Judges
Chapter 6
1 The Israelites did bad things in front of God, so God let Midian control them for seven years.
2 The Midianites overpowered Israel, so the Israelites hid in mountain dens, caves, and strongholds.
3 So when Israel planted crops, the Midianites, the Amalekites, and the Easterners came to attack them.
4 They camped against them, ruined the crops of the land up to Gaza, and left Israel nothing to eat; no sheep, no oxen, no donkeys.
5 They arrived with their animals and tents, countless like locusts; they and their camels were too many to count, and they invaded the land to ruin it.
6 Israel became very poor because of the Midianites; and the people of Israel called out to God for help.
7 When the Israelites cried out to God because of the Midianites,
8 God sent a prophet to the people of Israel, who told them, “This is what God of Israel says: I took you out of Egypt, and I freed you from slavery.”
9 I saved you from the Egyptians and from all who oppressed you, I forced them out of your way, and I gave you their land.
10 I told you, ‘I am God, your God; do not fear the gods of the Amorites where you live.’ But you did not listen to me.
11 An angel from God came and sat under an oak tree in Ophrah, which belonged to Joash from the Abiezrite family. His son Gideon was beating out wheat near the winepress to keep it hidden from the Midianites.
12 God’s messenger appeared to him and said, “God is with you, brave man.”
13 And Gideon said to him, “Oh my God, if God is with us, why has all this happened to us? And where are all the miracles that our ancestors told us about, saying, ‘Didn’t God bring us out of Egypt?’ But now God has left us and let the Midianites defeat us.”
14 God looked at him and said, “Go with your strength and you will rescue Israel from the Midianites. Haven’t I sent you?”
15 He said to him, “Oh my God, how can I save Israel? My family is poor in Manasseh, and I am the least in my father’s house.”
16 God said to him, “I will surely be with you, and you will defeat the Midianites as if they were one person.”
17 He said to him, “If I have now found favor with you, then show me a sign that you are speaking to me.”
18 Please don’t leave until I come back to you, bring my gift, and present it to you. And he said, I will wait until you return.
19 Gideon went in, cooked a young goat, and made bread without yeast from a large amount of flour. He put the meat in a basket and the soup in a pot, then took them to the oak tree and gave them to him.
20 God’s messenger told him, “Put the meat and bread without yeast on this rock, and pour the soup over them.” And he did it.
21 Then the angel of God reached out with the staff in his hand, touched the meat and bread without yeast, and fire came up from the rock and ate up the meat and the bread. Then the angel of God left from his sight.
22 When Gideon realized he was an angel of God, he said, “Oh no, God! I have seen an angel of God face to face.”
23 God said to him, “Peace to you; do not be afraid: you will not die.”
24 Gideon made an altar there for God and named it “The Lord is Peace.” It is still in Ophrah of the Abiezrites to this day.
25 That night, God told him, “Take your father’s young bull, the seven-year-old second one, and destroy the altar of Baal that belongs to your father, and also cut down the wooden image next to it.”
26 Make an altar for God on top of this rock where it is supposed to be, and use the second bull to give a burned offering with the wood from the trees you cut down.
27 Gideon took ten of his men and did what God had told him to do. Because he was afraid of his family and the people in the city, he did it at night instead of during the day.
28 When the city people got up early in the morning, they saw the altar of Baal had been knocked over, the trees around it had been chopped down, and the second bull had been sacrificed on the new altar.
29 They asked each other, “Who did this?” When they investigated and asked around, they learned that Gideon, Joash’s son, had done it.
30 The city men said to Joash, “Bring out your son so he can die, because he destroyed Baal’s altar, and he also cut down the wooden idols near it.”
31 Joash said to those against him, “Are you going to argue for Baal? Will you rescue him? Anyone who argues for him should be killed before morning. If Baal is a god, let him argue for himself, since someone has destroyed his altar.”
32 So on that day he named him Jerubbaal, meaning, let Baal fight against him because he tore down Baal’s altar.
33 All the Midianites, Amalekites, and eastern people gathered and camped in the Jezreel Valley.
34 God’s Spirit came on Gideon, and he sounded a trumpet; then Abiezer joined him.
35 He sent messengers through all Manasseh, who joined him. He also sent messengers to Asher, Zebulun, and Naphtali, and they came to meet them.
36 Gideon said to God, “If you will save Israel through me, as you have said,
37 I will place a piece of wool on the ground; if there is dew only on the wool and it’s dry everywhere else, then I will know that you will save Israel through me, as you have promised.
38 It happened: He got up early the next morning, squeezed the wool together, and wrung out a bowl full of water from the wool.
39 Gideon said to God, “Please don’t be angry with me, and I will speak just this time: let me do one test with the fleece. Let the fleece alone be dry, and let there be dew on all the ground around it.”
40 God did that night; the wool was dry, but the ground was wet with dew.