there was no sound in the sky; Joash was not struck dead; Baal was proved to be nothing.  That was a sight to see that morning:  the ashes smouldering in the sunlight, the raging crowd, Gideon and his fellows behind Joash, and Joash calling on Baal to avenge himself if he was a god as his worshippers pretended.  Ah, if that had been Jehovah’s altar!  When Nadab and Abihu offered strange fire before the Lord, fire came down from the Lord and devoured them.  When Miriam spoke against His servant she became a leper; and when Korah, Dathan, and Abiram blasphemed, they were swallowed up in the pit.  But Baal could not move a breath of heaven on his behalf.  What kind of a god is he?  A god who cannot punish those who insult him is but a word.

As for Gideon, he grew in strength.  Nothing happened to him because he had thus dared Baal.  He went about his work daily; no judgment fell on him, and nobody dared to meddle with him.

Soon afterwards the Midianites and Amalekites, who had withdrawn for a while, overspread the land again, and pitched in the valley of Jezreel.  Gideon having suffered nothing for his insult to Baal, had become bolder.  Moreover, his tribe, the Abiezrites, had seen that he had suffered nothing.  Thus it came to pass that when the Spirit of the Lord came upon him; and he blew a trumpet, all Abiezer followed him.  Not only so; he sent messengers through Manasseh, Asher, Zebulun, and Naphtali, and they came up to meet him, the very people who a few months before would have stoned him.  They thronged after him, and now professed themselves believers in Jehovah.  They were not hypocrites.  They really believed now, after a fashion, that Baal could not help them.  Their fault was that they believed one thing one day and another thing the next.  That has always been the fault of the people.  Your grandfather did not despise them for their instability.  So far as they were not stable to Baal it was good, and he pitied them as they flocked to his standard, hoping that he could deliver them.  He blew the trumpet, and at the simple blast of that trumpet in each village and town the nation seemed to rise as one man, such strength was there in its tones.  These men had been idolaters, and it might have been thought that to turn them all would have taken years of persuasion; but no, at the simple sound of the trumpet the religion of Baal vanished.

Gideon was now at the head of a great host; he had been favoured with visions from the Most High; the angel of the Lord had appeared to him; he had burnt the image; and yet now, when the army was round him, fear fell upon him again, and he doubted if he could save Israel, or if God would keep His promise.  So it always was with him, as I have already said.  He therefore prayed for another sign, and the Lord did not rebuke him, as a man would have done if his promise had been mistrusted.  Gideon’s test was strange; he did not pray that he might see