Judges 8:6-17 And the princes of Succoth said, Are the hands of Zebah and Zalmunna now in your hand, that we should give bread to your army?… These men were blind to the glory of the common cause — selfish, poor-spirited creatures, that shut themselves up in their fenced cities, and were satisfied to let God's soldiers starve, and God's work come to an end for want of support, so long only as they had bread enough to satisfy their own hunger. This was a state of mind not to be corrected by a mere civil speech or explanation. Gideon taught them, not by expostulation, but by the sword and with the briers of the wilderness. Can we say that there are none now who merit the same punishment? none who resist every appeal to assist those who are faint by pursuing God's work? There are still men who have no eye for spiritual importance, but measure all things by their outward appearance and by their relation to their own comfort; men who fortify themselves in their ungenerous selfishness by asking, as these men of Succoth did, "What have you made of this pursuit in which you want us to assist you? what great good have you done, that we should help you? Are Zebah and Zalmunna already in your hands, that we should acknowledge you as useful men, and give you what you ask to help you on in your pursuit?" For such persons, who despise the day of small things, who cannot recognise God if He takes on Him the form of a little child, nor His Church when it exists as a grain of mustard-seed, there remains the doom of seeing the whole work of God in the world finished without their aid, and of hearing the voice of God Himself in rebuke, "Behold, ye despisers, and wonder and perish!" (Marcus Dods, D.D.) Parallel Verses KJV: And the princes of Succoth said, Are the hands of Zebah and Zalmunna now in thine hand, that we should give bread unto thine army? |
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