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THE ORIGINAL "300" In Judges chapters six and seven, we have the remarkable account of Gideon, a man that saw himself as being very little in God’s eyes, which turned out to be one of the chief reasons for God selecting him (Jud. 6:12-15). After being selected by the Lord to deliver Israel from the Midianites, Gideon received a great boost of faith by having a sacrifice miraculously accepted, by seeing the Lord without dying, by successfully throwing down the altar of Baal, and by receiving the two signs of the wet and dry fleece. Now he was prepared to put together his army of 32,000 men and take on the enemy.Of course, there was no guarantee that 32,000 men would be enough, but with God’s help, he was confident that he would enjoy a victory. Then God decided to get “foolish” again. We pick up the narrative at Judges 7:2-3: “And the LORD said unto Gideon, The people that are with thee are too many for me to give the Midianites into their hands, lest Israel vaunt themselves against me, saying, Mine own hand hath saved me. Now therefore go to, proclaim in the ears of the people, saying, Whosoever is fearful and afraid, let him return and depart early from mount Gilead . . .” Gideon is probably thinking, “Okay, that’s not a bad plan. The fear of a few bad apples could spread through the whole army like a plague, so, yes, it’s probably best to weed out a few people, maybe even a few hundred.” But then the wildest thing happened: “. . . And there returned of the people twenty and two thousand; and there remained ten thousand.”Whoa! THAT wasn’t supposed to happen! Getting rid of a few bad apples is fine, but getting rid of 22,000 is crazy! How could they possibly win with only 10,000 men, especially since these 10,000 men had just watched 22,000 fellow-soldiers leave the camp out of fear? “What in the world are we going to do?” Gideon was likely asking. God’s answer only made the situation seem worse: “. . . The people are yet too many . . .” (verse 4)Too MANY? What? Oh, no, here we go again! God is going to do one of those foolish things that puts all flesh down just so He can get the glory. So, here we go again: “. . . bring them down unto the water, and I will try them for thee there: and it shall be, that of whom I say unto thee, This shall go with thee, the same shall go with thee; and of whomsoever I say unto thee, This shall not go with thee, the same shall not go. So he brought down the people unto the water: and the LORD said unto Gideon, Every one that lappeth of the water with his tongue, as a dog lappeth, him shalt thou set by himself; likewise every one that boweth down upon his knees to drink. And the number of them that lapped, putting their hand to their mouth, were three hundred men: but all the rest of the people bowed down upon their knees to drink water. And the LORD said unto Gideon, By the three hundred men that lapped will I save you, and deliver the Midianites into thine hand: and let all the other people go every man unto his place.” (verses 4-7)Three hundred men are going to whip the untold THOUSANDS of Midianites? No, THE LORD in His wisdom is going to whip the Midianites by using the three hundred. (By the way, please note that it was three hundred Israelites long before it was three hundred Spartans.) There are some good points to be made about the lapping manner in which the three hundred men met God’s qualifications, and there are some good points to be made in showing how the three hundred lamps tricked the Midianites by appearing to represent three hundred columns of soldiers rather than only three hundred soldiers, but the prevailing point is that God wanted to get the glory by using a small number of men (less than one percent of what they began with), and He did just that. Israel got the victory, God got the glory, and the flesh got nothing (I Cor. 1:29)