Shamgar, An Unsung Hero
My sporting achievements are few and far between. One of the few was when I was at primary school. Every lunchtime and after school, I went to football training. However, for not hard to surmise reasons, I was never selected for the school team until one fateful day. It was my final year at the school before moving on to secondary school and the last match of the season was approaching hence my last chance to be chosen for the team. And believe it or not, I got the nod (probably more out of pity than anything else; a little reward for my persistence in coming to so many football practices without actually ever being picked for the team).
The day of the match arrived, and the school bus sped its way to the fixture with, for the first and indeed last time, me in it. We made it to the school where the match was to take place and the two teams lined up on the field to begin the match. I of course was watching from the side as I was a substitute. The first half went well, and we raced into a lead. This continued into the second half where eventually it was three-nil to our team. So, finally the moment came when it was safe to introduce me into the fray. I could no longer do much harm as we were well ahead with just twenty minutes to go. However, more so than that after a few moments of headlessly running around and maybe the odd touch, the ball was crossed into the area and not only all the defenders but also the goalie missed it. It fell at my feet with just a couple of metres to the goal and no one in the way. Even I couldn’t miss, and I didn’t. Four nil a d I had scored the winning goal!
From then on, I can claim the best record of anyone who ever played for Rise Park Junior school; 100% scoring record that is a goal in every match I played and furthermore, a goal with every shot!
For obvious reasons, I have never received much attention in spite of this glorious footballing achievement. In the Bible, there are mentioned a number of people who did great things but are rarely talked about. Unsung Biblical heroes we might say. For what reason I don’t know. Maybe there are just so many Biblical heroes or maybe just some of them did slightly odd things.
I would say Shamgar definitely falls into this second category. I can’t imagine that Judges 3:31 is many people’s favourite verse, however it contains some deep truths, despite at first reading seeming a little strange to say the least.
We are told that Shamgar, the son of Anath, managed to defeat 600 Philistines using just an ox-goad. This raises a number of questions. To begin with though, I think it is good to look at the context.
The verse begins by telling us that Shamgar came after Ehud (incidentally, another unsung Biblical hero). In other words, he was just one in a long line of special people called, “Judges”, who God chose at a particular time in Israel’s history, to save them from difficult situations. The problems were caused by the fact that although the Jews were God’s chosen people, they had the tendency to allow themselves to be tempted into sin by the other people groups around them. As a consequence God allowed oppression to come on them at the hands of certain people’s. Just as suffering and difficulty today encourages many to seek God’s help, so the Jews, when they were in these difficult times of oppression began to call out to God for help. He’s response was to raise up these Judges to get the Jews out of the fix that they were in.
Shamgar is mentioned as having been the third of these Judges. He is described as the son of Anath. Anath is the name of a Canaanite Goddess of fertile. In what sense Shamgar was her son is debatable. Maybe it was title to show that he was somehow connected to her or maybe it was his mother’s name. Either way, it suggests that Shamgar might not have been Jewish, at least not 100%. Nevertheless, here he is being named as a hero who saved Israel. It just goes to show that God can use anybody he chooses to do His work, even unlikely candidates such as Shamgar who might not have even originally been a part of God’s people.
The way that Shamgar actually goes about his task appears extravagant even compared to today’s Hollywood offerings. We are told that he managed to kill 600 Philistines using just an ox-goad.
In this early part of Israel’s history, the Philistines are mentioned a number of times as being enemies of Israel, so this explains why Israel would have needed help to get free from there. However, why an ox-goad and how did Shamgar manage this extraordinary feat?
In terms of the question regarding the ox-goad, there is a clue in Judges chapter 5. Here in verse 6 it mentions the days of Shamgar and the days of Jael. Jael was the wife of Heber the Kenite, who is one of the starring figures in Judges chapter 4, where she kills Sisera, the bad guy who is leading the Canaanite King’s army. This suggests that Shamgar and Deborah, the female hero who motivates the Israelites to go out to battle the Canaanites who are oppressing them, were contemporaries. In verse 8 of this chapter we find out that at this time not a shield or spear was seen amongst forty thousand in Israel, in other words weapons were rare. Thus, we can surmise that Shamgar didn’t have access to more conventional means of fighting the Philistines and so was forced to turn to a more creative method, using an ox-goad, which would have been a piece of metal normally used to prod animals into working.
Additionally, in 1 Samuel 13:19-22 there is a passage which sheds some more light onto the situation. Here we discover that early in Saul’s reign as King of Israel, there was a period when the Philistines were oppressing Israel and one of their tactics to keep the Israelites under control was to ensure that there weren’t any blacksmiths around to sharpen weapons. Shamgar himself was fighting against Philistines, so maybe in his day there was a similar strategy at play.
In any case, the bottom line is that it seems like Shamgar used an ox-goad to defeat the Philistines because that’s all he had. It might appear to us to be an unusual weapon and it’s most certainly hard to imagine how he managed to defeat 600 men with it, but the key point is that Shamgar used what he had to bring about a great victory for God’s people. In the same way, although we might feel like we don’t have much to use for God in Christian lives, the main thing is take that which we do have, no matter how insignificant it might seem, and trust that God can bring about a great victory through it.
A simple example would be Dwight Moody, who was not very well educated and indeed after becoming a Christian could barely read the Bible due to his lack of education. Nevertheless, he dedicated what he had to God’s work and ended up preaching the Gospel to many, and even the President of America came to hear him!