Jehovah-Shalom – ‘The Lord Is Peace’

This, by any reckoning, is one of the most precious titles of God in scripture. Peace, no less than grace, is a charming sound, and a commodity in desperately scarce supply in our world and, too often, in our lives. Against the background of ‘fighting and fears, within and without’, it is precious indeed to grasp that God does not just desire peace or promote peace, but that He is, Himself, peace.

The revelation of Jehovah-shalom occurs at a rather unexpected point in scripture. We might have imagined an aged patriarch, the struggles of life past, naming his final altar Jehovah-shalom. Or we might have expected to find it in those early, happy years of Solomon’s reign, when the temple stood in pristine splendour and the kingdom’s boundary was larger and more secure than it had ever been before. But the revelation of Jehovah-shalom comes in an altogether more unexpected place.

Peace is hardly the most obvious characteristic of the book of Judges, with its recurring cycles of oppression and conflict. It is true that, early in the book, these cycles are punctuated by periods when the land had rest, 3. 11, 30; 5. 31, but during none of these periods do we learn that Jehovah is peace. That revelation must wait until we reach the story of Gideon. And in the trajectory of his life, too, it comes in an unexpected place, not at the end, when Midian had been defeated, Ephraim soothed, and internal disloyalty dealt with. Rather, Gideon learns that the Lord is peace when Midianite raiders still threaten, when he has just received information that has awakened his deepest insecurities, and at the end of a rather tetchy, if not downright confrontational, exchange with the Angel of the Lord. Gideon, in short, learned the lesson when he needed it most. What was true in his experience is so often true in ours - it is in our extremity that we most learn of our God.

The truth of Jehovah-shalom was something that Gideon needed to learn. The name that he gave to his altar was no mere platitude, but the expression of a reality that he had just grasped. That he linked that truth to the tangible symbol of the altar is a telling indication of how much he valued it, and the narrator’s note - ‘unto this day it is yet in Ophrah of the Abiezrites’, Judg. 6. 24 - is a reminder of the enduring importance of Gideon’s lesson for all of God’s people. Gideon did not grasp this truth suddenly. Rather, it was the climax of the lessons that he had learned since first the Angel of the Lord appeared to him.

The first lesson Gideon learned was that Jehovah was present. ‘The Lord is with thee’, was the Angel’s unexpected greeting, v. 12. To Gideon it seemed improbable. ‘Oh my Lord’, he asked, ‘if the Lord be with us, why then is all this befallen us? and where be all his miracles which our fathers told us of, saying, Did not the Lord bring us up from Egypt? but now the Lord hath forsaken us, and delivered us into the hands of the Midianites’, v. 13. The immediacy and directness of Gideon’s question give us a vivid insight into his priorities, and help us to understand why God was choosing this man to be the deliverer for His people. Gideon was deeply concerned at the impoverishment of the nation. The seven years of relentless raids, the gut-wrenching experience of ploughing and planting, watering and weeding the crop only to have it snatched away by the Midianite marauders, had burned deeply into his soul. How could God be present, and His people still suffer so?

It is striking that Gideon’s question never receives a direct answer. The Angel of the Lord takes no time to explain the reality of departure and discipline, to show Gideon that God was neither distant nor uninterested. The Angel’s focus is not on the past but the future, and as He commissions him to ‘save Israel from the hand of the Midianites’, v. 14, He gives Gideon a clear commitment, ‘Surely I will be with thee’, v. 16. Coming, as Gideon seems to have assumed, from an ordinary angel (insofar as there can be such a thing), this was no small promise. But, as the flesh and cakes went up in smoke and the Angel of the Lord disappeared from Gideon’s sight, the reality - and the immensity - of the situation dawned upon Gideon. He had been speaking, not just to a lord, v. 13, but to the Lord, and it was not just an angel who had promised his presence, but Jehovah Himself.

We would do well to notice Gideon’s response to this realization. The assurance of God’s presence was not the source of complacency. Like Manoah and his wife in Judges chapter 13, Gideon understood the greatness of God; the realization that he had ‘seen an angel of the Lord face to face’, v. 22, filled him with terror. The presence of God with His people was not a talisman or badge of distinction to be pointed at with pride, but a holy reality that searched the depths of Gideon’s conscience. ‘There am I in the midst of them’, Matt. 18. 20, should have no less of an impact on us in 2025.

Linked inextricably with the promise of God’s presence was the assurance of His power. The Angel of the Lord had addressed Gideon as ‘thou mighty man of valour’, v. 12, but Gideon, in his haste to lament the condition of God’s people, seems scarcely to register it. It is only when the divine messenger speaks again that Gideon seems to grasp the import of this address. ‘Go in this thy might, and thou shalt save Israel from the hand of the Midianites’, v. 14. The Angel’s words have a certain ambiguity - just what was meant by ‘this thy might’? Gideon - who, understandably enough, appears to have been struggling to keep up with the conversation - seems to have understood this as a reference to his own innate strength. That best explains his response, ‘my family is poor in Manasseh, and I am the least in my father’s house’, v. 15. But, in his struggle to process the Angel’s words, Gideon had missed a key piece of information, ‘have not I sent thee?’ v. 14. As verse 16 makes clear, this was to be the source of Gideon’s might, ‘Surely I will be with thee, and thou shalt smite the Midianites as one man’. Gideon was right; his own strength was utterly inadequate for the task that lay before him. The required power would come, not from himself or from his bloodline, but from Jehovah Himself. That promise would be realized just a short while later, when ‘the Spirit of the Lord came upon Gideon’, v. 34. This interesting expression has also been translated as ‘clothed Gideon’, LSB, reflecting the fact that the underlying term has to do with putting on a garment. Strictly speaking, though, the idea is not so much that the Spirit came upon Gideon like a garment - an image that is relatively easy to understand. Rather, the grammar suggests that we should understand that the Spirit put Gideon on. Just as we fill, and control, and empower our garments, so Gideon, in his deeply-felt weakness, was filled, and controlled, and empowered by the God who commissioned him, and who said, ‘Go in this thy might’.

Gideon has been criticised for his assessment of his own weakness. That seems hardly fair, because that assessment was correct. The answer to Israel’s need did not lie in him. His might must be God’s might. We still need to learn that lesson. We still need to ‘be strong in the Lord, and in the power of his might’, Eph. 6. 10, to grasp that our lives must be lived, and our service performed, ‘Not by might, nor by power, but by my spirit, saith the Lord of hosts’, Zech. 4. 6.

Gideon learned that God is present and powerful. And the realization terrified him to the core of his being. He, in all his unworthiness, had ‘seen an angel of the Lord face to face’, Judg. 6. 22, and death seemed the inevitable outcome. But in the aroma of the ascending sacrifice, he learned that God is peace. His subsequent building of the altar served not just to erect a physical monument to the truth of Jehovah-shalom, but to strengthen the link between the sacrifice and the peace.

Gideon’s offering, though it hardly satisfied the requirements of Levitical convention, nonetheless contained elements of the burnt offering and the meal offering. As such, it would be difficult for us to think about Gideon’s offering, and not to think of the One who is ‘our peace’, Eph. 2. 14, whose offering gives us ‘peace with God’, Rom. 5. 1. It is His sacrifice that makes the presence of God a blessing rather than a judgement, and His presence a source of joy, and not of fear. Jehovah-shalom is the God of the altar.

It was in an unexpected place Gideon learned these lessons. Strange lessons they must have seemed for a man living in violent days, charged with the responsibility to ‘smite the Midianites’, Judg. 6. 16. But the timing of the lesson was divinely planned. To engage in conflict for God, Gideon needed to be in the enjoyment of peace with God. Soon he would risk conflict with his father and experience it with his neighbours. Midian’s hosts must be overcome and God’s people delivered. Discernment would be needed - the prima-donna petulance of the men of Ephraim would require a different response to the failure of Succoth and Penuel, and Gideon would show himself as much a master of the soft word that turns away wrath, Prov. 15. 1, as of military strategy. Gideon had known the famine of strife. He had been commissioned by Jehovah-shalom. Negatively and positively, he learned the value of peace, and ‘the country was in quietness forty years in the days of Gideon’, Judg. 8. 28. This will be the last time in Judges that we read of national rest, and the quietness of Gideon’s judgeship is underscored by the succeeding mayhem of Abimelech’s disastrous experiment in kingship.

Like Gideon, we are called to conflict. It is ours to ‘fight the good fight of faith’, 1 Tim. 6. 12. But the servants of Jehovah-shalom, ‘the very God of peace’, 1 Thess. 5. 23, must not be bellicose or belligerent, for God’s call is still, ‘be at peace among yourselves’, v. 13.