A Flawed Man, A Blessed Land
Judges 8:22-35
You’ve just won the war. The kings of Midian lie dead. The land is on the very edge of forty years of peace. With the victory won, the leadership of Israel come to you with an offer: rule over us, they say — you and your son and your grandson. This is where it gets really dangerous. Today’s passage is about a man who said no with his lips, but whose actions said quite another thing. A man who, having beaten the Midianites in the field, welcomed the worldview of Midian into his own tent.
We’re going to find out what an ephod actually is and why Gideon’s ephod was such a big deal. We’re going to find out why the convergence of kingship and priesthood in one man is the defining mark of paganism and why the Lord hates it. And we’re going to look around our own day and ask whether the same pattern is at work in our churches, our nations, and even our hearts. This is the final episode of our Gideon series.
Recap: Justice and the Shadow of Saul
Last time we walked back into the heartland of Israel with Gideon at sunrise — the sun in its full strength, the embodiment of Deborah’s blessing on those who love the Lord. We watched him execute lawful judgement on the elders of Succoth with thorns and briars and tear down the tower of Penuel. We stood with him before Zeba and Zalmunna, murderers of his brothers at Tabor. We saw him ask his son to strike down the two kings, and Jether fail at the decisive moment — unprepared by his father. We saw Gideon strike the kings himself and take from the camels the crescent moon gold ornaments. Justice done. The war won. And then the moment of greatest danger arrived.
Rule over Us
Then the men of Israel said to Gideon: rule over us, both you and your son and your grandson also, for you have delivered us from the hand of Midian. Was it true that Gideon delivered them? Yes. But was that the whole story? Far from it. They didn’t recognise the hand of the Lord. They saw the hand of Gideon and couldn’t lift their eyes past the human deliverer to the divine deliverer behind him. And so, fresh from the most extraordinary deliverance in their living memory, the men of Israel hunger for a king.
This is a prelude to 1 Samuel 8, when Israel would demand a king like all the other nations — and the Lord said to Samuel: they have not rejected you, but they have rejected me, that I should not reign over them. The people want a visible, human, permanent authority. They want something they can see and touch. They want to be like the nations.
The Right Answer and the Wrong Action
But Gideon said to them: I will not rule over you, nor shall my son rule over you. The Lord shall rule over you. This is the test of 1 Samuel 8, three hundred years before 1 Samuel 8. Top marks. Right answer. He puts the crown back on the Lord’s head where it belongs.
But notice something. Gideon is clearly in two minds about it, because what he says with his lips and what he does with his hands in the very next breath are two different things. The Lord, invisible but present, had been enough during the campaign. But to slog it out as judge for years and decades — Gideon wanted something he could hold on to. He reckoned, perhaps, that the people would never really be able to be ruled by the invisible Lord. They needed a visible counterpart.
The Earrings: An Echo of Sinai
Then Gideon said: I would like to make a request of you — that each of you give me the earrings from his plunder. For they had golden earrings because they were Ishmaelites. He’s just refused the crown and in the very next breath he’s taking up an offering.
Now, where do we first find earrings mentioned in this kind of context? Exodus 32 — Aaron at the foot of Mount Sinai, asking the people for their earrings. And what did Aaron do with them? He melted them down and made the golden calf. The golden calf that Israel danced around while Moses was receiving the law. The golden calf that almost cost the entire nation its existence. Then in Exodus 33, the children of Israel, in repentance, stripped off their ornaments at Mount Horeb and never wore them again. Israelites do not wear earrings after Sinai.
But these earrings come from the Ishmaelites — the seed of the rejected son, the line outside the covenant. And Gideon is going to do with those Ishmaelite earrings something that carries a deep, sad echo of what Aaron did with the earrings at Sinai. There are no coincidences in God’s word.
The Weight of Gold
The weight of golden earrings that he requested was 1,700 shekels of gold — roughly two million dollars at today’s prices, and on top of that the crescents, the pendants, the purple robes, the camel chains. A serious amount of wealth flowing into the hands of one man. But this flies in the face of Deuteronomy 17:17: neither shall he greatly multiply to himself silver and gold.
Gideon, having just refused the kingship, is doing exactly what kings weren’t supposed to do. He’s breaking tripwire after tripwire. He’s just said: I won’t be king. But he’s acquiring the gold of a king, the purple of a king, and at his funeral we see the wives of a king.
What the Ephod Actually Is
Then Gideon made it into an ephod and set it up in his city, Ophrah. Now — if you read this too quickly, you’ll think that Gideon made an idol. He did not. An ephod is not an idol. What it was was the central garment of the high priest, described in detail in Exodus 28 — a garment of gold, blue, purple, scarlet, and fine linen, fastened at the shoulders with two onyx stones engraved with the names of the twelve tribes. Attached to the ephod was the breastplate of judgement, set with twelve stones, holding the Urim and the Thummim — the means by which the high priest sought direction from the Lord on behalf of the nation.
So the ephod was, in shorthand, the badge of the priestly mediator. But there was only one authorised ephod in Israel, worn by the only authorised high priest, kept at the tabernacle, belonging to the line of Aaron. And here is Gideon in Ophrah in Manasseh, miles away from the tabernacle, taking the gold spoils of war and making his own.
This isn’t idolatry exactly. It’s something more sophisticated, more subtle, and in many ways more dangerous. This is an issue of mixing kingship and high priesthood. He’s going to function as a kind of king but without the title. He’s going to function as a kind of high priest but without the authorisation.
The Pagan Pattern: King and Priest United
What is the big deal? Why does this matter? The big deal is that Gideon has taken into his tent, into Israel, the philosophy of the pagan world — the philosophy that the Lord hates. Here is the pagan pattern: in paganism, the king has to be the high priest. The king is the chief priest. Look at the pontifex maximus — literally chief bridge builder, but in function the chief priest. Caesar was head of the priests. The Pharaoh was a god-king in his own person. The Chinese emperor was the Son of Heaven who performed the rites of Heaven on behalf of the nation. Every pagan kingdom unifies political authority and religious authority in the same man.
And why does the Lord hate this so completely? Because there is only one true king-priest. There is only one man in whom political sovereignty and priestly mediation are legitimately joined — and he is the Lord Jesus Christ, the one Mediator between God and man, the King of kings and Lord of lords. Melchizedek was the type — king of Salem and priest of God Most High. Every human attempt to be your own king-priest is an act of usurpation, a claim to be what only Christ can be.
Pagan Kingship in Our Day
We are afflicted by paganism in our own day, deep in the church as well. Part of that pagan kingship says: Jesus is certainly king — king of the spirit realm, king of my heart, king of the church — but the world? That’s men’s business. Some go the whole hog and say the world belongs to the devil. A Christian Satanist! Or they say: the world is a neutral realm — and this is Gnostic dualism. The gods are up there in heaven, but men rule here, and we just swap out the old gods, change the names, and write in the Trinity. But God does not fit into anybody’s mould. When we say God rules in heaven and the church, but men rule here in the neutral realm — that’s paganism. It has the same net result. It leads people astray and opens the earth up to the state as the only God that is supposed to exist down here.
Forty Years and the Mercy of God
All Israel played the harlot with it there, and it became a snare to Gideon and to his household. The text doesn’t soften the verdict. The ephod led Israel astray. But then, verse 28: thus Midian was subdued before the children of Israel and they could raise their heads no more. And the country was quiet for forty years in the days of Gideon.
Forty years of peace. Don’t let perfect become the enemy of the good. The grace of forty years of peace flows out of the obedience of one man who was imperfect. Gideon is found in the heroes of faith chapter in Hebrews 11. Do you want forty years of peace for your nation? Then don’t hold your nose so tight that you write off every movement and every leader who doesn’t meet every standard of subsection 12b of your ideological checklist. Look at the fruit. By their fruit you will know them. The mercy of forty years is real — and the damage of the ephod is also real. We hold both truths together.
The Series in Summary
We started with the nation — then the children of Israel did evil in the sight of the Lord. The Lord deals with nations as nations, and he still does, and he always will. The Midianites were the visible problem, but the real cause was the Lord chastising his covenant people. It is not allowable to stop at blaming the WEF, the bureaucrats, or any other Midian of our day. We pointed to the destruction of agriculture, the locust swarms, and drew the parallel to our own day where governments by their policies eat up the substance of the working people.
When the people cried, the Lord did not send a deliverer. He sent a prophet. The word came first. Then the Lord came to a man hiding in a winepress and addressed him as a gibor hayil — a mighty man of valour. The identity of Gideon had to change before the actions of Gideon could change. If you want radical change in your life, you can have it — but you cannot hold on to your old identity. You have to embrace your God-given, Scripture-written-in-black-and-white identity as a son of God, a dominion man.
But God did not call Gideon because he had the right opinions. He called him because he was a working man. Your lack of pedigree may in fact become your primary qualification to be used by God. We talked about testing the call — the fellowship offering, the fire from the rock, the altar named Jehovah Shalom. We saw Israelites behaving like Sodom, paying for the blood of the righteous. We talked about the fleeces — how this was a public confrontation between Baal, the dew god, and the true Lord of dew and rain. From 32,000 to 300: the Lord strips away the fearful and assembles his remnant. A barley loaf brought down an empire. A soft answer turned away the wrath of Ephraim. The men of Succoth and Penuel, with covenantal privilege, sided with the enemy and paid the price.
And here at the end, a spirit-filled man takes one bad decision in the morning of his greatest triumph — and the shadows of what might have been gather round his house.
Next series: Exiles No More — our identity not as exiles in this world, but as dominion men. I look forward to seeing you then.
Contact me at questions@godsworldgodsway.com.