He Leads Me By Streams of Water
He Leads Me By Streams of Water
Judges 7:4-7a
And the LORD said to Gideon, “The people are still too many. Take them down to the water, and I will test them for you there, … Every one who laps the water with his tongue, as a dog laps, you shall set by himself. Likewise, every one who kneels down to drink.” And the number of those who lapped, putting their hands to their mouths, was 300 men. … And the LORD said to Gideon, “With the 300 men who lapped I will save you and give the Midianites into your hand.”
I once heard a preacher make the logical speculation that the reason God performed this rather bizarre drinking test is to set apart the most readied warriors from their counterparts, choosing only the men who lapped the water from their cupped hands because they’d still have an eye on their surroundings. Yet that doesn’t answer the more enigmatic question of why a group of these tribesmen learned to drink water in a different manner at all, nor why they were so few in number. To me, that’s where the greater intrigue lies.
God doesn’t pick this test willy nilly, friend. He knows precisely that only 300 out of 10,000 of these fearless fighting men just so happen to drink water in a particular way. That’s a meager 3 percent! But He singles them out on purpose. Why? I mean, why them? Were they all from the same tribe and clan? Did they all grow up in the same backwater town? Did they have really special genes or something? Or—imagine this—if we take the preacher’s speculation seriously that these 300 men drank water with an eye on their surroundings, might it be that they learned that method due to sharing the same occupation? If so, in what sort of occupation would someone learn at a young age to always keep an eye out for danger even at a watering hole? Ah, the occupation of shepherding, of course! The work of protecting little lambs from wolves and lions that could pounce from the shadows at any moment.
Oh, how marvelous to think that maybe, just maybe, the LORD singled out these 300 men not because they were better or more elite fighters, but simply because their very vocation was emblematic of His.