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"The people that are with thee are too many for Me to give the Midianites into their
hands, lest Israel vaunt themselves against Me, saying, Mine own hand hath saved me"
(Judges 7: 2).
Gideon was therefore instructed to issue a proclamation allowing all who were fearful
to withdraw, and twenty-two thousand men took advantage of the release and withdrew.
But there were still too many, and the remainder were subjected to a test which only 300
of the 10,000 passed.
"By the three hundred men that lapped will I saved you" (Judges 7: 7).
The principles underlying this selection seem to be that:
(1)
In all our dealings with the enemy, only the glory of God, and not the magnifying
of self, or faith, or suffering, or anything, apart from the cross of Christ, can be
permitted as a goal or accepted as a means.
(2)
Only those who "use this world as not using it to the full" (I Cor. 7: 31), can be
trusted with victory. To all others victory would be worse than defeat.
In view of Judges 7: is it not folly to boast in numbers?
Before leaving verse 3, we draw attention to a most difficult yet important matter,
namely the true principle of Hebrew numerical computation. The A.V. of Judges 7: 3
tells us that the number that returned of Gideon's army was "twenty and two thousand",
and it has been assumed that this is just the same as "twenty-two thousand". This
however is by no means the case. Indeed it is necessary to undertake a fairly exhaustive
analysis of the Hebrew Bible before even competence to express an opinion can be
gained. This matter of numbers has often been made the starting point for hostile attack
upon the Scripture, whereas the attack should have been directed against the attempt to
compute ancient sums upon modern lines.
In English, "twenty and two thousand" does not usually mean "two thousand and
twenty", but it is only custom that has so decided, for twenty and two shillings is the
same as two and twenty shillings. Not the actual wording in the Hebrew decides the
matter but the custom of the times which therefore must be ascertained. Let us turn to
another passage which provides a good example of the problem of Hebrew computation.
In I Sam. 6: 19 we read that "fifty thousand and three score and ten men" were slain.
Do we realize that this figure represents about twice the population of a town like
Brentwood in Essex, or about the same as the town of Luton in Bedfordshire? and that
this terrible destruction fell upon the men "who looked" into the ark of God? Is it also
remembered that the ark stood in "the field" of Joshua the Beth-Shemeshite, and have we
attempted to estimate how long it would take for this vast concourse to walk past the ark?
In short, what a set of complicated problems have been set by those who have decided to
add up Hebrew figures by modern methods!
The actual words and their order in the Hebrew, are "seventy men, fives and thousand
men". The word translated "fives", if used in the singular, means simply "five" as in
verse 4 of this chapter, but why the plural form should mean that five is multiplied by ten,