Was it mockery,
a diatribe against his timorousness,
brought on by Israel’s descent
into the maelstrom of despondency,
as scavenger tribes plundered
the fruit of its labour,
powerless to resist
their savagery and greed.
How effete to beat out wheat
secretively
in a wine press
hidden in a cave!
How could this Angel of the Lord
whom he had met
under the pistachio tree
at Ophrah
call him, the least
of the tribe of Manasseh
cowering in a cave,
Valiant Warrior!
He was no halcyon youth
brimming with zeal
to redeem a fallen nation;
nor had he the prowess
of a young Nimrod,
or the might of Samson.
No man so unexceptional,
or undistinguished
as he.
The age of miracles
must lie in the mythical past
for why had Adonai
not saved the nation
against gentile swarms,
numerous as locusts
as He had once done?
But the Angel of the Lord
gazed upon him so intently
that there was no spectre of a doubt
that incredibly,
the mantle lay on him
to deliver Israel
from the hands of Midian.
For Adonai looks beyond
the tatters and the tawdriness
into the interior of the soul
and sees the latent seeds of growth
and of what a man shall yet
become.
Judges 6:11-24