Gideon Delivers Israel: We finally move to the confrontation. There have been numerous interruptions along the way. But these have not been superfluous interruptions; each has contributed something substantive to help craft the story in such a way that it illustrates important lessons about the Lord’s work on behalf of Israel, the most important being that the Lord delivers them. This point will now be explicitly expressed, as well as dramatized in an unsual way.

7:1–3 The two opponents were camped opposite each other, Gideon and all his men . . . at the spring of Harod and the Midianites near the hill of Moreh, both poised for the showdown. But once again comes an interruption. Israel was still not ready to fight the battle, not because they did not have enough troops but because they had …