Subject:
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Re: The Brick Testament: Gideon!
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Newsgroups:
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lugnet.build.ancient
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Date:
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Thu, 21 Apr 2005 21:54:56 GMT
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Viewed:
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6324 times
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In lugnet.build.ancient, Brendan Powell Smith wrote:
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In lugnet.build.ancient, Marc Nelson Jr. wrote:
Thanks. That’s always a nice compliment to hear. :)
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I have a quibble with “Gideon and His Sons”. The
ephod was a priestly garment - “a
‘skirt’ with two shoulder straps, to which the golden breastplate was
attached, and a belt to tie it in front”. Your depiction looks more like a
statue or idol.
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When I first read this story about Gideon setting up an “ephod” at Ophrah
which all the Israelites “prostituted themselves” to, I was pretty confused
about just what was going on. I remembered the word ephod being used in
Exodus where it clearly does refer to something that the Israelite priests
wore, something of a holy garment. But on the face of it, it seemed very odd
to me that Gideon would create a preistly garment and “place it” in Ophrah
(as opposed to “wear it”), and that the Israelites would then come to Ophrah
to “prostitute themselves” to said garment. So I did some checking around on
the web to see how others have interpreted this confusing story and word
usage.
There seems to be a difference of opinion on the matter. Some hold that the
word ephod is being used in its “normal” sense here in the Gideon story,
and that indeed, strage as it might seem to me, Gideon put on display a
priestly garment. Here are some sites that hold to that interpretation:
Bethel Church of God page about
Gideon
SDA Sabbath School
Lessons
NetBible’s textual
notes
New Foundations
Ministries
A rival theory is that, although the word ephod usually refers to the
preistly garment, in a certain set of passages in the Bible it is used with a
different meaning, to refer to something along the lines of “an image”, this
passage in Judges being one of those instances. Sites that hold to this
interpretation include this first link under “external links” on the
Wikipedia page you noted
(Jewish
Encyclopdia: ephod) and others:
Roger Christopherson’s Bible
Study
And Adam Knew Eve
RightNow.org
David A. Denyer’s
commentary on Judges 8:22-35
Evolution of Theology by
Thomas Henry Huxley
A commentary on Hosea
NIV
Study Bible Notes (as quoted on this page)
And still other sources note that the meaning of ephod in uncertain:
Bibletools.org
1911encyclopdeia.org
The Prohibition
of Images in the Old Testament The Prohibition of Images in the Old
Testament
Since there is not concencus on the issue, for my illustration of the ephod
in this story, I decided to leave in a bit of ambiguity. Yes, it does kind
of look like an idol, but I also wanted it to be conceivable that it was some
form of higly decorative garment. It does not look like the breastplat
described in Exodus, to be sure, but in other parts of the Bible, the ephod
likewise does not always seem to be the breastplate and/or skirt, such as
when King David wears a linen ephod as he dances in front of the ark of the
covenant (here the the ephod is generally thought to be something like a
loincloth).
Cool, hope you enjoy the book. With The Ten Commandments just having seen
its official release last month, there is not yet a fourth book in the works.
I’m sure my publisher is watching the sales of this new book closely in order
to see if it’s in their interest to continue the series. Needless to say, I
would love to have more of the website’s stories available in book form.
Hopefully it will just be a matter of time.
Thanks for the comments and support!
-Brendan
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Wow! Thank you for the detailed reply - I never thought I’d be getting an
education in Hebrew etymology on LUGNET. The most interesting theory was from
the Jewish
Encyclopedia link - that the ephod started out as a garment for an an idol,
and eventually the two meanings were conflated.
Keep up the great work, and thanks again for the enlightenment.
Marc Nelson Jr.
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Message is in Reply To:
 | | Re: The Brick Testament: Gideon!
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| (...) Thanks. That's always a nice compliment to hear. :) (...) When I first read this story about Gideon setting up an "ephod" at Ophrah which all the Israelites "prostituted themselves" to, I was pretty confused about just what was going on. I (...) (20 years ago, 21-Apr-05, to lugnet.build.ancient, FTX)
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