I am amazed. We're almost one-fourth through the text and nearly 80 days into the year and each day, day by day, the Bible speaks to me, personally, with an incredible voice of confidence and assurance. Do we take the miracle of the Bible for granted? Especially those of us who've been raised in the church, those of us for whom the Bible has always just been there. Just the other morning, I found several photographs out when John was small. Mariana had been looking through old photographs to find something for some of the senior events that wanted old pictures. Looking at that picture of him, it had amazing power and made me think about what a beautiful child he was, a miracle really, and how wonderful that time was in our lives together and it brought back so many emotions and memories. It made me pause and think and evaluate our lives since then -- what I've done well...and what I've done wrong. What power from a forgotten photography. This Bible. It's God's picture. Forgotten and overlooked. But when I stop to look at it I'm filled with a rush of emotions and memories. It causes me to consider my relationship with Him all over again, from my birth in Christ until now. I think this picture needs a more prominent place in our house and in my heart.
Anyway, so much lurks under the surface of today's reading about Gideon and his son Abimelech. This is a rich morning in my reading and meditation (if you couldn't already tell from my previous paragraph). But I'm going to mediate the headiness of
it all with a few lego illustrations from The Brick Testament.
We can make anything bad if we want to. We're extremely talented in those regards. Gideon takes his spoils from battle and crafts a gold ephod (part of the priests adornment, a piece of jewelry). Given Gideon's acknowledgement of God as Lord, I'm sure he meant it as a thing of praise and remembrance. Perhaps it started out that way. But soon it becomes something that is worshipped by the people and "a snare to Gideon and his family." [Judges 8:27] How tragic. Gideon, who was so careful not to usurp God's authority over Israel, crafts a piece of jewelry that becomes an idol in his house that usurps God's authority over Israel. This is the centerpiece to Israel's story. They and we are so easily distract from our God by the gods we make for ourselves.
Now let me stop for a moment and express my incredulity, my wide-eyed and opened-mouthed amazement, even a little bit of horror at this single verse: "
He [Gideon] had seventy sons of his own, for he had many wives." [Judges 8:30] Wow, seventy kids?! Now sometimes in the Bible people attributed as the offspring or children of someone are actually the grandchildren or great-grandchildren, etc. That's what makes tracing a timeline or measuring years against a genealogy so difficult. But give the context of this verse and the explanation for this astounding bit of trivia, "for he had so many wives," I've got to believe he actually had 70 children.
Seventy children. Think of it. Live in it for a moment. Try it on and see how it feels. Did he know all of their names? And if he did, could he match the name to the face? And could he match the name and the face to a birthday? How long, how many months did it take for him to get around to spend time and play with each of them? His household was more like a McDonald's on a Saturday.
Then there are the wives. If we say each wife averaged 5 kids because a woman tended to have more children in those days, then we're talking 14 wives. The only thing worse than keeping up with all the idiosyncrasies of 14 wives...is dealing with 14 mothers-in-law. Hopefully he married a few sisters.
Wait a minute, wait a minute! I've made a mistake here. I misread something. He had "seventy sons." There were most likely more children. So, let's redo the math. Let's be conservative and say Gideon averaged one daughter for every three boys. So that makes it around 27 girls for an estimated total of 97 children with names and birthdays to be remembered from an estimated 20 wives with birthdays and anniversaries and "our songs" to be remembered and with mothers telling you you're not spending enough time and home with the kids and their daughter, your wife.
I'm surprised that Gideon didn't find someone else to wage a war with. Even though war is hell, a house of 117 can't be a picnic. I take back what I said. "He had seventy sons of his own, for he had many wives," is not the most incredible verse in this reading. It's the verse just prior, Judges 8:29 -- "Jerub-Baal son of Joash [Gideon] went back home to live."
The evil of Abimelech is also incredible. And the fact that a people would follow someone so obviously and completely evil is equally amazing. Abimelech kills, murders, all 70 of his brothers...except one. Even in the most evil of times, the Lord always preserves a remnant. His brothers are killed on a stone, like an altar, sacrificed to Abimelech's desire to be king. But God will avenge this evil in a most God-like way. Something will just fall out of the sky and kill him. A woman drops a milestone on Abimelech's head. Abimelech dies in shame, asking his armor-bearer to kill him so that he won't be remembered for the indignity of being killed by a woman.
Sorry, Abimelech, but that's how it is recorded for all time. You were felled by a woman with a stone to grind.
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