| “Then the men of Israel said unto Gideon, Rule thou over us … and Gideon said unto them, I will not rule over you … the Lord shall rule over you” (Judges 8:22-23). |
| “And his [Gideon’s] concubine that was in Shechem, she also bare him a son, whose name he called Abimelech” (Judges 8:31). |
| As we have seen earlier in these meditations, the Lord used Gideon to gain a great victory in battle, and to deliver the people of Israel from the domination of the Midianites. The Israelites were very grateful for this, and wanted Gideon to rule over them. In fact, they wanted him to become their king, so that his son would succeed him when Gideon died. |
| Gideon was a wise man, and he refused to take this place. He recognized that it was the Lord that had given him the victory over the Midianites, for you will remember that Gideon had only three hundred men, while the Midianites had more than 120,000 in their army. Gideon wanted the Lord to rule over Israel, and this was a good attitude for him to take. |
| However, later on in his life, when everything was peaceful in Israel, Gideon had a lot of children. It tells us that he had seventy sons! Can you imagine having that many children? Probably there were more, for he likely had some daughters too. But then he finally had one more son, whom he called Abimelech. This might not seem too unusual, except for the name he gave this son. Abimelech means “my father is king.” |
| It seems that Gideon must have had some secret ambition to be king, even though he refused it when he was younger. Giving this name to his son caused a lot of problems after Gideon died, for if you read on in Judges 9, you will find out that Abimelech killed all his brothers but one, in order to be the chief ruler. He knew what his name meant, and he acted on it. Eventually the Lord allowed him to be killed when a woman dropped a millstone on his head, but he caused a lot of sorrow in Gideon’s family. |
| Again, this is a serious lesson for us. Sometimes we know something is wrong, and we may refuse to do it, but deep down inside there is a secret wish that we could do it. Gideon’s secret wish made a lot of trouble for his family, and caused the death of all but one of his sons. If we know something is wrong, let us ask the Lord to help us get rid of that thought! If we hang on to that wrong thought, it will probably come out in our actions, sooner or later. |
