Gideon Is Called Amid Fear, Oppression, and Idolatry

Midian descended from Abraham through Keturah (Genesis 25:2). Moses had married into a Midianite family (Exodus 2:21), and Israel had fought Midian on the plains of Moab (Numbers 31). The oppressor this time is a distant relative.

“Dens” translates minharot, a word found only here, perhaps clefts or tunnels in the rock. The same retreat into caves returns under the Philistines, when “the people did hide themselves in caves, and in thickets, and in rocks” (1 Samuel 13:6).

“The children of the east” are the bene qedem, the peoples of the desert east of the Jordan, the group Job is said to be greatest among (Job 1:3). The raids are timed to the farming year: they come “when Israel had sown”, and take the harvest.

“Till thou come unto Gaza” carries the damage across the whole width of the land, from the Jezreel valley to the southern coast. “Sustenance” is michyah, the means of staying alive: the raiders leave nothing to live on, animal or grain.

“Grasshoppers” is arbeh, the locust of the eighth plague (Exodus 10:4–5). The camels mark something new: large raids by camel riding nomads, able to strike across the desert and vanish, are among the earliest of their kind recorded.

“Impoverished” is dalal, to be brought low, and Gideon will use the same root of his own clan: “my family is poor”, dal, “in Manasseh” (verse 15). The whole nation’s condition is the condition of his family.

The cry is recorded twice, in verse 6 and again here, before any answer comes. The repetition slows the account at the moment the reader expects a deliverer, and what arrives first is a speech.

The earliest surviving manuscript of Judges, a Dead Sea Scroll, does not contain verses 7–10: it moves straight from the cry to the angel at Ophrah. In the Hebrew text as received, an unnamed prophet speaks first, “a man, a prophet”, the only one in the book besides Deborah.

“All that oppressed you” uses lachats, the pressing verb used of Egypt (Exodus 3:9), of the Amorites who pressed Dan into the hills (1:34), and of Jabin (4:3). The prophet names every oppressor in one clause.

The same charge explains the fall of Samaria in 2 Kings 17:35–38, which repeats “ye shall not fear other gods” four times. The prophet’s speech ends on the accusation with no promise of rescue attached; the promise comes in the next verse, from someone else.

A winepress was a vat cut into rock, sunk below ground level; grain was normally threshed on an open, windy height so the chaff could blow away. Threshing in a winepress was awkward and slow, and hidden. The angel sits under a terebinth, as the three visitors did at Abraham’s tent (Genesis 18:4).

“Mighty man of valour” is the title given to Jephthah (11:1), to Saul’s father Kish (1 Samuel 9:1) and to David (1 Samuel 16:18); Boaz is called by the same words, “a mighty man of wealth” (Ruth 2:1). “The LORD is with thee” is also Boaz’s greeting to his reapers (Ruth 2:4).

The angel spoke to Gideon in the singular, “with thee”; Gideon answers in the plural, “with us”. He turns a personal greeting into a national complaint. “Miracles” is niflaot, the wonders Joshua promised at the Jordan (Joshua 3:5).

Here the speaker is called “the LORD” himself, no longer only the angel. “Have not I sent thee?” uses shalach, the verb of the call of Moses: “I will send thee unto Pharaoh” (Exodus 3:10).

“My family” is literally “my thousand”, eleph, a clan unit. Saul makes the same protest: “am not I a Benjamite, of the smallest of the tribes... my family the least?” (1 Samuel 9:21). The least from the weakest is the one sent.

“Surely I will be with thee” is ki ehyeh immakh, the words God spoke to Moses at the bush, “Certainly I will be with thee” (Exodus 3:12). Ehyeh, “I will be”, is the verb from which the divine name is explained two verses later there: “I AM THAT I AM”.

“If now I have found grace in thy sight” is how Abraham addressed his three visitors (Genesis 18:3). Moses too was given signs to answer his doubts (Exodus 4:1–9). Gideon asks for proof that the speaker is who he seems to be.

“Present” is minchah, the word for both a gift and a grain offering, and for the tribute Ehud carried to Eglon (3:15). Gideon may not yet know which kind of present he is bringing. The visitor agrees to wait, as Abraham’s guests did.

An ephah of flour was more than twenty litres, an enormous amount for a hungry household hiding its grain. Kid, cakes, broth in a pot, brought out under the tree: the meal is modelled on Abraham’s for his three guests (Genesis 18:6–8).

The rock becomes an altar, and the broth is poured out as a libation rather than eaten. “The angel of God” here, “the angel of the LORD” in the next verse: the title shifts as the scene moves from meal to sacrifice.

Fire from the LORD consumed Aaron’s first offerings (Leviticus 9:24) and Elijah’s on Carmel (1 Kings 18:38). The same book repeats the pattern with Samson’s parents: the angel ascends in the flame of their offering (13:20).

“Alas, O Lord GOD” is ahah Adonai YHWH, the cry of alarm. God had told Moses, “there shall no man see me, and live” (Exodus 33:20), and Samson’s father will say, “We shall surely die, because we have seen God” (13:22).

“Peace be unto thee” is shalom lekha, the everyday greeting between people meeting (1 Samuel 25:6), here turned into an answer to fear of death. The angel has gone, and Gideon hears the voice without seeing anyone.

The King James renders the divine name as “Jehovah” only in a handful of places, among them Exodus 6:3, Psalm 83:18 and Isaiah 12:2, and in place names such as Jehovah-jireh and Jehovah-nissi. Jehovah-shalom means “The LORD is peace”.

“Seven years old” matches the seven years of Midian’s oppression (verse 1). The altar of Baal belongs to Gideon’s own father, Joash, and the “grove” is an Asherah pole beside it. The reform begins in Gideon’s own yard.

“In the ordered place” may mean with stones laid in proper order, or on a levelled platform. The Asherah pole becomes firewood under the LORD’s sacrifice, as Deuteronomy 7:5 had said: “burn their graven images with fire.”

Ten servants means Joash’s household was not so poor as Gideon claimed in verse 15. The Book of Judges states his fear plainly and credits the act to it: he did it by night because he feared his father’s household and the men of the city.

The discovery comes in three parts, each introduced by “behold” in the Hebrew sense: the Baal altar thrown down, the Asherah cut, the bull offered on a new altar. The townsmen see the whole reform at once in the morning light.

“Enquired and asked” are darash and baqash, the verbs of Deuteronomy 13:14, where Israel must “enquire, and make search, and ask diligently” when a town turns to other gods. The men of Ophrah apply the procedure to the man who tore down the idol.

Deuteronomy 13:6–10 required death for anyone, even a son, who enticed a family to serve other gods. The men of Ophrah demand death for a son who turned his family away from Baal: the law read backwards by a town that has changed gods.

“Plead” is riv, to contend in court. Joash turns the case around: let Baal bring his own lawsuit. Elijah will mock Baal’s prophets on Carmel in the same spirit: “Cry aloud: for he is a god; either he is talking, or he is pursuing” (1 Kings 18:27).

Jerubbaal means “let Baal contend”. In 2 Samuel 11:21 the name appears as Jerubbesheth, with Baal replaced by boshet, “shame”, the same change that turned Saul’s son Eshbaal into Ish-bosheth. Scribes disguised the god’s name even inside a hero’s.

Jezreel means “God sows”. The raiders who come to take Israel’s crops camp in the valley named for sowing. “Went over” means they crossed the Jordan from the east, as they had every harvest for seven years.

“Came upon” is literally “clothed itself with”: the Spirit put Gideon on like a garment. The same expression is used of Amasai (1 Chronicles 12:18) and of Zechariah son of Jehoiada (2 Chronicles 24:20). Abi-ezer, his own clan, rallies first.

Asher, which had stayed by the shore in Deborah’s day (5:17), answers this time. Zebulun and Naphtali, who risked their lives with Barak (5:18), come again. Manasseh, Gideon’s tribe, comes whole.

From here to the end of the chapter the text calls God Elohim, not YHWH, which is unusual in Gideon’s account. “If thou wilt save” is literally “if there is with thee a saving”: Gideon asks whether the promise is really in hand.

The fleece is shorn wool laid on the threshing floor, the open place where dew would fall freely. Wool soaks up moisture, so a wet fleece on a dry floor was unusual but not impossible, which may explain why Gideon asks again.

Summer nights in the hill country bring heavy dew, the main moisture for crops in the dry months. Hosea uses it as a promise: “I will be as the dew unto Israel” (Hosea 14:5). Gideon wrings out a full bowl, and rises early to do it.

Gideon borrows Abraham’s words from the bargaining over Sodom: “Oh let not the Lord be angry, and I will speak yet but this once” (Genesis 18:32). “Prove” is nasah, to test, the verb of Deuteronomy 6:16, “Ye shall not tempt the LORD your God.” He knows he is pressing.

A dry fleece on wet ground reverses nature, since wool would be the last thing to stay dry. Church fathers such as Ambrose later read the two nights as figures, the dew falling first on Israel and then on the nations; the chapter itself simply says “God did so”.