YHWH decided it was time to smash the Baal and slaughter the Bull. He picked Gideon for the task (Judg. 6:25).
Gideon’s father, Joash had a Baal altar and before Gideon was to gather troops to overthrown the Midianites, they needed to undertake some idol bashing. They were supposed to worship YHWH only, so the Baal altar needed to get torn down. Joash also had an Asherah, which was technically a sacred pole (like a totem pole), but the pole was dedicated to the goddess Asherah, Baal’s supposed wife or consort. The Asherah also needed to get cut down. To celebrate this idol bashing, Gideon was also supposed to take his dad’s prize bull and slaughter it, using the wood from the Asherah.
This task should be no problem for a “mighty” warrior like Gideon, but he knew his father and the townspeople might not endorse this undertaking, so Gideon does it at night. The text tells us that Gideon did it then because he was afraid (Judg. 6:27).
How would you feel if your son took the car (a bit like a bull) and crashed into your HD TV (the closest thing we have to an altar–we devote a lot of time and energy to it–Andrew Luck on TV right now is making it hard to finish this blog…)?
Before God calls us to do something big like Gideon, he’s going to want us to make him first. God commands us to not worship idols, and even though we’re not really bowing to Baal much (hopefully…), we’ve other things we devote too much time, energy and money to (cars, computers, TVs, houses).
So have you ever smashed a TV, or destroyed one of your idols?