Judges, Chapter 8 - After the Victory | Prophets of Israel Daily

[music] >> Shalom friends, welcome back to the Prophets of Israel daily. This is the Book of Judges chapter 8. I'm Jeremy Gimpel [music] here with Ari Bremwitz and it's brought to you by the Land of Israel Network at the landofisrael.com. [music] All right, so chapter 7 is one of the most inspiring chapters in all of Shofetim. Gideon, 300 men, clay jars, torches, it's like an impossible victory. Left no doubt who actually won the war. But chapter 8 is what happens next because this is where the story gets complicated. This is where a man who just won Hashem's battle starts fighting his own spiritual battles. And chapter 8 is the story of Gideon's descent. It happens so gradually, so humanly, so recognizably. It's it's here for every one of us to learn from. And so Gideon was one of our greatest leaders and like every biblical hero, we're told about what makes them great and we're also told about what their mistakes were and how they could have been better and every leader in the Bible is an eternal lesson for us. So chapter 8 begins well for Gideon. The men of Ephraim come to Gideon right in the middle of pursuit. Right in the heat of the chase, they're furious. They feel slighted. They feel disrespected, left out of the victory and they say to him in verse 1, "And the men of Ephraim said to him, What is this thing you have done to us not to call us when you went to fight Midian?" And they quarreled with him sharply. Okay, 120,000 enemy soldiers are gone. The land is on the verge of liberation for the first time in years and this is the conversation happening at the tent of the man who made it all possible. It's not like congratulations, not thank you God, we're free, not hey, how can we help? It's like Gideon responds in such a beautiful way, wisdom and humility. Verse 2, "What have I done now compared to you? Is not the gleanings of Ephraim's grapes better than the grape harvest of Abiezer?" He's saying to Ephraim, "Your leftovers, your gleanings, they're better than our best harvest. You captured the princes. That was the real victory." He lifts them up, he reframes their contribution, places them above his own and the danger or the anger dissolves. And that is still the Gideon of chapter 7. The man who bowed before acting. He understood that all the glory belongs to Hashem. He doesn't get into an ego war. He gives them the honor they needed and acts truly like a righteous leader of men. And then the story continues in verse 4. By a vote Gideon and I are done. And Gideon came to the Jordan and crossed it. He and 300 men with him exhausted yet pursuing. I have seen they wrote theme, exhausted yet pursuing. It's like what a phrase. 300 men, they haven't slept. They've been running through the night, bone tired and still going. Gideon was a mirror of the future king of Israel. King David had a group of a few hundred men and they too faced impossible odds and emerged victorious. And now these people, they needed food, they needed rest, they need their brother's help. So Gideon turns to the men of Succoth, an Israelite city, and asks simply, "Give us some bread. We're pursuing the kings of Midian and we're exhausted." And the men of Succoth say in all of their chutzpah, "Are the hands of Zebah and Zalmunna already in your hand that we should give bread to your army?" Verse 6. And they refuse. So Gideon goes to Penuel and they refuse to help too. And here's where something begins to shift inside Gideon because these aren't Midianites that are refusing him. These are Israelites, his own people watching their brothers fight for their freedom, exhausted, starving and saying, "It's not my problem. Show me the victory first and then we'll talk." Yeah, and and that betrayal by your own people, that cuts differently than any enemy ever could because you expect enemies to oppose you. But your own brothers refusing you bread when you're exhausted in the middle of Hashem's work, in the middle of that war, that is a wound that does not heal quickly or easily. And I can't read this without thinking about what we see today. Maybe it's controversial, I don't know. But but you know, the men of Succoth weren't evil people. They weren't the Midianites. They were Israelites who looked at their exhausted brothers fighting for freedom of their people and said, "Show me the victory first, then we'll commit." Right? They they were they dressed it up as pragmatism, as realism, but underneath it was fear. Fear of what Midian would do to them if they backed the wrong side too early. Fear of standing out. Fear of being on the losing team. And we have those Jews today, the ones who march with Gaza, who publicly distance themselves from Israel, who issue statements of solidarity with those who want to destroy us and they call it a moral position, a stance of conscience. But look what it actually is. It's Succoth. It's the calculation that if I make myself useful to the other side, if I demonstrate that I'm not like those Jews, maybe I'll be spared when the time comes. It's the oldest Jewish mistake in the book. And the Torah is telling us 3,000 years before our current news cycle exactly what Hashem thinks of it. And I think what what we watch unfold in the rest of this chapter is in part the consequence of that wound. Gideon keeps going but something has changed. The I starts growing. The mission starts becoming more personal and less national and and communal. You know, that's true. He does keep going and he finds out that it really is personal. You know, he catches the kings of Zebah and Zalmunna. He completes the mission. The final tally, 120,000 enemy soldiers have fallen. The land is finally free. And then on his way back, he stops at Succoth. He makes good on his promise. He punishes them with thorns and briars. He tears down the tower of Penuel. He executes justice on those who refused to help. And then he confronts Zebah and Zalmunna and asks them a question that reveals something that we didn't know beforehand. This is verse 18. "Where are the men you killed at Tabor?" And the king answered, "They looked like you, Gideon, like sons of a king." And Gideon says, "They were my brothers, sons of my own mother." This entire relentless pursuit, crossing the Jordan exhausted, pushing through rejection, refusing to stop, it wasn't all about Israel. It was his personal family. His brothers were killed by these men and Gideon would not rest until justice was done. And so Gideon himself kills Zebah and Zalmunna. And then comes the moment when Gideon is set apart from every other judge in Israel. The people turn to Gideon and say in verse 22, "Rule over us, you, your son and your grandson for you have saved us from Midian." They're actually asking Gideon to become the first king of Israel. They're asking him to rule over them and then his son will take his place and then his grandson. They're telling him to be their king and build a dynasty. I mean, he's quite literally a mirror of King David and the people sense it. And Gideon says one of the most beautiful statements in the entire book. Verse 23. Lo emshol ani bakhem. "I will not rule over you. My son will not rule over you. Hashem will rule over you." That is perfect. That's exactly right. That is the Gideon of the clay jars and the shofars and the battle of worship in the darkness outside the enemy camp. Hashem will rule over you. He's so righteous. It's not about his power or his glory or securing positions for his children. He's just fully dedicated to Hashem and he wants everyone to follow his lead. And then even Gideon, the faith warrior, makes mistakes. In the very next verse, Gideon says, "But give me all the gold earrings from the plunder." And they do. 1,700 shekels of gold plus the crescents and the pendants and the purple garments of the kings, a small fortune. And Gideon takes all of it and makes an ephod, a priestly garment which he places in his hometown in Ophrah. And then, you know, what what started with good intentions turns sour pretty fast. This is verse 27. Vaiznu kol Yisrael akharav. And all Israel went whoring after and it became a snare to Gideon and to his house. A snare. The word in Hebrew, mokesh, means trap, a noose, something that catches you before you realize you're caught. In modern Hebrew, mokesh is a landmine. You're just walking on the ground and then one wrong step and it blows up in your face. And so now what happened here? I mean, how can we understand this? An ephod is a sacred garment worn by the Cohen Gadol, by the high priest. It's a vest worn over the chest and connected to the breastplate, the choshen, and its purpose in the Mishkan is used for divine communication. It's associated with Urim and Thummim, the ones that really communicate the divine will and the divine answer. So in its proper place, the ephod is good. It's a tool for holy guidance and connection to God. And Gideon, he lived his life with unprecedented guidance from God. He lived and acted with an incredible level of certainty. I mean, he demanded signs. He wanted to see personal miracles before he acted. He wanted to hear the dream exactly as he was walking by those exact soldiers. He wanted direct communication to decide to define his decisions. And perhaps that's why he created the the ephod to commemorate that connection. But, instead of raising up teachers, spreading the Torah, teaching people how to live a guided life like Joshua commanded, you don't create like a physical spiritual ornament. And although he may have had beautiful intentions, it became a trap spiritually for Israel. With a physical ornament, Israel's spirituality like shifts away from seeking, growing, and learning. An ephod offers kind of a shortcut. It moves from relationship to mechanism, from connection to control. And it becomes something you use instead of something that you live. And from there the descent begins. The ephod, a way of honoring Hashem for the victory, becomes an object of worship. People travel to Ophrah to bow before it, and Gideon watches and doesn't really respond. And I'll tell you, I think what gets missed when we read this story is like this, right? Gideon didn't fall because he was weak. He fell because he was great. Right? The very qualities that made him chosen, his hunger for direct contact with Hashem, his need for certainty, his refusal to act without a sign, these same qualities, once the battle was won, had nowhere wholly left to go. And so they sort of curdled or ruminated that the the ephod wasn't built by a corrupt man. It was built by a spiritual man who didn't know what to do with himself after the miracle was over. And that's one of the most dangerous moments in any person's life. Not the valley, but the aftermath of the mountaintop. Because in the valley, you're desperate and you cry out to Hashem. On the mountaintop, you're filled with his presence. But the morning after the victory, that's when you're most exposed. That's when the the I creeps in, dressed in the clothing of gratitude. Right? It's it's it's a little bit uh deceitful, uh the emotion of it all. Right? The mouth says the right thing, Hashem will rule over you. And the hands almost immediately reach for gold. And I don't think Gideon even noticed the contradiction. That's what makes it a mokesh. That's what makes it a landmine, like you said, Jeremy. You don't see it coming. You're just walking forward, and suddenly everything you built is the thing that traps you. You know, and then the chapter closes with words that ring like a bell throughout this entire book. And it came to pass as soon as Gideon was dead that the children of Israel again went whoring after the baals. And I mean, that is the cycle of Shoftim. And Gideon's story is one of the clearest expressions of that. It's like a man called by Hashem, stripped bare, given an impossible victory, honored by a grateful nation, and then slowly the nation strays away from the path. And you know, the chapter records that he ended his life with 70 sons, many wives, and while he was alive, there was peace in Israel for 40 years. But the man who said Hashem will rule, the challenge was he became the man that people looked to instead of Hashem. And the moment he died, they forgot both him and Hashem entirely. And I believe there's a message here for us today. I mean, we're seeing in Israel today a real fixing, a tikkun, for the nation of Israel on the deepest level. I mean, Israel doesn't have popular, powerful spiritual leaders today. There isn't really one leader that the nation of Israel recognizes and that the nation of Israel is like, "Oh, this is the leader." But still, Israel is growing spiritually more powerful every day. And we learn these ancient epic stories of the Tanakh not only as a map, but as a barometer for where we're holding as a nation now. And although every other country in the world, as they become more prosperous, they become less religious and forget about God, Israel is the one exception to the rule. As Israel is maturing and becoming more powerful, the next generation is becoming more conservative, more spiritually inclined, more prepared for Mashiach than ever before. And all this without a Gideon to lead lead us. And so, all throughout the chapter, Gideon is the leader that Israel could only have dreamed of. But at the end, it's a heartbreak, and it's a sign for our times. Because Israel, without a leader, is on a path toward redemption, and all of us are invited to join. All right, my friends, >> [music] >> that's it for today. Hazak ve'ematz, and be'ezrat Hashem, we will see you again tomorrow for Judges chapter 9.