40 Minutes In The Old Testament - Judges 8:8-28 (Episode 206)

Episode Date: March 6, 2020

Gideon makes a 2nd threatening promise and then follows through on both of them. We learn more about his family and what may be some additional motivation in these conflicts. The people start wanting a ruler and Gideon slips into compromise. Chad and Daniel discuss all of this. Have a listen! 1517 Podcast Network Las Vegas City Event Great Freedom Conference in Germany Freedom Conference in Stockholm Donate

Welcome to another episode of 40 Minutes in the Old Testament. 40 Minutes in the Old Testament is a 1517 Podcast Network podcast. You can go to 1517.org slash podcast and check out all the podcasts that are living over there. You can check out that new Hidden Streams podcast featuring Chad Bird. We put a little clip of that podcast at the end of our last episode. If you didn't listen to that, you should go check it out. Or just, you know, go over to the whatever podcasting app or platform you use and search Hidden Streams and check out the new devotional kind of In the Psalms podcast featuring Chad Bird.

It's got original music. It's probably one of the most highly produced podcasts that we have. I mean, it's not like me and Chad just sitting here chopping it up. It ain't like that. There's a lot of production that goes into this bad boy. So check that out. I think that you will probably enjoy it. Also, if you are in the Las Vegas area or anywhere in Nevada,

or maybe you're in Arizona or Southern California, come on out to the city event that we're having in Las Vegas on March 21st. And I'll be there, and Eric Sorensen, and Scott Keith, and Blake Flatley, Cindy Koch, and Adam Francisco. We're going to go through the entire book of Galatians. Yeah, it's going to be a cool thing, man. You're going to be able to come out. We're going to read the entire book in the course of the day and talk about it. And so don't get all freaked out.

It's not that long of a book. I know you hear we're going to read a whole book, and that seems like a lot. It's not a lot. What you're going to learn is that you can read the book of Galatians in one day, no problem. and not only read it, but actually hear a lot about it. So come check that out. I'll put a link in the show notes. Or you can go over to the events page, get all the information there.

It's free. All you got to do is sign up and show up, have some lunch with us. It's going to be a good time. Also, Germany, Sweden, we're heading out. We're going to hit the trail, go out there in Europe. We are going to be in Germany the first weekend of May and in Sweden the second weekend of May talking about Christian freedom. Chad and I just right before this

were talking about the things we were going to talk about I think it's going to be a good time so I'll put a link in the show notes to the registration for both those events if you are in Sweden or Germany or anywhere in Europe where you can get over to those places come on out we'd love to hang out with you

alright Chad what is going on man we left Gideon in an interesting place where he's just breathing all kinds of threats yeah man what happened to him he got all confident man he had a resounding victory and he is just telling everyone exactly what he's going to do yeah he did he did i mean when we first meet him he's like oh i don't know man i'm like i'm the

youngest my my clan they don't they're like small clan i think you have to find somebody else and the angel finally gets him to do it after like giving him 15 signs he's gonna be with him and he so he finally gets his victory and he's like whoa man this is a new guy all of a sudden yeah he's like bossing people around making threats like he got a taste of blood now he's out for more yeah well he's he he had a victory using unlikely means you know torches and clay pots and this sort of stuff so now he's like man i like this unconventional means thing so when i get back here i'm gonna take some briars and some thorns and just go to town on some people yeah yeah that's kind of where we left him breathing these threats against uh against

these folks uh yeah they're they're on the run they're i mean they're on the trail of people who are on the run so they caught some of these midianite guys or of and zaiv are the two we got a lot of z names in here so they they took them out beheaded them actually but they're chasing these Midianites. And I can't give it away now. Maybe you know the story already, if you've read this whole chapter, but I'm not going to give it away now. But there's a reason, I think, that Gideon is hot on the heels of the Midianites. And the thing is, we haven't yet been told. It's like one of these details that is withheld until later in the story. So we really don't know. I mean, at this point, it's like, wow, I mean, he's chasing them. I mean, it'd be

one thing to to do battle against them on their side of the jordan on gideon's side of the jordan but he like crosses the river and he's going way way into the wilderness to try and find these guys i mean he is not going to stop until he catches them you think he just like okay we drove them out we killed a bunch of their guys let's go home enjoy the spoils of war enjoy our freedom and declared a victory, but that's not the way it works. So they're, they're on the way and they've been, I guess they've been gone a while because they're, they're real hungry. So they stopped at this Israelite village called Sukkot. And that's where we have the hangry moment, right? They won't feed them. And so he says, all right, I'll tell you what, when we come back, I'm going to whip

you with briars and thorns. That's kind of where we're left off. That's verse seven of Judges 8. and right after that he utters another threat so i guess he goes from there to the next place place called pinuel and kind of the same thing happened these guys wouldn't give him any provisions because they didn't have any evidence of this success yet so he says to them when i return safely i will tear down this tower so the first place he's gonna take some thorns of the wilderness and some briars and thrash the bodies of the men who wouldn't help him at Sukkot. He's going to tear down the tower in Penuel. So he's got a plan of revenge coming up. So I guess we'll have to wait and see what happens. As it turns out, he's going to do a little bit more than he

threatened. But anyway, that's where we're at. So that took us through verse 9 of Judges 8. So let's find out what what goes on next in this this hot game a hot pursuit so zeba and zamana those are the midianite kings z and z they were in a place called car core which is about i mean this kind of gives you an idea as to how far he's gone that's a about a hundred miles if if the people who have located it are correct there's always a little bit of a an iffiness to some of these geographical locations, but most people think that Karkor is a hundred miles east of the Dead Sea. Now, keep in mind, we started out a few miles west of the Sea of Galilee, and now we've ended up a hundred miles into the wilderness on the eastern side of the Dead Sea. That's a long,

long way to be pursuing these kings, but that's where they stop. It says their armies are with them, about 15,000 men. And that's all that was left of that whole army. It says the guys who died were 120,000. So we're down to a pretty small force now after the whole slaughter that took place on the night of trumpets and torches and clay jars. It says Gideon, verse 11, Gideon went up by the way of those who lived in the tents. So some kind of caravan route evidently on the east of a couple of places called Nova and Jogbah. And it says he attacked the camp when the camp was unsuspecting or when they felt secure is another way that Hebrew is translated there. So they, in other words, they think, man, we're in Karkor, we're a hundred miles

east of the Dead Sea. We're way, way out of the range of the Israelites. So they think they're back in their own territory. They think everything's going to be fine. So Gideon does a surprise attack and it says the kings once again got away. So he pursues them and he finally catches them after he's routed the whole army. By the way, that word routed, the Hebrew there is harad. That's the same verb that we encountered way back at the beginning of chapter three. They camp by the spring of Harad. And the first group that was sent home of Gideon's army were those who were afraid and were Harading. So it's this image of, of trembling. My translation has a routed the whole army, but whatever they did to them, they shook them up. But maybe we'd say, so they shook up the whole

army. They were, they were shaking, they were quivering, uh, whatever they did exactly. We know that it was around, it was a, it was a success, but the two Kings get away. So Gideon once more, he's going to chase these guys down and uh capture them and it says that he went back and he's still the strange part about this story is he didn't kill the kings the prisoners of war and we're going to take he's going to take care of them momentarily but it's like he can't wait to get back to sukkot and to deal with the people that wouldn't take care of his army by giving them provisions. So they go back to Sukkot, and he's going to find a way to get into the city. We don't know exactly what happened. Maybe they saw him coming, they closed the gates of the city,

whatever it was, they weren't able to just march into Sukkot and take the city. So what they do is they catch this young guy, he's described as a youth from Sukkot, and they interrogate him. and they get him to to write down all the princes of of sukkot it turns out there's 77 men these were probably just the translation is princes i mean it's probably just kind of the local leaders right i mean they're just the guys who were i don't know what we compare it to like the town council i mean these these were just kind of the maybe the elders of the cities in the way of thinking about this so anyway there's there's 77 of these guys and gideon wants their names because of course he has plans for these guys so there's 77 of them this young this kid that they

caught writes it down for him he comes to the men of sukkot and uh of course when he showed up there the first time they're like we're not going to give any bread because we don't we don't see you already having these two midnight kings so we're not going to take care of you so he says to them look zeva and zamana concerning whom you taunted me saying are the hands of zeva and zamana already in your hand that we should give bread to your men who are weary so he throws the words right back in their face and now he actually has in his hands these two particular kings and what do you think he's going to do to him he's gonna he's gonna follow through right uh verse 16 he takes the elders of the city and he takes thorns of the wilderness and briars and he well this is my

translation says he disciplined the men of sukkot with them is that what you have no i've got i've got a better translation than that what do you have my my translation straight up says he took the elders of the city and took thorns of the wilderness and briars and with them he taught the men of Sukkoth a lesson. That's great. Taught them a lesson. I, I, when I saw that discipline, I thought, Hmm, what's the Hebrew there? So I looked it up and it's kind of, it's interesting. It's the it's the, it's the verb for to make no, you know, it's instruction. Yeah. It's like he, and he he made the men of Sukkot know by using these briars. So, you know, we often hear that knowing in the Hebrew scriptures

isn't just a mental activity, but it's an experiential sort of thing. So there's all sorts of experiences, right? Adam knew his wife Eve and she conceived. Well, that's one kind of knowing. Gideon made them into Sukkot. No, by the use of briars and thorns. And that's quite a different kind of not so pleasant knowing but that's uh that's what he it's what he followed through with now he's uh he's on the war path he's he's caught these two kings he's gone back to sukkot he's thrown their words right back in their in their face they taunted him he taunts them and so he takes these 77 princes of sukkot and uh he disciplines them he teaches he teaches them a lesson which is you know when you step back from this story of a back from the details

and you think of everything we've learned about gideon from the from the very beginning it's like we were dealing with a completely different person here yeah yeah i mean he's when we meet him he's threshing but he's not like he doesn't have people laying on the ground threshing them with briars and thorns he's he's threshing wheat hidden inside a wine vat yeah you know sometimes these stories move very quickly and and you can be like man seems extreme but yeah you have to realize that you are talking about a group of people overthrowing another group of people that is horrifically oppressing them yeah i mean this isn't this isn't like just randomly rolling up on some uh you know on some people and then they refuse to give you some food and then you go off

on them you're talking about uh the the children of israel having been uh you know enslaved essentially uh or at least at least dominated uh by this other group of people yeah yeah so uh it's it's a it's pretty severe but yeah when you look at it in the in the bigger story it makes a little more sense and he's not done yet because right he's taking care of sukkot but look look at the next verse verse 17 when he was at pinuel earlier what did he say he said when i come back i'm going tear down your tower well he does that it says verse 17 and he tore down the tower of pinuel but he ain't done because it says he goes on and he kills the men of the city so it's like the more he does the the greater the next thing has to be right so he whips the men of sukkot and he

threatened to tear down the tower of pinuel but he doesn't do just that he actually executes all the men of the city as well so all this he does and he still has the two kings with him now i'm thinking these two kings assuming they observed all this are probably thinking man what in the world does he have planned for us yeah this i gotta tell you chad this seems rather personal yes it does seem rather personal and and i think we're about to find out why so this is the this is the moment at which once we find out this detail, and if you didn't know it already, you're about to hear it. This is the moment where once you find out this particular fact, it makes you go back and reread the whole story from a different perspective. The Bible does this

sometimes, not always with every story, but on occasion, it's kind of a, I don't know what the technical literary device is called but it's a literary device where it's kind of like what kind of compare it with it's kind of like when you're reading a mystery novel all right and you get to the last chapter and you find out what what it was all about you know who did it or whatever whatever it is disclosed in that final chapter what do you do well typically you in your mind you just kind of run back through the whole story and you're kind of putting pieces together and you're understanding the whole story a little bit better once you know how everything kind of fits together at the end well that's kind of what's going to happen here because verse 18

it says that Gideon spoke to these two kings and says what kind of men were they whom you killed at Tabor now this just strikes us out of the blue because Tabor has not been mentioned once in this whole story. Even from the very beginning, there's been no mention whatsoever of Tabor. And the guys respond, the kings respond, they were like you, each one resembling the son of a king. Now, we don't know if they mean that like facetiously or if this is like they're actually being honest here. And Gideon had some sort of regal look about him. Really don't know. But whatever it was, that's the way they respond. Now, here's the moment, verse 19. Gideon says, They were my brothers, the sons of my mother.

As the Lord lives, if only you had let them live, I would not kill you. So this is the moment where you're like, oh, now a lot of this is beginning to make sense. You see, it was one thing for God to call Gideon and to clothe him with his spirit and to send him out to save Israel and in the process, of course, to defeat the Midianite kings. It was quite another thing for Gideon not only to do this, but to pursue them hundreds of miles into the wilderness and along the way to just completely blow up at these two towns of Sukkot and Penuel, not only to issue the threats, but to make sure that he brought these two kings back and to deliver on those threats.

This was not so much about Gideon seeking faithfully to fulfill his vocation as the deliverer for Israel as it was about him seeking blood vengeance for the death of his brothers. That's what I think is crucial here. Yeah, and you have a distinction too because he says they were my brothers.

Now, if that was all it said, this could be interpreted as they were fellow Israelites, right? I mean, it could be, or they could be from the same tribe as Gideon, and they would use that brother language then as well, but it's more distinct than that. So I might say, Chad's my brother, and this would be correct in the way that Christians talk, so Chad and I are brothers in Christ, and that's how that works. So I could say, hey, you have gravely offended my brother, and thus you've offended me, that

kind of thing. but that's different if i say you've gravely offended my brother who is also the son of my mother now we're talking about like my actual flesh and blood brother at this point so this is not just hey you killed some israelites and i regard israelites as my brothers but you you have killed my actual family yeah yeah that's and that's why this causes us to go back at least a chapter or chapter and a half and begin to read this story in a whole new light. And I think it helps us then to understand exactly why Gideon is acting the way he does. Of course, that initial victory probably did go to his head a little bit. It was a greater victory than he ever expected.

But I think something else was going on here and something that was more influential, and that was this desire to seek revenge for the death of his brothers. It could, I don't know for sure, but it could partially explain why God chose Gideon to begin with. I mean, that's conjecture on my part, maybe because he knew that Gideon, having lost brothers to the Midianites, would, once he had a little prompting and two or three divine miracles, be ready to act as Israel's deliverer. But anyway, whatever was kind of behind his motivations,

I think we can definitively say that the reason we see a new Gideon one who's grown fangs as it were in these last uh last few stories is because now he's he's looking for for blood revenge against the midi knights for the sake of his brothers and how he carries this out is interesting too it is yeah i mean you would think he'd gone this far he would just do it right but he doesn't first he says to his firstborn so this is his oldest son uh we'll We'll hear about his other sons at the close of this chapter, but this is his oldest son who's named Jether, and he says to him, rise, kill them. He says, but the youth did not draw his sword because he was afraid because he was still

a youth. Now, there's an irony there because you remember when we first encountered Gideon that he was like that, right? so it's like his son is sort of a uh an image of the pre-Gideon if you will at least the Gideon who was before before the Gideon we're facing now so he's afraid he don't want to do it but he wants his firstborn to do it so it's kind of a family thing I suppose take take revenge for the sake of your uncles kind of kind of thing yeah I think this is the first moment that we're given the information that gideon even has sons yeah it is right and and this kind of paints with

some different colors too because if god is asking you to do this crazy thing and you've got a family this is different if he as i think that you like well there's this guy gideon and immediately i think that we we think and i do that okay well this is probably like a young guy that's gonna go in there and you know he's probably at the in the prime of of life ready to go in there and you know take some guys out and now we find that Gideon has sons and that these sons are old enough to be in battle with him and stuff so this means that Gideon is not that young of a guy yeah I remember when first looking at this story I thought yeah Gideon's probably I don't know what 20 yeah at 25 I mean because he describes himself as uh what did he say he says I am

the youngest in my father's house yeah so when you hear that you mean oh okay so he's you know he's 18 19 20 years old maybe 25 you think he's a david yes exactly yeah you think he's at least like a david like a teenager out there well no i mean he's he's old enough to have not only just old enough to have a son but only to have a son who is old enough to travel hundreds of miles with his army while they are chasing the Midianite kings. So we're filling out the picture a little bit more as we go along of exactly who Gideon was. Well, then we have another surprise because these two kings, they're observing this, right? They know. I mean, there cannot be any doubt in their minds that they're going to die. They've seen what he did to those two cities, and he just

told his firstborn to kill them so they know they're going to die so they kind of have this last minute courage right they say to gideon rise up yourself and fall on us for as the man so is his strength so kind of one of these proverbial sort of sayings so in other words if if you're going to do it well then why don't you do it right why are you trying to get somebody else to do your dirty work for you rise up and do it yourself so he did get into rose killed Zeba and Zalmanah, and a little detail here at the end that's going to prove very significant for the rest of the chapter and for Gideon's legacy. He not only killed them, but he said he took the crescent ornaments, which were on their camel's necks. We'll get back to that in a moment.

So that takes care of the Midianite kings, and Gideon is victorious. He's just taken revenge against the guys that as we found out killed his brothers and so you might think well story's about over right next couple verses are going to say and the land had rest for 40 years and Gideon died and slept with his father's end of chapter right yeah that would be nice it would be nice but as I said when I mentioned the crescent ornaments that's that's significant because as we're about to find out, the end of Gideon's life did not go well. We see this so often in the scriptures, and we see this so often in just today's world, today's world as well, how victory or great achievements or fabulous successes, even though these are an opportunity for the accomplishing

of more great good very often if not more often than not actually provide an opportunity of temptation to come in and to lead to whoever that is who's been successful or triumphant into great harm and vice and other great sorts of sorts of sin i mean you see this all over the judges i mind all over the stories of the kings right you know king starts out great and then by the end of his life it all goes to his head and he ends up glorifying himself instead of instead of glorifying glorifying god that that seemed to be so integral to to human nature that it is it is proverbial i mean it's just all over and over again we see examples of this and as we're about to see it happens to get it as well yeah another thing that's interesting that we see right before that

we haven't got into this yet but we're about to is that uh the men of israel are going to be like you know this is sort of a one of the first instances where where you sort of see this desire not necessarily they don't say the word outright king but a desire to like you know what maybe like a singular person in charge of everything would be a good idea because this sort of things are good then we're then we're oppressed and then things are good and then we're oppressed is bad and if we're if there was ever a moment where maybe we could identify someone to be the guy in charge this seems like a good moment to do this yeah yeah i mean they're they're wanting to kind of break this chain right yeah i mean if i mean if you can't wrap your head around why someone would

think this i mean you i would i would be probably there right with him like you know it'd be a good idea let's just like have this guy lead us from now on and that'll probably be better yeah yeah i mean it makes it makes sense right he's uh he's able to been able to pull off just an astonishing victory. And of course, word would have spread. Did you know what Gideon did? I mean, he took out all these many knights and he never even raised his sword. Well, dude, when George Washington defeats all the enemies, it's time to make him president. Right. This is how it goes, man. This is the way it needs to go. When the United States were like, you know what? The people of the new world are suddenly actually free. And they're like, who should we

make our leader well probably that general that got us all this freedom yeah i mean don't we see this throughout uh well the history of lots of different countries and cultures right generals just quite naturally move up into leadership positions of the nation they were able they were successful militarily so they'll also be successful in governing yeah well that's kind of what they're thinking right yeah well it adds to i mean baked into this person is the idea of security yeah because you're like well i mean look what this guy just did yeah who who better like i'm gonna feel great having this guy be in charge because he just destroyed everybody that was that was oppressing us so yeah i don't want like who else are we gonna choose i mean it's not like we

need presidential primaries or anything we don't need we don't need a list of candidates from two different parties we got our guy right here he's in front of us yeah so that's what they say they yeah these it says the men of Israel we don't know I mean how many men of Israel these like just from kind of the representatives of the people who were following him or or how far flung was this particular group we don't we're not told it just says the men of Israel they say to Gideon yeah rule over us both you and your son and your son's son because you've delivered us from the hand of midian so i mean it not only do we have the they want a dynasty right i said they're about to set up the monarchy right here

man yeah yeah i mean we they named three generations first gideon you will and then your son and then your grandson so they've got it all they've got it all planned out and you're right they never say the word king but the hebrew word that's used there for rule is of course very frequently used of the function of kings so it's clearly that's what they had in mind and i don't know how they wouldn't have had that mind because well they just killed two kings right everybody had kings except israel you had kings

of city states you had kings of countries obviously you had multiple kings because you had just two kings mentioned there of of midian so i mean a lot of the kings of the ancient world weren't like what we think of uh if we think of like the king of england or the king of some country i mean they they were kings yeah but they were kings of what we call city states smaller areas you know probably we would call the day like a governor or mayor or something like that but they were called the king so that's what they want now gideon gideon says one thing with his mouth but he does something quite different with his hands with his actions so here's his response and it's it sounds like a good response right and it's on the surface it is the first

sentence sounds just like bang on man yeah yeah i mean i i will not rule over you nor shall my son rule over you the lord shall rule over you this dude is pious he is he is pious yeah and if he would have just shut up at that point everything would have been good i mean if he just like stop talking and don't say anything else you've just uttered truth you have you have delivered an orthodox confession of faith i'm not king god is king period but he doesn't after he gives this little speech my my my verse 24 starts out with the word single word yet i mean which is kind of interpretive translation but it kind of it kind of gives you a hint as to what's about to happen yet you know gideon says this yet gideon goes on to say i would request of you that each of you

give me an earring from his spoil and then it has in parentheses for they had gold earrings because they were ishmaelites and maybe that was maybe the ishmaelites were known for having gold gold earrings evidently so after they killed all these guys as you know as commonly happens in war they would strip the fallen they would take whatever they could use from from the fallen warriors so i guess they had a whole bunch of golden earrings that they had stripped from these slain midi night warriors and they said oh you bet we will surely give them so they they spread out this cloak on the ground and every one of them throws an earring onto the cloak from his from his spoil now let me pause there for a second because i think something's i think we're getting set up

here there's a couple things there's a there's a couple things i think that we should if we put our ear right to the bible and like listen real closely there's a couple of whispers here first of all what story before this did we have golden earrings mentioned being collected uh by a leader in israel to use for something it's it's just the first priest ever yeah just the first priest here it just happens to be like the brother of like the biggest name of the old testament yeah all the way back in exodus right when moses is up on the mountain and the and the people come to Aaron and say, make a God for us, because we don't know what happened to this Moses. So what does Aaron do? He starts collecting earrings, right? Starts collecting those gold

earrings. So I think that's one story that maybe not even whispered here. I think this is like a shout that we should hear, especially when we get to what's coming next. But the other story is not really a story. It's a verse earlier in this particular story. Remember that when the Spirit came upon Gideon, I made a point of noting that usually when the Spirit comes upon a person, it just says that the Spirit came upon that person. But we're told back in chapter 6, verse 34, that the Spirit of the Lord clothed Gideon. And I'm wondering if we're not supposed to kind of hear that as kind of a contrast to what's happening here. So the Spirit came upon Gideon as like a cloak comes upon a person. The spirit is clothing Gideon earlier, and now

as this story turns south, you have a cloak, you have clothing once more thrown down, but the spirit is going to be completely uninvolved, indeed opposed to what's about to happen. So that's what goes on in verse 25. What do they can do with all this gold? Well, let's find out this is a bunch right this is the weight of the gold earrings was 1700 shekels which one commentator says was about 43 pounds worth of gold yeah i wouldn't mind having 43 pounds of gold i mean it'd be pretty nice i put that in my safety deposit box yeah keep for a rainy day uh so i mean that's a lot keep it keep in mind by the way that at this point there were no there was no coinage this is before there were coins so when you hear about like shekels don't think in terms of coins

it just was a unit of weight is all so uh a shekel was about i don't know like uh four tenths of an ounce i don't know something like that uh we're uncertain about the exact the exact weight of that but it was a small small small unit of measurement anyway uh comes out to about 43 pounds and that's aside, it says the crescent ornaments, which we heard about earlier, and the pendants and the purple robes, which were on the kings of Midian, and the neck bands that were on their camel's necks. There's a whole lot of wealth that they have from the spoils of war. So what's Gideon going to do with all this gold? Well, we find out in verse 27 that Gideon made it into an ephod and placed it in his city, Ophrah, and all Israel, as you might expect, played the harlot with it

there, so that it became a snare to Gideon and his household. So, it's not good. We see Gideon, you know, you think about this story as a whole, and what's the first thing God told Gideon to do, right to take his uh to take a take an ox and to to tear down the altar of his father and to cut down the asherah pole and to sacrifice a bull there and to use the the wood from the asherah pole to for the sacrifice so the very first thing that god told gideon to do was to destroy idolatry and now at this point in the story once Gideon has achieved this great success he turns right around and he not only engages in idolatry but he makes an idolatrous object and it's not just him or just him and his family or just him and his city that are negatively affected by this but it says all

Israel began to play the harlot with it there as Gideon's name and his fame spread his impact also spread. And so people, no doubt, were looking to him for leadership, for guidance. And this is what he did. He made this golden ephod. It's a little bit difficult to define because there's different kinds of ephods in the Old Testament. Usually we think of that connected with like the breastplate of the high priest, but there's other kinds of ephods which seem to stand upright, so clearly not just an article of clothing. So ephod is a little bit difficult precisely to define, but we do know that it was often used. In fact, we're going to encounter one later in the book of Judges in idolatrous circumstances. And when it says Israel played

the harlot there, well, it's pretty obvious what's going on there, that they were engaging once more in the worship of probably Baal, maybe Asherah as well. And all this became a snare to Gideon and to his to his household my translation is it's a little more explicit here where it's and all of israel whored after it yeah yeah obviously there's like an adulterous sort of connotation to it but there's also like when you hear that like all like the entire nation whores after this thing there's like this really sort of like dirty lust like that's built into that right where it's uh where these other gods it's so interesting that over and over and over again what you see is that israel and this is true of us too are easily seduced by sort of like

a sexier god right because because because yahweh's just not that sexy right right he's using like ordinary things he doesn't have images like all this it's just not as uh arousing to the senses so yeah this this sort of horde after it language it has this sort of like look we have this this lust for a god that is different than the god that we have yeah i i think that's a perfect way to put it i mean and quite literally the other gods were sexier yeah i mean because of course uh sex was actually a a part of part of their worship and you they were all about fertility so you could you can see why knowing people are the way they are that this would have been a constant temptation for the Israelites. And I mean, the sad part of this whole story is that despite Gideon's

great successes due to God's intermission, I mean, God set the whole thing up, right? He reduced his force to 300 men so that it would be obvious that this was all a gift from God. And yet Gideon is just a typical case where it's easy to forget that it's easy to transform the gifts of God into entitlements or to personal achievements and that's certainly what happened here with with him yeah and and still this this is sort of the end of the story we're not to we'll get to the the death of gideon next week but the you do end it's weird that it ends here with the the land had rest for 40 years in the days of gideon so it had it had rest in the sense that it wasn't being oppressed or uh enslaved by anyone but during this 40 years of rest that what do you have

the not so slow decline into idolatry so this one is set up a little bit differently because you have like then they had 40 years of rest but then they did what was evil in the sight of the lord this this way in this story you get the patience of god where this seems to have happened pretty quickly and for 40 years god is pretty patient as as the children of israel don't have any enemies invading them or anything like this but there is this idolatry going on and and you assume that this is how it usually works it wasn't like there was 40 years of rest and they were doing everything that they should do and it was great and then one day one guy did one thing that really really rubbed god the wrong way no it's this is this is how it works it's like yeah they're

delivered and immediately the decline starts and then for 40 years god is long-suffering and then he has enough yeah yeah that's a great way to describe it this is just more of a kind of a realistic portrait of exactly what was happening in israel they didn't like wake up one day and decide you know what i'm done with yahweh i'm gonna worship baal right it was always a cancer that was growing in the in the nation until finally it was uh it was enough and we're out of time that's it man next week we'll uh i think we'll wrap up gideon guys if you uh enjoy the podcast and it's been helpful to you you can support it by going over to 1517.org go to the donate page. You can become a monthly contributor there. Thank you so much to those of you who do

that. Chad, I will see you next week. See you then.