Gideon passed through a couple towns while pursuing the last leaders of the army of eastern peoples. In them, he asked for bread for his tired men, but the leaders of the towns mocked him and refused to help. Once Gideon captured everyone God told him to capture then, he returned to these towns and whipped their elders with thorn bushes and tore down a tower as an example to the people there.
After the battle, everyone wanted Gideon to rule, but he told them that God was to rule. That was a good thing he did, but it’s pretty much the last good thing that anyone does in this story.
With a collection of gold earrings Gideon made an ephod, which I think, is kind of like a tabard or a sort of holy sandwich board. He displayed it in his hometown and people worshipped it. It was a snare to Gideon and his family.
If there were only one human habit chosen to embody all of our sinful nature and our broken relationship with God it would be our sense of entitlement. Even when we do something good, we love to allow it to lead to something awful. Gideon did a good thing by refusing to take leadership over the land, and he knew it. Because he did this great thing, right after being a part of the great battle that God had won just before no less, he felt he could indulge a little and make a small monument. It was a monument to God sure, but it was also just a little bit a monument to how awesome Gideon is.
When people would show up in town and see this neat altar made of Gideon’s ephod, they would say “Hey, what’s this altar for?” and someone would reply, “Well, listen to this great thing that the Lord did with Gideon.” “Listen to the amazing things that Gideon and the Lord did.”
It’s kind of like if someone had carved his own initials into the standing stones on the bank of the Jordan back at the beginning of the book of Joshua.
So Gideon’s family has this alter to themselves and eventually Gideon dies, but he leaves 70 sons with his many wives. Abimalek goes off to a neighboring town where his mother is from and tells them that they should support his claim to the throne (this is the throne that Gideon had previously refused and left open for God). The people of the town give him enough money to go buy some thugs to kill the rest of his brothers and then I guess he informs the people in the area that he is now king.
The youngest brother escapes after delivering a parable about trees electing a king, but he runs off into exile and we don’t hear from him again. It is important though that he takes off because I guess now we know that Gideon’s line isn’t broken by the horrible thing that you know is going to happen to Abimelek soon.
I mean he claimed a throne for himself that was held by God.
Abimelek eventually loses the people’s favor so when a city gets unruly he rolls in with his army and not only defeats them, but then sets fir to the tower where all the non-combatants were hiding. He does this once in a town that’s about to rebel, and then when he hears of another town rebelling, he goes to do it again, but a lady on the roof of the tower throws a millstone at him and cracks his skull. He tells one of his men to stab him so no one will say he was killed by a girl.
And that’s the story of the line of Gideon. Nobody wins, everyone’s wrong.
The end.
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