Gideon’s Small Army

“The LORD is with you, O mighty man of valor.” — Judges 6:12

Once again the Israelites forgot God and did wrong. So God let a people called the Midianites rule over them. Every year, when the Israelites had planted their crops, the Midianites came swarming in like locusts, with their camels, and took everything. The Israelites had to hide in caves in the mountains.

One day a young man called Gideon was threshing wheat. Normally people threshed wheat out in the open, where the wind could blow away the husks. But Gideon was hiding in a winepress, a pit in the ground, so that the Midianites wouldn’t see him.

Then the angel of the Lord appeared to him. “The Lord is with you, mighty warrior!” he said.

Gideon must have looked around to see who he was talking to! He certainly didn’t feel like a mighty warrior. “If the Lord is with us,” Gideon said, “why has all this happened to us?”

“Go in the strength you have,” said the Lord, “and save Israel from the Midianites. Am I not sending you?”

“But how can I save Israel?” said Gideon. “My family is the weakest in our whole tribe, and I am the youngest in my father’s house.”

“I will be with you,” the Lord said.

Gideon still wasn’t sure. So he asked God for a sign. “I will put a woolly fleece on the threshing floor,” he said. “If there is dew on the fleece in the morning, but the ground all around it is dry, then I will know You will save Israel through me.” The next morning, the fleece was so wet he wrung out a whole bowl of water! But the ground was dry.

Then Gideon asked again. “Don’t be angry with me. This time, let the fleece be dry, and the ground covered with dew.” And God did that too!

So Gideon gathered an army. Thirty-two thousand men came. But God said, “You have too many men. If you win, Israel will boast, ‘We saved ourselves.’”

So Gideon told everyone who was afraid to go home. Twenty-two thousand men went home! Ten thousand were left.

“There are still too many,” God said. He told Gideon to take the men down to the water to drink. Most of them knelt down to drink. But three hundred men scooped up the water in their hands and lapped it. “With these three hundred men I will save you,” said God.

Three hundred men, against an army as many as locusts!

In the middle of the night, Gideon gave each man a trumpet and an empty clay jar with a burning torch hidden inside it. They crept to the edge of the enemy camp and spread out all around it. Then Gideon blew his trumpet. All three hundred men blew their trumpets and smashed their jars, so that the torches blazed out in the dark. And they shouted, “A sword for the Lord and for Gideon!”

The Midianites woke up to trumpets and crashing and fire and shouting all around them. They panicked! In the confusion, they turned on each other, and then ran away.

God won the battle, with just three hundred men. Everyone knew it was God, not Gideon, who had saved them.

Read it in your Bible: Judges 6–7

Dear God, when I feel small and weak, remind me that you are with me. Thank you that you can do great things through people who seem unimportant. Amen.