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.”
A God who thins out an army so the win looks more impressive is not easy to admire. Say the objection at full strength: it reads like vanity, a commander sending men home to keep the credit, with other men's lives as the stake.
Read the sentence again for who is at risk 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 named is a sentence Israel would say about Israel, and the thinning is aimed at stopping them saying it. This is preventative work on a nation about to misread its own history for a generation.
Isaiah watched an empire do exactly that later: By the strength of my hand I have done it, and by my wisdom; for I am prudent. Jonathan refuses to let the arithmetic mean anything in either direction: there is no restraint to the LORD to save by many or by few. And the first cut was not even God's doing. Whosoever is fearful and afraid, let him return. Twenty-two thousand men took it, two thirds of the army, gone before anyone reached the water.
Here is what keeps this from being a tidy lesson. It worked, and it did not last. Gideon refuses the crown afterwards with a good sentence, the LORD shall rule over you, and in the same breath asks for the gold from the plunder. He makes an ephod of it, sets it up in his own town, and all Israel went thither a whoring after it. Three hundred men were enough to stop a nation claiming the victory. They were not enough to stop the man who led them building the next idol out of the proceeds.
Daily Manna runs on a two-year cycle. The year one reading for day 23 is The Way Out (1 Corinthians 10:13).