We receive the impression that the inhabitants of
Ophra do not know their worship of Baal to be illegitimate, that
Gideon also had taken part in it in good faith, and that there had
never been an altar of Jehovah in the place before.
Of a somewhat different form is a correction which is to be found
at the close of the history of Gideon (viii. 22 seq.). After
the victory over the Midianites the Israelites are said to have
asked Gideon to be king over them. This he declined out of regard
to Jehovah the sole ruler of Israel, but he asked for the gold
nose-rings which had been taken from the enemy, and made of them
an image of Jehovah, an ephod, which he set up in Ophra to be
worshipped. "And all Israel went thither a-whoring after it, and
it became a snare to Gideon and to his house." Now the way in
which such a man acts in such a moment is good authority for the
state of the worship of Israel at the time, and not only so, but
we cannot impute it to the original narrator that he chose to
represent his hero as showing his thankfulness to the Deity by
the most gratuitous declension from His worship, as in fact crowning
His victory with an act of idolatry.
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