The devil doesn’t take you seriously, as long as you have no grasp on the Sword of the Spirit.
I’m told that poltroon was one of the nineteenth century’s favorite insults. It means “coward,” in fact, a coward of the worst sort. The word comes from the Latin poltrone, which interestingly referred to someone whose thumb had been cut off! Not like this strange incident today, where a king was captured whose practice it was to remove the thumbs and great toes of the chieftains he had captured. Instead, a poltrone was a young man who cut off his own thumb so he would be ineligible for military service. The men of Judah gave this king the same treatment he had been dishing out for years: “they killed ten thousand men at Bezek. And they found Adoni-Bezek in Bezek, and fought against him;…Then Adoni-Bezek fled, and they pursued him and caught him and cut off his thumbs and big toes. And Adoni-Bezek said, ‘Seventy kings with their thumbs and big toes cut off used to gather scraps under my table; as I have done, so God has repaid me’” (Jdg 1:4-7). Grisly as the story is, what lessons there are to learn! Removing one’s thumb made it virtually impossible to go to war. When the Athenians decreed that all the inhabitants of the island of Aegina should have the thumb cut off from each right hand, it was “so that they might ever after be disabled from holding a spear.” It’s not a stretch to see a spiritual lesson. With the removal of the great toe, the person lost their balance; with the taking of the thumb, they lost their grip. Having a grip on God’s Word gives us convictions; having a balanced walk gives us consistency. The enemy of our souls wants to neutralize both. But notice Adoni-Bezek’s conclusion: “As I have done, so God has repaid me.” Even when they’re missing some digits, God still balances the books.