What does it take to shake off our fears to take on agency and face a challenge, perhaps rise up to our destiny?
Sometimes it’s a random stranger’s statement that can charge us to wake up or act up. In this chapter - it’s the dream of a random soldier on the other side of the border.
In many of the Biblical stories the elusive but emphatic voice of the Divine feels utterly conclusive and commanding to the degree that right away - or eventually - the recipient of the command obeys: Abraham, Rebecca, Moses, Deborah. They all somehow hear - and follow up to obey God’s voice and the role they are assigned. To some the message comes through signs or symbols - Joseph through dreams, Miriam’s perhaps through music.
For Gideon, our judge du jour - a stranger’s dream ignites the leadership fire, get over his fears of leading into battle. Of all the judges in this book he has the most direct dialogue with YHWH - but that has only partially achieved in inspiring his resolve. In one of the weirdest sub-stories right in the middle of the already weird and baffling story of Gideon, this dream fragment found in today’s chapter is a curious relic with far reaching implications, as dreams sometimes have. It starts as Gideon - or Jeubaal - amasses an army to fight Midian but is instructed to reduce the numbers so that the PR effect is greater - only 300 men join him for the battle. The others are dismissed for admitting their fear, or because they drink water in a specific way and fail his faith test, which is a whole other story.
On the night before the battle YHWH tells Gideon to descend to the valley and infiltrate the Midianite’s camp , disguised by the darkness, along with his boy-servant Pura, so that they hear what the soldiers are talking about.
They overhear an impromptu therapy session:
וַיָּבֹ֣א גִדְע֔וֹן וְהִ֨נֵּה־אִ֔ישׁ מְסַפֵּ֥ר לְרֵעֵ֖הוּ חֲל֑וֹם וַיֹּ֜אמֶר הִנֵּ֧ה חֲל֣וֹם חָלַ֗מְתִּי וְהִנֵּ֨ה צְלִ֜יל לֶ֤חֶם שְׂעֹרִים֙ מִתְהַפֵּךְ֙ בְּמַחֲנֵ֣ה מִדְיָ֔ן וַיָּבֹ֣א עַד־הָ֠אֹ֠הֶל וַיַּכֵּ֧הוּ וַיִּפֹּ֛ל וַיַּהַפְכֵ֥הוּ לְמַ֖עְלָה וְנָפַ֥ל הָאֹֽהֶל׃וַיַּ֨עַן רֵעֵ֤הוּ וַיֹּ֙אמֶר֙ אֵ֣ין זֹ֔את בִּלְתִּ֗י אִם־חֶ֛רֶב גִּדְע֥וֹן בֶּן־יוֹאָ֖שׁ אִ֣ישׁ יִשְׂרָאֵ֑ל נָתַ֤ן הָאֱלֹהִים֙ בְּיָד֔וֹ אֶת־מִדְיָ֖ן וְאֶת־כׇּל־הַֽמַּחֲנֶֽה׃
“Gideon came to their camp just as one man was narrating a dream to another. “Listen,” he was saying, “I had this dream: There was a commotion -- a loaf of barley bread was whirling through the Midianite camp. It came to a tent and struck it, and it fell; it turned it upside down, and the tent collapsed.”
To this the other responded, “That can only mean the sword of the Israelite Gideon son of Joash. God is delivering Midian and the entire camp into his hands.”
It’s an uncanny scene: Two men talking to each other in the middle of the night, while two other men, their enemies and soon to be killers, are listening in hiding.
Gideon slips away back to his camp on the hill, and is so inspired by the cracking of the dream code that he leads his 300 men to fight with theatrical might, each of them holding a lit torch hid inside a jar, along with 300 shofars that make such a commotion so that the enemy flees at once. Gideon triumphs - as in the dream interpretation of the anonymous soldier who was likely slain by the sword of Gideon.
What’s this dream all about?
Prof Robin Baker dream analysis looks at its significance for the development of Gideon as a complex character and eventually fallen leader:
“The Midianite’s dream has the distinction of being the only symbolic oracular dream recounted in the Hebrew Bible which is not only received by a non-Israelite, but interpreted by one...Ironically, it is not the direct communication from Yahweh that produces Gideon’s transformation but an oracle delivered and interpreted by Midianites,...It is when He communicates through a dream, not even a dream experienced by Gideon, but one received and interpreted by a polytheist, presented in a context rich in allusion to polytheistic ominous belief, that Gideon finally changes...
It is not only the fact that the Midianite’s dream affects the transformation of Gideon into a hero of strength and concomitantly ends the communication between him and Yahweh, which has hitherto driven the narrative, that suggests this episode is the theological centre of the cycle. It is literally its centre, according to the verse count. Judg 6:11-8:35 comprises ninety verses. The forty-fifth verse begins: “When Gideon heard the dream account” (7:15a).”
Whoever edited this text in latter days placed this dream right in the middle of the story, a wink perhaps to what are once again perceived as the much more blurred boundaries between people and tribes, faiths and gods, realities, dreams and nightmares.
Back in Roman times, Josephus Flavius interpreted the dream this way: “The Barley loaf - The seed called barley was all of it allowed to be of the vilest sort of seed, the poorest: and that the Israelites were known to be the vilest of all the people of Asia; agreeable to the seed of barley.”
Maybe it was the detail of the commotion at the top of the dream that caught Gideon’s imagination. The word used in the text is “Tzlil’ - which can be ‘commotion’ or simply ‘sound’ or ‘pitch’. Where did Gideon learn the trick of showing up in the dark with 300 hidden torches that suddenly fill the night with light as the sound of 300 broken jars is mixed with the blowing of 300 ram horns? That surprising strategy almost seems dream-like - or nightmarish - in itself. Maybe Gideon’s late night excursion across military lines to decipher public opinion and the whispers of dreams was what he needed to lean into his dreams, and find his calling. The chapter ends with the two kings of Midian, Wolf and Raven, are slain by the sword of Gideon. With his victory comes hubris, power, and the first attempt at a quasi royal house of Israel nobody ever really heard of.
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