The God of the impossible (Judg 7:9-14)

In his book, The Great Good Thing, Andrew Klavan tells his own story of coming to faith and he relates an incident when he felt overwhelmed by life and by his failures. He was working late that night while in the background a baseball game was being reported on the radio. He thought again and again in despair, I don’t know how to live, I don’t know how to live. He was tempted to take his life and was contemplating how to do it when he heard a baseball player on the radio interviewed. The player’s knee had been badly damaged in previous games and the reporter was asking how he managed to run so fast during the game. ‘Sometimes you just have to play in pain’, he replied. It struck a chord with Klavan, who thought, I can do that, and he continued living. He did not know that this dark period of his life was almost over and soon the healing process would take off that ultimately led him to Christ.[1]

The Lord has an amazing way of speaking even through people who have no intention of encouraging us. This is what will happen to Gideon but first, God tells him to go against the enemy with his seemingly negligible group of three hundred (Judg 7:9). Down in the valley is the camp of the Midianites, Amalekites and easterners (probably desert nomads) spread as far as the eyes can see, like locusts that settle on vegetation, numerous and innumerable (Judg 7:12). Yet, once again the Lord understands how overwhelming this all feels for Gideon, so He offers one more reassurance and even encourages him to take his servant along for support (Judg 7:10-11). The discussion of a dream and its interpretation that the pair overhear between two Midianite soldiers is the final evidence that God is giving Israel victory.

In the Old Testament, dreams are often the way that God speaks to pagans (think Pharaoh’s dream in Joseph’s story or Nebuchadnezzar’s in Daniel’s – Gen 41:1; Dan 2:1; 4:4-5). The Midianite’s dream, as dreams generally, is not self-evident. As Block points out, the barley bread could have been Midian and the tent Israel thereby predicting Midianite victory.[2] However, God provides not only the dream but also its interpretation (Judg 7:13-14). Perhaps the logic of the bread being Israel is that as an agricultural product it symbolised Israelite farmers.[3] In effect, Israel was the Midianites’ breadbasket and food supply. The meaning of the Hebrew translated as ‘loaf’ in these verses is uncertain as it only appears here in the whole of the OT. Some think this is derived from the word for pastry or cake (hence ‘loaf’), others that it means dried out or mouldy. If the latter, then it is particularly ironic that this mouldy piece of bread knocks off and upturns a whole tent, an apt metaphor for insignificant Israel overcoming mighty Midian.

Our passage shows once again both God’s immense power and His amazing kindness in providing encouragement for His fearful servant. One might think that God saying outright that victory is assured (Judg 7:9) would be sufficient, but there is something particularly uplifting in the way He can give Israel’s foes a dream as well as its correct interpretation and thereby strike fear into their hearts. He can also time the process for Gideon to overhear all this and get the testimony about victory right from the mouth of the enemy. In other words, the Lord demonstrates His sovereignty over people, events, and timing. When we are overwhelmed because our circumstances, life, and future seem impossible, God says that all is in His power to arrange as He wills. May we take encouragement and know that nothing is too difficult for the Lord (Gen 18:14).

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[1] Andrew Klavan, The Great Good Thing: A Secular Jew Comes to Faith in Christ (Nashville: Nelson Books, 2016), 175-81.

[2] Daniel I. Block, Judges, Ruth, NAC 6 (Nashville: B&H, 1999), 280.

[3] Carolyn Pressler, Joshua, Judges, Ruth (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox, 2002), 176.

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