“The Israelites did evil in the eyes of the Lord, and for seven years
He gave them into the hands of the Midianites.” Judges 6:1
Before we leave this first verse on Judges 1 we need to think about how God disciplines His children. God is a loving Father – his wrath is never poured out on us. Instead he corrects us to grow us into the mature saints He wants those in His family to become. In the area of discipline we see God act decently and in order with love , mercy and justice intermingled. When sin comes into a believer’s life God uses His Spirit to prick our conscience to remind us of what we are doing and to turn us back to Him.
Believers are different and God wants us to be formed into the image of His son, not of this world. If we heed God’s conviction in our lives we learn and grow. If the believer refuses to heed God’s counsel, He will strive with us to get our attention and obedience. (Why would a child of God not listen? Because they have their hearts set on obtaining and having something God has warned us against.) God’s conviction is to get our attention that there is a problem that cannot be allowed to go on. If the believer hardens his heart to God and His word, Scripture tells us that God becomes angry with our overt rebellion toward Him as a father does with his child. When we reach that point God uses a number of different instruments to bring us back to Him. (This is an act of mercy. God will not allow us to go further into sin which will harm our hearts and others without His discipline. He selects the instruments of discipline to fit our situation. We know He can allow famine – both physical or spiritual. He can allow loss of things we love and cherish. He can allow us to experience leanness in our souls as we love things of the world instead of things of God. We can lose opportunities God desired for us. We always will lose the joy in our lives as we find what we grasped for was worthless.
When we come to Judges 6:1 we read God used a foreign nation to discipline Israel. Since the Midianites were the offspring of Abraham with his concubine we would expect them as a relative of Israel’s to be an ally. They were not. The Midianites brought a very different kind of humbling discipline on Israel. The Midianites were nomads who lived across the Jordan from Israel. God gave the Midianites military supremacy over Israel but the way they implemented their “occupation” was quite different from the occupation of other foreign nations such as the Moabites. When the Moabites ruled over Israel they built military outposts in the land. Moabite soldiers were placed in these posts to enforce Moabite control. If the Israelites behaved
themselves and paid their annual tribute to Moab, they were granted a certain measure of freedom.
The Midianites ruled differently. As nomads they had no desire to live in Israel’s land. Instead they wanted the fruit of the labor of the Israelites. The Midianites did not require payment of a tribute or tax to their king. Instead the Midianites would flood into Israel when it suited them to take what they wanted. These visits were timed around the harvesting seasons in Israel. When crops were ready to be reaped the Midianites would attack Israel to plunder the Israelites’ harvest. The Moabites tribute left Israel with a portion of what they amassed; the Midianites took everything they could get their hands on. All the Israelites labor was for nothing – no fruit in this life and nothing for God either. After the Midianites took everything they could carry away, they left the land. The Israelites were left in the place God led them to in a desperate condition. (Think of the prodigal son in the pig sty with nothing!) God allowed this condition to cause He people to
turn their eyes back to Him.
What can we learn? As we read this story of Gideon we see Israel acting in fear. The peace of God is gone. The Israelites hide from the Midianites – they never know when the next attack will come. They are constantly trying to store a little away before Midian ravages what they have. Under the Midianites fear and poverty spread across the land. It was exactly the condition God knew would cause His people to remember Him, to turn their eyes back to the only one who truly loved them . “It is better to obey than sacrifice!’