The Chosen Key Word in this Chapter is “Peace” it comes from the Hebrew Word “shalom” which means “peace, wholeness.”
God calls a fearful farmer hiding from his enemies to become Israel’s next great deliverer. Welcome to Bible Life Basics Chapter Reviews, I am Chris and this is Judges 6.
Israel again does evil, and God delivers them into the hand of Midian for seven years, whose raiders devastate the land so thoroughly that Israelites hide in mountain dens and caves. When Israel cries out, an angel of the Lord appears to Gideon, threshing wheat secretly in a winepress to hide it from the Midianites, greeting him as “thou mighty man of valour.” Gideon responds with doubt and confusion, asking why, if the Lord is truly with them, all this trouble has happened, and how he, from the weakest family in the weakest tribe, could possibly save Israel.
God reassures Gideon of His presence, and Gideon asks for a sign, offering a meal that the angel consumes with fire from the rock itself before vanishing. Terrified at having seen the angel of the Lord face to face, Gideon builds an altar there, naming it “Jehovah-shalom,” meaning “the LORD send peace,” the Hebrew word for peace being “shalom.” That same night, God instructs Gideon to tear down his own father’s altar to Baal, which he does secretly by night out of fear of his family and the townspeople.
When the men of the city discover this and demand Gideon’s death, his father Joash defends him cleverly, reasoning that if Baal is truly a god, he can defend himself. As the Midianites and their allies gather against Israel, the Spirit of the Lord comes upon Gideon, and he sounds a trumpet to rally an army. Still uncertain, Gideon asks God for two more confirming signs involving a fleece of wool, first wet with dew while the ground stays dry, then dry while the ground around it stays wet, and God graciously grants both signs exactly as requested.
Gideon’s repeated requests for confirmation, even after already speaking with an angel and witnessing fire consume a sacrifice, could easily be read as a lack of faith. Yet God patiently grants every single request without rebuking him for it. Sometimes God’s patience with our doubts and questions is far more generous than we expect it to be.
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