NOTES for Jdg 6:1-23

The words "God is with us!" and "God be with you!" are known to every believer. But what stands behind them? Quite often, sadly, nothing substantial. Most often, the speaker is expressing either confidence that he is right and everything will go well for him, or, on the contrary, he wants to tell the person to whom he says "God be with you!" that something is wrong with him.

In both cases, the matter concerns a God who, according to the speaker's logic, must confirm the correctness of his own statement, whether it concerns himself or others. But Gideon sees the matter differently. For him the expression "God is with us" means something quite concrete: the fulfillment of the promises God gave to the fathers whom He brought out of Egypt.

He understands what we do not always understand today. For him it is obvious that God enters our life not in order to look at the world through our eyes and carry out our will. Gideon understands that if God is truly near, He will act by carrying out His own plan. And Gideon remembers well the promises God gave to his fathers.

Gideon asks the messenger of God a simple, practical question: if God is truly with us, why is what is happening happening? Where are the former times, when the pagans fled, leaving the battlefield to God's people? Why has everything changed?

God's plan is known to Gideon. In any case, he knows how God led his fathers from Egypt to Palestine and how Palestine was conquered. He is sure that this was not accidental good fortune; God did not bring His people into the land He had promised to Abraham in order to give them over to be torn apart by neighboring pagan tribes. And if this is exactly what is happening, then God has turned away from His people; He is not near.

And Gideon asks the messenger of God what is, from his point of view, a completely natural question: if God is with us, why does He not intervene when His plan is collapsing, when His people are being attacked? Gideon does not yet know the answer. He does not yet know that the one who asks such questions must step onto God's path and himself become an instrument in God's hands; otherwise it is better for him to keep silent.

Gideon will not remain in ignorance for long: very soon the messenger of God will tell him that it is through him that God intends to change the situation, making it what He wants it to be. But the messenger of God would hardly have appeared before Gideon if Gideon had not been asking himself the very question he asked the messenger of God who appeared to him.

How can one understand God's will? The answer to this question is at once simple and complex. Simple because in essence it is not so difficult: one need only ask God a question and receive an answer. Complex because we are usually inclined to speak with God more than to listen to Him. We often interact with people in the same way, with this difference, however: a person whom we are not ready to hear does not disappear from our field of vision by himself, but God most often acts precisely this way. He disappears if people do not want or are not ready to hear Him. Or He does not appear at all. The person meanwhile often continues his monologue, inserting into it complaints about God's silence and His unwillingness to answer.

In the time of the judges, prophets heard God; they knew how to listen and how to hear. God, however, sometimes addressed those who were not prophets, desiring to make a person His leader who seemed least prepared for it. So it was with Gideon. Gideon was not a prophet; he was a quite ordinary man, yet the situation of his tribe was by no means indifferent to him. He saw too well that the heroic times of great victories were in the past, while the present of the people as a whole and of his own tribe inspired no optimism. He had no experience of hearing God, but at least he had a readiness to hear. When God's messenger appears before him, he is surprised not by the appearance itself, but by the fact that God sends His angel precisely to him: he seemed least capable of doing anything significant, much less heroic. His clan was by no means among the first in his tribe, and the tribe itself was not the largest.

God, however, has His own plan; He does not look at human measures. He makes Gideon His leader. Gideon is bewildered. It is not that he does not believe; rather, he is perplexed. God's choice seems to him some kind of misunderstanding, and the natural question arises: perhaps I have misunderstood Him? Here the issue is no longer some distrust or unwillingness to hear, but the simple caution of a person whose experience of communion with God is small and whose awareness of responsibility before God fully corresponds to the task God has set before him.

Gideon asks for a clear sign that will become a true miracle of God: after all, it does not happen that dew falls everywhere except for one small patch, just as the reverse is practically impossible. The impossibility of what happens here becomes an obvious sign of God's action. God does not often agree to give such a sign to a person, but here there was a special case. The sign was truly necessary, for the issue was not idle curiosity but the making of an important decision by a person ready to make it.