Judges 6:15, “And he said unto him, Oh my Lord, wherewith shall I save Israel? behold, my family [is] poor in Manasseh, and I [am] the least in my father’s house.”

Ever feel like you are just sort of subhuman, maybe you grew up in a situation where family members made you feel subhuman.  Perhaps you grew up with a disability and you never felt normal or a part of the human race.  Is that’s what troubling you Bunkie?   Then cheer up, you are in good company for that is exactly the way one of the greatest generals in history felt, his name was Gideon.   Gideon’s name means one who cuts into pieces, the destroyer or mighty warrior.  He was not born with this name.  In a Semitic culture you rarely lived with the name you were born with, usually you were given a name as you passed through life and what you became as a person was usually the name you acquired.  Gideon was not always a Gideon.

It is curious that he says he is from a poor family.  In verse 27 we learn he took ten men of his servants to destroy the idol of Baal. The wording would suggest he had more than ten servants that does not sound like he was very poor.  The word in Hebrew for poor is a difficult word to translate.  It is the word hadal.  The root word is dalal and the Hei is a prefix indicating a definite article. Dalal means to hang down, be brought low, being weak or feeble.  It comes from a Semitic root which has the idea of being reduced or considered less than human. It was a word applied to slaves, to people who were thought to be of an inferior culture or race. What Gideon was actually saying was that he was from a family who were not even looked upon as truly human, they were considered subhuman.  Subhuman may really be the best English word to apply to the word dalal. Slaves in America were considered Dalal or reduced from the human population hence they could be owned, bought and sold like cattle because they just did not come up to being truly human beings in the eyes of their owners.  Concentrations camps guards were taught that their Jewish prisoners were dalal not really humans and thus they should feel no guilt in exterminating them. Records show that many of these German prison guards could only last a few months at their job of extermination before they had to be removed because they themselves came to believe they were Dalal (subhuman) after carrying so much blood on their hands.

The tribe of Manasseh were considered trouble makers and were looked down upon by the other tribes and were never really given much respect such that Gideon felt he was somehow dalal (subhuman).   Then Gideon says that he was the least in his father’s house.  Some commentators claims this meant he was the youngest, but the word least in Hebrew may suggest something else.  The word used here for least is hatsair which comes from a Semitic root word tsa’ar which also means to be reduced or small. So Gideon was really down on himself, he not only felt he came from an inferior family but out of this inferior family he was the most inferior of all. Tsa’ar could also mean that he was physically small, the runt in the family.

Yet, God called him Gideon a mighty warrior. The world may not see you as worth very much, that homeless person on the street, that person in the wheel chair, that person that is mentally disabled, that drug addict laying in his own filth may seem less than a person, less than a human to many but in God’s eyes they are Gideons they are mighty warriors.  God sees their hearts, He sees their fight to survive, He sees them struggling against all odds and all He sees is something beautiful that He created.

Hans Christian Andersen told the story of a baby duckling that was ugly and rejected by all the other ducklings.  He grew up being abused and mistreated and finally went to hide out in a cave.  He felt subduck, a duckling that was less than a duck that should not even belong to the duck family.  One day he looked out from his cave and saw a flock of swans swimming in the lake. The poor ugly duckling craved attention so bad that he figured he was better off if they just pecked him to death rather than live in this isolation.  So he went out to the lake and discovered a warm welcome.  Looking at his reflection in the lake he discovered that he had grown into a swan, the most beautiful all of the duck family. Our culture is notorious for honoring the rich, beautiful and gifted.  Yet, man looks on the outward appearance, but God looks on the heart and those we consider to be subhuman because of some flaw or defect may really be a Gideon, a beautiful swan in the eyes of God. Perhaps aging, losing one’s youthful beauty and grace is God’s way of reminding us that even the most beautiful of all will one day be looked upon as a dalal (subhuman) by others. Just as time will erode one’s physical beauty, time can also enhance the beauty of one’s heart.  As one preacher once said, our parents will catch up with us, Father time and Mother nature.

God made no mistakes when he created us.  To look at someone and call them a dalal subhuman because of some supposed defect, some supposed flaw would be to insult God, to say He doesn’t know what He was doing when he created that person or that He somehow made a mistake.  Sometimes we need to stop and look at that person who appears almost subhuman to us and look beyond all their faults, their supposed imperfections and flaws and see what God sees, a Gideon, a beautiful swan created for a very specific purpose and someone that God loves just as dearly as He loves you.

Mother Theresa was once asked by a reporter how she could go out into the streets and even look upon some of the ugly, decaying bodies of people who were the poorest of the poor, dying in their own filth.  She replied, “In every face I see, I see the Jesus that I love.”