Topic: Persons Of The Bible - Gideon

The name "Gideon" means "feller" or "hewer" in Hebrew. The name also means "he that cuts down."

Gideon was also called Jerubbaal (Judg. 6:29, 32), and was the first of the judges whose history is circumstantially narrated (Judg. 6-8). Gideon's calling is the commencement of the second period in the history of the judges. After the victory gained by Deborah and Barak over Jabin, Israel once more sank into idolatry, and the Midianites (q.v.) and Amalekites, with other "children of the east," crossed the Jordan each year for seven successive years for the purpose of plundering and desolating the land. Gideon received a direct call from God to undertake the task of delivering the land from these warlike invaders.

Gideon was of the family of Abiezer (Josh. 17:2; 1 Chr. 7:18), and was the youngest son of Joash, an undistinguished family who lived at Ophrah, a town probably on the west of Jordan, (Judges 6:15) in the territory of Manasseh, near Shechem.

He was the fifth recorded judge of Israel, and for many reasons the greatest of them all. When we first hear of him he was grown up and had sons, (Judges 6:11; 8:20) and from the apostrophe of the angel, ch. (Judges 6:12) we may conclude that he had already distinguished himself in war against the roving bands of nomadic robbers who had oppressed Israel for seven years. When the angel appeared, Gideon was threshing wheat with a flail in the wine-press, to conceal it from the predatory tyrants.

His call to be a deliverer, and his destruction of Baal's altar, are related in Judges 6. After the destruction of the alter begins the second act of Gideon's life.

First, clothed by the Spirit of God, (Judges 6:34) comp. 1Chr 12:18; Luke 24:49, with ten of his servants, Gideon overthrew the altars of Baal and cut down the asherah which was upon it. Gideon blew a trumpet, and was joined by Zebulun, Naphtali and even the reluctant Asher. The people flocked to his standard on the crest of Mount Gilboa to the number of twenty-two thousand men.

Strengthened by a double sign from God, he reduced his army of 32,000 by the usual proclamation. (20:8) comp. 1 Macc. 3:56. By a second test at "the spring of trembling he further reduced the number of his followers to 300. (Judges 7:5) seq.

These three hundred, strangely armed with torches and pitchers and trumpets, rushed in from three different points on the camp of Midian at midnight, in the valley to the north of Moreh, with the terrible war-cry, "For the Lord and for Gideon" (Judg. 7:18, R.V.). Terror-stricken, the Midianites were put into dire confusion, and in the darkness slew one another, so that only fifteen thousand out of the great army of one hundred and twenty thousand escaped alive. The memory of this great deliverance impressed itself deeply on the mind of the nation (1 Sam. 12:11; Ps. 83:11; Isa. 9:4; 10:26; Heb. 11:32).

After this there was a peace of forty years, and we see Gideon in peaceful possession of his well-earned honors, and surrounded by the dignity of a numerous household. (Judges 8:29-31) It is not improbable that, like Saul, he owed a part of his popularity to his princely appearance. (Judges 8:18) In this third stage of his life occur alike his most noble and his most questionable acts viz., the refusal of the monarchy on theocratic grounds, and the irregular consecration of a jeweled ephod formed out of the rich spoils of Midian, which proved to the Israelites a temptation to idolatry although it was doubtless intended for use in the worship of Jehovah.

Gideon died in a good old age, and was buried in the sepulchre of his fathers. Soon after his death a change came over the people. They again forgot Jehovah, and turned to the worship of Baalim, "neither shewed they kindness to the house of Jerubbaal" (Judg. 8:35). Gideon left behind him seventy sons, a feeble, sadly degenerated race, with one exception, that of Abimelech, who seems to have had much of the courage and energy of his father, yet of restless and unscrupulous ambition. Abimelech gathered around him a band who slaughtered all Gideon's sons, except Jotham, upon one stone.

Derived from Easton's and Smith's Bible Dictionaries

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