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Nothing that occurred in the quiet and peaceable times of Israel is recorded; the forty years' rest after the conquest of Jabin is passed over in silence; and here begins the story of another distress and another deliverance, by Gideon, the fourth of the judges. Here is, I. The calamitous condition of Israel, by the inroads of the Midianites (Jdg 6:1-6). II. The message God sent them by a prophet, by convincing them of sin, to prepare them for deliverance (Jdg 6:7-10). III. The raising up of Gideon to be their deliverer. 1. A commission which God sent him by the hand of an angel, and confirmed by a sign (Jdg 6:11-24). 2. The first-fruits of his government in the reform of his father's house (Jdg 6:25-32). 3. The preparations he made for a war with the Midianites, and the encouragement given him by a sign (Jdg 6:33-40).

Observe here, I. The cognizance God took of the cries of Israel, when at length they were directed towards him. Though in their prosperity they had neglected him and made court to his rivals, and though they never looked towards him until they were driven to it by extremity, yet, upon their complain and prayer, he intended relief for them. Thus would he show how ready he is to forgive, how swift he is to show mercy, and how inclinable to hear prayer, that sinners may be encouraged to return and repent, Psa 130:4. II. The method God took of working deliverance for them. 1. Before he sent an angel to raise them up a saviour he sent a prophet to reprove them for sin, and to bring them to repentance, Jdg 6:8. This prophet is not named, but he was a man, a prophet, not an angel, as Jdg 2:1. Whether this prophet took an opportunity of delivering his message to the children of Israel when they had met together in a general assembly, at some solemn feast or other great occasion, or whether he went from city to city and from tribe to tribe, preaching to this purport, is not certain; but his errand was to convince them of sin, that, in their crying to the Lord, they might confess that with sorrow and shame, and not spend their breath in only complaining of their trouble. They cried to God for a deliverer, and God sent them a prophet to instruct them, and to make them ready for deliverance. Note, (1.) We have reason to hope God is designing mercy for us if we find he is by his grace preparing us for it. If to those that are sick he sends a messenger, an interpreter, by whom he shows unto man his uprightness, then he is gracious, and grants a recovery, Job 33:23, Job 33:24. (2.) The sending of prophets to a people, and the furnishing of a land with faithful ministers, is a token for good, and an evidence that God has mercy in store for them. He thus turns us to him, and then causes his face to shine, Psa 80:19. 2. We have here the heads of the message which this prophet delivered in to Israel, in the name of the Lord. (1.) He sets before them the great things God had done for them (Jdg 6:8, Jdg 6:9): Thus saith the Lord God of Israel; they had worshipped the gods of the nations, as if they had had no God of their own to worship and therefore might choose whom they pleased; but they are here reminded of one whom they had forgotten, who was known by the title of the God of Israel, and to him they must return. They had turned to other gods, as if their own had been either incapable or unwilling to protect them, and therefore they are told what he did for their fathers, in whose loins they were, the benefit of which descended and still remained to this their ungrateful seed. [1.] He brought them out of Egypt, where otherwise they would have continued in perpetual poverty and slavery. [2.] He delivered them out of the hands of all that oppressed them; this is mentioned to intimate that the reason why they were not now delivered out of the hands of the oppressing Midianites was not for want of any power or good-will in God, but because by their iniquity they had sold themselves, and God would not redeem them until they by repentance revoked the bargain. [3.] He put them in quiet possession of this good land; this not only aggravated their sin, and affixed the brand of base ingratitude to it, but it justified God, and cleared him from blame upon account of the trouble they were now in. They could not say he was unkind, for he had given all possible proofs of his designing well for them; if ill befel them notwithstanding, they must thank themselves. (2.) He shows the easiness and equity of God's demands and expectations from them (Jdg 6:10): "I am the Lord your God, to whom you lie under the highest obligations, fear not the gods of the Amorites," that is, "do not worship them, nor show any respect to them; do not worship them for fear of their doing you any hurt, for what hurt can they do you while I am your God? Fear God, and you need not fear them." (3.) He charges them with rebellion against God, who had laid this injunction upon them: But you have not obeyed my voice. The charge is short, but very comprehensive; this was the malignity of all their sin, it was disobedience to God; and therefore it was this that brought those calamities upon them under which they were now groaning, pursuant to the threatenings annexed to his commands. He intends hereby to bring them to repentance; and our repentance is then right and genuine when the sinfulness of sin, as disobedience to God, is that in it which we chiefly lament.

INTRODUCTION TO JUDGES 6 In this chapter we have an account of the distressed condition Israel was in through the Midianites, Jdg 6:1, of a prophet being sent unto them to reprieve them for their sins, Jdg 6:7 of an angel appearing to Gideon, with an order to him to go and save Israel out of the hands of the Midianites, Jdg 6:11 and of a sign given him by the angel, whereby he knew this order was of God, Jdg 6:17, and of the reformation from idolatry in his father's family he made upon this, throwing down the altar of Baal, and building one for the Lord, Jdg 6:25, and of the preparation he made to fight the Midianites and others, Jdg 6:33, but first desired a sign of the Lord, that Israel would be saved by his hand, which was granted and repeated, Jdg 6:36.

And it came to pass, when the children of Israel cried unto the Lord, because of the Midianites. Because of their oppressions and ill usage of them, and not because of their sins, which had brought those evils on them, of which, at present, they seemed not to be sensible; and yet such was the goodness and compassion of God to them, that having a mind to deliver them, he immediately, on their crying to him, sends them a messenger to bring them to a sense of their sins, and prepare them for the deliverance he designed to work for them, as follows. And it came to pass, when the children of Israel cried unto the Lord, because of the Midianites. Because of their oppressions and ill usage of them, and not because of their sins, which had brought those evils on them, of which, at present, they seemed not to be sensible; and yet such was the goodness and compassion of God to them, that having a mind to deliver them, he immediately, on their crying to him, sends them a messenger to bring them to a sense of their sins, and prepare them for the deliverance he designed to work for them, as follows. Judges 6:8 jdg 6:8 jdg 6:8 jdg 6:8And the Lord sent a prophet unto the children of Israel,.... "A man, a prophet" (f), as in the Hebrew text, not an angel, but a man; and this not Phinehas, as say some Jewish writers (g); for it is not probable he should live so long as more than two hundred years; and had he been living, it is very much he should not have been heard of in the times of the preceding judges, and that he was not made use of before now to reprove the people for their sins; but who the prophet was we have no account now nor hereafter, here or elsewhere. Abarbinel supposes he was raised up for a short time: which said unto them, thus saith the Lord God of Israel; he came in the name of the Lord, and using the form and manner of speech the prophets of Israel did, putting them in mind of the true God they had forgot, and who yet was their Lord and God: I brought you up from Egypt, and brought you forth out of the house of bondage; reminding them of the benefits they received from God, and the obligations they lay under to serve him, who, when they were bond slaves in Egypt, he appeared for them, and brought them out of their miserable condition. (f) "virum prophetam", V. L. Pagninus, Montanus, Junius & Tremellius, Piscator. (g) Seder Olam Rabba, c. 20. p. 53.

THE ISRAELITES, FOR THEIR SINS, OPPRESSED BY MIDIAN. (Jdg 6:1-6) and the Lord delivered them into the hand of Midian--Untaught by their former experiences, the Israelites again apostatized, and new sins were followed by fresh judgments. Midian had sustained a severe blow in the time of Moses (Num. 31:1-18); and the memory of that disaster, no doubt, inflamed their resentment against the Israelites. They were wandering herdsmen, called "children of the East," from their occupying the territory east of the Red Sea, contiguous to Moab. The destructive ravages they are described as at this time committing in the land of Israel are similar to those of the Bedouin Arabs, who harass the peaceful cultivators of the soil. Unless composition is made with them, they return annually at a certain season, when they carry off the grain, seize the cattle and other property; and even life itself is in jeopardy from the attacks of those prowling marauders. The vast horde of Midianites that overran Canaan made them the greatest scourge which had ever afflicted the Israelites.

2. The Times of Gideon and His Family, and of the Judges Tola and Jair - Judges 6-10:5 In this second stage of the period of the judges, which did not extend over an entire century (only ninety-five years), Israel was only punished for its apostasy from the Lord, it is true, with a seven years' oppression by the Midianites; but the misery which these enemies, who allied themselves with Amalekites and other Arabian hordes, brought upon both land and people, so far surpassed the pressure of the previous chastisements, that the Israelites were obliged to take refuge from the foe in ravines, caves, and strongholds of the mountains. But the more heavily the Lord punished His rebellious nation, the more gloriously did He set forth His nearness to help, and also the way which would lead to a lasting peace, and to true deliverance out of every trouble, in the manner in which He called and fitted Gideon to be its deliverer, and gave him the victory over the innumerable army of the hostile hordes, with only 300 chosen warriors. But the tendency to idolatry and to the worship of Baal had already become so strong in Israel, that even Gideon, that distinguished hero of God, who had been so marvellously called, and who refused the title of king when offered to him from genuine fidelity to the Lord, yielded to the temptation to establish for himself an unlawful worship, in a high-priestly ephod which had been prepared for his use, and thus gave the people an occasion for idolatry. For this reason his house was visited with severe judgments, which burst upon it after his death, under the three years' reign of his son Abimelech; although, notwithstanding the deep religious and moral depravity which was manifested in the doings of Abimelech, the Lord gave His people rest for forty-five years longer after the death of Abimelech under two judges, before He punished their apostasy with fresh hostile oppressions. The history of Gideon and his family is related very fully, because the working of the grace and righteousness of the faithful covenant God was so obviously displayed therein, that it contained a rich treasure of instruction and warning for the church of the Lord in all aGes. The account contains such an abundance of special notices of separate events and persons, as can only be explained on the supposition that the author made use of copious records which had been made by contemporaries and eye-witnesses of the events. At the same time, the separate details do not contain any such characteristic marks as will enable us to discover clearly, or determine with any certainty, the nature of the source or sources which the author employed. The only things peculiar to this narrative are the use of the prefix שׁ for אשׁר, not only in reports of the sayings of the persons engaged (Jdg 6:17), but also in the direct narrative of facts (Jdg 7:12; Jdg 8:26), and the formula לבשׁה יהוה רוּח (Jdg 6:34), which only occurs again in Ch1 12:18; Ch2 24:20. On the other hand, neither the interchange of ha-Elohim (Jdg 6:36, Jdg 6:39; Jdg 7:14) and Elohim (Jdg 6:40; Jdg 8:3; Jdg 9:7, Jdg 9:9,Jdg 9:13, Jdg 9:23, Jdg 9:56-57) with Jehovah, nor the use of the name Jerubbaal for Gideon (Jdg 6:32; Jdg 7:1; Jdg 8:29; Jdg 9:1-2, Jdg 9:5,Jdg 9:16, Jdg 9:19, Jdg 9:24, Jdg 9:28), nor lastly the absence of the "theocratical pragmatism" in Judg 9, contains any proof of the nature of the source employed, or even of the employment of two different sources, as these peculiarities are founded upon the contents and materials of the narrative itself. (Note: Even Bertheau, who infers from these data that two different sources were employed, admits that ha-Elohim in the mouth of the Midianites (Jdg 7:14) and Elohim in Jotham's fable, where it is put into the mouth of the trees, prove nothing at all, because here, from the different meanings of the divine names, the author could not have used anything but Elohim. But the same difference is quite as unmistakeable in Jdg 8:3; Jdg 9:7, Jdg 9:23, Jdg 9:56-57, since in these passages, either the antithesis of man and God, or the idea of supernatural causality, made it most natural for the author to use the general name of God even it did not render it absolutely necessary. There remain, therefore, only Jdg 6:20, Jdg 6:36, Jdg 6:39-40, where the use of ha-Elohim and Elohim instead of Jehovah may possibly have originated with the source made use of by the author. On the other hand, the name Jerubbaal, which Gideon received in consequence of the destruction of the altar of Baal (Jdg 6:32), is employed with conscious reference to its origin and meaning, not only in Jdg 7:1; Jdg 8:29, Jdg 8:35, but also throughout Judg 9, as we may see more especially in Jdg 9:16, Jdg 9:19, Jdg 9:28. And lastly, even the peculiarities of Judg 9 - namely, that the names Jehovah and Gideon do not occur there at all, and that many historical circumstances are related apparently without any link of connection, and torn away from some wider context, which might have rendered them intelligible, and without which very much remains obscure, - do not prove that the author drew these incidents from a different source from the rest of the history of Gideon, - such, for example, as a more complete history of the town of Shechem and its rulers in the time of the judges, as Bertheau imagines. For these peculiarities may be explained satisfactorily enough from the intention so clearly expressed in Jdg 8:34-35, and Jdg 9:57, of showing how the ingratitude of the Israelites towards Gideon, especially the wickedness of the Shechemites, who helped to murder Gideon's sons to gratify Abimelech, was punished by God. And no other peculiarities can be discovered that could possibly establish a diversity of sources.)