This post is part of my ongoing series of writing down my thoughts on the Bible passages I read each day. Some days I hope to have great insight that the Lord gives me, and many days, I will likely struggle through the text and not know what to write down based on what I read. My hope and prayer is that as I make this a habit, just as I did daily writing for so long, that I will improve on my ability to read and understand the passages I’m reading. Please keep in mind that many of these posts may be published late at night or with little time studying and simply be my first thoughts after reading. This is in no way a commentary that one should use to discern the Bible, but my own personal thoughts.
The first interrogation
I never realized before, but this seems to be the first history I’ve seen in the Bible of a full-on interrogation. Gideon interrogates a man in chapter 8 and is able to get 70 names from the guy for the leaders of the people. FBI has nothing on Gideon.
It seems in recent years, there have been quite a handful of leaders who have been influential in the Christian world that did not end their ministry well. I think of people like Doug Phillips, Bill Gothard, Ravi Zacharius, and unfortunately, the list probably goes on. These men had the respect of the people, and yet they used the influence they had to do evil things (I say this with a caveat that I do not know these men, nor do I know the full stories behind the accusations against them, so I cannot know for certain the full truth of what they may or may not have done). I think of the story of David when these things happen. He did something extremely evil in God’s sight. He killed a man and committed adultery with a woman. But, he didn’t end his ministry with that. He went through some great punishment and pains for that, in fact. Losing a child because of it.
However, here we see a story that doesn’t seem too far off from some of these recent stories that have come out against these modern “heroes of the faith”. Gideon, after following God seemingly to the end. Even when he was offered to be made king, he refused and told the people that God was their king, and neither he nor his sons would be king over them. It seems like he is doing perfectly and following the Lord.
But then, he has the people give him their gold earrings and makes an ephod that it later says the people whored after and it became a snare to Gideon and his family…how sad. In the same sentence it seems he refused to be king and disobey what God wanted, he goes and created something that is also evil in God’s sight.
It’s a reminder to me that, just because you don’t choose the thing that is evil in God’s sight, it doesn’t mean that you chose the correct thing. There are not always two choices, and it seems to me, sometimes we shy away from doing something really wrong to do something only partially wrong (which by the way, is still completely wrong. There is no middle ground).
This is something I definitely need to be careful of in my life.
Finally, the story of Abimelech reminds me of the truth in the Bible: “Be sure your sin will find you out.”
He may have thought he got away with the sin in his life, but he basically chases his tail for several years until he is killed. He did evil, and his own wickedness is what eventually caught up to him and killed him. You could say that it was God who punished him, which is true. But also, it was his own sin that caused him to live the life that he did and have the enemies that he did.