Judges Chapters 6&7&8-VS- 1-27
Soon a great army of Midianites arrived and camped in the valley of Jezreel. Gideon blew a trumpet and called the men of Israel to go with him and fight them.
Gideon asked God to do a miracle to prove to him that it was really God who had promised to help him when he went to fight against the Midianites. This is the miracle Gideon asked God to do. Gideon said he would leave some wool out on the ground all night. In the morning, if the wool was wet with dew and the ground all around it was dry, this would be a miracle and he would know that the Lord was going to help him in his fight to free the people of Israel.
So Gideon left the wool on the ground all night. Early the next morning he went outside and found it full of water. He wrung the dew out of it with his hands and filled a bowl with the water, but the ground all around was dry! Why wasn’t the ground wet too? You see, it was a miracle.
Then Gideon asked the Lord for permission to try it again; but this time he asked God to make the ground wet with dew and to let the wool stay dry! God agreed, so Gideon left the wool out another night, and in the morning the wool was perfectly dry, but the ground all around was wet.
Gideon knew by these miracles that the Lord would certainly help him when he went out to fight against the Midianites. Gideon’s little army got up early in the morning and started towards the vast army of Midian. But the Lord told Gideon that his little army was to big!
“Send some of your men home,” God said, “Tell anyone who is afraid to eave.”
When Gideon told his men this, twenty-two thousand of them went home, while ten-thousand stayed.
“There are still to many!” the Lord said. “Bring them down to the river and I will choose the ones I want in the battle.”
{God told Gideon to send his soldiers home except for three hundred of them who drank from their hands. God would use these three-hundred to defeat a vast enemy army.}
So Gideon brought them to the river. All the men were thirsty and began to drink. Some lifted the water to their mouths in their hands, and some stooped down and put their hands, and some stooped down and put their mouths into the water. The Lord said that only the ones who drank from their hands (There were three hundred of them) could go with him to the battle!
Gideon was afraid to go with so few, but the Lord told him to take one of his soldiers and creep over to the camp of the enemy through the darkness to listen to what they were saying.
The Midianites were as thick as grasshoppers in the valley below, and they had so many camels it was hard to count them. That night Gideon and another man crept down to their camp and listened outside one of the tents where two Midianites soldiers were talking. One was telling the other about a dream he had.
“In my dream,” He said, “I saw a loaf of bread come tumbling into our camp; it struck against a tent and it knocked down flat on the ground!”
And the other man said, “Your dream means that the Lord is going to give Gideon a great victory over us!”
When Gideon heard this he went back to get the three hundred men. He told them to get up and come with him, for the Lord would give them the victory. He put them in three different groups and gave each man a trumpet and a pitcher with a lighted lamp inside. He told them that when they came to the camp of the Midianites, they must do exactly as he did. When he blew his trumpet, they must all blow theirs and shout, “The sword of the Lord and of Gideon!”
In the middle of the night he and his three hundred men arrived in the camp of the Midianites . Suddenly he and all of his men blew their trumpets and broke the pichers and shouted, “The sword of the Lord and of Gideon!”
When the Midianites heard the noise and saw the burning lamps that had been hidden in the pitchers, they yelled in fear and ran for their lives. The Lord made them afraid both of the men of Israel and of each other, too, so that they were killing and fighting one another all over the valley.
Gideon and his men chased them as they fled across the Jordan River. The two kings of the Midianites raced ahead of him with fifteen thousand soldiers. But he caught up with them and overcame them and took the two kings captive.
So the Midianites were driven out of Canaan, and the people of Israel were no longer their slaves.
Gideon was the judge of Israel for forty years. God gave him many sons, and he lived to be an old man.
Questions:
What two miracles did God do with Gideon’s wool?
How did the Lord decide which men should be Gideon’s army?
How did Gideon’s tiny army defeat the huge Midianite army?
Have a fabulous day full of blessings.
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