Reflections on Scripture through the Daily Office (4)
Sunday: Psalm 93, 96; Judges 6:1-24; 2 Corinthians 9:6-15; Mark 3:20-30
The Israelites did what was evil in the sight of the LORD, and the LORD gave them into the hand of Midian for seven years. — Judges 6:1
Now the angel of the LORD came and sat under the oak at Ophrah, which belonged to Joash the Abiezrite, as his son Gideon was beating out wheat in the wine press, to hide it from the Midianites. The angel of the LORD appeared to him and said to him, ‘The LORD is with you, you mighty warrior.’ — Judges 6:11-12
Then the angel of the LORD reached out the tip of the staff that was in his hand, and touched the meat and the unleavened cakes; and fire spraing up from the rock and consumed the meat and the unleavened cakes; and the angel of the LORD vanished from his sight. Then Gideon percieved that it was the angel of the LORD; and Gideon said, ‘Help me, LORD God! For I have seen the angle of the LORD face to face.’ But the LORD said to him, ‘Peace be to you; do not fear, you shall not die.’ Then Gideon built an altar there to the LORD, and called it, The LORD is peace. To this day it still stands at Ophrah, which belongs to the Abiezrites. — Judges 6:21-24
The book of Judges is messy. Messy motives, messy memories, messy results out of messy situations. Only a skilled and careful author could produce such a challenging and honest text for we, the generations, to wrestle with.
When we meet Gideon, son of Joash the Abiezrite (of the tribe of Manasseh), many elements of the story of Abraham start to appear (and this is on purpose—it’s called “intertextuality,” where the Hebrew scriptures evoke and reference one another for the purpose of raising questions in the listener). An angel comes and sits below the oak at Ophrah, and watches Gideon, who is hiding from the Midianites as he threshes wheat in the wine press. Angels and oaks immediately bring to mind Abraham’s encounter with the three angels in Genesis 18:1-2, so already I am expectant of a divine encounter. But unlike Abraham, who looks up from his tent and runs to the angels when he sees them, Gideon is engrossed in his task, and it is the angel who must approach and appear to him.
After a conversation with the angel that is starkly reminiscent of Moses’ argumentative exchange with God in Exodus 3-4, Gideon does what Abraham did, and prepares meat and fresh cakes of bread to present to the angel. But it is not for his refreshment, but as a test of the Lord, for unlike Abraham Gideon is not sure who he is speaking to. With his “present” of bread and meat and broth, the angel has Gideon lay them out on a rock, and with the touch of his staff the rock leaps into flame and consumes everything. Only now does Gideon realize he has been speaking with the God of his ancestors—and he mistakes the angel he has seen for an angel of death (Exodus 12:12-13), forgetting all of the other times angels have met and conversed in peace with his people.
It is tragic to forget and misremember. It is also astounding, and heartening, that the Lord will still come and meet with us, not abandoning us to ourselves.
Prayer: Father in heaven, what is man that You visit him, and the son of man that You are mindful of him?—and in every way, in every respect! Verily, You never leave Yourself without a witness; and at last You did give humanity Your Word. More You could not do—to compel him to make use of it, to hear it or read it, to compel him to act according to it, this You could not wish. Ah, and yet You did do more. For You are not like a man—rarely does he do anything for nothing, and if he does, he at least would not be put to inconvenience by it. You, on the contrary, O God, bestow Your Word as a gift—and we human beings have nothing to give in return. If only You do find some willingness on the part of the single individual, You are prompt to help, and with divine patience do sit and spell it out with the individual, that he or she might be able rightly to understand this, Your Word. You are the one who, again with divine patience, do take each individual by the hand, as it were, and help them when he or she strives to do accordingly—You, our Father in heaven. Amen (Søren Kierkegaard, beginning prayer to For Self-Examination, lightly modernized)
Monday: Psalm 80; Judges 6:25-40; Acts 2:37-47; John 1:1-18
Then Gideon said to God, ‘In order to see whether you will deliver Israel by my hand, as you have said, I am going to lay a fleece of wool on the threshing-floor; if there is dew on the fleece alone, and it is dry on all the ground, then I shall know that you will deliver Israel by my hand, as you have said.’ And it was so. When he rose early next morning and squeezed the fleece, he wrung enough dew from the fleece to fill a bowl with water. Then Gideon said to God, ‘Do not let your anger burn against me, let me speak one more time; let me, please, make trial with the fleece just once more; let it be dry only on the fleece, and on all the ground let there be dew.’ And God did so that night. It was dry on the fleece only, and on all the ground there was dew. — Judges 6:36-40
False gods alter our very minds. Our thinking changes, our ability to see and recognize and discern becomes entangled. I don’t want to miss, in recognizing Gideon’s limited memory and understanding of his heritage, that Gideon is faithful amidst his unfaithfulness. Gideon puts the Lord to the test multiple times—first with the offering of bread and broth, then with the fleece in the dew. By now we see the wisdom amidst the tragedy, that because Gideon and his people have lost the ability to discern, he needs to be all the more cautious who he will follow. It is not that Gideon knows God, and from within that knowing disbelieves Him. It is more that Gideon does not know God, and is fearful of false spirits who maraud as true.
Ambrose of Milan’s (339-397 AD) take is interesting, as he sees something similar:
“Someone perhaps will inquire whether Gideon does not seem to have been lacking in faith, seeing that after being instructed by many signs he asked [for] still more. But how can he seem to have asked as if doubting or lacking in faith, who was speaking in mysteries? He was not doubtful then, but careful so that we would not doubt. For how could he be doubtful whose prayer was effectual? And how could he have begun the battle without fear, unless he had understood the message of God? For the dew on the fleece signified the faith among the Jews, because the words of God come down like the dew” (On the Holy Spirit 1, Prologue 6).
Prayer: Unhinge our minds, O Lord. Be our foundation and our courage. We can bear anything, because of You. Let us not turn our eyes away from what You would show to us, what You would have us look at and see. For it is an honor, O Lord, to listen and speak and wrestle with You—this alone is indication of Your great love for us. Amen
Tuesday: Psalm 78:1-39; Judges 7:1-18; Acts 3:1-11; John 1:19-28
Then Jerubbaal (that is, Gideon), and all the troops that were with him rose early and encamped beside the spring of Harod; and the camp of Midian was north of them, below the hill of Moreh, in the valley. The LORD said to Gideon, ‘The troops with you are too many for me to give the Midianites into their hand. Israel would only take the credit away from me, saying ‘My own hand has delivered me.’ Now therefore proclaim this in the hearing of the troops, ‘Whoever is fearful and trembling, let him return home.’ Thus Gideon sifted them out; twenty-two thousand returned, and ten thousand remained. Then the LORD said to Gideon, ‘The troops are still too many; take them down to the water and I will sift them out for you there.’ — Judges 7:1-4
That same night the LORD said to him, ‘Get up, attack the camp; for I have given it into your hand. But if you fear to attack, go down to the camp with your servant Purah, and you shall hear what they say, and afterwards your hands shall be strengthened to attack the camp [‘after that you will have the courage to attack the camp’, JPS].’ — Judges 7:9-11a
God loves to invert our expectations. It is His mercy, His humor, and His wisdom. Gideon has gone from being the least of his family, who is from the weakest of the clans of Manasseh, to being a great judge of whom even the tribes of Asher, Zebulun, and Naphtali will respond to when called upon. It was an ironic joke, even if a prophesy, when the angel called Gideon a “mighty warrior,” for of course Gideon was anything but. Now, it is true: the people recognize Gideon as Jerubbaal their deliverer, and he has an army of 32,000 at his command. Yet God sees how winning against the Midianites with an army of 32,000 will only hand over strength to strength—the strength of the Mideanites will pass to the Israelites, and God will remain forgotten and unrecognized. So, instead, it is with an army of merely 300 men against an army ‘as thick as locusts’ that Gideon frightens the Midianites into a flee of panic, and successfully takes them.
God is not interested in a “mighty warrior”—He is interested in people who love and depend upon Him, who follow him in free will, delighting in His version of strength which is weakness in the eyes of the strong. So, God does not address Gideon as Jerubball (“Let Baal contend with him”) as the people do—He is after Gideon’s friendship, even as He is after the deliverance of Israel from poverty under the Midianites. Yet Gideon still remains distant: he is obedient in culling the army down to 300 men, but now is (understandably) afraid again, and only worships the Lord after he hears, not from God, but from the mouth of his enemy that they will lose to Gideon. Gideon remains superstitious, and his commanded battle cry is not “for YHWH, the God of Israel!” but rather “For the Lord and for Gideon!”
Prayer: Do Thou, O God, renew my heart, fill me with that love of Thee which extinguishes all other affections, and enable me to give Thee my heart, and to serve Thee in spirit and in truth. Quicken me by Thy blessed Spirit, bring home the wanderer, and fix my misplaced affections on Thee. Amen (William Willberforce, two prayers combined from Unpublished Spiritual Journals)
Wednesday: Psalm 119:97-120; Judges 7:19—8:12; Acts 3:12-26; John 1:29-42
Then the Ephraimites said to him, ‘What have you done to us, not to call us when you went to fight against the Midianites?’ And they upbraided him violently. So he said to them, ‘What have I done now in comparison with you? Is not the gleaning of the grapes of Ephriam better than the vintage of Abiezer? God has given into your hands the captains of Midian, Oreb and Zeeb; what have I been able to do in comparison with you?’ When he said this, their anger against him subsided. Then Gideon came to the Jordan and crossed over, he and the three hundred who were with him, exhausted and famished. So he said to the people of Succoth, ‘Please give some loves of bread to my followers, for they are exhausted, and I am pursuing Zebah and Zalmunna, the kings of Midian.’ But the officials of Succoth said, ‘Do you already have in your possession the hands of Zebah and Zalmunna, that we should give bread to your army?’ Gideon replied, ‘Well then, when the Lord has given Zebah and Zalmunna into my hand, I will trample your flesh on the thorns of the wilderness and on briers.’ — Judges 8:1-7
Infighting, misplaced pride, and cursing one another…this is what unfolds immediately after the Midianite take over. God remains absent from the minds of the Israelites, even though they know that He was helping Gideon this whole time. The Ephraimites are upset that Gideon didn’t call them earlier, and Gideon has to ego-stroke them in order to avoid a worse conflict. But then Gideon meets twice with people who refuse to help him on his quest to capture the princes of Midian—the people of Succoth refuse to offer the starving men bread, and so do the people of Penuel. Ungrateful of them, certainly, to withhold crucial aid to those who are fighting on their behalf. But then Gideon takes it upon himself to be his idea of a ‘mighty warrior,’ and warns of punishment and vengeance when he returns their way.
Gideon never once asks God for bread. He never consults with the Lord for his and the men’s needs, doesn’t ask for council, doesn’t ask for guidance. Unlike Moses, who throughout the deliverance of Israel relied heavily upon communing with God, Gideon never again speaks with Him.
Why do we forget God? Why do we question His goodness, His abundant provision and giving-ness? It’s disappointing and frustrating; we don’t understand our own selves, and therefore we also struggle to know one another. Thanks be to God, that He became our curses, in order to undo curses once and for all. Gideon swears by the rule ‘an eye for an eye,’ and tramples the people of Succoth upon wild thorns and briars when they withold their generosity. But the flesh rent by the crown of thorns on Golgotha fought by no such philosophy, revealing evil for what it was. And He unmade it.
Prayer: Dearest Lord Jesus Christ, who desired and thirsted for us from the very first and from upon the Cross – we marvel that still you desire, long, and thirst for us, until the last soul to be saved has arrived at its blessedness. This quality of longing and thirst springs from Your eternal goodness, and it draws us up to Your blessedness, which will finally come to rest on the Day of Judgement. You have pity and compassion upon us, You who long to possess us—would that we would recognize Your ever-longing, and respond in kind. Amen (Dame Julian of Norwich, adapted into prayer, end of Chapter 31 in Revelations of Divine Love)
Thursday: Psalm 145; Judges 8:22-35; Acts 4:1-12; John 1:43-51
So he [Gideon] said to Jether his firstborn, ‘Go, kill them!’ But the boy did not draw his sword, for he was afraid, because he was still a boy. Then Zebah and Zalmunna said, ‘You come and kill us; for as the man is, so is his strength.’ — Judges 8:20-21
Then the Israelites said to Gideon, ‘Rule over us, you and your son and your grandson also; for you have delivered us out of the hand of Midian.’ — Judges 8:22
Gideon made an ephod of it [the gold] and put it in his town, in Ophrah; and all Israel prostituted themselves to it there, and it became a snare to Gideon and his family. — Judges 8:27
As soon as Gideon died, the Israelites relapsed and prostitued themselves with the Baals, making Baal-berith their god. The Israelites did not remember the LORD their God, who had rescued them from the hand of all their enemies on every side; and they did not exhibit loyalty to the house of Jerubbaal (that is, Gideon) in return for all the good that he had done for Israel. — Judges 8:33-35
Picking up at Judges 8:13-21, we see Gideon’s vengeance unfold. The elders of Succoth are tortured and trampled upon the thorns, and the tower of Penuel is not only overthrown, but all of the townsmen living in the area are killed too (which was not part of the original threat). Gideon’s strong adherence to the rule ‘an eye for an eye,’ irrespective of whether the people are his own or not, is being intentionally highlighted here, for immediately following this vengeance we see Gideon’s exchange with the captive kings of Midian.
Gideon asks Zebah and Zalmunna what happened to his brothers at Tabor. When they admit that they killed them because ‘they resembled the sons of a king,’ Gideon replies that only because of their deaths will he now kill them too. “As the LORD lives, if you had saved them alive, I would not kill you.” Swearing before the Lord, Gideon looks to the younger generation to do the deed, and asks his son to kill these two kings—in so doing, his family will now be known as powerful justice-exacting warriors. But here there is a glimmer and hint of God’s non-warrior ways, as Gideon’s son is young and afraid and does not draw his sword to obey. Gideon has forgotten the assurances he was given when he was afraid, how the Lord provided for him in those moments. Gideon fails to remember this through the innocent fear of his son, and whether out of goading or a sense of honor it is instead by Zebah and Zalmunna that Gideon’s son is relieved of his task—they tell Gideon to kill them himself, and he does.
The rest of the story is like the rest, full of mixtures of great shortsightedness and lack of faith amidst true signs of faith. The Israelites ask that Gideon become their permanent ruler (whether as a judge or a king isn’t clear), and Gideon’s response can be read as both faithful and unfaithful, when he reminds the people that it is the LORD who is their ruler. He then makes an ephod (which is a priestly garment) out of the gold given to him, which only people of power wore. Yet he does not wear it, but ‘puts it in his town,’ where ‘all of Israel prostituted themselves to it.’ And as soon as Gideon dies, the Israelites forget all that Gideon and God had done for them.
Prayer: Father God, Holy Spirit, dearest Lord Jesus…You have made stars the foil to set off virtues; griefs to set off sinning: Yet in this wretched world we toil, as if grief were not foul, nor virtue winning. I will complain, yet praise; I will bewail, approve: And all my sour-sweet days I will lament, and love. Amen (George Herbert, adapted from the poems “The Foil” and “Bitter-sweet”)
Friday: Psalm 88; Judges 9:1-16, 19-21; Acts 4:13-31; John 2:1-12
On the third day there was a wedding in Cana of Galilee, and the mother of Jesus was there. Jesus and his disciples had also been invited to the wedding. When the wine gave out, the mother of Jesus said to him, ‘They have no wine.’ And Jesus said to her, ‘Woman, what concern is that to you and to me? My hour has not yet come.’ His mother said to the servants, ‘Do whatever he tells you.’ Now standing there were six stone water-jars for the Jewish rites of purification, each holding twenty or thirty gallons. Jesus said to them, ‘Fill the jars with water.’ And they filled them up to the brim. He said to them, ‘Now draw some out, and take it to the chief steward.’ So they took it. When the steward tasted the water that had become wine, and did not know where it came from (though the servants who had drawn the water knew), the steward called the bridegroom and said to him, ‘Everyone serves the good wine first, and then the inferior wine after the guests have become drunk. But you have kept the good wine until now.’ Jesus did this, the first of his signs, in Cana of Galilee, and revealed his glory; and his disciples believed in him.
So much here, in such a simple yet extraordinary event.
For how simple is it, to draw water from the wells? This necessary, ordinary draught, one that we all need and often take for granted. Rebekah drew water for Israel’s servant’s camels, Moses drew water for Reuel the Midianite’s daughters. It is glorious to serve; you see the miracles of God, and in so doing are His image to others—‘the last shall be first and the first shall be last.’ It is no coincidence, either, that these jars here are for purification.
How fitting is it, that it is at the great celebration of a wedding that Jesus does his first miracle. Weddings are everywhere in the prophets’ and wisdom teachers’ speech of God’s union with his people…Jesus and the apostles Paul and John make much of this in their teachings, too.
How amazing is it, that wine comes forth as both the celebration and sorrowful foreshadowing of blood that it is. “Love is that liquor sweet and most divine, which my God feels as blood; but I, as wine.” (Herbert, “The Agony”)
And how good is it, that Mary mother of God is the image of faith here, not in competition with the Father’s will, but rather as a means of revealing it. Jesus obeys his mother according to the commandments, but He also does so in the perfect communion of the Father. He calls her “Woman” as the new Adam, who through his death will undo death. His time has not yet come, because it has just begun. “Jesus did this…and revealed his glory. (vs 11)”
Prayer: O my God, fill my soul with holy joy, courage and strength to serve You. Enkindle Your love in me and then walk with me along the next stretch of road before me. I do not see very far ahead, but when I have arrived where the horizon now closes down, a new prospect will open before me, for You O Prince of Peace, go with me. Amen (Edith Stein aka St Teresa Benedicta of the Cross, prayer lightly adapted)
Saturday: Psalm 87, 90; Judges 9:22-25, 50-57; Acts 4:32—5:11; John 2:13-25
Now the whole group of those who believed were of one heart and soul, and no one claimed private ownership of any possessions, but everything they owned was held in common. With great power the apostles gave their testimony to the resurrection of the Lord Jesus, and great grace was upon them all. There was not a needy person among them, for as many as owned lands or houses sold them and brought the proceeds of what was sold. They laid it at the apostles’ feet, and it was distributed to each as any had need. There was a Levite, a native of Cyprus, Joseph, to whom the apostles gave the name Barnabas (which means ‘son of encouragement’). He sold a field that belonged to him, then brought the money, and laid it at the apostles’ feet. But a man named Ananias, with the consent of his wife Sapphira, sold a piece of property; with his wife’s knowledge, he kept back some of the proceeds, and brought only a part and laid it at the apostles’ feet. ‘Ananias,’ Peter asked, ‘why has Satan filled your heart to lie to the Holy Spirit and to keep back part of the proceeds of the land? While it remained unsold, did it not remain your own? And after it was sold, were not the proceeds at your disposal? How is it that you have contrived this deed in your heart? You did not lie to us but to God!’ Now when Ananias heard these words, he fell down and died. And great fear seized all who heard of it.
There has been a lot of death in the meditations this week—the death of the Midianite army, the death of the men of Penuel, the death of Zebah and Zalmunna kings of Midian, the death of Gideon, and now the death of Ananias and Sapphira here in Acts. I’ve been unsettled by so much death, not least because it ever present in our news these days.
If we struggle with death, then we do well. It is not to be trivialized, and neither is it to be made peace with. I was astonished, when I first encountered this claim—that Christ did not come to keep us from death, but rather that He came to experience death for us and with us. And that, in so doing, He has saved us from the wages of sin (which is spiritual death). The idea that we should make peace with the inevitable, our physical death, comes instead from the Stoic philosophers, which Simone de Beauvoir and Alexandar Schmemann challenge with these thoughts: "There is no such thing as a natural death; nothing that happens to a man is ever natural, since his presence calls the world into question. All men must die: but for every man his death is an accident and, even if he knows it and consents to it, an unjustifiable violation." (Simone de Beauvoir, A Very Easy Death, as recollected by JRR Tolkien in a 1968 BBC interview).
Schmemann takes this further: “Christianity is not reconciliation with death. It is the revelation of death, and it reveals death because it is the revelation of Life. Christ is this Life. And only if Christ is Life is death what Christianity proclaims it to be, namely ‘the enemy to be destroyed,' and not a "mystery" to be explained. Religion and secularism, by explaining death, give it a "status," a rationale, make it "normal." Only Christianity proclaims it to be abnormal and, therefore, truly horrible…[only] when Christ reveals Life to us…we can hear the Christian message about death as the enemy of God. It is when Life weeps at the grave of the friend, when it contemplates the horror of death, that the victory over death begins.” (For the Life of the World, pp. 120-121).
To be unsettled and to struggle with death…this is right, to do so. By my understanding so far, we ought to unlearn our natural fear of death, that we might regain a fear of death that is illumined by the light and life of Christ.
Prayer: Holy God, Holy Trinity, Holy Immortal One, by You only can we pray and say ‘Death be not proud, though some have called thee Mighty. Thou art slave to fate, chance, kings, and desperate men, and dost with poison, war, and sickness dwell. Why swell'st thou, then? One short sleep past, we wake eternally, and death shall be no more.’ Hallelujah, come Lord Jesus, come. Amen (adapted from John Donne’s Divine Meditations #10)