Gideon, a man in hiding told to become a mighty hero

11 Then the angel of the Lord came and sat beneath the great tree at Ophrah, which belonged to Joash of the clan of Abiezer. Gideon son of Joash was threshing wheat at the bottom of a winepress to hide the grain from the Midianites.

Israel was in deep trouble at this time.

And the reason is clearly laid out for us in the first ten verses of Judges chapter 6.

The people had forgotten the key warning that the Lord had given them, worship him alone and stay faithful.

But they didn’t, the local religions of the land offered a tempting and easy faith.

They absorbed the local practices and worshipped the god Baal and Asherah.

As a result the author of the book of Judges tells us that God handed them over to the Midianites.

The Midianite hordes striped the land bare for seven years.

But they did so with a new and terrifying super weapon that the Israelites had never encountered before.

In fact this is the first documentation of the large scale use of this weapon in a military campaign.

Mounted calvery, but not on horses.

Not chariots which Israel had faced before.

But camels.

Thousands of warriers mounted on camels giving the Midianites and their allies the Amalekites and tribes from Syrian deserts an incredible advantage in speed and agility over enormous distances.

For seven years these forces would sweep in from the south east and devastate the land.

The raiders would come around harvest time, taking whatever they could find.

Villages would be laid waste, crops and orchards stripped bare and herds driven off.

The open plains and villages in these areas would be the worst affected and the result would be very lean winters with little to eat for those who survived.

Things became so bad that the israelites were forced to leave open villages and towns and seek shelter in the hills.

Reduced to hiding in caves, mountain canyons and fortified strongholds.

Things were not looking good.

Large areas occupied by the southern tribes were affected.

Each year the hordes would come and each year things would get worse as the lost stores of grain and the diminished herds of sheep and goats never had time to recover before the next seasons raids.

Finally facing starvation the people cried out to God.

Judges 6:7–10 NLT

7 When they cried out to the Lord because of Midian, 8 the Lord sent a prophet to the Israelites. He said, “This is what the Lord, the God of Israel, says: I brought you up out of slavery in Egypt. 9 I rescued you from the Egyptians and from all who oppressed you. I drove out your enemies and gave you their land. 10 I told you, ‘I am the Lord your God. You must not worship the gods of the Amorites, in whose land you now live.’ But you have not listened to me.”

Only as a last resort did they turn to God.

Not a pretty picture for a people who had the stories of the Exodus as their foundation.

Hiding in the hills, afraid, starving because they had failed to remain faithful to the Lord who had provided and protected through incredible miracles against the most powerful Army on earth, through the dangers of the journey through the desert and again as they conquered established, well equipped armies in fortified cities.

But here they were, hearing an unnammed prophet tell them what they should have known.

But God is faithful and it is at this moment that he steps in to save the people, again.

The angel of the Lord turns up as Gideon is threshing wheat in a winepress.

Normally wheat would be threshed in the open so the wind would carry away the chaff and a sled pulled by animals was normally used.

But the harvest is now so small that Gideon can carry out this task in hiding.

The exchange between the angel of the Lord and Gideon sets out for us in stark detail the reality of the situation.

He is addressed as a mighty hero or mighty man of valour.

His reply indicates that as far as he is concerned he and the people are weak and perhaps so is the Lord for not rescuing them.

Perhaps he hasn’t grasped the seriousness of their fall away from true worship.

Perhaps he is just feeling defeated.

But Judges 6:15 gives us another perspective.

Gideon saw himself as the least in his family and his clan as the weakest in the tribe of Manasseh.

However as Arthur E. Cundall puts it so well in the Tyndale Commentory, “it is when a man is fully conscious of his own weakness and the difficulties of the situation that the Lord can take and use him. The man who relies upon his own innate strength is not likely to draw upon the Lord’s grace, nor give him the glory for anything that is achieved. It is also equally true that the Lord saw not only the man that was—weak and timorous, but the man that could be—strong, resolute and courageous”

Cundall, A. E., & Morris, L. (1968). Judges and Ruth: an introduction and commentary (Vol. 7, p. 104). InterVarsity Press.

But Gideon recognising that this was something special makes a remarkable committment given the scarcity of food at the time.

He askes the angel of the Lord to wait whilst he prepares a significant sacrifice.

Gideon is looking for a sign, he wants confirmation that this is truly of the Lord

Judges 6:19 NLT

19 Gideon hurried home. He cooked a young goat, and with a basket of flour he baked some bread without yeast. Then, carrying the meat in a basket and the broth in a pot, he brought them out and presented them to the angel, who was under the great tree.

This is an enormous offering in the circumstances, about 15 litres of flour and a young goat.

Now obviously the angel of the Lord had plenty of time on his hands to wait in a winepress hidden under a huge Terebinth tree whilst Gideon went and cooked this enormous sacrifice.

But God never seems in a hurry!

The sign that Gideon seeks is given when he returns with the offering.

We read in Judges 6:20-24

Judges 6:20–24 NLT

20 The angel of God said to him, “Place the meat and the unleavened bread on this rock, and pour the broth over it.” And Gideon did as he was told. 21 Then the angel of the Lord touched the meat and bread with the tip of the staff in his hand, and fire flamed up from the rock and consumed all he had brought. And the angel of the Lord disappeared. 22 When Gideon realized that it was the angel of the Lord, he cried out, “Oh, Sovereign Lord, I’m doomed! I have seen the angel of the Lord face to face!” 23 “It is all right,” the Lord replied. “Do not be afraid. You will not die.” 24 And Gideon built an altar to the Lord there and named it Yahweh-Shalom (which means “the Lord is peace”). The altar remains in Ophrah in the land of the clan of Abiezer to this day.

Gideon is now convinced, well sort of as his actions in later events show that he is still looking for a sign from God at every step.

His first task is given to him that night when the Lord tells Gideon to start the process of getting rid of the false god’s and giving him his rightful place.

This is a fascinating account in Judges 6:25 onwards.

Gideon’s own father Joash appears to be the keeper of the local altar to the false god’s of Baal and Asherah.

This tells us two things.

Firstly that Gideon’s family was a leading family, if not the leading family in the village, which is in stark contrast to how Gideon had described himself just a few verses earlier.

And secondly Gideon’s father’s reaction to the whole situation would seem to indicate that Joash had the syncrestic view that saw Yahweh the true God of Israel as one among many of the gods of the Baal religion.

If Gideon is to become the hero of Israel he needs to sort his own family out first and it starts in the family home where it appears his own father begins to see the light when he intervenes to save Gideon from the angry towns folk the next morning.

Gideon is told by the Lord to destroy the altar to Baal and to rebuilt an altar to the Lord.

He is to take the second bull of their herd one that is seven years old, the number of the Lord, and use the wood from the Asherah pole as fire wood for the sacrifice of the bull.

This is the ultimate insult to the false gods.

Baal was seen as a bull, Asherah represented fertility.

A bull is sacrificed, the Asherah pole used as firewood for the sacrifice.

There can be no other understanding of this action other than the fact that Yahweh will have no rival and these false gods are as nothing before him.

But Gideon is a bit careful in these actions, he fears his own family and the townsfolk’s reaction.

So he goes about the whole activity in the dead of night, with ten male servants, which is another indication that his was the leading family of the town.

In this single act of declaration Gideon has taken an incredibly brave stand.

He has nailed his colours to the wall.

He has made it plain that there is need for revival in the land, a turning back to Yahweh and a trust in him alone to deliver them.

In the morning the confrontation comes to a head, the men of the town, angry at the defiling of the altar to their god find out it was Gideon who destroyed the altar and demand his death.

Judges 6:31–32 NLT

31 But Joash shouted to the mob that confronted him, “Why are you defending Baal? Will you argue his case? Whoever pleads his case will be put to death by morning! If Baal truly is a god, let him defend himself and destroy the one who broke down his altar!” 32 From then on Gideon was called Jerub-baal, which means “Let Baal defend himself,” because he broke down Baal’s altar.

Gideon a man hiding in a hole in the ground, a man who saw himself as the weakest in his family, a man who saw his clan as the weakest in the whole tribe of Manasseh.

A man whose nation had no faith in their God to defend them, becomes a man willing to take a stand.

Why, because God told him that he was with him.

Because God told him that he needed to act.

Even though it would have been far more comfortable to keep on hiding in the face of heresy and violence.