Please don't go away, until I come to you, and bring out my present, and lay it before you. He said, I will wait until you come again.
And do you wonder at it, when the ills of war were all around? He had for a long time seen in the cases of his friends and neighbors the desolating effects of war: their property was taken from them, their bread was stolen out of their mouths, their children were slain, and themselves made to hide away upon the tops of mountains or in caverns among the hills. Life became intolerable amid such privations and dangers. Gideon must have felt his heart swell with grief and indignation as he looked upon the remnant of Israel hunted like partridges upon the mountains, though once they had dwelt safely, every man under his vine and under his fig tree. The Bedouin styled the valley of Jezreel “﻿the meadows of God﻿”: how grievous to see those fat pastures trodden down by the feet of the invaders! Ah, little can you and I imagine of the horrors of war. We read of it, and our sympathies are touched, but we know not the multiplied murders, the painful wounds, the desolating rapine, and the fierce crimes which attend the track of armies. If we saw battle with our own eyes, we should with burning fervor cry, “﻿Send us peace in our days, good Lord.﻿”
