Page 19 - February 2026 - Truth & Tidings

he narrator of the book of Judges, Another solemn lesson that we learn from
like the other writers of the Bible, Gideon’s failure is, as has often been pointed
Tis interested in real people. The out, the fact that it occurred towards the end
men and women whose experiences he of his life, when the battle had been fought,
records are not the simplistic, flattened out the victory won, the offer of a crown denied,
figures of morality tales. They are three- and the pressure was finally off. Gideon
dimensional, fully formed characters with personifies the principle of 1 Corinthians
strengths and weaknesses, who win victo- 10:12 – “let him that thinketh he standeth
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ries and experience failures, whose lives, take heed lest he fall” – and offers a serious
in short, are just like ours. And the human warning about the dangers of complacency
writers of Scripture are interested in these at any stage in our Christian experience.
real men and women because the Holy Gideon’s example also reminds us that,
Spirit, who moved them as they wrote, is in spiritual things, success and failure can
interested in real human beings. Failure stand cheek-to-cheek. In Judges 8:23, Gideon
to recognise this fact will mean that we reveals his spiritual stature as he declines the
never really “get” the book of Judges, and offer of kingship: “And Gideon said unto
that we miss what it has to tell us about them, I will not rule over you, neither shall
the weaknesses of our own character and my son rule over you: the LORD shall rule
about the grace and faithfulness of God. over you.” In the next breath, however, he
Gideon is a great man; his story leaves us in requests the gold earrings of the Ishmaelites,
no doubt about that. His humility, his courage and, just a handful of verses later, has made
(if, at times, reluctant), and his desire for the the golden ephod after which all Israel went
blessing of God’s people all mark him out as “a whoring.” We have often been taught
an admirable character. And our impression that Gideon rejected kingship but grasped
is given divine confirmation by his inclusion after priesthood, and that seems a plausible
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among the worthies of faith in Hebrews interpretation of the biblical data. It was most
11. But Gideon failed. And, while different likely not that he set the ephod up as an idol;
interpreters might draw up different lists of that would have been a very sad decline for
the ways in which Gideon failed, only the 1 Bible quotations in this article are from the
most determined effort to whitewash his KJV.
character could ignore his failure in terms of 2 It should be noted that not all commentators
his family, or the devastating consequences take such a generous view of Gideon’s response
that failure had for the nation. It is sobering to the invitation to become king. Daniel I.
Block, Judges, Ruth, New American Commentary
that in the previous article in this series, we (Nashville, TN: B&H Group, 1999), 300,
identified Gideon’s family life as the arena of maintains his generally negative view of the
one of his greatest victories. Not for the last latter part of Gideon’s life, arguing he “assumed
time in this book, we learn the lesson that, a king’s role as sponsor of the cult by creating an
ephod and erecting it in his city” and suggesting
even at our strongest, we are all so very weak. that the term “ephod” here describes an idol.
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