When Your Brothers Pick a Fight
Judges 8:1-3
You’ve just won the Olympic gold medal of life. You’ve done the hard thing, the thing nobody else would do. You stood when others sat down, spoken up when others kept quiet, built the business while everyone else was making excuses. And what happens? Do your brothers slap you on the back and say, well done? Absolutely not. Your closest friends pick a fight with you. They come at you red-faced, eyes blazing, demanding to know why you didn’t include them sooner, why you didn’t ask their permission, why you went off and did this without them. And they’re not your enemies — these are your brothers. These are the men who share your covenant, maybe even share your surname, share your blood, share your faith. And they’re the ones who turn up the moment the dust settles looking for a row.
Today’s passage is about exactly that. And we’re going to learn one of the most powerful tools the Lord has given his people — a tool you can pick up and use in the next twenty-four hours, in your marriage, in your family, your workplace, your church, that is guaranteed to eliminate anger every single time.
Recap: Into the Camp of Midian
Last time we walked into the Midianite camp at night with Gideon and his servant Pura. We overheard a dream — a loaf of barley bread, the bread of the poor, tumbling into the camp and bringing down a tent. We watched Gideon take that intelligence and, by Holy Spirit-empowered wisdom, divide his 300 into three companies, give each man a trumpet, an empty pitcher, and a torch, and surround the camp. The trumpets were blown, the pitchers crashed, the torches sprang into light, and the cry went up: the sword of the Lord and of Gideon. The Lord set every man’s sword against his companion, and the valley floor ran red with Midianite blood. The sword of the Lord is brandished at the moment of divine judgement — the word of God proclaimed, which sets the wicked into confusion and self-destructive chaos.
The Ephraimites Arrive
Gideon has just come through one of the most extraordinary chapters in the entire Old Testament. He has been clothed by the Holy Spirit, torn down the altar of Baal, been renamed by his own father, rallied the tribes, watched the Lord reduce his army from 32,000 to 300, overheard the dream of the barley loaf, surrounded 135,000 men with 300 torches, and 120,000 men fell. He is, at this very moment, the most successful military commander in the entire book of Judges. He’s at his absolute peak.
And then the men of Ephraim turn up to start a row. Now the men of Ephraim said to him: why have you done this to us by not calling us when you went to fight with the Midianites? And they reprimanded him sharply.
Who were the Ephraimites? Ephraim was the second son of Joseph; Manasseh was the firstborn. Gideon was from Manasseh. But in Genesis 48, Jacob near death crossed his hands — putting his right hand on Ephraim, the younger, and his left on Manasseh, the elder. He gave the blessing of the firstborn to the younger. So Ephraim has, from Jacob’s deathbed, the covenantal preeminence, the leading position between the two. And here in Judges 8, the dominant tribe shows up to a man from the lesser tribe, demanding to know why the lesser tribe started the war without them. This is family politics of the most ancient and combustible kind.
And where was Ephraim for the previous seven years? For seven years the Midianites, the Amalekites, and the children of the East had been swarming in like locusts. Where was Ephraim? The Midianite raids focused on the northern tribes — on Manasseh and the agricultural heartlands. Ephraim, geographically slightly further south and in higher country, was less affected. So it appears they sat it out for seven full years while their brothers were being ruined. And the moment Gideon has done the impossible, they’re at the front of the line demanding to know why they weren’t invited.
Does that seem familiar? The man who would not back you when you were starting your business is the same man who turns up at your success complaining. The pastor who had it easy during the hard years is furious at your modest success and wonders by what authority you’re doing these things. The Ephraimite shows up after the victory with a bone to pick. The text says they reprimanded him sharply — the Hebrew is much stronger. This wasn’t a stiffly worded letter. This was Ephraim rolling up with the boys, ready to punch it out.
The Soft Answer
But Gideon has every right to defend himself. He has the Holy Spirit. He has 300 battle-hardened men behind him, with the tribes of Manasseh, Asher, Zebulun, and Naphtali already responding to his trumpet. He has just personally commanded the decisive battle of his generation. If anyone in Israel had the right to put a man back in his box, it was Gideon. He could have said: where were you for seven years, Ephraim? He could have said: get back across the river before I make you.
But he does none of that. What then did Gideon say to them? He said: what have I done now in comparison with you? Is not the gleaning of the grapes of Ephraim better than the vintage of Abiezer? God has delivered into your hands the princes of Midian, Oreb and Zeeb. And what was I able to do in comparison with you? Then their anger toward him subsided when he said that.
He magnified what they did. He shrunk what he did. He called his own clan’s great vintage — the primary harvest of the campaign — a gleaning, the scraps left in the field after the main harvest. And he called Ephraim’s secondary action — catching and killing the two princes of Midian — the primary harvest. He inflated their contribution and deflated his own. And the fire went right out of them. The anger subsided. The strife evaporated. The fight was over in three sentences.
The If-Then Law
Now I want to give you the principle behind what Gideon did — because it is one of the most useful principles in the whole Bible, and it is everywhere.
Proverbs 15:1: a soft answer turns away wrath, but a harsh word stirs up anger. Bible teachers call this a wisdom saying. I want to call it something more direct: it is an if-then statement. If you give a soft answer, then wrath will be turned away. If you give a harsh word, then anger will be stirred up. This isn’t just wisdom, like a nice suggestion. It’s a statement about how the world the Lord made actually works.
Once you start looking for if-thens in the Bible, you can’t stop seeing them. 2 Chronicles 7:14: if my people humble themselves, pray, seek my face, and turn from their wicked ways, then I will heal their land — if-then. James 4:8: draw near to God and he will draw near to you — if-then. The whole Bible is full of them. Conditions — if — and consequences — then. If you do this, then God has bound himself by his own covenant word to bring about that outcome.
And here’s the thing: the ifs, the obedience, are followed by thens which are blessings. The Lord isn’t like a pagan god who says, if you do this, maybe I’ll hurt you for fun. Far be it from Jehovah. He says: if you do this, then I will bless you, deliver you, prosper you, save you, calm the angry man down, give you the harvest, the wife, the children, the nation — according to his good will, in his good time.
The just shall live by faith — Romans 1:17. Not merely the just shall go to heaven by faith. The just shall live by faith, daily, hourly, in the nitty-gritty. He believed the divine if-then, he acted on the if-then, the if-then worked. God’s if-thens are unbeaten.
Your Ephraimite
Where in your life are you currently dealing with an Ephraimite? Is there a brother who, the moment you started obeying God seriously, picked a fight with you? Is there a colleague who, the moment your business started growing, found a grievance? Is there a relative who, the moment you started taking your headship seriously, went on the offensive? You likely can name them right now.
And you have a choice in front of you. You can defend yourself, stand on your achievements, lean on your anointing, list his absences for the last seven, ten, thirty years. Or you can give a soft answer. You can ask: what have I done now compared with you? You can name the real thing he has done well and magnify it. You can shrink yourself voluntarily by faith in obedience to the if-then statement that has been in the books since before the foundation of the world. And then you will watch the wrath subside, the spirit go out of him, the situation turn.
You don’t need an army to handle the Ephraimites. You don’t need a clever argument. You don’t need a lawyer. You need a soft answer, and you need the faith to give it.
An Amber Light for the Achievers
Gideon in this passage is at his peak — spirit-filled, victorious, humble, wise, soft-tongued, acting in perfect alignment with the law of God. But in the verses to come, Gideon begins his descent. There’s a small thing he’s going to do in chapter 8, a single decision in the aftermath of victory, that is going to undo a great deal of what he has built and haunt his household, his town, and the nation for generations. The most dangerous moment in a man’s life is not the moment of his failure. It’s the moment after his greatest success. That is when the flesh, defeated for once, tries to come back through the door. That is when little decisions, sowed after victory, plant seeds that take a generation to grow into ruin. We’ll deal with that in the very last episode of this series.
Next time: we cross the Jordan with Gideon and his 300 exhausted men, and we’re going to find that the very heartland of Israel — the towns founded by Jacob himself — refuse the Lord’s anointed deliverer a single loaf of bread.