And Israel was greatly impoverished because of Midian. And the children of Israel cried to Jehovah.
Commentary for this verse has not been generated yet.
And it came to pass when the children of Israel cried to Jehovah because of Midian,
Midian's raids had stripped Israel bare, and at last the people cried to God. What came back was not a rescuer but a preacher, and that delay carries the lesson.
The cry mattered because Israel at last admitted what it had become. One writer turns the same lesson on the church:
The sin of the church has brought it into desolation. Yet little real cry has gone up to the Lord; and why? We are not aware of how far we have departed from our original standing. We have gained so much of the world's dignity, influence and riches! These things, though they do not hide us from God or from Satan, are hiding our real poverty from ourselves. If we only knew our destitution, if we only cried to the Lord, He would deliver and raise up, "when He sees that their power is gone and there is none remaining, bond or free." Whether for Israel, for one person, or for the church, the lesson to be learned is the same: its own poverty and destitution. No matter how poor we are, if we are aware of our poverty; for there is all fullness in Christ.
Yet the cry was not yet repentance. It was the groan of people who wanted their circumstances changed:
When Israel finally cried out to the LORD (v. 7), they cried simply because of their misery. So the Lord did not relieve them at once. He sent a prophet to press on Israel that their own guilt was responsible for these troubles.
God sends two messengers to Israel, and the order matters.
Notice the twofold process of the Lord. He sends first a prophet, then an angel. The prophet brings their sin home to their conscience. The angel raises up a deliverer. He loves to rescue His people from the wretched consequences of their failure, but He will have the evil owned first.
The delay is not coldness. It sets a rule for how we handle others in trouble:
The people suffer bitter oppression, and they cry to God. But instead of sending relief at once, He deepens in their souls the sense of the evil of their course. Our first thought is to escape the consequences of our folly and disobedience. God wants us to judge fully what led us into it. His patience and His pity combine in divine proportions, so that we may get the profit of the lesson. Let us not rush to pull His people out of an awkward position. Let us first see that they have been to the bottom of the matter with God.
Who was this prophet? The commentators say the question misses the point:
God answered their cry by working a fresh revival, in which He sought to probe the conscience of this poor people more deeply than in the past. "The LORD sent a prophet to the people of Israel." His name is not given, and it does not matter. This man simply carried the word of God, to bring the people into His presence. God has a means by which to bless us: His word, which meets every requirement and ought to be quite enough for us.
The message ends by settling one question: whose fault was this?
God had been faithful to Israel, but Israel had not been faithful to God. This was the point of the prophet's testimony. He always proves His own conduct right: "If we are faithless, He remains faithful—for He cannot deny Himself." If we walked as He wants us to walk, nothing could prevail against us — not the world, not the flesh, not the devil. Whenever we find ourselves under the power of our enemies, we must be sure to charge the fault on ourselves, and not on God.
The prophet delivers no plan of escape. He simply goes.
Not a word about how they might be delivered; He did not yet open the way for their return to Him. The prophet disappeared, leaving them under the weight of their responsibility in the presence of grace. God had carried them in His arms and on His heart; He had fought for them. "Have I failed you in any way?" He asks. "But what have you done?" This silence would touch their conscience far more than any reproach. They were impressed, if not convicted. But the word of grace did not yet give the unfaithful people what they needed, and Israel remained powerless before the enemy.
- Cry — Recovery starts when God's people feel their own poverty. Until then the cry is only about the pain.
- Delay — The cry does not bring instant relief. We want out of the consequences; God wants us to judge the cause.
- Word — His answer is an unnamed man carrying His word, because the word itself is the means by which He blesses.
- Verdict — God had been faithful; Israel had not. When enemies get the upper hand, the fault is ours, never His.
- Silence — The prophet leaves with no remedy. That silence works on the conscience harder than any rebuke. Then God raises up the deliverer.
that Jehovah sent a prophet to the children of Israel, who said to them, Thus saith Jehovah the God of Israel I brought you up from Egypt, and brought you forth out of the house of bondage;
Israel cried out to the Lord in their misery, and God answered — but not first with a rescuer. He sent an unnamed prophet. The message begins not with Israel's trouble, but with what God had done for them long before.
The cry that went up was the cry of people in pain, not yet people in repentance. One writer notes how God answered.
When Israel at last cried out to the Lord (v. 7), they cried only because of their misery. So the Lord did not relieve them at once. He sent a prophet to press home to Israel that their own guilt was to blame for these troubles.
God sends a second messenger after the prophet, and the order matters.
Notice the Lord's twofold way of working. He sends first a prophet, then an angel. The prophet brings their sin home to their conscience; the angel raises up a deliverer. He loves to rescue His people from the miserable results of their failure, but He will have the evil owned first.
The man has no name and predicts nothing. That is no gap in the story. The word covers more than prediction.
So a prophet does not only mean someone who can predict future events. The messenger of God who rebuked Israel in the days of Gideon (Judges 6:8) was a prophet.
The prophet's first words point back to the rescue out of slavery. That backward look is the point: the God who acted then has not changed.
They could not have been poorer than they were. But when they felt that poverty and cried to the Lord in their distress, He met them — and He met them as the God of deliverances. He carried their thoughts back to what He had done for them in the past. He had brought them out of their captivity by a great deliverance... and had planted them in a rich inheritance, driving out all their enemies before them. He wanted them to know that He was the same God He had always been. They had changed, but He remained the everlasting God, whose strength cannot fade or fail.
The words "house of slavery" are more than background. One writer says that being bought out of slavery is the strongest motive God gives for obedience.
The fact is that redemption, even when it is only a picture of the greater redemption to come, is a stronger motive to obedience than creation itself... If the aim of all this part of Deuteronomy is to press obedience, then nothing keeps obedience alive like redemption. And if that was true when the deliverance was only an outward one, how much more when it is eternal?
The prophet's message does more than recall the past. It uncovers the cause of Israel's present trouble.
He first shows them their sin, as He did when they could not take the city of Ai. That is where the secret of their poverty comes to light. "You are crying to me now," He says in effect, "because you feel how poor you are. But the real cause of your poverty is this — you have sinned against me." They had no one to blame but themselves.
Another writer turns the same point on us.
God had been faithful to Israel, but Israel had not been faithful to God. This was the point of the prophet's testimony... Whenever we find ourselves under the power of our enemies, we must be careful to lay the blame on ourselves, and not on God.
- Cry — Israel cried out of misery, not repentance. So God did not relieve them at once. He sent a messenger to press their guilt home first.
- Word — God's first answer is a prophet, His second a deliverer. He rescues His people from the results of their failure, but He will have the evil owned first.
- Reminder — the message opens with Egypt because God is still the God of deliverances. Israel had changed; He had not.
- Claim — the house of slavery is the ground of God's claim. Nothing keeps obedience alive like the memory of being redeemed.
- Verdict — Israel's own sin, not any change in God, caused their poverty. When we find ourselves under the power of our enemies, the fault is ours.