Judges 7

Although I'm a procrastinator in certain areas of my life, if I know I need to be somewhere by a certain time, I like to make sure that I leave more than enough time to get there. Nowhere is this little trait of mine more manifest than when I need to fly somewhere. Because my arms are weak, I can't flap very efficiently, meaning that I must go to the airport when I need to fly. I don't want to get mired in traffic or bogged down in a serpentine TSA security line that would put the queue for Radiator Springs Racers at Disney's California Adventure to shame--so I like to leave as early as possible. Or take sports: As I've mentioned before, I only watch sports intermittently, but when I do watch, I prefer when the team I'm rooting for builds a comfortable lead early on. (Because most of the time when I happen to watch, if it's a close game at the end, the team I'm backing has an uncanny tendency to blow it. Case in point: the 49ers in the 2013 Super Bowl and the Warriors in this year's NBA Finals.)

Likewise, if I were in Gideon's sandals, I would have liked to have as many warriors (small "w," though who knows, Draymond Green might prove to be a feisty soldier) in the army as possible. Just to be safe. And yet God shows Gideon that He is the one orchestrating the victory; their strength is not in numbers. First, God asks Gideon to dismiss all the soldiers who have qualms about fighting (verse 3). Then, He asks Gideon to perform the "drinking water" test. As I learned in Sunday school, those who drank the water straight from the river were dismissed because it would take them longer to prepare themselves should the enemy suddenly attack. The ones who drank from cupped hands would be more alert of any sudden danger. As for myself, if I had made it through the test of fear, I would have inadvertently passed the water test--not because I've been trained to stay alert, but because I don't fancy bending down so that my butt sticks way out in the breeze, as Holden Caulfield might put it.

Gideon spies a group of men having a conversation about a dream that foreshadows Gideon's victory. In all honesty, it's a rather comical image: a loaf of barley bread, rolling across the field like the unfortunate, neglected meatball of that esteemed air of yore, crashes into a tent (verse 13). While the tableaux is rather evocative of Looney Tunes, so too, in a way, is the method by which God, through Gideon, defeats the Midianites. Basically, the Israelites make a raucous din with trumpets, bellowing voices, and shattered pottery. All this cacophony is apparently too much for the Midianites, who run way screaming in fear (verse 21). On second thought, perhaps this is more like Mars Attacks! than Looney Tunes; we all know how thoroughly frightening certain songs can be.