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Guaranteed Human

Previously on the Chosen People

Before the breaker of chains came,

the Lord would send lesser heroes,

fractured and broken images of the deliverer to come.

Over the southern hills, dark shapes emerged, a seething, writhing mass of swift and

unrelenting medianite marauders. Keep planting, Israel. Raise your livestock. Press your grapes and harvest

your grain. Tend to your orchards as you have always done.

But know this, what you saw is ours. Refuse and we will kill you. Obey. And perhaps we will leave you just enough to survive.

The Lord is beside you and before you, Gideon, son of Joach. Nobody in their right mind would

send me to rescue anyone. If you were the mind would send me rescue anyone.

If you were the Lord, you'd know that.

I'm somewhat of a professional coward.

That night, as he lay in his tent, he thought of the heroes of old.

Othniel, Ehud, Shamgar, Deborah.

Their bravery felt like a distant legend, something unattainable. He was nothing like them. He was consumed by his weakness, crippled by his fear.

But this, Gideon did not yet realize, was precisely why God had chosen him.

The ridge was cloaked in shadow, the final light of the sun slipping behind the mountains to cast a pale pink hue over the horizon.

Gideon crouched at its edge, his eyes fixed on the valley below where the Medianite camp sprawled like a nest of vipers.

Countless torches dotted the landscape, their flickering light barely enough to define the horde swarming beneath him.

The Medianites moved with purpose, their camp alive with the hum of a massive army preparing for slaughter.

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