Jehovah-Shalom: The Lord Who Is Peace
The next name comes from one of my favorite stories in Scripture, the story of Gideon in Judges 6–8. The judges ruled over Israel at a time when everyone was doing what seemed right in their own eyes. Time after time, Israel would turn away from the Lord, be judged by their enemies, be delivered by a judge God raised up, profess their allegiance to the Lord, and then repeat the cycle again.
Israel was being terrorized by the Midianites, and God raised up a farmer named Gideon to deliver the nation from Midian’s attacks. Gideon was hiding at his threshing floor when the angel of the Lord approached him—he was dumbfounded that God wanted him to be the deliverer of Israel from the scourge of Midian. So Gideon accepts God’s call and defeats the huge Midianite army with just a handful of soldiers. But at the beginning, Gideon was really up tight about being called to this new role—and who can blame him?
It wasn’t until Gideon built an altar to worship Jehovah-Shalom, “The Lord Who Is Peace,” (Judges 6:24) that he finally settled into his new role. He did that because the Lord said to him, “Peace be with you; do not fear, you shall not die.”
Gideon celebrated the Lord who gives us every kind of peace.
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