GIDEON. 129

Grandfather. He had taken the power that was given
him by God ; he refused it when offered to him by the
people. He sets us in this an example of piety and
humility: he worked for the glory of God and the good
of the people, and sought no reward for himself.

Marianne. What an: excellent man Gideon was,
grandfather. I think surely he had no faults at all.

Grandfather. He certainly was a good man, a true
servant of God, -yet in one thing he erred. He collected
all the gold ornaments that had been worn by the
enemies of the Israelites, and the fine garments that he
had taken from the kings; of these he made an ephod
or sacred garment, and put it in the city of Ophrah.
The people did homage to it as if it had been divine,
and even Gideon’s own family were led astray by it.
This is the only faulty thing related of Gideon.

_ George. But I do not see that that was his fault ;
he was not to know that the people would worship the
ornaments.

Grandfather. Many of those ornaments were gods of
the Midianites, which the Israelites had been in the
habit of worshipping before Gideon came to deliver them.
Among the things particularly mentioned as used in the
making of the ephod, were the ornaments that were on
their camels’ necks; they were round plates of gold like
the moon, images of the goddess Ashtaroth, who repre-
sented the moon, as Baal did the sun. When Gideon
knew this he ought not to have preserved these things,
as the Israelites were so apt to wander from the true

K