A Double-Sided Sword
A Double-Sided Sword
Judges 7:20 & 22a
Then the three companies blew the trumpets and broke the jars. They held in their left hand the torches, and in their right hands the trumpets to blow. And they cried out, “A sword for the LORD and for Gideon!” … When they blew the 300 trumpets, the LORD set every man’s sword against his comrade and against all the army.
During the course of my M.A. in Classical Studies, I read through many accounts of decisive ancient battles, from naval battles between Athens and Sparta, to Julius Caesar’s nearly fatal voyage against the Brits, to Constantine’s shrewd victory over the pagan apologist Maxentius at the Milvian Bridge, but Gideon’s battle strategy here in Judges 8 where 300 men obliterate a legion full of seasoned warriors through psychological warfare remains the most outlandish of any I’ve ever read.
It makes me wonder: did God give Gideon this instruction directly or did He allow Gideon to come up with it himself? After all, we’ve seen many biblical occasions where the LORD gave specific instructions to His people—for instance, when He instructed Noah to build the ark or when He instructed Moses to build the tabernacle or when He instructed Joshua to march around Jericho for seven days. Yet, in other instances, God lets his people play quarterback as it were—for instance, when Rahab hid the Jewish spies in her brothel or when Joseph tested his brothers by placing a golden chalice in Benjamin’s cup or when the Gibeonites dressed up like foreign travelers and made an unbreakable pact with Joshua. Maybe, in this instance, God doesn’t come to Gideon by night to lay out this exquisite battleplan, but rather He places Gideon here, for such a time as this, to bring the best out of him. He wants to showcase what little guys from little tribes and little towns can do with divine anointing. In fact, that’s sort of the point, isn’t it? That in moments like these, when the odds are stacked against us, we learn what our faith is made of.
Sometimes God takes us to the banks of the Sea to part the waters for us; sometimes He gives us the insight to find a tree on the shoreline and build a boat. But, either way, the result is the same: “A sword for the LORD and a sword for His saint!” A triumph shared.