Yahweh said to him, Surely I will be with you, and you shall strike the Midianites as one man.
Besides, Gideon was in a state of mind in which he could be easily cast down. He was a brave man, but long affliction had cast a tinge of sadness over him. His usual conduct in life is well pictured by the two signs which God gave him. When all the people around him were, with excitement, like the threshing floor, heated and dry, he, like the fleece, was cool and composed: and then, again, when all around him like the wet floor, were dampened with discouragement, he alone remained in his ordinary condition, with not a drop of cowardice within him. That was the kind of man: calm, quiet, determined, brave. But at the moment recorded in our text he was smarting under a cruel oppression, conscious of God’s anger for Israel’s sin, and overshadowed by God’s own presence, and therefore his mind was ready to rush from one fear to another. Only, see the beauty of it, that he always tells his fear to God, always goes to him for comfort, and therefore always obtains succor. The brave man is not he who sees no fear, but he who, seeing the danger, rises superior to it. Such was this man, tossed to and fro from one fear to another, but never tossed off from his God, and so always sure to right himself.
