The LORD Thy God Is With Thee: Waging Mandatory War

The LORD Thy God Is With Thee

The imagery in Deuteronomy 20:1 is specific: 'horses, and chariots, and a people more than thou.' This is the language of Egypt's military — the chariot armies Israel had no answer for as slaves, and would have none for as a nation of farmers and shepherds either. The verse does not promise that Israel will out-number or out-equip such an enemy. It promises something else entirely: 'the LORD thy God is with thee.'

The verse grounds that promise in history rather than abstraction, adding: '...which brought thee up out of the land of Egypt.' The same God who broke Pharaoh's chariots at the sea is the God now going out with Israel to battle. The command not to fear is not a call to ignore reality — it is a call to remember a specific, already-witnessed deliverance, and to expect God to act the same way again.

Let Not Your Hearts Faint

Notice who delivers this message. According to the verses just before, it is 'the priests' who 'approach and speak unto the people' before the battle — not a general delivering a tactical briefing, but a religious official framing the coming fight in covenantal terms: 'Hear, O Israel, ye approach this day unto battle against your enemies: let not your hearts faint, fear not, and do not tremble... for the LORD your God is he that goeth with you, to fight for you against your enemies, to save you' (Deut 20:3-4).

Immediately after this, Deuteronomy 20:5-8 lists who is sent home before the battle even starts: a man with a new house not yet dedicated, a new vineyard not yet used, a betrothal not yet completed — and 'what man is there that is fearful and fainthearted? let him go and return unto his house' (20:8). 'Mandatory war' does not mean every man fights regardless of his circumstances. It means that those who do fight must do so without the kind of fear that the text says is contagious: 'lest his brethren's heart faint as well as his heart' (20:8).

By the Three Hundred Men That Lapped

Gideon's story puts Deuteronomy 20:1 to its sharpest test. Facing a Midianite horde described as 'like the sand by the sea side for multitude,' Gideon musters thirty-two thousand men — and God tells him that is too many: 'lest Israel vaunt themselves against me, saying, Mine own hand hath saved me' (Judges 7:2). Through a series of tests, the army shrinks to three hundred.

God's word to Gideon is blunt: 'By the three hundred men that lapped will I save you, and deliver the Midianites into thine hand' (Judges 7:7). Three hundred men, with no chariots of their own, armed with trumpets and empty jars, against a multitude — this is Deuteronomy 20:1's promise stripped of every possible alternative explanation. A generation earlier, at the start of the conquest, Joshua had received the same assurance in almost the same words: 'Have not I commanded thee? Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the LORD thy God is with thee whithersoever thou goest' (Joshua 1:9).

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Study Questions