Judges 8: In Writing

Come, I say

but she hangs back

curling herself to a ball. 

Up the steps.

Two than four. 

I'm waiting.

She falls to the ground.

Screams, You come to ME! 

as I walk forward

hoping she'll be behind me

in a game of chicken

I will always lose

because I can't leave

and her screams 

could tumble a tower

Where's Mommy, asks each passerby

Mommy is here, I grit

Mommy is waiting

Knowing I should be grateful

they care. Wishing 

they were elsewhere. 

I'm waiting, I say

in our daily disemboweling

tug of war 

Judges: Chapter 8

Who stands back

and who joins?

Who leads. who follows?

Who birthed you 

and what do you birth?

We come to the closing of the Gideon cycle, as the young man who stepped into Debora's place achieves victory, providing, like her, for  a transformative "forty years of quiet."

As he chases the Midianites to achieve this decisive victory,  Gideon traverses the bank of the river, revisiting the stops made by his ancestor Jacob on his primordial journey back to Canaan: Penuel, Succot, and finally Shechem.

 Yet Gideon's trajectory here is the opposite of Jacob's.

If Jacob sends his children and wives ahead remaining "alone" to be rebirthed as Israel through a struggle with a mysterious assailant, Gideon's symbolic rebirth as Yerubaal took place before he approached Penuel. If Jacob's tumultuous life narrowed to the strains of Jabbok,Gideon's canvas widens. If before, we met Gideon alone, at night, in private dialogue with God and angels, here we see Gideon within the national context, as he interacts with the other tribes, and speaks to the Midianite kings.

 If Gideon's earlier struggles were with his own fears and doubts, here he struggles to placate those who wish for greater involvement (Ephraim), and to punish those who hold back (Succoth and Penuel). No longer does he carefully assuage fears. Instead, he ruthlessly and violently asserts national authority. Not for nothing does Israel offer him kingship. 

In place of the lone young initiate, we now see Gideon embedded within a family: suddenly he has "brothers, the sons of my mother," and a young son he is trying to train. Gideon's history begins to extend forward and back in time. As he retraces his forefather  Jacob's journey, and worries for his brothers, he is offered hereditary kingship, extending forward in time. "I will not reign over you, nor will my son reign over you. God will  reign over you," Gideon ceremoniously declaims, his every choice now reverberating through time.

 Yet this sudden tension between Gideon's rule and God's is dangerous, as the man who once was "clothed" in God's spirit now lays down a "dress" to gather gold (in a scene reminiscent of the creation of the Golden Calf). The money gathered serves to create an article of clothing (an "ephod") that becomes a gateway to idolatry, indeed competing with God.

Despite the achievement of the forty years of peace, the Gideon-cycle ends on a dark note. From one son we end with 70, and "many women" (precisely what Moses warned the king to avoid). The Israelites, we are  told, do not "deal kindly" with Yerubaal or his family. The hero who comes to deal with a post-Golden-Calf Israel gets trapped in their cycle of idolatry and sin).