"The Israelites said to Gideon, 'Rule over us---you, your son and your grandson---because you have saved us from the hand of Midian.'" (Judges 8:22) Up until now the Lord has been the king of Israel. He has appointed leaders to guide the people but He is the head of the nation. In Deuteronomy 17:14 He predicted that a day would come in which the Israelites would want to have a king like all the other nations around them. He provided guidelines they must follow when choosing a king, but this is an example of the Lord's permissive will. His perfect will was that He be enthroned in the people's hearts as king of Israel, not that they would enthrone a human being as their head of state.
What the Israelites of Gideon's day are proposing is to set up a dynasty. They are offering to make him the first king of Israel and to make his descendants the royal line of Israel. But although a time is coming in which the Lord will allow a king and a royal family line in Israel, this is not the time, Gideon is not the man, and his tribe is not the correct one. You'll recall from our study of Genesis that Jacob, when blessing his sons, prophesied that the tribe of Judah would be the royal line of Israel, saying that to the tribe of Judah will belong the "scepter" and the "ruler's staff". (Genesis 49:10a)
Gideon wisely refuses the people's offer and turns their focus back to the King of kings. "But Gideon told them, 'I will not rule over you, nor will my son rule over you. The Lord will rule over you.'" (Judges 8:23) Even if this had been the right time and place for a king, the people's motive for choosing Gideon is wrong. They choose him because he has won a mighty victory against the enemy. They believe if they promote him to the office of king, none of the nations surrounding them will dare to try to lay a finger on them. His victory over the Midianites and over the Midianites' allies will remain prominent in the minds of everyone in the region. Even if Gideon had been the right man to wear the crown, their reasons for selecting him were the wrong reasons. They're seeking a man to defend a nation, not a man to set a spiritual example for the nation.
Gideon makes a wise choice when he refuses the crown. He says the right thing when he reminds the Israelites their government is a theocracy, not a monarchy. But he makes a request of the people for the purpose of fashioning an unwise object, as we'll soon see. "And he said, 'I do have one request, that each of you give me an earring from your share of the plunder.' (It was the custom of the Ishmaelites to wear gold earrings.)" (Judges 8:24) In Genesis 37, when the brothers of Joseph sold him into slavery, we found the caravan of people they sold him to being referred to as both Midianites and Ishmaelites. Both these groups were connected to Abraham: Ishmael was Abraham's son by his Egyptian slave Hagar; Midian was one of Abraham's son by Keturah, a wife he took later in life. In Genesis 25 we were told that Abraham left everything he owned to Isaac---his son and heir by his first and chief wife, Sarah---and that he gave gifts to the sons of his concubines and sent them away to the land of the east. He had already sent Hagar and her son Ishmael away long before. It is believed that the descendants of the sons of his concubines joined together and intermarried, hence the traveling together of the Midianites and the Ishmaelites in the caravan of Genesis 37. This is why, here in Judges 8, the author refers to the Midianites as the Ishmaelites.
It was customary for the victorious army to plunder the goods of the enemy. The Israelites have taken all the goods of the men they conquered in battle. Gideon asks each Israelite to give him only one earring out of everything they've taken. This is a very small amount for each man to give and they are happy to give it. "They answered, 'We'll be glad to give them.' So they spread out a garment, and each of them threw a ring from his plunder onto it. The weight of the rings he asked for came to seventeen hundred shekels, not counting the ornaments, the pendants and the purple garments worn by the kings of Midian or the chains that were on their camels' necks." (Judges 8:25-26) Though the amount each man gave was small, it amounted to quite a bit when added up. This was about fifty pounds of gold. To put it into perspective, this amount of gold would be worth $1,445,656 in the current market.
The people probably believe Gideon is asking for the gold earrings as his pay for having led the army of Israel against the Midianites. They gladly gave him fifty pounds of gold. They would gladly have given him much more, had he asked for it. But instead of using this gold for his personal wealth, he does something strange and unexpected with it. "Gideon made the gold into an ephod, which he placed in Ophrah, his town." (Judges 8:27a)
An ephod was a garment worn by the high priest of Israel, as we learned earlier in the Old Testament. But Gideon is no priest and he is not of the priestly tribe. However, he does not appear to have taken upon himself any of the duties of a priest, nor can we assume he ever wore the ephod since it would be impractical if not impossible for a man to move about in a stiff and heavy ephod of gold. Instead the Bible tells us the ephod was "placed in Ophrah", indicating it was on public display. The author of Judges doesn't tell us why Gideon made the ephod. He may have fallen victim to pride, setting the ephod up as a monument to himself and to his family line. Although he refused to be crowned king, we'll see later in Judges 8 that he named one of his sons Abimelek, which means "the king is my father". This suggests that he thought of himself as more than a victorious army general or a judge of Israel. He may not have accepted the title of king but in his heart he may have regarded himself as a king.
Or, giving him the benefit of the doubt, it could be that the golden ephod on public display was intended by Gideon to remind the people of what the Lord had done for them. But if this was his intention, it backfired terribly, for the ephod itself became an object of worship. The author of Judges concludes our passage today by saying, "All Israel prostituted themselves by worshiping it there, and it became a snare to Gideon and his family." (Judges 8:27b) We are not told exactly how or why the people began to worship it. Israel's house of worship (the tabernacle) is located in Shiloh at this time, within the borders of the tribe of Ephraim. Earlier in Chapter 8 the men of Ephraim found fault with Gideon because they felt slighted that he had not called their soldiers to arms when making up his army to attack the Midianite camp. Some scholars have proposed that Gideon placed the ephod in Ophrah and created a center of worship there so that his people (he was of the clan of Abiezer of the tribe of Manasseh) would not travel to Ephraim to worship the Lord at the tabernacle. They think he set up a rival altar in West Manasseh due to his strained relationship with the Ephraimites. If this is the case, Gideon acted in direct opposition to the Lord who had commanded all Israel to worship only at the place of His choosing, which was at the tabernacle.
Whatever the reason for the creation and the display of the golden ephod, it became an object of worship. It led the people away from the Lord's house at Shiloh. It kept them from the nation's center of worship and from the godly influence of the priests at the house of God. Staying away from the house of God caused the people to create their own rules and rituals. They were doing things their way instead of doing things God's way. This is why the Bible says the Israelites prostituted themselves; they were unfaithful to their covenant relationship with the Lord. This is why the Bible says the ephod became a snare to Gideon and his family; it lured them away from true religion and entrapped them in idolatry. I don't believe for a minute that Gideon meant for this to happen. It's just that small compromises lead to bigger compromises, as we've discussed before, and compromising leads to sin.
No comments:
Post a Comment