11/11/2017
Judges 6:1-6
1 The Israelites did evil in the Lord’s sight, so the Lord turned them over to Midian for seven years. 2 The Midianites overwhelmed Israel. Because of Midian the Israelites made shelters for themselves in the hills, as well as caves and strongholds. 3 Whenever the Israelites planted their crops, the Midianites, Amalekites, and the people from the east would attack them. 4 They invaded the land and devoured its crops all the way to Gaza. They left nothing for the Israelites to eat, and they took away the sheep, oxen, and donkeys. 5 When they invaded with their cattle and tents, they were as thick as locusts. Neither they nor their camels could be counted. They came to devour the land. 6 Israel was so severely weakened by Midian that the Israelites cried out to the Lord for help (Judges 6:1-6).4
We are hardly surprised to read, once again, that the Israelite's have returned to their evil ways, at least as God sees things. Since every man did what was right in his own eyes, it is likely that the Israelites did not see their sins as evil. By the way, the author does not name the sins to which he refers here; he speaks of them only in generalities, and for good reason. We already know Israel’s sins from the pattern set forth in chapter 2 and from the chapters which have preceded our text. We know, for example, that the Israelites would have disregarded God’s Word and would have worshipped the gods of the Canaanites. In addition, they would have intermarried with the Canaanites.
If the Israelites have acted as we would have predicted, so does God. He turned the Israelites over to Midian for seven years of harsh treatment. Let us first refresh our memories as to who the Midianites were, so that we will better be able to comprehend the kind of suffering they imposed on the Israelites.
Midian was the son of Abraham and Keturah, one of Abraham’s concubines (Genesis 25:2-6). It was a Midianite caravan that “happened by” when Joseph’s brothers were about to kill him, prompting them to sell Joseph to these traders instead of taking his life. These traders then took Joseph to Egypt where they sold him as a slave (Genesis 37:28, 36). When Moses fled from Egypt after killing an Egyptian, he went to Midian where he encountered a Midianite priest. Moses married his daughter, Zipporah, and had two sons by her (Exodus 2:15-22). Moses’ father-in-law accompanied the Israelites into the land of Canaan, and so it is that we find the Kenites mentioned twice already (1:16; 4:11, 17) in the Book of Judges. The Midianites also were involved in the seduction of the Israelites in the Book of Numbers.5
The Midianites were a nomadic people who lived to the East (and Southeast) of Israel, across the Jordan. While the Midianites had been given military supremacy over Israel, their “occupation” of Israel was quite different from the occupation of other foreign nations such as the Moabites. The Moabites gained military supremacy over Israel and then established certain military outposts. Here, Moabite soldiers would be stationed to enforce Moabite control. If the Israelites behaved themselves and paid their annual tribute, they were granted a certain measure of freedom.
It was quite different under the domination of the Midianites. For one thing, we should observe that no one king is named. I don’t doubt that the Midianites had their leaders, but their nomadic lifestyle must have resulted in a less centralized government.6 The Midianites did not exact a payment of tribute, as the Moabites had done; rather the Midianite hordes simply migrated to Israel whenever it served their purposes. They would time their “return visits” to Canaan in accordance with the growing season. When harvest time arrived, so did the Midianites, and with an appetite for everything the Israelites possessed. They took all of their crops they could get their hands on; the Midianites’ cattle grazed on what was left. And any Israelite cattle were added to their own herds. When they had consumed all there was, the Midianites moved on, leaving the Israelites in desperate straits.
It is no wonder that the Israelites sought to disappear, along with their crops and cattle, into the hills before the Midianites arrived. They gathered up what little they could and headed for the hills, literally, seeking refuge in caves and mountain hideouts. To some degree, this had happened earlier when Jabin and the Canaanites had cruelly oppressed the Israelites. And so we read:
6 “In the days of Shamgar son of Anath,
in the days of Jael, the roads were abandoned;
travelers took to winding paths.
7 Village life in Israel ceased,
ceased until I, Deborah, arose,
arose a mother in Israel.
8 When they chose new gods,
war came to the city gates,
and not a shield or spear was seen
among forty thousand in Israel (Judges 5:6-8,)
My sense is that under Midianite domination, things had gotten as bad as Israel had ever seen it. And so we read that the Israelites cried out to the Lord for help. What is interesting, and somewhat unique, is that God did not immediately raise up a judge to deliver them as He had done before; instead, God sent a prophet to rebuke them.
