Ep17 p2of7 Ephraim Manasseh - Deborah, Gideon and Ambilech

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This is part 2 of a series about Ephraim and Manasseh.
Each time the children of Israel fell under oppression from a neighboring nation they would cry to God and each time God would raise up a judge to conquer the enemy and lead Israel back into God's favor but after each judge died Israel would again forget God and follow after false deities or as we learned in episode 2, demonic entities.
Israel fell under the rulership of Jabin, a Canaanite king who ruled from Hazor in the region of Naphtali. Deborah the prophetess became the judge of Israel, she lived near Bethel in Ephraim. She called a man named Barak of Naphtali. She told him God has told you to take 10.000 men of Naphtali and Zebulon and go meet the captain of Jaban's army near Mt Tabor for battle. Barak would not go without Deborah so she said he will share his glory with a woman. So they went together and won because the captain of Jaban's army was killed by a woman when he hid in her tent.
After that the Midianites to move into the land. They are sons of Abraham through his 3rd wife Keturah. They over ran the land with cattle and they ruined the land so that Israel had to hide from them. They cried out to God and he called Gideon to go to battle. An angel appeared to him to call him, he brought food as a gift and the angel consumed it by sending fire from a rock with his staff.
God told Gideon to cut down his father's altar and grove to Baal and use the wood to sacrifice the bull to YHWH. In the morning the men of the town wanted to kill Gideon but his father intervened and renamed Gideon as Jerubaal.
The Midianites were gathered in the valley of Jezreel. Gideon blew a trumpet and gathered his family and all of Manasseh, Asher and Zebulon. He then asked god to prove himself twice with the dew and the fleece. God then told Gideon his army is too big and he thinned it down from 32,000 to 300 men.
Gideon and his 300 fooled the Midianites with clay pots and lamps and trumpets, the sent the camp into disarray and they began fighting each other, they then fled in fear down the Jordan valley. The men of Asher Naphtali and Manasseh then joined back in to the battle . The Ephraimites headed off the Midianites at Beth-Barah and beheaded 2 Midianite princes.
Gideon and his 300 pursued the Midianites up the valley to Succoth. Gideon asked the people of Succoth for bread for his men but they refused. He promised to return and punish them. Succoth is where Jacob built booths for his cattle and named the place Succoth.
Gideon then came to the town of Penuel, this is the place where Jacob wrestled with the angel all night. The people of Penuel also refused to help him and he also promised to punish them. The Midianites stopped to camp for the nigh but Gideon and his men spent the whole night flanking the Midianite army. He captured 2 Midian kings and return to Succoth with them, he then had the elders of Succoth whipped with thorns.He then returned to Penuel where he destroyed their tower and killed every man in the village. There he killed the two Midian kings.
Gideon then took all the gold moon shaped symbols the Israelites had collected from the Midianites and he melted the gold down and made an ephod which he placed on display in Ophir. The people of Israel would all go to Ophir and adore the ephod that Gideon had made.This gave rise to the Baal-berith cult in Israel which was a mixture of Baal religion with the covenant between God and Israel.
The Crescent moon is associated with Sin the moon god of Arabia and the God Nanna of Mesopotamia.
The Midianites and Ishmaelites were sons of Abraham, the Moabites and Ammonites were sons of Abraham's nephew Lot and the Edomites were sons of Jacob's brother Esau.
Gideon had 70 sons, one of whom was named Ambilech. He was the son of a servant woman from Shechem. After Gideon died Ambilech stirred up his kinsmen in Shechem to revolt and they went to Ophir and killed all of Gideon's sons on one stone. The youngest son named Jotham hid from them and lived. When they were gathered in Shechem to crown Ambilech king, Jotham cried out to them from the top of Mount Gerizim. Shechem is located between Mount Gerizim and Mount Ebal, this creates an acoustic dome which carries voices very far. These 2 Mounts are also known as the Mount of blessing (Gerizim) and the Mount of cursing (Ebal). Jotham cried out a parable about the trees looking for a ruler. God sent an evil spirit to carry out the parable between Ambilech and the people of Shechem. The evil spirit tried to get them to follow after Hamor the father of Shechem. Hamor was the king of Shechem during Jacobs time. War broke out between Ambilech and Shechem destroying them both and bringing about Jotham's words upon them. This is the first time the 'Cedars of Lebanon' was used as a prophetic symbol in the Bible. The cedars of Lebanon was a great cedar forest harvested out in ancient times by Egyptian and Mesopotamia.