Gideon's Ephod

“And Gideon made an ephod of it and put it in his city, in Ophrah. And all Israel whored after it there, and it became a snare to Gideon and to his family.” – Judges 8:27

I’m slowly reading through Watership Down with Ellie and Eric, and for a long time we were in suspense about what mysterious thing was wrong with the first warren Hazel and his friends encounter on their journey. All the rabbits there are sleek and well-fed, but there is an atmosphere of unspoken fear and secrecy. They finally discover the truth in one horror-filled moment: “What enemy was at work on the other side of the hedge? There were no cries—no spitting of a cat, no squealing of a rabbit—only the crackling of twigs and the tearing of the grass in violence. By an effort of courage against all instinct, Hazel forced himself forward into the gap, with Fiver following. A terrible sight lay before them… Bigwig was lying on his side, his back legs kicking and struggling. A length of twisted copper wire, gleaming dully in the first sunlight, was looped round his neck and ran taut across one forepaw… The projecting point of one strand had lacerated his neck and drops of blood, dark and red as yew berries, welled one by one down his shoulder. For a few moments he lay panting, his side heaving in exhaustion. Then again began the struggling and fighting, backward and forward, jerking and falling, until he choked and lay quiet.”

Snares are things that trap you unexpectedly. They appear simple, even harmless, but are purposely set for one reason: to immobilize and kill. Early on, God warns the Israelites that the Canaanite “gods shall be a snare to you” (Judges 2:3): idols, in other words, work like snares do. They insidiously trap and enslave, they ultimately control and immobilize, and their end is death. In this passage, Gideon refuses a golden crown only to turn around and make a golden ephod, melting down earrings in a way that eerily resembles how the golden calf was made (Exodus 32). The ephod was intended for glory and beauty, to bear the names of God’s people in remembrance before Him, to receive God’s guidance through the Urim and Thummim stones set upon it (Exodus 28). The actual ephod was worn at that time by the high priest in Shiloh (Judges 18:31), but by creating his own version of it, Gideon takes something that God intended to symbolize beauty, relationship, and guidance, and turns it into a snare for all the people. 

How can the vestures of our faith become idols? How can the very tools of worship become hindrances of that worship? How can we look towards our ministry to be our savior? How can the beauty of the created keep us from experiencing the beauty of the Creator? Perhaps we become ensnared by legalism; by power, visibility, or reputation in ministry; by a desire to control God on our own terms; by overemphasis on a particular style of worship; by the momentary at the cost of the eternal. The danger of these kinds of idols lies in their hiddenness, even to ourselves, cloaked as they are by the veneer of religion, by victory and rest as it was for Gideon (Judges 8:38). In the story, it took Hazel, Silver, Buckthorn, Pipkin and Fiver, working together and in turns, to dig out and bite through the peg to free Bigwig. It took seeing the copper wire for what it was to move them from a place of indolence and material comfort. May God open our eyes to the presence and workings of hidden idols in our lives.