NOTES for Jdg 6:12-13
The words "God is with us!" and "God be with you!" are known to every believer. But what stands behind them? Quite often, sadly, nothing substantial. Most often, the speaker is expressing either confidence that he is right and everything will go well for him, or, on the contrary, he wants to tell the person to whom he says "God be with you!" that something is wrong with him.
In both cases, the matter concerns a God who, according to the speaker's logic, must confirm the correctness of his own statement, whether it concerns himself or others. But Gideon sees the matter differently. For him the expression "God is with us" means something quite concrete: the fulfillment of the promises God gave to the fathers whom He brought out of Egypt.
He understands what we do not always understand today. For him it is obvious that God enters our life not in order to look at the world through our eyes and carry out our will. Gideon understands that if God is truly near, He will act by carrying out His own plan. And Gideon remembers well the promises God gave to his fathers.
Gideon asks the messenger of God a simple, practical question: if God is truly with us, why is what is happening happening? Where are the former times, when the pagans fled, leaving the battlefield to God's people? Why has everything changed?
God's plan is known to Gideon. In any case, he knows how God led his fathers from Egypt to Palestine and how Palestine was conquered. He is sure that this was not accidental good fortune; God did not bring His people into the land He had promised to Abraham in order to give them over to be torn apart by neighboring pagan tribes. And if this is exactly what is happening, then God has turned away from His people; He is not near.
And Gideon asks the messenger of God what is, from his point of view, a completely natural question: if God is with us, why does He not intervene when His plan is collapsing, when His people are being attacked? Gideon does not yet know the answer. He does not yet know that the one who asks such questions must step onto God's path and himself become an instrument in God's hands; otherwise it is better for him to keep silent.
Gideon will not remain in ignorance for long: very soon the messenger of God will tell him that it is through him that God intends to change the situation, making it what He wants it to be. But the messenger of God would hardly have appeared before Gideon if Gideon had not been asking himself the very question he asked the messenger of God who appeared to him.