'And when Gideon was come, behold, there was a man that told a dream
unto his fellow, and said, Behold, I dreamed a dream, and, lo, a cake
of barley-bread tumbled into the host of Midian, and came unto a tent,
and smote it that it fell, and overturned it, that the tent lay along.
14. And his fellow answered and said, This is nothing else save the
sword of Gideon the son of Joash, a man of Israel: for into his hand
hath God delivered Midian, and all the host. 15, And it was so, when
Gideon heard the telling of the dream, and the interpretation thereof,
that he worshipped, and returned into the host of Israel, and said,
Arise; for the Lord hath delivered into your hand the host of Midian.
16. And he divided the three hundred men into three companies, and he
put a trumpet in every man's hand, with empty pitchers, and lamps
within the pitchers. 17. And he said unto them, Look on me, and do
likewise: and, behold, when I come to the outside of the camp, it shall
be, that as I do, so shall ye do. 18. When I blow with a trumpet, I and
all that are with me, then blow ye the trumpets also on every side of
all the camp, and say, The sword of the Lord, and of Gideon. 19. So
Gideon, and the hundred men that were with him, came unto the outside
of the camp in the beginning of the middle watch; and they had but
newly set the watch: and they blew the trumpets, and brake the pitchers
that were in their hands. 20. And the three companies blew the
trumpets, and brake the pitchers, and held the lamps in their left
hands, and the trumpets in their right hands to blow withal: and they
cried, The sword of the Lord, and of Gideon. 21. And they stood every
man in his place round about the camp: and all the host ran, and cried,
and fled. 22. And the three hundred blew the trumpets, and the Lord set
every man's sword against his fellow, even throughout all the host: and
the host fled to Beth-shittah in Zererath, and to the border of
Abel-meholah, unto Tabbath. 23. And the men of Israel gathered
themselves together out of Naphtali, and out of Asher, and out of all
Manasseh, and pursued after the Midianites.'--JUDGES vii. 13-23.
To reduce thirty-two thousand to three hundred was a strange way of
preparing for a fight; and, no doubt, the handful left felt some
sinking of their courage when they looked on their own small number and
then on the widespread Midianite host. Gideon, too, would need
heartening. So the first thing to be noted is the encouragement given
him. God strengthens faith when it needs strengthening, and He has many
ways of doing so. Note that Gideon's visit to the Midianite camp was on
'the same night' on which his little band was left alone after the
ordeal by water. How punctually to meet our need, when it begins to be
felt, does God's help come! It was by God's command that he undertook
the daring adventure of stealing down to the camp. We can fancy how
silently he and Phurah crept down the hillside, and, with hushed breath
and wary steps, lest they should stumble on and wake some sleeper, or
even rouse some tethered camel, picked their way among the tents. But
they had God's command and promise, and these make men brave, and turn
what would else be foolhardy into prudence. Ho put his ear to the black
camel's-hair wall of one tent, and heard what his faith could not but
recognise as God's message to him.
The soldier's dream was just such as such a man would dream in such
circumstances. A round loaf of barley (the commonest kind of bread) was
dreamed of as rolling down from a height and upsetting '_the_ tent.'
The use of the definite article seems to point to some particular tent,
perhaps simply the one in which the dreamer lay, or perhaps the
general's; but the noun may be used as a collective, and what is meant
may be that the loaf went through the camp, overturning all the tents
in its way. The interpretation needed no Daniel, but the immediate
explanation given, shows not only the transparency of the symbol, but
the dread in the Midianite ranks of Gideon's prowess. A nameless awe,
which goes far to produce the defeat it dreads, was beginning to creep
over them. It finds utterance both in the dream and in its translation.
The tiny loaf worked effects disproportioned to its size. A rock
thundering down the hillside might have mass and momentum enough to
level a line of tents, but one poor loaf to do it! Some mightier than
human hand must have set it going on its career. So the soldier
interprets that God had delivered the army into Gideon's hand.
This dream suggests two or three considerations. In several instances
we find God speaking to those outside Israel by dreams; for example, to
Pharaoh and his two officers, Nebuchadnezzar, Pilate's wife. It is the
lowest form of divine communication, and, like other lower forms, is
not to be looked for when the higher teaching of the Spirit of Christ
is open to us all.
Again, while both dream and interpretation might be accounted for on
simply natural grounds, a deeper insight into the so-called 'natural'
brings us to see it as all penetrated by the operations of the
ever-present God. And the coincidences which brought Gideon to just
that tent among the thousands along the valley at just the moment when
the two startled sleepers were talking, might well strike Gideon, as
they did, as being God's own fulfilment of the promise that 'what they
say' would strengthen his hands for the attack (v. 11).
Further, Gideon had already had the sign of the fleece and the dew; but
God does not disdain to let him have an additional encouragement, and
to let him draw confirmation of his own token from the talk of two
Midianites. Faith may be buttressed by men's words, albeit its only
foundation is God's.
Gideon has a place in the muster-roll of heroes of faith in Hebrews
xi., and his whole conduct in this incident proves his right to stand
there. 'He worshipped,' for his soul went out in trust to God, whose
voice he heard through the two Midianites, and bowed in thankfulness
and submissive obedience. There could be no outward worship there, with
an army of sleepers close by, but the silent uplifting of confidence
and desire reaches God and strengthens the man. So he went back with
new assurance of victory, and roused his sleeping band.
Mark his words as another token of his faith. The Midianite interpreter
had said, '_God_ has delivered'; Gideon says, 'The _Lord_ has
delivered.' The former name is the more general, and is natural on the
lips of a heathen; the latter is the covenant name, and to use it
implies reliance on the Jehovah revealed by His acts to Israel. The
Midianite had said that the host was delivered into Gideon's hand; he
says that it is delivered into the hands of the three hundred,
suppressing himself and honouring them. God's soldiers must be willing
to 'esteem others better than themselves,' and to fight for God's
glory, not their own. The Midianite had said, 'This is ... the sword of
Gideon'; he bid his men cry 'the sword of _the Lord, and_ of Gideon.'
It was God's cause for which they were contending, not his; and yet it
was his, inasmuch as he was God's instrument. 'Excellent mixture,' says
Thomas Fuller, 'both joined together; admirable method, God put in the
first place. Where divine blessing leads up the van, and man's valour
brings up the battle, must not victory needs follow in the rear?'
Gideon does not seem to have been divinely directed to the stratagem by
which the Midianites were thrown into panic. He had been promised
victory, but that does not lead him to idle waiting for fulfilment of
the promise. 'To wait for God's performance in doing nothing is to
abuse that divine providence, which will so work that it will not allow
us to idle' (_Bishop Hall_). True faith will wisely adopt means to
reach promised ends, and, having used brain and hand as if all depended
on ourselves, will look to Him, as if nothing depended on us, but all
on Him.
There was strong faith as well as daring and skilful generalship in
leading down the three hundred, with no weapons but trumpets and
pitchers, to close quarters with an armed enemy so superior in numbers.
And did it not need some faith, too, not only in Gideon but in God, on
the part of his band, to plunge down the hill on such an errand, each
man with both his hands full, and so unable to strike a blow? The other
three hundred at Thermopylae have been wept over and sung; were not
these three hundred as true heroes? Let us not count heads when we are
called on to take God's side. His soldiers are always in the minority,
but, if He is reckoned in, the minority becomes the majority. 'They
that be with us are more than they that be with them.'
One can fancy the sleepers starting up dazed by the sudden bray of the
trumpets and the wild shout of that war-cry yelled from every side. As
they stumbled out of their tents, without leaders, without knowledge of
the numbers of their foe, and saw all around the flaring torches, and
heard the trumpet-blasts, which seemed to speak of an immense attacking
force, no wonder that panic shook them, and they fled. Huge mobs of
undisciplined men, as Eastern armies are, and these eminently were, are
especially liable to such infectious alarms; and the larger the force,
the faster does panic spread, the more unmanageable does the army
become, and the more fatal are the results. Each man reflects, and so
increases, his neighbour's fear. 'Great armies, once struck with
amazement, are like wounded whales. Give them but line enough, and the
fishes will be the fishermen to catch themselves.'
So the host broke up in wild disorder, and hurried in fragments towards
the Jordan fords, trampling each other down as they raced through the
darkness, and each man, as he ran, dreading to feel the enemy's sword
in his back next moment. `The wicked flee when no man pursueth: but the
righteous is bold as a lion.' Thus without stroke of weapon was the
victory won. The battle was the Lord's.
And the story is not antiquated in substance, however the form of the
contests which God's soldiers have to-day to fight has changed. Still
it is true that we shall only wage war aright when we feel that it is
His cause for which we contend, and His sword which wins the victory.
If Gideon had put himself first in his warcry, or had put his own name
only in it, the issue would have been different.
May we not also venture to apply the peculiar accoutrements of the
victorious three hundred to ourselves? Christ's men have no weapons to
wield but the sounding out from them, as from a trumpet, of the word of
the Lord, and the light of a Christian life shining through earthen
vessels. If we boldly lift up our voices in the ancient war-cry, and
let that word peal forth from us, and flash the light of holy lives on
a dark world, we may break the sleeper's slumbers to a glad waking, and
win the noblest of victories by leading them to enlist in the army of
our Captain, and to become partakers of His conquests by letting Him
conquer, and thereby save them.