Week 13 Judges 6
There’s a snippet in the Gideon story that’s easy to skip past. A prophet appears with a message from the Lord: I brought you up out of slavery in Egypt…I drove out your enemies and gave you their land…I told you that you must not worship the gods of the Amorites…But you did not listen to me.
The message is important but it isn’t really the message I notice. What I notice is that the Lord sent a prophet. The only prophet I can think of in Judges is Deborah. I check a word book and it looks like the only prophets in Judges are Deborah and this Anonymous Guy. I also check prophecy prophecies prophesied prophesies prophesy prophesying prophetic & prophets. Just Deborah & the guy.
Back in Numbers the Lord said that one of the characteristics of prophets was that: I the Lord communicate with (them through) visions and dreams. Which is interesting because here in Judges there’s a bunch of unusual vision-and-dreamlike things happening – in fact right away in the Gideon story an angel appears…speaks with Gideon…and disappears right before his eyes.
But even though people in Judges are being communicated with in super-normal ways they’re not prophets and they don’t become prophets. Or at least not formal and actual real-life prophets (not like the prophets in the books of the prophets).
So in spite of the fact that there’s lots of exceptional activity in Judges there’s almost no prophecy.
Note: quote from Judges 6:8-10 & Numbers 12:6 (NLT)