Faithfullee

Called in a Winepress

Israel has been under Midianite oppression for seven years — an oppression so crushing that Israelites hide in caves and dens, and the Midianites sweep across the land at harvest time like locusts, taking everything (Judges 6:2–5). The angel of the LORD appears to Gideon while he is threshing wheat inside a winepress — a place designed for pressing grapes, not threshing grain, chosen because the winepress would conceal him from Midianite view.

"The LORD is with you, O mighty man of valor." — Judges 6:12 (ESV)

The address is striking. Gideon is hiding. He has just been called mighty. His immediate response is to challenge the premise: if the LORD is with us, why has all this happened to us? (Judges 6:13). The question is not faithless — it is the right question about the right problem. And God's response sidesteps the theodicy and goes straight to commission:

"Go in this might of yours and save Israel from the hand of Midian; do not I send you?" — Judges 6:14 (ESV)

Daniel Block, in his Judges, Ruth commentary (NAC, 1999), observes that "this might of yours" is ironic — it refers not to Gideon's own strength but to the strength of the divine word just addressed to him. His might is the commission he has received. Gideon objects that he is from the weakest clan in Manasseh and is the least in his father's house (Judges 6:15) — and God answers with the same formula that answered Moses' objections: "But I will be with you."

Gideon requires two signs with fire and two fleece tests before he moves. The narrator does not condemn the tests, but their cumulative effect reveals something about Gideon's character: he needs more reassurance than any previous judge. And God, patient with him, gives it. What we find significant is that God does not rebuke Gideon for his hesitation. He simply keeps meeting Gideon where he is, keeps giving him what he needs to take the next step. That's not nothing. God is not impatient with Gideon's fear. But the story that follows will show us that God's patience with a man's fear is not the same thing as God's endorsement of how that man uses power once the fear is gone.

The Three Hundred and the Torches

The reduction of Israel's army from 32,000 to 300 (Judges 7:1–8) is among the most deliberately theological military decisions in the Old Testament. God reduces the force three times, with explicit explanation:

"The people with you are too many for me to give the Midianites into their hand, lest Israel boast over me, saying, 'My own hand has saved me.'" — Judges 7:2 (ESV)

The first reduction is by the fearful (22,000 leave). The second is by the method of drinking water — those who lap water with their tongues like dogs are kept; those who kneel to drink are sent home. The selection criterion is not military bravery (the lapping method is actually less militarily alert). Barry Webb, in his Book of Judges commentary (NICOT, 2012), argues that the criterion is designed to be arbitrary — to make the outcome unmistakably depend on God, not on the quality of the remaining troops.

The battle plan is equally unmilitary: jars concealing torches, rams' horns. In the middle of the night, 300 men shatter 300 jars, blow 300 horns, and shout:

"A sword for the LORD and for Gideon!" — Judges 7:20 (ESV)

The Midianites wake in panic, turn on each other, and flee. The LORD's strategy has been vindicated: no boasting is possible. Three hundred men against 135,000 Midianites. The math is the point. Human strength cannot explain this. God has made sure of that.

Victory Spoiled by Pride and Idolatry

The cracks appear immediately after the victory. Gideon's exchange with the men of Ephraim (Judges 8:1–3), who are angry that they weren't called to the initial battle, is diplomatically handled — but the exchange with the men of Succoth and Penuel (Judges 8:4–9), who refuse to give bread to his pursuing army, is not. When he returns with the captured Midianite kings, Gideon tears the men of Succoth with thorns and briers, and breaks down the tower of Penuel, killing the men of the city (Judges 8:16–17). The deliverer has become an instrument of internal Israeli violence.

When the men of Israel offer him dynastic rule — "Rule over us, you and your son and your grandson" — Gideon refuses with words that sound like covenant faithfulness:

"I will not rule over you, and my son will not rule over you; the LORD will rule over you." — Judges 8:23 (ESV)

But his actions tell a different story. He takes gold from the plundered earrings and makes an ephod — a priestly garment used for seeking divine guidance — and sets it up in his hometown of Ophrah. The text's verdict is devastating:

"And all Israel whored after it there, and it became a snare to Gideon and to his family." — Judges 8:27 (ESV)

The man who said "the LORD will rule over you" just put a golden object in his hometown for all Israel to visit. He also takes many wives and seventy sons, and a concubine in Shechem who bears him a son he names Abimelech — meaning "my father is king." The man who refused a crown names his concubine's son "my father is king." That name is not an accident. It is a confession of what Gideon actually wanted, dressed up in someone else's title.

Abimelech and the Logic of Violence

Judges 9 is one of the darkest chapters in the Old Testament. Abimelech, the son of Gideon's concubine, goes to his mother's family in Shechem and proposes himself as ruler. The Shechemites give him seventy pieces of silver from the temple of Baal-Berith. With it, he hires worthless and reckless men, goes to Ophrah, and kills seventy of his brothers — Gideon's sons — on a single stone. Only Jotham, the youngest, escapes by hiding.

Seventy brothers. On a single stone. The one man who wanted a king — in action if not in name — left seventy sons by his legitimate wives. His son by a concubine murders them all in a single morning. What Gideon built with his private power, Abimelech destroys in an afternoon.

Jotham tells the trees' fable (Judges 9:7–15) — the most explicitly political parable in the Old Testament. The trees seek a king; the olive, the fig, and the vine all decline because they have productive work to do. Only the bramble accepts the invitation, threatening to consume the cedars of Lebanon if anyone fails to take refuge in it. The parable's application is devastating: the man who wanted to be king among Israel is the man with nothing useful to offer. Brambles do not shelter anyone. They scratch and snag. That is Abimelech.

Three years into Abimelech's rule, God sends an evil spirit between him and the Shechemites (Judges 9:23) — the first mention of divine judgment by means of internal disorder — and the violence spirals. Abimelech destroys Shechem. He attacks Thebez. And at Thebez:

"A certain woman threw an upper millstone on Abimelech's head and crushed his skull." — Judges 9:53 (ESV)

An unnamed woman. A millstone. The narrator closes the Abimelech section with a theological verdict: God returned Abimelech's evil upon him, and the evil of Shechem upon them, as the blood of Gideon's sons required. The story of Gideon and Abimelech is Judges' clearest demonstration of what happens when a deliverer starts accumulating power for himself. Gideon never took the crown. But he kept all the rewards of kingship — wives, sons, an ephod, a name. His ambiguity produced a son who dropped the ambiguity and showed everyone what it actually was. The fruit of Gideon's reign was not peace. It was Abimelech.

Last updated: March 3, 2026.