For they came up with their cattle and their tents; they came in as locusts for multitude; both they and their camels were without number: and they came into the land to destroy it.
Why was Gideon afraid? Not because he was a coward you will scarcely meet with a braver man in all Scripture than this son of Joash but because even brave men are alarmed at the supernatural. He saw something which he had never seen before, an appearance celestial, mysterious, above what is usually seen of mortal men; therefore, as he feared God, Gideon was afraid. When the living God draws very near to a soul, even though it be in the person of Christ Jesus, that soul is struck with awe, and trembles before the Lord. It cannot well be otherwise. Recollect how it was with the beloved John. “﻿When I saw him,﻿” says John that was, his own dear Master, upon whose breast he had leaned his head “﻿when I,﻿” the disciple whom Jesus loved, “﻿saw him, I fell at his feet as dead.﻿” You do not wonder, therefore, if a poor soul full of doubt and anxiety, vexed with a sense of sin, and greatly troubled by affliction, is full of fear when Jesus draws near. Though he comes with no feeling but of love, no thought but of mercy, no sentence but of free forgiveness, yet the heart is awe-struck at the wondrous sight.
