1And the Israelites did evil in the eyes of the LORD, and He gave them into the hand of Midian seven years. 2And the hand of Midian was strong over Israel. Because of Midian the Israelites made themselves the dugouts that are in the mountains and the caves and the strongholds. 3And it happened when Israel planted, that Midian and Amalek and the Easterners came up against them. 4And they encamped against them and destroyed the yield of the land all the way to Gaza, and they would not leave a source of livelihood in Israel, nor sheep nor ox nor donkey. 5For they with their flocks and tents would come up, like locusts in multitude, and they and their camels were beyond numbering, and they came into the land to destroy it. 6And Israel was sorely impoverished because of Midian, and the Israelites cried out to the LORD. 7And it happened, when the Israelites cried out to the LORD about Midian, 8that the LORD sent a prophet-man to the Israelites, and he said to them, “Thus said the LORD God of Israel, ‘It is I Who brought you up from Egypt and brought you out from the house of slaves. 9And I saved you from the hand of Egypt and from the hand of all your oppressors, and I drove them out before you and I gave you their land. 10And I said to you—I am the LORD your God. You shall not revere the gods of the Amorite in whose land you dwell. And you did not heed My voice.’” 11And the LORD’s messenger came and sat under the terebinth that is in Ophrah, which belongs to Joash the Abiezerite, and Gideon his son was threshing wheat in the winepress to conceal it from Midian. 12And the LORD’s messenger appeared to him and said, “The LORD is with you, valiant warrior.” 13And Gideon said to him, “Please, my lord, if the LORD is with us, why has all this overtaken us, and where are all His wonders of which our fathers told us, saying, ‘Did not the LORD bring us up from Egypt?’ And now the LORD has abandoned us and given us into the grip of Midian.” 14And the LORD’s messenger turned to him and said, “Go in this power of yours and rescue Israel from the grip of Midian. Have I not sent you?” 15And he said to him, “Please, my lord, how shall I rescue Israel? Look, my clan is poor in Manasseh, and I am the youngest in my father’s house.” 16And the LORD’s messenger said to him, “For I shall be with you, and you will strike down Midian as a single man.” 17And he said to him, “If, pray, I have found favor in your eyes, give me a sign that you are speaking with me. 18Pray, do not move from here until I come to you and bring out my offering and set it before you.” And he said, “I shall sit here until you return.” 19And Gideon had gone and prepared a kid and an ephah worth of flour of flatbread. He put the meat in a basket and the broth in a pot, and he brought it out to him under the terebinth and brought it forward. 20And God’s messenger said to him, “Take the meat and the flatbread, and set them on yonder crag, and pour out the broth.” And so he did. 21And the LORD’s messenger reached out with the tip of the walking stick that was in his hand and touched the meat and the flatbread, and fire went up from the rock and consumed the meat and the flatbread. And the LORD’s messenger went from his sight. 22And Gideon saw that he was a messenger of the LORD. And Gideon said, “Alas, LORD my Master, for I indeed have seen a messenger of the LORD face-to-face.” 23And the LORD said to him, “It is well with you. Do not fear. You shall not die.” 24And Gideon built there an altar to the LORD, and called it YHWH Shalom. To this day it is still in Ophrah of the Abiezerites. 25And it happened on that night that the LORD said to him, “Take the bull which is your father’s and the second bull, seven years old, and you shall destroy the altar of Baal which is your father’s, and the cultic pole that is on it you shall cut down. 26And you shall build an altar to the LORD your God on top of this stronghold on the surface, and you shall take the second bull and offer it up as a burnt offering on the wood of the cultic pole that you cut down.” 27And Gideon took ten men of his servants and did as the LORD had spoken to him. And it happened as his father’s household and the men of the town feared to do it by day, that he did it at night. 28And the men of the town rose early in the morning, and, look, the altar of Baal was shattered and the cultic pole that was on it was cut down, and the second bull was offered up on the altar that had been built. 29And every man said to his fellow, “Who has done this thing?” And they inquired and sought out, and they said, “Gideon son of Joash has done this thing.” 30And the men of the town said to Joash, “Bring out your son that he may die, for he has shattered the altar of Baal and cut down the cultic pole that was on it.” 31And Joash said to all who stood round him, “Will you contend for Baal, will you rescue him? Let he who would contend for him be put to death by morning. If he is a god, he will contend for himself, for his altar has been shattered.” 32And he was called on that day Jerubaal, which is to say, “Let him contend for himself, for his altar has been shattered.”
33And all of Midian and Amalek and the Easterners gathered together, and they crossed over and camped in the Valley of Jezreel. 34And the spirit of the LORD invested Gideon, and he blasted the ram’s horn, and Abiezer was mustered behind him. 35And he sent messengers throughout Manasseh, and it, too, was mustered behind him. And he sent messengers in Asher and in Zebulun and in Naphtali, and they went up to meet them. 36And Gideon said to God, “If You are going to rescue Israel by my hand as You have spoken, 37look, I am about to place a fleece of wool on the threshing floor. If there is dew on the fleece alone but on the ground it is dry, I shall know that You will rescue Israel by my hand as You have spoken.” 38And so it was: he rose early the next day and squeezed the fleece and wrung out dew from the fleece, a bowlful of water. 39And Gideon said to God, “Let Your wrath not flare up against me. I would speak just this one time more and I would make a trial, pray, just this one time more with the fleece. Let it be dry on the fleece alone, and on the ground let there be dew.” 40And, so God did on that night, and it was dry on the fleece alone and on all the ground there was dew.
CHAPTER 6 NOTES
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1. Midian. The Midianites, unlike the indigenous peoples of Canaan confronted by Deborah and Barak, are nomads whose chief territory is east of the Jordan.
2. the dugouts. On the basis of an Arab cognate, the term probably refers to some sort of man-made trench. In modern Hebrew, this word, minharah, is used for “tunnel.”
strongholds. These would not be architectural structures but the tops of crags that are adapted as fortifications.
4. destroyed the yield of the land. The Midianites are not an invading army but ruthless marauders, and so they pillage the fields or use them for grazing and confiscate the Israelites’ livestock.
5. camels. These beasts, only recently domesticated toward the end of the second millennium B.C.E., were the distinctive mounts of the desert-dwelling Midianites. The Israelites for the most part used donkeys.
11. Gideon. The name transparently derives from the verbal stem g-d-ʿ, which means “to hack down.” Since the name appears to be a consequence of his first act in the story, one might guess that his original name was actually the pagan name Jerubaal, which would mean, “Baal contends [for his loyal worshippers],” and not, as verse 32 suggests, “Let Baal contend for himself,” or perhaps, referring to Gideon, “he contends with Baal.”
12. the LORD’S messenger. The Masoretic Text reads “the LORD,” but some Hebrew manuscripts have “the LORD’s messenger.” The same problem occurs in verse 16. There are scholars who think “messenger” was piously added earlier and later in the passage in order to avoid excessive anthropomorphism, but, on the other hand, the image of God Himself poking at something with the tip of a walking stick (verse 21) would be anomalous, and so it seems wiser to assume that the interlocutor throughout is a divine emissary, not the divinity.
valiant warrior. He has not yet earned this epithet, which is thus predictive, and in fact he seems, as Yairah Amit has observed, a rather fearful man.
14. Go in this power of yours. This phrase probably suggests that the LORD’s messenger is conferring power on Gideon.
15. my clan is poor . . . I am the youngest. Such professions of inadequacy regularly occur in the call narratives of the prophets, and they are evident in Moses’s call narrative—that is, the call to prophecy. In fact, the possession of numerous servants (or, perhaps, slaves) indicates that Gideon’s family is well off.
20. pour out the broth. Though the liquid in question is not conventional in the cult, this looks like a libation.
21. And the LORD’s messenger went from his sight. Given the fact that he has just miraculously ignited a fire on the rock, it is likely that his going away is equally miraculous—a sudden vanishing.
22. Alas, LORD my Master. Here the direct reference to God is appropriate because one would pray to God, not to a divine emissary. But Gideon fears that beholding even a messenger of God could mean death for him.
24. YHWH Shalom. That is, “the LORD—it is well,” the words God spoke to Gideon.
25. the second bull. This second bull is a puzzle because nothing afterward is done in the story with what appears to be a first bull. Some scholars solve the problem by emending sheini, “second,” to shamen, “fat,” thus eliminating the multiplicity of bulls.
26. this stronghold. See the comment on verse 2.
on the surface. The Hebrew maʿarakhah is a little odd. It usually refers to anything arrayed in a set order, like the items in a sacrifice or troops in an army. Perhaps here it is a kind of metonymy, as David Kimchi surmised, indicating the flat surface of the rock on which the sacrifice is to be laid out.
27. the men of the town feared to do it by day. Here the fearful ones are Gideon’s subordinates, not Gideon himself. This nocturnal act is of a piece with the clandestine threshing of wheat in a winepress. However, the people feared here are not Midianite marauders but the Israelite inhabitants of the town, who have made Baal worship the official cult there, as we see vividly in their resolution to execute Gideon for having desecrated the altar of Baal.
31. Let he who would contend for him be put to death. Joash shrewdly argues that if Baal has real power as a god, he will fight his own battles and exact punishment from the person who violated his altar. If he does not do that, he is not worthy of worship.
33. crossed over. The term indicates crossing the Jordan from their habitual territory to the east.
34. blasted the ram’s horn. As in the Ehud story, this is a call to arms.
37. I am about to place a fleece of wool. Moses, too, was given signs before the beginning of his mission, but the apprehensive Gideon sets up an elaborate test for a sign and then reverses its terms for a second test.
39. Let Your wrath not flare up. Gideon obviously feels he is pushing matters with God, but he nevertheless requires an additional proof that God will be with him when he leads the insurrection against the powerful Midianites.
Let it be dry on the fleece alone, and on the ground let there be dew. This is a more miraculous outcome than the first test because fleece would naturally absorb moisture that might well evaporate from the ground.