Thoughts on Judges 8

Today’s reading: Judges 8; Acts 20

This is a bit of a follow up on my thoughts yesterday on Judges 7. At the end of yesterday’s post I was thinking about how God had intended to deliver Israel with Gideon and his army of only 300 men, but then after the initial victory Gideon calls up a large army to pursue the Midianites and wipe them out, meaning they never actually see what God had planned to complete His victory over Midian.

Today, what we see in Judges 8, is more than just them not getting to see God work His miraculous deliverance for Israel, but also active damage done to Israel’s people as a result of that choice.

In his quest to rescue the people of Israel, Gideon passes the cities of Succoth and Penuel, looking for them to feed his army before they continue on. Both cities refuse and Gideon threatens them as a result, stopping back after his conquest to pull down the tower of Penuel and put all the men in the city to death, and to whip 70 elders of Succoth with thorns. How ironic is it that God raised Gideon up to rescue His people and what Gideon does with the opportunity is kill and whip the very people he is supposed to be rescuing?? Especially when you consider that the people of these cities had no reason or obligation to give Gideon and his army supplies given that he wasn’t king, or even an officially recognized military general or anything. Are they supposed to supply every mercenary band that passes by their town? We know that Gideon was sanctioned by God, but they have no way of knowing that, and honestly, even if they did, God sanctioned Gideon to take 300 men into battle, but He never sanctioned the larger pursuit Gideon has undertaken here!

At first I thought this sounded a lot like when David was going to kill Nabal, but it’s actually very different. Not only had David technically been anointed king at that point (though he did not have the throne), but he and his men had actively protected Nabal’s men and herds in the wilderness, so, unlike Gideon, he actually had a basis for expecting Nabal to repay what they had done for him. Even still though, when Abigail comes to David, he praises God for her actions that avoided the bloodshed that would have come upon Nabal’s household if he had taken vengeance into his own hands.

But for Gideon, even though the Lord had promised to defeat Midian, he took matters into his own hands, and the result of Gideon’s efforts was the destruction of not just God’s enemies, but of two cities of God’s own people as well. So while God did use Gideon to accomplish Israel’s deliverance, Gideon deciding to pursue it his own way instead of God’s was not an innocuous decision and had serious ramifications for some of God’s people.