Daily Manna, Year Two · Day 23 · January 23
Too Many
“And the LORD said unto Gideon, The people that are with thee are too many for me to give the Midianites into their hands, lest Israel vaunt themselves against me, saying, Mine own hand hath saved me.”
It is hard to admire a God who thins out an army so that the victory looks more impressive. Say the objection at full strength: it sounds like vanity, like a commander sending soldiers home so that he keeps the credit, while other men's lives are at stake.
Read the sentence again, and ask who is in danger in it. "The people that are with thee are too many for me to give the Midianites into their hands, lest Israel vaunt themselves against me, saying, Mine own hand hath saved me." The danger is a sentence Israel would say about itself, and thinning the army is meant to stop them from saying it. God is protecting His people from getting their own story wrong.
Isaiah later records an empire saying exactly that kind of sentence: "By the strength of my hand I have done it, and by my wisdom; for I am prudent." Jonathan refused to let the numbers count for anything either way: "there is no restraint to the LORD to save by many or by few." And in the first cut, the men chose for themselves. Gideon was told to announce, "Whosoever is fearful and afraid, let him return," and twenty-two thousand men took the offer. That was more than two thirds of the army, gone before anyone reached the water.
What keeps this from being a tidy lesson is that it worked, and it did not last. After the battle Gideon turns down the crown with a good sentence: "the LORD shall rule over you." Yet in the very next verse he asks for the gold earrings from the plunder. He makes an ephod out of the gold and sets it up in his own town of Ophrah, "and all Israel went thither a whoring after it." Three hundred men were enough to stop a nation from taking the credit for the victory. They were not enough to stop the man who led them from making the next idol out of the winnings.
So the warning reaches us too, because pride can come back in through the very gifts God gives. The safest thing to do with any victory is to keep saying out loud what Gideon said and then forgot: the Lord rules, and the Lord is the one who saves.
Daily Manna runs on a two-year cycle. The year one reading for day 23 is The Way Out (1 Corinthians 10:13).