Judges 7 Devotional

Weakness Chosen on Purpose

“Then the LORD said to Gideon, “You have too many men for Me to deliver Midian into their hands, lest Israel glorify themselves over Me, saying, ‘My own hand has saved me.’”Judges 7:2 (BSB)

Gideon starts with thirty-two thousand men, and God says it is too many. If Israel wins with that army, they will claim they saved themselves (7:2). So the fearful go home, and then all but three hundred are sent away (7:3-7). What remains is a few hundred men against a camp as countless as locusts (7:12).

Then God does something tender. Knowing Gideon may be afraid, he sends him to the edge of the enemy camp to overhear a soldier's dream of a barley loaf flattening a tent, and its meaning: God has given Midian into Gideon's hand (7:10-14). Gideon worships before the battle begins (7:15). The weapons are horns, jars, and torches, and the victory comes when the LORD turns the Midianites' swords against one another (7:22). Paul says God still chooses what the world counts weak and lowly, so that no one can boast before him (1 Corinthians 1:27-29). What feels like too little in your hands may be exactly where he means to show that the rescue is his.

To think about: Where does your weakness feel like a problem to fix rather than a place where God might show his strength?