Today's reading: Judges 6; Acts 18
There is an interesting detail at the beginning of the story of Gideon that I have never really paid much attention to before, but as I've been thinking about the patience and kindness of God lately, especially despite the fickleness and faithlessness of His people, it just makes details like this stand out.
The detail I'm talking about is the unnamed prophet that God sent to Israel in the second paragraph of Judges 6:
When the people of Israel cried out to the Lord on account of the Midianites, the Lord sent a prophet to the people of Israel. And he said to them, "Thus says the Lord, the God of Israel: I led you up from Egypt and brought you out of the house of slavery. And I delivered you from the hand of the Egyptians and from the hand of all who oppressed you, and drove them out before you and gave you their land. And I said to you, 'I am the Lord your God; you shall not fear the gods of the Amorites in whose land you dwell.' But you have not obeyed my voice."
My first thought on reading this was, "Why send a prophet if you are just about to raise up a judge to rescue them anyway?" But as I was thinking about it, I think that's kind of the whole reason He sent the prophet, because He desired to raise up a judge to rescue His people.
The context for God sending the prophet is, "When the people of Israel cried out to the Lord on account of the Midianites..." And I think we get a fuller picture of where the people were at from Gideon's response to the angel of the Lord when he says, "Please, my lord, if the Lord is with us, why then has all this happened to us? And where are all his wonderful deeds that our fathers recounted to us, saying, 'Did not the Lord bring us up from Egypt?' But now the Lord has forsaken us and given us into the hand of Midian." The people crying out to God is not the same as the people recognizing their sin in worshipping other gods and turning back to Yahweh, the people crying out to God is probably a lot more like Gideon here saying, "Hey! What's going on? I thought you promised our fathers that you would protect us and all that, so why aren't you doing anything for us???"
God told Israel from the beginning what the consequences of going after other gods would be, and also that if they turned from those other gods and back to Him, He would rescue them. So as the people are crying out to God, He sends them a prophet to remind them why He has given them over to Midian and to call them to leave their gods and turn back to Yahweh. It is only after that prophet calls the people back to Yahweh that we get the angel of the Lord showing up to Gideon and calling him to go rescue Israel from the hand of Midian.
So as minor of a role as he plays in the story compared to Gideon, I think this prophet gives us a glimpse into the patience and love of God for His people. He did not want to see them suffering, and His desire was to rescue them, but they needed to turn from their gods back toward Him so that He could rescue them. But even that process of them recognizing their sin and turning back to God, God Himself initiated rather than leaving them to flounder in the consequences of their faithlessness even longer.
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