Old Testament can be understood as overlaying the pagan stories with the correct story. <Yeah.> And, so again, to go back to this idea of myth, don't get hung up , on this idea.

Oh, these stories are fake or, you know, the Greeks made up their story. So the Israelites created their stories. Like, no, no, no. It is a recognition of, let's overlay the pagan story with the correct story. The narrative matters. We're going to use some of the elements of that narrative, but we are going to repurpose the pagan stories, except we are going to tell the correct story using the elements of the pagan story. Yeah, I think that's key. 

David: Yeah. And you see that in this sacrifice. It is interesting. It's like tear down the Asherah pole and use it for fire for a proper [00:33:00] sacrifice. It's tear down this altar to Baal and use the stones repurposed them for a proper sacrifice, right? Take the bulls that have been fattening for seven years. It's interesting that idea that the Midianites oppressed them for seven years and these bulls had been prepped for seven years. It's like everything was coming to a completion for this offering to Baal. And the angel of the Lord or God steps in and says, no, I'm going to repurpose this for the proper sacrifice. 

J.R.: Right. It's almost like the bull was being held for the day of deliverance.

David: Something like that. 

J.R.: You know, like the day that the Midianites are gone and we're finally rid of them, we're going to offer this bull to Baal. <Yeah.> Because he's who did it, right? And it's this, it's this heavenly battle mirroring the earthly realm. 

David: Yeah, so Gideon does this. It's worth pointing out that he does it at night, right? <Right.> Because again, we see the smallness of Gideon, right? Hiding out because he's worried about how this is all going to be received. And then what [00:34:00] happens? How does this go over with the town? 

J.R.: It does not go over well. It says the men woke up and they want to kill Gideon. They're like, what in the world? Who's done this thing? 

David: Yeah. 

J.R.: Who tore down altar to Baal? And they want somebody to pay. And they know that Gideon did it, so they drag him out and they basically threaten to kill him. 

David: And dad steps in. 

J.R.: Dad steps in. I love it. I love it. 

David: The mighty man of Valor's dad steps in.

J.R.: Right, which I think is kind of interesting because Gideon tore down his father's altar. 

David: They were his father's altars, yeah. So his father had to have some inkling that this wasn't right. <Yeah.> Or hey, my son is actually, maybe it's that idea of my son is actually mustering up the courage to do the right thing here.

J.R.: Yeah, I can see that. Yeah. Okay, so that's interesting because we're going to get into a little bit of a disappointing son father combination later. But yeah, yeah, but right now for this moment, it's almost like Gideon's father he might be thinking, look, I'm not thrilled that you tore down my altar. But you stood on your own two feet. You [00:35:00] made a call on your own. I'm proud of you. And so I'm going to, I'm going to defend you something like that. 

David: Yeah, I think so. 

J.R.: Okay. Cause that's not, just a, a one off theme. That's going to keep going. 

David: Yeah. Okay. Yeah. There's a theme through here. 

J.R.: So daddy has to step in and basically tells the people that want to drag his son out and kill him. Will you contend for Baal? He asked them a question, right? <Yeah.> And he's like, Hey, are you going to do Baal's dirty work? Right. Can't Baal handle himself? 

David: Which is interesting because again, it's his dad's idol. <Right, right.> And dad somewhere has enough sense to say, "Hey, if this Baal god is all powerful like we think, can't he handle himself?"

J.R.: Yeah. Let him take care of his own business. 

David: Yeah, yeah. 

J.R.: And so the guys back off. 

David: They back off and they give him the name Jerub-baal. 

J.R.: Right. 

David: Which means, let Baal contend with him. <Right.> And what's interesting is through the rest of the story, the story goes back and forth between calling him Gideon and [00:36:00] Jerub-baal. 

J.R.: Right. And Jerub-baal is not a positive meaning, right? It's not like, Hey, he stood up to Baal. It's almost like tagged that, Hey, Baal's going to deal with you one of these days.

David: Let Baal deal with him. 

J.R.: Yeah. Let Baal deal with them. And so it's a little bit of an insult. But you're right, the rest of the story, we, hear 'em interchange those two names. <Yeah.> And it's a little bit confusing because it's like, wait, is, is this Jerub-baal or is this Gideon? 

David: It's like, yeah, why would they want to continue to call him Jerub-baal? <Right.> But it also sets up then, and we saw this in Deborah as well, it sets up the battle is not between Gideon and the Midianites. The battle is between Yahweh and Baal. 

J.R.: Right. Absolutely. 

David: And I think that's what that name carries with it. <Right.> Let Baal contend with him, and Yahweh says, Yeah, we're going to play this out.

J.R.: Let's see what happens. 

David: I'm going to contend with Baal. 

J.R.: Yeah, this is, and so you're right, that sets up the narrative for what's about to come. <Right, right.> Right, okay, so then we jump into the fleece. <Okay.> Now we're at the story that we normally. 

David: Now we're, yeah. Yeah. Now we're at the part of the story where we normally just pick it up.

J.R.: Right, [00:37:00] right. Verse 36, it says, "Gideon said to God," right, "Gideon says to Yahweh, If you'll save Israel by my hand, as you've said, I'm going to lay a fleece of wool on the threshing floor and if there's dew on the fleece alone and it's dry on the ground, then I'm going to know that you will save Israel by my hand."

David: Yeah. 

J.R.: Okay. So he kind of sets up this challenge to God, so to speak. <Yeah.> And we've talked about this as, as far as whether it means that Gideon didn't have faith or whether Gideon needed proof. And so I think what Gideon's doing here is saying, I believe what you're saying in the spiritual realm. I'm not sure that's going to manifest itself in the material, the physical realm. So it's this covenantal symbol of, I want to see the spiritual truth manifested in the physical world. That's what he's asking. Again, he's trying to bring heaven down and say, I believe what's going on in the spiritual world, but I want to see a physical manifestation of this and see a wet fleece and a dry ground and then I'll be happy, right? 

David: And then he flip [00:38:00] flops it the next night. Again, sometimes we can take that as, well, did he lack faith? 

J.R.: Right. 

David: But I also heard some wisdom from one of the desert fathers, I think, but may be wrong about that. That said, look, if you're wondering if God is telling you to do something, God understands if you're asking for confirmation, right? Because the alternative is, and we've all been there, is, God told me to do something and I'm going to run off half cocked and do it, right?

And it's like, man, maybe you just had Indian food last night. 

J.R.: Right, which we did.

David: Which we did. And you know, <Yeah.> I had weird dreams all night. So God told me to do all kinds of things. Well, it might be some prudence in saying you might want to test some of those. Just to be sure, right? And God understands that. I kind of like that wisdom from wherever I read it. 

J.R.: Yeah. But, that's almost like saying, yeah, I really don't want to talk about this anymore, right? You know.

David: It's kind of bulletproof too. Like if you say, as soon as you say, God told me to do this. Who am I to say, well, did you give it really some thought? [00:39:00] Have you run that by some other people? 

J.R.: Right. It's like, dude, who do I, else do I need to run this by? God told me. <Yeah.> What did you not understand about what I just said?

David: It's kind of a conversation to ender, right? 

J.R.: Yeah. 

David: Yeah. So the idea of the fleece is interesting. The other idea I had is like, okay, so what does it mean? Wet versus dry, dry versus wet. And I wondered if there's some kind of idea of, of separateness, like the fleece is separate from the surroundings. And if Gideon is almost saying, give me a sign that you truly are calling me out to do something separate from everything else. 

J.R.: Yeah, I cann see that. 

David: Maybe something like that. 

J.R.: Well, like I said, the animal skin represents the covenant. It's a covenant symbol.

David: Yeah. 

J.R.: And again, to contrast it with the fig leaves of Adam and Eve, it's like, why were the fig leaves not good enough? Well, because there needed to be a sacrifice to cover it. And so there's going to be these animal skins. Well, now we have this kind of reoccurring idea of, The animal skin being separate from the surrounding nature around it, [00:40:00] the ground, the dew, the leaves and the ground around it. And so he wants to see this separation. He wants to see this division. 

David: Yeah, the separation. Yeah, I think that's right. 

J.R.: Okay, I like that. And then of course he says. says to God, listen, don't be mad at me, right? Don't let your anger burn against me, but just speak once more for me. Right? So he says, do this one more time for me. And he says, let's flip flop it. Now I want to see the ground wet and the fleece dry. And I'm not sure why there's a flip flop, a mirror image. But that's where it's like it's even Gideon recognizes, okay, I know that you did this for me the first time. Don't be mad at me. I just need one more time, right? 

David: Yeah, we see the insecurity, the reluctance of Gideon. 

J.R.: Yes, I think that's what it is. 

David: The smallness.

J.R.: Yes, the smallness. 

David: Yeah, I think that's actually a theme. The smallness of Gideon. <Yeah.> And we see that in a lot of these, but I think that's what's going on with this fleece. <Right.> I'm still unsure of myself. I think you might have the wrong guy, God. 

J.R.: Yeah, yeah. 

David: Let's keep going with this. 

J.R.: Right. God of course proves it [00:41:00] to him. The ground is wet, the fleece is dry. And then we jump into chapter seven. 

David: Yeah, we get to the battle.

J.R.: Where it says, then Jerub-baal, And then in parentheses says that is Gideon. For those of you who didn't read the previous chapter. 

David: For those of you just joining us. 

J.R.: Right, that's right. So, it now we've got this dual nature in the name. Then it says that he rose early and he joins his army 32,000 men, right, is where we start off. 

David: He put the word out and 32,000 men responded.

J.R.: Right, right. And then right at the beginning he offers it to the men, "Hey, listen, If any of you are scared of the Midianites, it's okay. You can go home. And right away, 10,000 of them bail.

David: Which is kind of funny because he sends out word and says, Hey, we're going to fight the Midianites. And the first thing he does is said, if you're scared, then go home. And two thirds of them go, well, yeah, I'm going to go home. Right? And maybe answer the call if as soon as you're given the opportunity to go home, you go, yep, I'm out of here. 

J.R.: Yep. Thanks. That's all I need. Right. Do I get credit? 

David: I get [00:42:00] credit for this, right? I showed up. 

J.R.: Can you punch my parking pass? Yeah. So there you go. Two thirds of them are already gone. Now we're whittled down to 10,000. 

David: Yeah. 

J.R.: Okay. Then we get to the strange thing that we talked about earlier, that we're gonna narrow the group down even more by the way they drink. 

David: Yeah. The Lord says to Gideon in verse 4, "There are still too many men." Which is interesting because later on it will say, the Midianites the Amalekites were, I think it says thick as locust, which again, so it's a formidable army <Sure.> that the enemy is putting together. And God's response to Gideon is "Look, you just sent two-thirds of your men home. Butt there's still too many." And I'm thinking if I'm Gideon, I'm like, are you sure about that? 

J.R.: 10,000 versus the herd of locusts? Yeah. Yeah. Right.

David: I can still recall those guys. I'm sure I can get them back. You know? 

J.R.: Yeah. 

David: So God tells Gideon, this is how to whittle this down, right? And that's just where we get this weird, take all the men to the brook and watch them drink. 

J.R.: [00:43:00] Right, the water test, right? <Yeah.> And you and I have heard different things about this, about what this means. Kind of the general Sunday School consensus is that if you, bent down and you lapped up water directly out of the stream or the brook, then send those guys home. But if you cupped your hand and you brought water up to your mouth, then you're kind of still aware of your surroundings. <Yeah.> You are drinking, but you also are ready for battle. So some kind of indication of these guys were more aware, these guys were ready, these guys were smarter.

David: Yeah. That's the common explanation. 

J.R.: Right. Right. But why doesn't that work? 

David: So first of all, I think that's interesting because God is clearly not trying to gather the best warriors here. And in fact, if you look at the theme throughout Gideon, it's always like Gideon's I'm the least I'm the lowest, right? <Right.> so I don't know why in this sense that God would want to pick out the best warriors, elite warriors, when actually they don't do anything. All they do is drop a jar. 

J.R.: If you're capable of [00:44:00] breaking a pot, you're in our group.

David: If you hold this and drop it, that's really all the qualifications here. So I don't know that it makes a lot of sense once I really start thinking about it, that he's trying to identify those warriors that are truly ready for battle because of their alertness and their awareness of their surroundings.

J.R.: Right, that sounds good but it almost is like we're trying to come up with the rational explanation. It's again, it's trying to look at this story rationally and saying ...

David: Yeah, I think that's right. 

J.R.: Yeah.

David: It's missing maybe a mythic meaning 

J.R.: Yes, it's zooming right past the mythical explanation and saying, well, what's the rash- why would, why would this matter the way they drank water? And somebody came up with the idea as well. If you use your hand, then you're ready for battle. 

David: Yeah. 

J.R.: And that sounds good as, as a rational explanation, but ...

David: It kind of makes sense. 

J.R.: You know, yeah, fair enough. I'll jump on that. Sure. But again, I think you're trying to dig too rational into a story that's meant to be symbolic. Or at least the symbology of the story. what is the purpose of the [00:45:00] whole the way they drink water? Why does that matter? 

David: I found it convincing, because most are going to give the explanation you just gave. <Right.> There's a couple of ones that are out there. One interesting one that I found convincing was this idea of bowing down, right? The people who bow to drink out of the brook. <Right.> And there's something about that's what Baal worshipers do. And it's almost like you quickly identified those who it was a little too easy for them to just quickly bow.

J.R.: Right. 

David: They had been doing this a lot, right? 

J.R.: Yeah. Well, twice in the explanation, it says everyone who kneels down to drink. So it's not just, 

David: So there is this, yeah, it's, it's in this specific words and really the phrase is like, bend the knee, right? 

J.R.: Right. Yes. so the people that put their hands to their mouths were 300 men, but all the rest of the people knelt down to drink water. So it says it twice. <Yeah.> It's like it confirms this idea you're a little bit too quick to bend the knee.

David: Yeah. And there's some verses throughout the Old Testament that talk about - you [00:46:00]don't really see Israelites bowing down in the way that they're talking about - but there is some kind of making prostrations and bowing down.

But I also found another place in the Old Testament where this phrase is used. First Kings 19, it says, "Yet I reserve 7,000 in Israel, all whose knees have not bowed down to Baal. And whose mouth says not kissed him." So it's very much calling in First Kings, this idea of calling out those who have not bowed down. They are not bending their knee to Baal. <Right.> And so I wonder if there's a connection there. 

J.R.: No, I think that makes sense. if you're trying to zoom in on the rational explanation, then another, response might be, why in the world is the way you drink water mean that you're going to be quick to bow the knee to Baal. 

David: Yeah.

J.R.: You know, so, but, again, you're trying to jump on the rational and it's like, no, it's just this symbolism the 300 left symbolically, they didn't, bend the knee. 

David: Yeah. Who their first response wasn't to automatically just bend the knee to Baal. <Right. Okay.> So I, yeah, I think that's kind of convincing to me. 

J.R.: Yeah. Again, when you kind of look through this lens, it's [00:47:00] a thread that holds true. <Yeah.> Okay, so, he's got his 300 men. Now we're back to our 300, right? We're back to Thermopyle. 

David: Yeah. Here are the three , so there's that. Yeah, there's that number. The 300. Yeah. He's going to attack a huge army with 300 people. 

J.R.: Right. How in the world can he do this? Now in Thermopyle, it was a bottleneck. And you could just rotate 10 or 20 soldiers out front and give the other ones to rest. You can't be surrounded. You've got hills on either side at least that's the way the movie portrayed it. and our mighty warriors are going to stand up against a massive army. That's not how it happens here in Judges though.

David: No. And very much like what happens with Deborah as well, because again, you're seeing patterns here. God basically says, you know, look, let's do things this way and you won't have to lift a sword and I'm gonna deliver this army into your hands.

J.R.: Right. 

David: So here we come to this unique strategy.

J.R.: But before this, and this is a kind of quickly overlooked part of the story. It's right in the middle of it. There's this strange dream, right? 

David: Yeah. 

J.R.: Gideon's still afraid. 

David: Yeah, because it's interesting [00:48:00] because it says God came to him during the night. The Lord said to Gideon, get up and go down to the camp. I'm gonna give it into your hands. But then he says, "If you're afraid to attack, go down with your servant Purah and listen to what they're saying." So God comes in and says, you're still scared, aren't you? 

J.R.: Yeah, I've got the people narrowed down. You're sending men home. 

David: Yeah.

J.R.: But yeah, you're still terrified, dude, aren't you?

David: And again, this happens at night. We find Gideon always in the dark, hiding, always tentative, always a little bit scared. 

J.R.: Right. Always in the shadows. <Yeah.> 

David: Well, it's the smallness of Gideon and I don't, I don't necessarily mean that a total rip on him, but I do think that's a theme you see. You see the smallness of Gideon. 

J.R.: Yeah. Well, I mean, listen, we've all been in situations where we're in over our skis. we're in too deep and I don't know how to get out of this. We've all had that kind of anxiety where we're like, Oh man, how am I going to pull this off? But we've all felt a little inadequate at times. And I think Gideon is kind of [00:49:00] representative of that.

David: Yeah. So he goes down to the camp and he hears two people in the camp recount this weird dream. 

J.R.: Yeah. This is a little strange. It took us a minute, but I think, I think we got somewhere on it. 

David: We did. Yeah. So here's one saying, I had a dream, a round loaf of barley bread came tumbling into the Midian camp. It struck the tent with such force that the tent overturned and collapsed. And his friend responded, this can be nothing other than the sword of Gideon. That's kind of a weird, all right, so first it doesn't sound all that scary that a barley cake rolls into ...

J.R.: A giant barley cake. Yeah, a huge bagel comes rolling in and knocks over your tent. Okay. That's a little laughable. I think I would just start laughing and try to find the cream cheese. 

David: For some reason I went immediately to the Stay-Puff Marshmallow Man monster in Ghostbusters. 

J.R.: Oh, okay. Yeah.

David: What's the most non scary monster, you know, <a big barley,> a big barley cake.

J.R.: I was thinking the Cheez-It commercial, you know, the rings of cheese that are sitting there talking. <Yeah.> I [00:50:00] can do this coach. Yeah. So it seems a little silly but then I think the friend's response is, Hey, you know what that is? That's Gideon. And you're like, what? 

David: Yeah. The friend immediately goes, "The barley cake? Yeah, Gideon's coming. 

J.R.: Yeah. And you're like, where did you come up with that? What gave you that idea? 

David: Yeah. So we actually made an interesting connection last night. 

J.R.: Yeah. We bounced us around a little bit because it bothered us. It's like, why would he think that the barley represents Gideon and why? Why is that?

David: Well, so if you go back to the beginning of this whole story, where do we find Gideon? 

J.R.: Yeah, hiding. 

David: At a wine press, gathering the crops, gathering barley right in the shadows, squirreling it away because the Midianites keep stealing all this, right? And so I don't think it's a stretch to say when they saw this giant barley cake rolling into the camp, it's almost like, "Hey, all those crops we've been stealing? This is coming back to haunt us." 

J.R.: Yep. This is coming back with a vengeance.

David: And that makes sense. That's why I think it [00:51:00] makes sense that his buddy would say, Oh, Gideon's coming for us. <Right.> All that stuff we've been stealing. this is the revenge, right? This is the revenge of the barley cake. 

J.R.: Right. Yeah. Which sounds a little silly now and not scary at all, he says specifically, and we'll come back to this: this is the sword of Gideon. <Yeah.> The sword of Gideon is coming for us. 

David: Yeah. So let's throw a silly example, but if my neighbor had all these tomatoes and I was sneaking into his garden every night and stealing his tomatoes. And then I had a dream that a giant tomato,

J.R.: destroyed your house, 

David: came through my window, shattered the window. It's like, I would make that connection pretty quickly, I think. <Right. Right. Right.> Yeah. Oh, the neighbor's on to me. 

J.R.: Yeah. So it's not as absurd as what, what my initial reading suggests. 

David: Yeah. So that's the confirmation that God gives him. So Gideon goes, okay, God's given me this confirmation. The camp is already a little bit on edge, right? And we're going to come back to this idea of, he says, the sword of Gideon is coming for me. 

J.R.: Right. And I also think there's something about [00:52:00] hearing somebody else, especially an enemy of yours, talk , in a fearful way about you, right? That, pumps the chest up a little bit. if you kind of into it with your neighbor and you overhear your neighbor talk about you say, Hey man, I'm not messing with that guy, that dude, I'm scared to death of that guy. There's something that you're like, Oh wow, they're scared of me. And it's almost like, Gideon at this point - and we'll get to this in a second - at this point, Gideon doesn't fully believe what God says in the heavenly realm, Because he wants all these confirmations. He wants this confirmation of prove me this way, prove me that way. But when he hears of his enemies saying, Hey, this is none other than the sword of Gideon. It's almost like, he's like, Oh wow. Hey, maybe I do have some kind of reputation that's to be feared. 

David: Well, I just had this image of, your spouse says, you're really good at this, you're really good. And you go, ah, come on. But then you have a coworker who says, man, I checked this out. You're really good at it. 

J.R.: Yeah. 

David: And you go home and tell your wife, you know, yeah, my coworker said [00:53:00] that. And her response is, I tell you that every day. 

J.R.: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. But you're my wife. 

David: You have to say that. Maybe there's something going on with Gideon hears it from the enemy and goes, yeah, maybe I'm a mighty warrior, like the angel said. 

J.R.: Right. so that seems to be kind of this turning point where we believe that Gideon kind of gets off track a little bit. 

David: Yes, right.

J.R.: But we still have the battle. Okay, so let's keep going here. 

David: Yeah So he comes up with the strategy.

J.R.: Right.

David: At night divides the 300 into three camps. Which there again, there's the number three. We see the division, we still see the three or the multiple of three or the division of three <right> holding. And he says, "Do as I do. So when I blow the trumpet, then everyone else blow your trumpet and shout 'For the Lord and for Gideon.'" And then they are going to break their jars that are covering the torch. And so it's going to create kind of this chaos effect.

J.R.: Right. 

David: they surround the camp three companies blew their trumpets and smash their jars. Grasping the torches in their left [00:54:00] hand and holding in their right hand the trumpets, they shouted, "A sword for the Lord and for Gideon." <Right.> we'll get into the chaos of the camp for a minute, but there's, there's a lot going on here. 

J.R.: Put a pin in that because we definitely want to come back there because I think this is the turning point for Gideon. <Yeah.> But we know the rest of this part of the story. They break the jars, there's people screaming, there's shattering of glass or clay pots. All the Midianites jump up and they start panicking and they start killing each other. 

David: And it says They either flee or kill each other. 

J.R.: we kind of got into this a little bit. It's like, I get the chaos. I get that it's dark. But what in the world makes all these Midianites just start pulling their swords out and slashing their brothers and slashing their tent mates and start stabbing people? What do you think is causing that?

Again, 300 is not nothing. But when you have an army of 10,000, I don't know what the torches represent. If you were to see torches and breaking glass off in the distance, I've heard before that, well, every torch represents a company of a thousand men. 

David: So there was this [00:55:00] illusion that there was a lot more people than there were.

J.R.: Right. and I'm sure there's something to that. <Yeah.> But the mind is going to create all this chaos and all these monsters out there. Who knows what's out there. It's like, it could be dragons out there. <Yeah.> So, so again to kind of push back against this idea of the rational explanation of well every torch represented a company and so they did the math real quick and they're like oh wow there's 50,000 people out and it's like I don't think that's what happened.

That's not the, that's not the implication. <Yeah.> It's like, it was utter and complete terror and chaos. When you're surrounded by literal monsters, by dragons, by gargoyles, by whatever, that can absolutely rip you apart, it's not, Hey, let's join shoulder to shoulder and fight this. It's, <Yeah.> dude, if I can hamstring you and get a headstart, I'm gone. <Yeah.> You know, , what's the joke? I don't have to outrun the bear. All I have to do is outrun you. <Yeah.> And so I think that's what's going on and it's complete chaos. And I don't necessarily think [00:56:00] that they thought that they were fighting the Israelites and they just happened to be stabbing their buddy. I think they were actually turning on each other. 

David: Well, so a couple of things. The guy who interprets the dream would lead you to believe that they're already on edge. 

J.R.: Oh yeah. Yeah. So there's already foreshadowing. 

David: And again, this is not Gideon's coming for us. Well, there was that part too, but this is Gideon's God is coming for us. <Right. Right.> Because again, this is God versus Baal. 

J.R.: Right. 

David: And so, yeah, I think this isn't just Gideon's out there. It's what kind of supernatural beings and monsters might he be summoning up? <Right.> I remember a friend of mine let me borrow their cabin for about 10 days. It was great, but it's the first time I really had taken an extended time of solitude. And this cabin was out in the middle of nowhere. And if you're used to living in the city, man, when the sun goes down out in the mountains. 

J.R.: Yeah. A lot of weird noises. 

David: It's dark. Yeah. And I remember the first couple of nights I'm hearing [00:57:00] all kinds of weird noises, you know, like probably bugs the size of small animals banging against the window, a little weird noise. And my mind is not going, that's probably just a friendly little chipmunk. My mind is going, what on earth kind of monster is on the deck right now? 

J.R.: Yeah. it must be a polar bear. 

David: There's only the only logical explanation. Yeah, is it's a demon dog, you know, prowling around. And that's, look, I mean, that's, that's, that's modern day. 

J.R.: Sure. And you're in a cabin. Yeah, they're in a tent. 

David: And in the ancient world, you know, the safety of a city or the safety of a camp very much represents, okay, this is what is known and outside is what is unknown. <Right.> And odd things happen in the wilderness. And then you throw darkness over that. And God knows what's out there, right?

J.R.: Right. Yeah, a common theme throughout the Bible is the safety of the walled city. 

David: Yeah. 

J.R.: And the danger of what's in the wilderness. <Yeah.> Because [00:58:00] strange gods exist in the wilderness. 

David: Yeah, alright, let's cover one more interesting thread through here and why we say we see a change shifting here. 

J.R.: Yeah, yeah, let's go there. 

David: And then there's a couple more parts, we may have to skip through that pretty quickly. But it's interesting this idea of what was yelled, right? The Sword of the Lord and Gideon.

J.R.: Yeah, because, the first time I read that I'm like, that's a little strange to yell. For the Lord and for Gideon. That's what Gideon tells his men to yell. 

David: Yeah, Gideon actually tells his men to yell "For the Lord and for Gideon." 

J.R.: Right. Which already is a little bit of a, kind of a red flag for me because I'm picturing myself saying, Hey guys, we're going to go into this battle and I want you to yell for God and for J.R. 

David: Yeah. 

J.R.: It's like, well, that seems a little self serving, you know. But okay, whatever. It's representative of something. 

David: Yeah. 

J.R.: So we kind of dug into this idea. And what we saw as an interesting connection is that Gideon tells his men to yell for the Lord and for Gideon, but [00:59:00] what the men actually yell is, A sword for the Lord and for Gideon.

David: Yeah. 

J.R.: Like, why would they change that?

David: And to take one more step back, if you go to the dream that they had in the camp, this said, this can be nothing more than the sword of Gideon. 

J.R.: The sword of Gideon. 

David: We already hinted at that idea that they may have planted something in Gideon. <Right.> The sword of Gideon. I like the sound of that. 

J.R.: Yeah. Yeah. I like what I'm hearing. 

David: Yeah. So we see this progression from the sword of Gideon. And Gideon says, okay, shout for the Lord and for Gideon. And what ends up being shouted is a sword for the Lord and for Gideon. So all of a sudden the sword of Gideon becomes inserted here. 

J.R.: It's kind of taking on a life of its own, isn't it? <Yeah.> This myth of Gideon is really starting to snowball. And so it starts out with something simple, like for the Lord and for Gideon. So it's not just for the Lord. It's, let's share this glory. Because you talked about the heroes in the Greek myths saying that the purpose of their conquest is for glory, for self glory. 

David: Right, Yeah. [01:00:00] That's how you become immortal in Greek myths is you glorify yourself. 

J.R.: Right, you don't give credit to the gods. You glorify yourself. You become a god.

David: But you're claiming glory for yourself. <Yes.> And you see the opposite in the Old Testament, right? And you see this back again, we keep saying back to Deborah.

J.R.: Because it's tied to Deborah, that's right.

David: Because it's very much tied to this. And we'll see it tied through out Judges, but God wants glory for himself. And for those who are willing to follow and obey God, He is willing to share glory with us. <Right> I think that's a fair characterization. But first God wants you to give proper, it goes back to the proper sacrifice. <Yeah.> You give proper glory. You give God His due. <Yeah.> Right? You give glory to God. <Right.> And let any, in fact, I think it says this in the New Testament, Philippians, let any kind of self glorification come from the fact that God is willing to share his glory with you.

J.R.: Right, you're not asking God to share his glory with you. God [01:01:00] imparts that on us. 

David: Yeah, so I don't think we're reading into it. You may disagree with us. But there's a little bit of Gideon starting to insert his own - the sword of Gideon <Right.> in here, right?

J.R.: Well, I think the proof is that things go downhill for Gideon. This is the end of the Sunday school story. He defeats the Midianites, but if we keep reading it's not a great look for Gideon.

David: Right, so we're gonna see the Sword of Gideon mentioned one more time. <Yep.> And we're going to see another theme that This is really the last time God is mentioned in the story of Gideon. <Yeah.> We've got two more chapters to go. 

J.R.: It's all about Gideon now. 

David: Yeah. Suddenly it becomes all about Gideon. 

J.R.: Yeah. The legend has outlived the man here and has moved forward and that's what Gideon's riding on.

David: Yeah. 

J.R.: Okay. So suddenly after this battle, we've got Gideon who started out hiding in the shadows, a small man, the least of my father's house, right? You see this low self worth and then you see a little bit of a, Hey, for the Lord and for Gideon, because we're in this together, dude. And you see a little bit of this taking [01:02:00] just a slice of the glory from God and putting it on himself. 

David: Yeah. 

J.R.: Right? So see this shift. And then we go on into Judge's 8 and we see a little bit different Gideon, right?

David: Yeah, suddenly we see two Midianite leaders captured, Oreb and Zeeb, and they're executed, put to death, right? And then we see Zeba and Zalmunna right? Who are also Midianite leaders, I believe, and Gideon in the act of chasing them down, he actually goes through two cities. <Right.> And says, help me chase them down. And both cities deny them, right? 

J.R.: Yeah. Do us a favor, man. Read Judges 8 because we are skipping some stuff, some of these details. 

David: For time sake. Yeah. 

J.R.: Like, yeah. Well, I mean, once you have your eyes open to the symbolism there really is a lot in Judges 8. But yes, he goes through a couple of towns. <Yes.> Of his tribes, right? Israelite towns. 

David: Yeah. And so his response to both of these is interesting because they both say, no, we're not going to help you. So for example, verse seven in chapter eight, he says, just for that, when the [01:03:00] Lord has given Zeba and Zalmuna into my hands, I will tear your flesh with desert thorns and briars. All right. Put a pin in that, and remember that. 

J.R.: We are coming back to that. 

David: Then he goes up to another town called Peniel. And they deny him too. And he says, when I return in triumph, I will tear down this tower. <Okay.> Now put a pin in that. 

J.R.: Thorns and towers.

David: Thorns and towers. <Okay.> And then we see Gideon chase them down. He has this interaction with the two Kings of Midian, Ziba and Zalmunna. And this is interesting too, but I'll just point out that through all of this, we don't see any idea that Yahweh told Gideon to do this, or Yahweh told Gideon to threaten these towns. <Mm.> Suddenly we see the smallness of Gideon going around, executing Kings, threatening towns.

J.R.: Yeah. There's one thing to chase down the Kings of Midian. 

David: There's a whole change in personality here. 

J.R.: But it's another thing to roll through your countrymen's town <Yeah.> and to say, help me, [01:04:00] or else. They don't help him. And so what we see Gideon do is we see him defeat the kings of Midian, but then he does make good on his promise. He rolls back to those towns and does exactly what he said he was gonna do. <Yeah.> He tears down the towers. 

David: Yep, he drags the town leaders with thorns and briars. 

J.R.: Yeah. And it even says in verse 16, it says, "And he took the elders of the city and he took the thorns of the wilderness and briars with him and taught the men of Sukkoth a lesson."

David: Pretty brutal for a guy who had to be convinced that this was a good idea at all just to show up and drop a vase in the middle of the night. 

J.R.: Who never had to lift a sword, but now we're living on the legend of the sword of Gideon. And you're right that at the beginning he's arguing with God, look, you got the wrong guy, okay? I'm not the one to do this. 

David: Yeah. So there's other interesting contrast that just occurred to me is the interaction with God where God's saying, nope, too many men, too many men, too many men. Send [01:05:00] to the ones home who are scared. <Right.> And suddenly the contrast to Gideon going into towns going, help me or else.

J.R.: Yeah. 

David: Like the whole pattern God was establishing is, trust me with this small group of men and I will deliver the enemy into your hands. And now we have Gideon shaking down fellow Israelites because you won't help me. 

J.R.: Yeah. That's interesting. 

David: Yeah. 

J.R.: God told him to pare down the men and all Gideon is doing after the battle that is miraculously won is trying to build his army. <Yeah.> I want more men. 

David: Yeah. Now I want to build a mighty army. 

J.R.: Right. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. You, so that's another image of this transition in Gideon's heart. 

David: Yeah. 

J.R.: Yeah. He's a little bit of different guy. 

David: All right. So they captured the two kings. Let's jump ahead here. And then there's this really interesting interaction where they've captured Zeba and Zalmunah. Judges 8:20 says, turning to his oldest son, Jether, He tells his oldest son, kill them. 

J.R.: Right. Gideon's oldest son. 

David: Gideon. Okay. We're talking about Gideon. <Right.> "But Jether did not draw his sword because he was only a [01:06:00] boy and afraid." So that's interesting, right? <Yeah.> So his son is also small.

J.R.: Is unsure of himself. <Yes.> Like I'm not ready for this. <Yeah.> Right? And so we have this image where Gideon looks at his lineage and says, it's time for you to step up. I've created the legend of the sword of Gideon. You can take this legend for yourself and here are these captive kings.

It's like rise up with the sword and go stab, it's this image of, we've seen this in some of the movies where the hunters go out and they capture a stag and hold them with ropes until the King shows up to lance the stags heart. <Yeah.> Right? And it's a little bit of an eye roll because you're like, really? This, you know, the king gets the glory here, but that's what you're seeing here. It's like look we've got these guys. You son jump up do your duty run this guy through. <Yeah.> And then you now be the sword of Gideon.

David: Yeah So we see this motif of the sword of Gideon. And so the son doesn't want to do it because he's young and he's afraid. Which again, described Gideon through most of the first part [01:07:00] of this story. 

J.R.: Right. And then the Midianite kings look at Gideon. 

David: Yeah, now this is interesting.

J.R.: I love this. He says, "Rise up yourself and fall upon us. For as the man is, so is his strength." It's almost like they see this chink in the armor of Gideon. And they're like, why don't you do it, big boy? And listen. 

David: Mighty Man of Valor? <Yeah.> Why don't you draw your own sword? <Right.> We heard about the Sword of Gideon. 

J.R.: And listen, these are captive kings. This seems a little bit of a, you don't want to antagonize the guy who's got you captive, right? And, of course, they pay for it, so Gideon does. He stands up and runs him through. <Yeah.> Kills him.

David: And so, yeah, so we see again this the sword of Gideon. So Gideon stepped forward and killed them, right? The sword of Gideon is now asserting itself, right? Right again. We don't see Yahweh through any of this anymore. We don't see Yahweh saying yeah, go ahead and kill.

J.R.: Here's what you're supposed to do here. 

David: Yeah 

J.R.: No, he's taken matters into his own hands. Yeah, he's built his own army or attempted to build his own army. He's trying to promote the sword of Gideon. He's trying to further his legend. He's trying to pass [01:08:00] that along to his son, who's also too afraid because the apple didn't fall far from the tree.

And so he's afraid and it's almost like Gideon recognizes, know, you're your father's son. <Yeah.> You don't quite have what it takes. And of course now we're outside of God's will. And I don't know how to bring God into this to lift you up the way he lifted me up, right? And so he knows that his son doesn't have what it takes. <Yeah.> So he has to step in and do it. 

David: After he killed the two kings, it said he stripped the ornaments off their camel's necks. <Yeah.> Okay. So he's starting to gather plunder for himself. 

J.R.: Right. Glory for himself. <Yeah.> Right. 

David: And then there's this really interesting, the Israelites say to Gideon verse 22, "Rule over us, you and your son and your grandson, because you have saved us from the hand of Midian."

Look at Gideon's response. "I will not rule over you, nor will my son rule over you. The Lord will rule over you." But then he says, "And I do have one request, that each of you give me an earring from your share of the plunder." So again, [01:09:00] Gideon's now collecting plunder. 

J.R.: Yeah. give me what's due to me is the implication.

David: So there's a couple things here. Let's stick with this idea of plunder for a second. And then we're going to get back to this idea of asking Gideon to be their king. <Right.> In the Old Testament, all throughout when they're conquering the promised land, it's very important to give the hero's portion of the plunder.

Now in the Old Testament, the hero is Yahweh, right? You got to see that connection, right? So when they're making offerings, when they're dedicating the plunder, they're dedicating it to Yahweh. Because, in Greek myth, it would go to the hero, right? <Right.> In Odysseus, in the Odyssey, it's very important for Odysseus to take his plunder home.

This is all the spoils of war that I've earned. In the Old Testament, that goes to Yahweh. But it's interesting here that it's Gideon gathering it for himself. He's stripping the camels of their ornaments. That's his, right? People say, is there anything else we can do for you? And he says, well, yeah, give me my share of the plunder.

J.R.: Yeah. Quit holding back [01:10:00] on me. 

David: And you have to understand that this should have been dedicated to God. 

J.R.: Well, it's very much similar to Jericho. When you go into Jericho, God is going to win this war. <Right.> I'm going to bring down the walls. And so it's very important that you don't keep anything. Everything is God's. Kill all the men, women, children, cattle, right? And all the gold dedicate to God. Right? And of course then you got the story where people kept it back and that was not good for them. But yeah, we have this story of Gideon, another image of Gideon trying to share glory, trying to take a little bit of glory from God and say, well, listen, God, why don't you give me my cut too?

David: Yeah, I've earned this share. <Right.> You know, I've, haven't you heard of the sword of Gideon now? 

J.R.: Yeah. Yeah. And it seems like an appropriate response from God would be, dude, you broke a pot.

David: I just asked you to drop a vase. 

J.R.: That's all I wanted you to do. Problem would have been solved, right? You know, but no, , he's kind of pulling this glory in for himself. And what's important is not just that he's trying to take [01:11:00] this glory for himself. It's what he does with that. 

David: Yeah. So I would say as confirmation that I think we're on the right track is, what does Gideon do with the spoils? And we're told that he builds, this is really odd story. He builds an ephod out of gold and he places it in his hometown. And what immediately happens now, we're not told his motivation for doing this. And I actually, again, I hear commentaries trying to defend Gideon. That this was all an innocent mistake. <Yeah.> But again, if you read all the threads through the story, I think it's pointing you to something a little different.

J.R.: Well, sure. First of all, what is an ephod? 

David: Well, an ephod would be, well, in the Old Testament, it, it was the breastplate basically that a priest would wear full of precious stone. And it was, how they discern the will of God. So it's interesting that it's a priestly garment. That he basically constructs, say he gives it to a priest. He sets it up in the middle of his town. 

J.R.: Yeah. Almost like a image of himself. 

David: A little bit. Yeah. 

J.R.: Builds his [01:12:00] own statue. 

David: We're reading into it here and there are commentaries that would disagree. 

J.R.: But well, I mean, it says in Orphah and Israel whored after it there and it became a snare to Gideon and his family.

David: Right. The evidence is in the result, how this goes down. <Right.> It becomes a snare to the town people. They begin worshiping it. 

J.R.: Right. So he clearly didn't consecrate it to the priest and say, you know, to discern God's will. <Yeah.> It became a, another image of the Sword of Gideon. Here's a a representation of the greatness of Gideon. <Right.> And it became a snare for him and his family, right? <Yeah.> Okay. 

David: Yeah. So it becomes a snare to him, his family. Things don't go well. 

All right, so postscript then. Midian was subdued. It said, interesting during Gideon's lifetime, the land had peace for 40 years. 

don't get the idea that we're portraying Gideon as this really horrible character. 

J.R.: No, he's just a flawed character.

David: Yeah. I call him the flawed hero almost. Right. So there was peace for 40 years. It's interesting because it says he had 70 sons. He had many [01:13:00] wives. He had a concubine in Shechem. That's going to play out. Very important. 

J.R.: Right. Had a lady on the side. 

David: Yeah. And it said Gideon then passed away. He dies. But it says no sooner than Gideon died than all the Israelites again, prostituted themselves to the Baals. And then the final postscript, which is, you know, kind of sad. It says in verse 35, they fail to show any loyalty to the family of, there's that name, Jerub-baal. 

J.R.: Jerub-baal. 

David: That is Gideon. 

J.R.: That is Gideon. For those of you who aren't following. 

David: In spite of all the good things he had done for them. So you see this very mixed bag of the reputation of Gideon. <Right.> And really, the way I take all this is, he did some good things. He conquered the Midianites, right? <Mhm.> He initially responded to the call of God - credit there, but we don't see actually a very good reputation for him and his family. In fact, it says as soon as he died, the people kind of forgot him.

J.R.: Yeah. It's kind of not the quite the hero story that we would have expected or that maybe Gideon expected. 

David: Yeah. Yeah. 

J.R.: [01:14:00] And I think, or we think it goes back to this moment where they asked Gideon to rule them. 

David: Yes. Now that's, that's interesting. 

J.R.: Yeah, because we look at this and it's like, well, man, no, Gideon humbly stepped down and said, no, let God rule you. Right? But I think there's a little bit more to that. 

David: So this idea, it sounds like a good thing that he said, the Lord will rule over you, right? There's no evidence throughout any of this that the Lord has been ruling over the people that the people are responding or in touch with any, in any way of what Yahweh is telling them to do. He's been doing it through leaders, right? And so I almost think when the people said rule over us, I almost think it was an invitation, I think from God to "yes, this is what I've set you up for." Lead the people now. <Yes.> Lead them. <Yes.> Right. 

J.R.: I've called you. you've stepped up. You've been used by me. <Yeah.> Now lead the people properly. 

David: And he doesn't. 

J.R.: But yeah. And we think that it's clear that Gideon [01:15:00] is a little bit reverting back to his original small self. You know, we talked about this idea of what they call the imposter syndrome, these people get elevated to these high positions and you are a little bit self conscious about it and you look at yourself and say, why am I here? Why am I this instrumental figure in this? I'm just a guy just like everybody else, right? Hollywood people and politicians, sometimes they talk about this idea of the imposter syndrome where you've been elevated a little. You're in over your skis you don't know why the people are holding you up as a hero and you're just a little bit self conscious about it.

And I think you kind of feel that and it started again, this is not, we're not just making this up. I think it started with the fact that he looked at his son. He tried to pass the torch onto his son and his son shrunk back exactly like he would have shrunk back when he was that age. 

David: Yeah.

J.R.: And they say it, it's in the words, "You and your sons lead us." Not Gideon. Look, I don't care about your kids. you lead us as long as you're alive. The people of Israel are [01:16:00] saying, let's set up this ruler family starting with you and then let's carry it through your bloodline to your sons, immediately following this story of where his son didn't step up. And it's almost Gideon recognizing that he's a bit of a fraud. 

David: Almost that makes him feel like the imposter. Like, Hey, I bought into this whole legend of the sword of Gideon. 

J.R.: Right. 

David: And this moment where my son shrinks back in fear, let's be honest, I'm a fraud here. And so the people say, Hey, you proved yourself, become our leader. And we think Gideon's response is, man, I'm a fraud. I'm not doing this. 

J.R.: Yeah. And again, I think the proof is in the result.

David: Is in the result. Exactly. 

J.R.: At first glance, you're like, yeah, Gideon did the right thing. don't glorify me, glorify God. <Yeah.> But I don't think that's, really his heart here. I think it's like, I don't have what it takes and it's almost like this idea of, Hey, let God do this. You know, it's, it goes back to that, idea of using God. to [01:17:00] sort of get out of, you know, Hey, God told me this. How do you argue with that? 

David: Yeah. 

J.R.: Right. Hey, why don't y'all let the Lord rule you? And it's like, well, who's going to argue with that and say, no, we don't want God to rule us, we want you to rule us, right?

David: Yeah. Yeah. I mean, there's silly ways that you think about that today. I can think of people who needed a job. And you go, well, have you put resumes out? And you go, well, I'm just leaving it to God. Well, dude, you might want to submit a resume or two. <Yeah.> You know, and so it's one of those things that sound nice. Like let God rule you. <Right.> But it's really shirking personal responsibility. 

J.R.: Yes. Yes. it's a way to cast off your own personal responsibility. <Yeah.> And lay it at the feet of God. <Yeah.> And, it's little self serving I think. 

David: Yeah. And the truth is we don't really know what the intent of Yahweh is through this because again, he's not, he's not speaking. There's no conversation. After the dropping of the vases, Yahweh's not really in the picture anymore. 

J.R.: Right, Okay. So, why do we say that the proof is in the results? Well, there [01:18:00] is a king in Israel. The only king that's mentioned the book of Judges, right? We talk about Judges being this lawless time and there is no king and it's before. Well, we have a ruler here and this is interesting. We've got a ruler in Abimelech says that he ruled Israel for three years. But it's not Gideon's actual son. It's, we're going back to the lady on the side. It's the concubine in Shechem, right? So it's not just a concubine. She's in another town. You know what I mean? If you got a lady in another town, that's not a good sign. That's stepping out a little bit too far.

David: So it's easy to stop reading the story of Gideon in chapter eight. <Oh yeah.> You have to go to chapter nine and read what happens next. <Right.> And we don't have time to go through this whole chapter, but to pick up on what you're getting at then. One thing I'll say is anytime in the Old Testament, even though it may have been permitted to take multiple wives and even have concubines, it never works out well for people.

<Right, right.> So that's [01:19:00] kind of the first clue here that Gideon is acting on his own, right? He's taken the plunder for himself. What does he do? He takes a bunch of wives has a bunch of kids and even has a concubine in Shechem. The concubine's son is Abimelech. 

Now that's interesting because the quick version in chapter 9 is Abimelech goes to his mom and says, why shouldn't I rule? 

J.R.: Right. 

David: And so there's this really interesting thing that starts to happen here is short story is Abimelech slaughters his 70 brothers because it says Gideon had 70 sons, right? That's kind of his legacy. <Right.> And Abimelech is, well, he's the bastard kid over in Shechem. <Sure.> And so he wants to assert his reputation because he's kind of been marginalized, right? And he ends up slaughtering the 70 sons of Gideon. <Right.> Which right there tells you [01:20:00] again, Gideon did not leave a stable lineage. Gideon did not leave a sterling reputation.

J.R.: Well, I would say he did have a stable lineage. That's the number 70. 

David: Okay. 

J.R.: It was there. but he stepped back from that, right? And so he didn't take his responsibility. And so whenever there's a vacuum, what steps in the bastard son steps in he destroys, he kills his 70 brothers. Remember we said the number of 70 represents a Assembly, And so he may or may not have had actually 70 sons. That's not the point. The point is there was an assembly. There was a proper size group that could lead the people of Israel. 

David: Okay. So that's kind of an interesting point because you tie back to the thing where they said, You and your sons lead us. And Gideon says no, but then it says he has 70 sons, which is the proper size for a group to lead. <Right.> It's almost like this little hint that that's what should have happened. [01:21:00]

J.R.: I think it is what should have happened. 

David: Yeah. Yeah. 

J.R.: Right. Because Abimelech steps up, kills his 70 brothers. <Yeah.> And again, this is the reason we say 70 is not important is because it says that he killed his 70 brothers. But then later we find out there's still a brother left. 

David: So there's another brother. 

J.R.: Yeah. So what are their 71 brothers? did he kill 69 of them because he's a brother? I, you know, who knows? 

David: And that's not important.

J.R.: But don't get hung up on the number 70, right? Because the number 70 is what's important. There was the proper size assembly to rule the people. <Yeah.> And he pulled back from that. And so Abimelech steps in, steps in that vacuum created by abdicated responsibility. <Yes.> And, It says in there that he took the gold from his 70 brothers, which also happens to be 70 shekels. And he basically bought this riffraff friends. 

David: Yeah. So it's interesting as the 70 shekels that he took from his 70 brothers, the new quote assembly is this riffraff. It's the dregs of society. That becomes the new 70. 

J.R.: [01:22:00] So yeah. And with the 70 pieces of silver out of the house, this is chapter nine, verse four says with the 70 pieces of silver out of the house Abimelech hired worthless and reckless fellows who followed him. So here is this proper assembly that was prepared of Gideon's 70 sons and it's replaced with another assembly because we're taking the 70, the 70 shekels and we're creating our own bastard assembly somewhat, right? 

David: Yeah. 

J.R.: That steps in because of the responsibility that was shirked by Gideon. <Yeah.> I think that's the way to read this. 

David: Yeah, I think so. 

J.R.: Yeah, and of course this does not go good at all. 

David: Right. So there's one other brother, Jotham, and he makes this speech. That's a really interesting speech and it kind of tells this parable. "One day trees went out to anoint a king for themselves. And they said to the olive tree, be our king. But the olive tree answered, should I give up my oil, of which gods and humans are honored, to hold sway over them? So he declines. Next he goes to the fig tree, come be our king. The fig tree says, should I give up my [01:23:00] fruit to hold sway over the trees?" And the answer kind of implied is no. So then they go to the vine. The vine says the same thing. And then finally, all the trees say to the thorn bush, come be our King. And the thorn bush says, "If you really want to anoint me King over you, come and take refuge under my shade. But if not, then let fire come out of the thorn bush and consume the ceders of Lebanon." Boy, there's a lot in there.

But if you aren't picking up, the olive tree - and there again, we talked about the significance of the tree, right? 

J.R.: The tree is the place of judgment. 

David: The tree is the place of judgment. Connects heaven and earth. It's the axis between heaven and earth. <Right.> So, he goes to the olive tree and there's every reason to believe here that the olive tree was Gideon. <Sure.> And Gideon declined. Which again, kind of confirms our reading back to saying Gideon should have stepped into that role that was given to him. 

J.R.: Absolutely. It's not spelled out completely, but we have this little speech by Jotham the brother that says, Yeah, if you're not tracking with the [01:24:00] symbolism, I'm going to spell it out for you. <Right.> And that's exactly what we have. 

David: So we go to the fig tree, the Vine the grapevine and then we get to the thorn bush And it's this funny thing that says the thorn bush says, "If you want to anoint me King take refuge under my shade." You don't take shade under a thorn bush.

J.R.: That is not the best shade.

David: It's going to be a quite an uncomfortable little daytime nap in the shade. <Right.> I'm gonna snuggle up under this rosebush here. 

J.R.: Yeah, yeah, but there's also this implication Shall I leave my abundance by which gods and men are honored to go up and hold sway over the trees?" It's almost like the olive tree is saying, Hey, I have something to offer and I'm not just going to give that away for free. 

David: Yeah. 

J.R.: You know, it's like they want to exalt the olive tree. And the olive tree says, no, I've got my own glory. I can handle myself. Thank you. I don't need to hold sway over you. And so the fig, of course, has something to offer. The vine has the wine to offer. <Mm-Hmm.> Right? And then you go to the [01:25:00] bramble who has nothing to offer , but pain, right? And that's that imagery of the brambles again, right. of Gideon dragging the kings of his own people through the brambles to teach them a lesson. Well, here come the brambles again. It's his own son or his bastard son. who have nothing to offer. they up with this absurd idea of, take rest under my shade. And so it's interesting that the olive tree thinks it has a little bit too much to offer. And so steps back. And the one thing that has nothing to offer is the one who absurdly comes up with this idea of, yeah, take rest under my shade.

David: Yeah. 

J.R.: Again, that's that image of the abdicated responsibility. 

David: Yeah, that's the point of this whole speech. 

J.R.: Right. What could provide shade is an olive tree. And along with the shade that it's providing, it can provide olives, but that's a little bit too much to give away. 

David: Yeah. 

J.R.: And so it steps back and what you end up having in its place is the briars and the brambles.

David: Yeah. If everyone else abdicates responsibility, what you're left with is a thorn bush saying gather under my [01:26:00] shade. 

J.R.: Right. Well, okay. So let's go back to Deborah. Who else abdicated their responsibility?

David: Yeah, well, some way Barak did, but men in general, like that's why Deborah rises to prominence. 

J.R.: Right, right. Deborah rises because the men abdicated their responsibility. So a woman was going to get the glory. It's this recurring pattern of people not stepping into their proper role, which this is a pattern all over Judges. I don't want to jump ahead, but remember the missing tribe we have this image of 11 because one of the key tribes isn't fulfilling their role.

Let's leave it at that. But it's this overarching theme of people not stepping up and embracing their responsibility given to them by God. Therefore it creates a vacuum that creates the brambles that fire comes out of and destroys. Now we're going to the culmination of this story that Jotham tells. 

David: Yeah. So the rest of the chapter actually says, here's how this plays out. So Abimelech is the new ruler. Jotham flees. He basically [01:27:00] said after Abimelech had governed Israel three years, God stirred up animosity between Abimelech and the citizens of Shechem. So they acted treacherous. 

J.R.: The brambles, the brambles aren't providing the shade that they thought, right? 

David: So it's interesting because , God steps back into the story here, right? Because things are going sideways. <Right.> You've had abdicated responsibility, you've had slaughter. The rightful assembly, you might say, has already been replaced by this riffraff, replaced by the riff raff. So God stirs up animosity. So Abimelech, his men in his hideout, it said, they chased one of the leaders of the crowd to the entrance of the gate and many were killed as they fled. So again, we get this picture of this rampage that he's on.

<Yeah.> He divides his men into three companies. Now there again, we see Abimelech dividing his men into three companies. There's a mirror going on. <Yeah, sure.> So this leads to a showdown where the citizens of Shechem gather in the tower. 

J.R.: Yeah, they go to the [01:28:00] tower for the stronghold. <Yeah.> There's that tower now. <Yeah.> Remember what we talked about? Brambles and towers. 

David: Brambles and towers. 

J.R.: Don't forget that.

David: We see Gideon tearing down towers. <Yup.> Right. And now we see the people of Shechem ...

J.R.: Yeah. Taking refuge in a tower. 

David: And what does Abimelech do? He gathers branches away and he stacks them around the tower. And he burns the tower down. And so there again, that's flames from the bramble. 

J.R.: That's Jotham's prophecy, so to speak. That's his story. <Yeah.> That's exactly what he said. The brambles are going to, fire is going to come out and it's going to destroy the towers and here we are. 

David: And that's what happens. So he goes to another city and the same thing happens. They gather in the tower. So we see again, another tower, all the people go in and he's going to do the same thing. He's preparing to set it on fire. 

J.R.: It worked once. Let's do this again. 

David: Yep. So here comes the flames from the bramble again. And, a fitting into this whole story, it says a woman dropped an upper millstone on his head and cracked his skull. So he's still alive. <Mm-Hmm.> And he says to his [01:29:00] armor bearer, "Draw your sword and kill me so that they can't say, 'A woman killed me.'" 

J.R.: I love this. I absolutely love this. So here's this guy obsessed with his own false image, to the point that he tells his armor bearer, "Hey, run me through with the sword because I don't want my legacy to be that a woman killed me." Like what's the alternative? Your shield bearer killed you. 

David: I died honorably? <Right.> And don't miss the irony that we're reading the story and what is the legacy? That a woman killed him. 

J.R.: Right. Yeah. Here we are. We know the truth. <Yeah.> So despite his attempt to alter his legacy - disrupt reality, to continue to hide in the darkness, it's in full view. A woman killed you. <Yeah.> Sorry, dude, that ties right back to Deborah. That's why you can't take these stories in an individual fashion. You can see these symbols all through it.

David: The men abdicated responsibility. <Yes.> They turned into tyrants and it was ultimately brought to an end by a woman. <Right.> Yeah. That's exactly what happens. [01:30:00] And so to wrap this up, I guess there's so many things, but want to point out, don't miss this idea that Gideon threatened to drag the Kings with thorns and brambles and Abimelech becomes known as the thorn bramble. It's almost like a self fulfilling prophecy that just happened. <Right.> 

Gideon tears towers down. Well, what does his son do? He tears towers down.

J.R.: And in turn the tower tears him down.

David: And in the, yeah.

J.R.: And again, the tower represents the connection, the manmade attempt to connect to the heavens. In one instance, he tears it down, the fire goes up, it destroys. And then in the next instant, the judgment comes down from above. <Yes.> That's another lands on his head. You know, it's like, man, don't miss that because it's so ...

David: It's like a woman drops a millstone, but it's also the image of finally judgment from above. <Yep. Yeah.> It's going to turn into this. 

J.R.: Yep. That's what, that's what it's going to take. <Yeah.> I think we really are onto something about Gideon is not the hero that we make him out to be. He's a flawed person. <Yes.> [01:31:00] But at the end of it, I really do think there's something that's a little bit hard to see. But Gideon was supposed to step up and lead the people. 

David: I think so. Yeah. 

J.R.: And when he didn't, when he shirked that responsibility, his halfwit son comes in and screws everything up, which that's a common theme in Mythology. That's actually a fairly common theme in the Bible, you know,? <Yeah.> The son of a great man comes in and monkeys it all up, right? 

David: Yeah, and we do have to say too, that look, we cast Gideon kind of a negative light here because I think that's actually how the story reads. Look, he's still a biblical hero, and if you go to the book of Hebrews in the New Testament, it actually lists Gideon as one of the people, because ultimately he delivers the people from the hands of one of the enemies of Israel.

J.R.: Right. At the end of the day, that's Gideon's legacy. 

David: That's his legacy. He did deliver it. He did it imperfectly. He did it flawed. We would argue he abdicated responsibility, but you know, let's not leave this on too negative of a note that Gideon ultimately he goes [01:32:00] down as one of the hero judges.

J.R.: Yeah. Yeah. Deborah, they delivered them from the Canaanites. Samson delivers them from the Philistines. Ehud delivers them from the Moabites. So these great judges that are labeled as heroes, it's not that they were perfect men or women. It's that, through them, Israel overcame their enemy.

<Yeah.> We were just commenting maybe we should have done this as two episodes, but I hope you've stuck with us. But what do you walk away from our conversation last night, our conversation today? And what do you pull out of this? 

David: One of the big things I pull out of it is I really do see Gideon as the reluctant hero. He wrestles with this idea that he's been called with God. To compensate, he creates this false image for himself and then he feels like a fraud. At the end of the day, yeah, he did what God called him to do, but he does it messy. He does it imperfect. And there's a missed opportunity here. And I guess I look at that and I, I think of the ways that I've played that out.

J.R.: Oh yeah, that's what I was about to say. It's a very relatable narrative arc, you know? <Yeah.> [01:33:00] That you see the guy that's not sure of himself, he finally gets a little bit of success and he feels like a fraud. And yeah, that's very relatable. <Yeah.> Yeah. 

David: And another theme that I think is very relatable is this idea of, it's, it's a very fine line to walk, to give God the proper sacrifice, give God the proper glory and let God glorify you. It's the pattern of Philippians, right? <Right.> And not let that create this false image of yourself. <Right.> It's very difficult to start to receive some we might say, you know, positive feedback, glory about yourself.

J.R.: Yeah.

David: And remain humble and go no no no that belongs to God And let any glory come from God. 

J.R.: Right, yeah. Well, 

David: And not do that in a false humility type of way, but to be authentic and I think Gideon story kind of plays that out as well.

J.R.: Yeah. The authenticity matters. You kind of see this idea in the New Testament where it talks about tithing and it basically says, won't, I give back to you tenfold? [01:34:00] <Yeah.> And so you kind of have this idea of, okay, so I give my 10%. And then what? I'm going to get back tenfold? You know, okay, sign me up for that. For that investment strategy, right? I can do that all day long, right? But the point is, God will share His glory, will actually share His glory with you, but it has to come from Him. And if you give glory to God, if you give your tithe to God with the expectation, Oh, this is a great investment. I'm about to get back tenfold. Well, that just defeats the whole thing. 

David: Yeah. 

J.R.: You know, that's not the point of it. It's like, trust God, what he says that it will come back for you tenfold, maybe not necessarily in dollars and cents on the ledger sheet, but it will come back to you. So give God the proper glory and he will in turn give you glory in, perhaps a different way. It's not exactly like we think it's going to happen. And again, we don't give God the glory so we can rub our hands together and say any day now I'm gonna get that glory back. You know, that's, that's not the proper sacrifice either. 

David: Yeah. That's not the proper [01:35:00] sacrifice.

J.R.: With the authentic heart, give God the glory. And what God tells us over and over in so many different ways is, I'll give that back to you. I'll share it. 

David: Yeah. We serve a God who's more than willing to share in that glory. 

J.R.: Right. 

David: As long as we give him his proper due. And continue to be obedient and operate out of a humble spirit, right? But that's a tough line. 

J.R.: Oh, absolutely. And this also where we depart from the Greek myths, you know.

David: Right. 

J.R.: The gods are not into sharing the glory in any way, right? When you go back to this idea of let's overlay the pagan stories with the proper story, what we see is in the pagan stories, we see god's who want glory and they hold it all for themselves and it's all about them. And the proper story is, No, Yahweh God, we need to give him the glory, but he's actually it with us.

He's actually created a covenant with us that it's going to come back to us. Now, that's not why we do it, but that is the result [01:36:00] of it. And so it's this back and forth of God giving glory to the son and the son giving glory back to God that we've talked about in other episodes. It's this reciprocal glory that we can all rise if we have our hearts properly aligned and give God the proper glory. We can all rise from that. And that is not the story of the Greek gods, but it is the story of the Israelite God Yahweh. 

David: Yeah.

J.R.: I think that's great, man. 

David: Well, this was a longer episode. We hope you stuck with it. Next time we're going to talk about Jephthah. It should be a little shorter, but another fascinating story. 

J.R.: We'll keep that to what, 90 minutes? 

David: A lot of weird stuff going on in the Jephthah story. 

J.R.: Right. It's a weird story with the same themes. We're going to keep talking about these same, you know, different numbers, different symbols, but they're all going to tie together because you constantly see these themes. And where you see a tower in one story, it's going to hold that same symbolism in the tower of another story. 

David: Yeah, yeah, that's what we're starting to see here. 

J.R.: Right, and so we're going to keep carrying this through. Man, the more we [01:37:00] dig into it, the more threads we pull. So again, we encourage you to read chapters six through nine and kind of draw your own things out. I would love to hear your thoughts because once you read this through this lens, there's so many things that can be drawn out. Like I said, we were setting up till midnight talking about it with these light bulbs going off over our head constantly, because you could see these connections. And so take a read for yourself, man, and let us know what you see. Because there's just dozens of symbols that we've missed.

David: Yeah, we didn't ever cover <No. Gosh.> part of them. No. 

J.R.: No, we didn't have a chance to cover 'em. And also I just think there's a lot that we've overlooked. But anytime there's a weird quirk in the story zoom in and pay attention to it because it means something's there.

David: Yeah. Give us your thoughts. Ask us questions on Facebook. We have a Fanlist page. You can ask us questions there because we would love to hear your thoughts on this. If you listen to this episode, if you read through, yeah, what stood out to you? 

J.R.: Yeah, absolutely. 

David: Share this podcast with anyone you think might enjoy it as well too. We'd love to get the [01:38:00] word out and we will talk to you next episode. 

J.R.: All right. We'll see you.