3 Now therefore go to, proclaim in the ears of the people, saying, Whosoever is fearful and afraid, let him return and depart early from mount Gilead. And there returned of the people twenty and two thousand; and there remained ten thousand.
Does not the leader of our army, the Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, call out now to his soldiers and say, Whoever is “fearful and anxious of heart,” let him not come to war with me? For this is also what he says in the Gospels in other words but with the same meaning: “Whoever does not take his own cross and come after me is not worthy of me,” and again: “Whoever does not renounce all that he has cannot be my disciple.” Is not Christ thus culling out the fearful and anxious and sending them from his camp?… But don’t let such a life of warfare turn you away; there really is nothing difficult, nothing arduous or impossible in it.
[AD 253] Origen of Alexandria on Judges 7:3