Judges 6:1-10
Midian Oppresses Israel
1 The people of Israel did what was evil in the sight of the Lord, and the Lord gave them into the hand of Midian seven years. 2 And the hand of Midian overpowered Israel, and because of Midian the people of Israel made for themselves the dens that are in the mountains and the caves and the strongholds. 3 For whenever the Israelites planted crops, the Midianites and the Amalekites and the people of the East would come up against them. 4 They would encamp against them and devour the produce of the land, as far as Gaza, and leave no sustenance in Israel and no sheep or ox or donkey. 5 For they would come up with their livestock and their tents; they would come like locusts in number—both they and their camels could not be counted—so that they laid waste the land as they came in. 6 And Israel was brought very low because of Midian. And the people of Israel cried out for help to the Lord.
7 When the people of Israel cried out to the Lord on account of the Midianites, 8 the Lord sent a prophet to the people of Israel. And he said to them, “Thus says the Lord, the God of Israel: I led you up from Egypt and brought you out of the house of slavery. 9 And I delivered you from the hand of the Egyptians and from the hand of all who oppressed you, and drove them out before you and gave you their land. 10 And I said to you, ‘I am the Lord your God; you shall not fear the gods of the Amorites in whose land you dwell.’ But you have not obeyed my voice.”
As we have seen in Scripture, each time the Israelites sin against God, they come back, forget about God, and are more corrupt than they were before. Every generation is confronted with the same problem in Israel. And that is, being disobedient to the Lord God. When a male child is born to a Jewish family, on the eighth day they bring him before the priest and he is circumcised. Yet, as we see in the Book of Judges, over and over again, the people, a new generation of Israelites, will come and go. Yet, the new generation still struggles with the same sin: rejecting God which causes them to run and chase after the false gods of the Canaanites. It’s disheartening! So many never learn that they were chosen by God. He made a covenant with them, giving them the sabbath, so they may know that the Lord is holy and it is Him who makes them holy (Exodus 31:13, Ezekiel 20:12). Needless to say, just because they are Jewish, just because they were circumcised, just because the Lord gave them the sabbath, and just because they may have followed the dietary law of Moses, did not make them the true sons of Abraham, They rejected God and worshiped false idols that were not gods. They did not walk by faith in God. The Apostle Paul said in Romans 4:11-12,
“He [Abraham] received the sign of circumcision as a seal of the righteousness that he had by faith while he was still uncircumcised. The purpose was to make him the father of all who believes without being circumcised, so that righteousness would be counted to them as well, 12 and to make him the father of the circumcised who are not merely circumcised but who also walk in the footsteps of the faith that our father Abraham had before he was circumcised” [emphasis added].
The Israelites had neither faith nor the holiness of God. They dwelt with the uncircumcised and had more unity with them than they did with God. They worshiped the Canaanite gods, not ‘Yahweh’, the God of Creation and the God of Israel. God did not discipline the Canaanites or the faithless and godless surrounding nations. A father only disciplines his own children. Hebrews 12:7-10 says,
“It is for discipline that you have to endure. God is treating you as sons. For what son is there whom his father does not discipline? 8 If you are left without discipline, in which all have participated, then you are illegitimate children and not sons. 9 Besides this, we have had earthly fathers who disciplined us and we respected them. Shall we not much more be subject to the Father of spirits and live? 10 For they disciplined us for a short time as it seemed best to them, but he disciplines us for our good, that we may share his holiness.”
Therefore, God gave them over to the Midianites and they had to serve them for seven years. Matthew Henry calls the Midianites a
“very despicable enemy … not Midian in the south where Jethro lived, but Midian in the east that joined to Moab (Num 22 4) … they were a people that Israel had formerly subdued, and in a manner destroyed (see Num 31 7), and yet by this time (nearly 200 years after) the poor remains of them were so multiplied, and so magnified, that they were capable of being made a very severe scourge to Israel. Thus God moved them to jealousy with those who were not a people, even a foolish nation, Deut 32 21.
We are reminded of Christ’s teaching on the return of the unclean spirit. When an unclean spirit is cast out of a person, it goes through the arid, barren land seeking a place to rest, but it does find any. Instead, the spirit comes back and finds the home all clean, empty, and nicely swept. The unclean spirit goes and gets seven more unclean spirits and they come and take up residence. Christ said the condition of that man is now worse than it was before. So will it be for those in that generation who crucified Him (Matthew 12:43-45)! In the same way, each successive generation in the Book of Judges is worse than it was before. Oh, the pity a father has to see the waywardness and rebellion of an unstable and unfit son.
Each time the children of God apostate themselves by serving false gods, ‘Yahweh’, the covenant-making God of Israel subjects them to a cruel taskmaster. This time, the Midianites were avenging their loss from 200 years before. They were so cruel because they had a purpose: to destroy Israel like Israel tried to destroy them. The Israelites made caves in the mountains where they can run and hide, whenever the Midianites came. Then the people cried out to the Lord, and He heard them. This time, he did not send them a deliverer as he did before. He sent them a prophet, who like Deborah the prophetess, spoke clearly to them about their sins. They rejected and disobeyed the Lord their God. The last verse in our passage today says in Judges 6:10, “And I said to you, ‘I am the Lord your God; you shall not fear the gods of the Amorites in whose land you dwell.’ But you have not obeyed my voice.”
God the Father did not, in his righteous anger, come to quickly destroy the Israelites. If He had, the Lord would have done this so many centuries ago when the Israelites rebelled in the wilderness and built an image of a golden calf to worship. They said this thing, the image made out of gold, was their god who brought them out of Egypt. Oh, the condition of man’s heart that is not changed by God. For by nature, a man in his natural state is alienated, does not love, or even tries to seek God. Thus, they are children of wrath. In application, we too must see the condition of our soul without God. We too are disobedient. We all are more inclined to sin than to seek Christ and His righteousness. We too, need a changed heart from God. We need a new birth. We need the Holy Spirit of God to take away our hearts of stone and give us new hearts. A new heart that is now inclined to seek Christ as our only hope and refuge. For me personally, the reason I am so devoted to Christ is that He changed me. I know that whatever affliction, trial, persecution, or times of tribulation that may come, for I’ve had many, I still come to rest and rejoice in the Lord my God, the Lord Jesus Christ! He is my God!
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My God of all mercies, I worship and praise to know and reflect in Scripture, how corrupt we are without you making me a new creation in Christ. Now, with thanksgiving and gratitude, I worship You! I come to trust You only. I pray Lord, that You consecrate now for your service. Because of the love, You have given me, I now love! I now worship! In Jesus’ Name, I pray, amen!
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I am Thine, O Lord, by Frances J. Crosby in 1875
