Judges 8:23

_AND GIDEON SAID UNTO THEM, I WILL NOT RULE OVER YOU, NEITHER SHALL MY SON RULE OVER YOU: THE LORD SHALL RULE OVER YOU._ The Lord shall rule over you. Their unbounded admiration and gratitude prompted them, in the enthusiasm of the moment, to raise their deliverer to a throne, and to establish a royal dynasty in his house. But Gideon knew too well, and revered too piously, the principles of the theocracy to entertain the proposal for a moment. Personal and family ambition was cheerfully sacrificed to a sense of duty, and every worldly motive was kept in check by a supreme regard to the divine honour. He would willingly act as judge; but the Lord alone was King of Israel. He saw, not by their wish to transmit the supreme power to his posterity, but even by their proposal to reserve it to himself during life, that they had forgotten God's sovereign right of nominating, and also of setting...

22-28 Gideon refused the government the people offered him. No good man can be pleased with any honour done to himself, which belongs only to God. Gideon thought to keep up the remembrance of this victory by an ephod, made of the choicest of the spoils. But probably this ephod had, as usual, a teraphim annexed to it, and Gideon intended this for an oracle to be consulted. Many are led into false ways by one false step of a good man. It became a snare to Gideon himself, and it proved the ruin of the family. How soon will ornaments which feed the lust of the eye, and form the pride of life, as well as tend to the indulgences of the flesh, bring shame on those who are fond of them!...

Verse Judges 8:23. _THE LORD SHALL RULE OVER YOU_] Few with such power at their command would have acted as Gideon. His speech calls them back to their first principles, and should have excited in them both shame and contrition. How different is this speech from that of _Oliver Cromwell_ when the commons offered him the crown of England!...

EXPOSITION JUDGES 8:22, JUDGES 8:23 RULE THOU, etc. The gratitude of Israel to their great deliverer, added to a sense that it would be for their own security, and to a desire, already perhaps beginning to he felt, to be like the nations around them (1 Samuel 8:5), naturally led to the offer, "Rule thou over us." But the time predicted by Moses (Deuteronomy 17:14, Deuteronomy 17:15) was not yet come. And so Gideon returned an answer replete with moderation an

AND GIDEON SAID UNTO THEM, I WILL NOT RULE OVER YOU,.... Not that he declined the government of them as a judge, to which he was raised of God, but as a king, for which he had no authority and call from God; the choice of a king belonging to him, and not to the people: NEITHER SHALL MY SON RULE OVER YOU; which Abarbinel thinks he spake as a prophet, and under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit; for after his death neither Jether his eldest son, nor any of the rest of his legitimate sons, ruled over them; for they were all slain by Abimelech, the son of his concubine, who was made king: THE LORD SHALL RULE OVER YOU; as he did; their government was a theocracy, which they would have changed, but Gideon would not agree to it....

CHAPTER 8 INTERNAL STRIFE, GIDEON'S FAILURE AND END _ 1. The strife (Judges 8:1)_ 2. The complete deliverance (Judges 8:10) 3. Gideon's failure and end (Judges 8:22) 4. Israel's failure after Gideon (Judges 8:33) Internal strife follows. The two princes of Midian, Oreb and Zeeb, were slain (Judges 7:25). Oreb means “raven” and Zeeb means “wolf.” Oreb, the raven, is slain on the rock and Zeeb, the wolf, at the winepress. The raven, the bird which represents darkness and evil, is the type of corruption; the wolf is the destroyer o

GIDEON REFUSES A KINGDOM, AND ERECTS AN EPHOD. Long before the Israelites had any human kings. Yahweh was regarded as their Divine King, and Gideon, like Samuel (1 Samuel 8:7; 1 Samuel 10:19; 1 Samuel 12:12; 1 Samuel 12:17; 1 Samuel 12:19), expresses the view that the Divine kingship leaves _no_ room for a human sovereignty. This view became prevalent in the eighth century B.C., when a succession of wicked kings was ruining the northern kingdom (Hosea 8:4;...

_Gideon refuses the kingship: he sets up an ephod: conclusion_ 22 _.the men of Israel_ Not the 300 of Judges 8:4, but the men who formed the army Judges 7:14; Judges 9:55, the Israelites drawn from Ephraim, Manasseh, and the neighbouring tribes Judges 7:23. Thus Judges 8:22 are probably not the sequel of Judges 7:4-21, nor of Judges 7:1-3, for the Ephraimites shewed anything but a dispositio

_Gideon Captures and Slays Midian's Kings Judges 8:1-28_ And the men of Ephraim said unto him, Why hast thou served us thus, that thou calledst us not, when thou wentest to fight with the Midianites? And they did chide with him sharply. 2 And he said unto them, What have I done now in comparison of you? Is not the gleaning of the grapes of Ephraim better than the vintage of Abiezer? 3 God hath delivered into your hands the princes of Midian, Oreb and Zeeb: and what was I able to do in comparison of you? Then their anger was abated toward him, when he had said that. 4 And Gideon came to Jordan, and passed over, he, and the three hundred men that were with him, faint, yet pursuing them. 5 And he said unto the men of Succoth, Give, I pray you, loaves of bread unto the people that follow me; for they be faint, and I am pursuing after Zebah and Zalmunna, kings of Midian. 6 An

HISTORY OF THE JUDGES (JUDGES 3:5 TO JUDGES 16:31) On this, the main section of the book, see Intro. § 2 and List of Oppressions and Judges. The larger part of the book is concerned with six of the Judges, one of whom is not properly a Judge at all (Abimelech), and in the case of another (Samson) isolated forays are recorded, but no actual deliverance. 7-11. Chushan-rishathaim and Othniel....