Today, I am reading and commenting on  Judges 7-8.

I have thought of a couple different ways to approach this story, since the main point of the story has been covered over and over again.  But that main point is important, so I decided to go over it today.  I am going to take a slightly different approach to that point than is the default.  Gideon had raised an army to defend the Israelites against the Midianite raiders.  In a way there were two problems with his army.  On the one hand, it was not large enough to be able to defeat the Midianites straight up.  On the other hand, it was large enough that, if they did win, the Israelites would believe they had won purely through their force of arms.  So, if Gideon had taken his army directly against the Midianites they could only win if God aided them.  But, if he did that, the Israelites, and others hearing of the victory, would think they had done so by the strength of the warriors and Gideon’s great command ability.  So, God had Gideon reduce his army to 300 warriors.  From this we learn that sometimes an organization may be too large to accomplish God’s purpose.

I use the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.