1. Othniel
2. Ehud
3. Shamgar
4. Deborah
5. Gideon

Deborah and Barak have now died.

🪦🥀🪦

And Israel has forgotten that Yahweh is their God. They’ve taken up Baal and Asherah worship and the Lord has allowed them to be overrun by the cruel Midianites.

There is a fascinating thing that happens in this setting. Yahweh sends an unnamed prophet to remind Israel that HE is the one who freed their ancestors from Egypt and that they were not to worship the gods of the other nations. This is the first anonymous prophet in the Bible. He will not be the last.

We meet a young Gideon doing something very odd – threshing wheat in the bottom of a winepress; or more accurately, in the vat that held the wine from the winepress – like this 2000 year old winepress in Nazareth.

Our guide is standing where the grapes would have been stomped. If you look closely, there is a groove in front of her feet in the edge of the rock to channel the juice down into the vat. And yes, Jesus probably visited this exact winepress. Maybe it’s where Joseph first noticed Mary. Mary and Jesus’ sisters may have even stomped grapes on this spot. There would’ve been a pole structure with a low thatched roof for shade and also for beams to hold onto while stomping the slippery grapes. 🍇

🌾 Normally, grains are threshed on a threshing floor (jebus). And threshing floors are usually large , circular, open spaces on higher elevations that take advantage of breezes to blow away chaff. If you’re threshing wheat down in a winepress, that’s what you call “stealth threshing” or “desperation.”

The skeptics and haters like to rant about Israel wiping out whole villages, but the truth of history is that Israel was defeated probably more often than they conquered. By this point – about 200 years after the conquest – Israel is almost as far from Imperialism as a people can get. Their situation is the stuff of Prepper fantasies: grid down (just kidding – there’s no grid), living in underground bunkers on bits of dried food, total societal collapse, cut off from the outside world survival scenario.

‼️⚠️☣️⛔️☢️

Back before Deborah and Barak, Hebrews couldn’t travel the highways. It wasn’t safe. Canaanite bandits would get you. 🦹🏽‍♂️🥷

Now it’s even worse. Now you’re not even safe on your own farm. You’re growing plots of wheat wherever you can and if (big IF) your crop doesn’t get stolen or burnt to the ground, you can’t just go haul a load of wheat out in front of the whole world and thresh it. That would be like walking through an L.A. gang neighborhood with cash just hangin’ out your pockets. That’s stupid with a death wish on top.

The old Pixar film A Bug’s Life is a fairly good approximation of Israel’s situation with the Midianites. Every fall the grasshoppers 🦗 show up to take the food the ants 🐜 have worked hard to collect all summer. Judges 6:5 even compares the Midianites to a horde of grasshoppers.

Gideon has grown up in this stealthy, survivalist reality. He’s hiding like a mouse in a wine vat trying to thresh wheat as quietly as possible. The Angel of the Lord shows up and finds a comfy spot under the shade of an oak tree on Gideon’s dad’s farm. That’s exactly what He did when He visited Abram. God just likes shade trees, I guess. He seems to like to meet with people at trees doesn’t He? 🌳

1. Garden of Eden, Tree of Life
2. Oaks of Mamre
3. Burning Bush
4. Shittim wood (ark of the covenant) and the lampstand (golden almond tree)
5. Palm of Deborah
6. Oak of Ophrah (Gideon)
7. Jonah’s overnight shade “plant”
8. Nathaniel under the fig tree
9. Zaccheus in the sycamore
10. Gethsemane
11. Calvary
12. New Jerusalem, Tree of Life

It’s certainly not the only place He meets with people, but trees do seem significant. Perhaps that why the fallen realm copied the idea of communing with people around trees. That’s what Asherah groves were – sacred trees for communing with the spirits.

Imagine the LORD sitting there, leaned back against the trunk, with the soft thudding of Gideon’s flail. He’s not a bit worried. He knows exactly where in the story He has popped into and what is about to unfold. Without this context, His greeting would sound like sarcasm:

🧔🏽 Angel of the LORD: The Lord is with you, Mighty Warrior!

😒 Gideon: (peeks over the edge of the vat, no idea he’s talking to Yahweh in human form) If the Lord was with us, I wouldn’t be hiding from the Midianites in this winepress.

In the conversation, Gideon sounds a bit like Moses meeting with the Angel of the Lord. “Who am I to lead?” “I’m nobody!” “I’m gonna need a sign or two.”

And the meal he prepares is very reminiscent of Abram preparing the meat and bread under the oaks of Mamre.

Oh – and in verse 21 we get the tiniest glimpse of the staff of Yahweh in the hand of the Angel of the LORD. This was mentioned back in Exodus 7:17 at the turning of the Nile to blood, and of course in Psalm 23; the staff of the Good Shepherd. (I geek out over stuff like this. 🤩)

The Lord convinces Gideon that he is indeed chosen and the stranger he has been speaking with is none other than Yahweh in a human form.

The name Gideon means “feller.” And not like in the hillbilly sense of “man” as in “I seen that there feller bufore somwurs.” No. It’s feller as in: one who fells or cuts down trees. 🌳🪓 Which is exactly what the LORD tells Gideon to do first.

🧔🏽 Angel of the LORD: Hi again, Feller.

😅 Gideon: Oh. Hi. Do you always just pop out of nowhere like that? It’s kinda late, ya know.

🧔🏽 Angel of the LORD: Here’s your first challenge. You’re going to tear down your family’s altar to Baal and fell the trees in the Asherah grove. Then you’re gonna build an altar to Yahweh and use the wood from the Asherah trees to burn up your dad’s 2nd best bull as an offering.

😳 Gideon: I’m gonna what????

Now – I don’t raise cattle, but I live around people who do. And if you got up one morning to find that your teenage son had barbecued your second best bull…

Let’s just say, dad’s probably gonna have a come-apart.

At dawn, the whole village is in an uproar. There may have been pitchforks involved.

😰 “We have angered the gods! 😡 Someone has offended Baal and Asherah! 😫 Now we will all suffer!” (Said the people living in bunkers and hiding from the Midianites. 🙄)

When Gideon (the feller) is identified as the feller of the altar and grove, the locals show up at Joash, his father’s, house demanding Gideon be handed over for execution.

🪓😡 🫵🏽😠🏹 🗡️😤 🤬🔪 ✊🏼😖🧨 ⛏️😡

“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!”
‭‭Judges‬ ‭6‬:‭31‬ ‭NLT‬‬

That’s a fair bit of logic. If Baal is truly this powerful being, surely he can avenge the desecration of one measly altar. And if he doesn’t… well… maybe he’s not such a big deal after all.

So Gideon the Feller gets a nickname – Jerubbaal: let Baal defend himself.

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Then… the armies invade…👀

The Midianites team up with Amalek (who are honestly like crab grass – you can’t seem to kill the evil stuff off) and the ominous-sounding “people of the east.” 🥷🥷🥷🥷🥷

They set up camp somewhere in this valley:

The Lord stirs up Gideon to call 4 tribes together to fight. But he wants to make triply sure that it’s REALLY Yahweh directing him to do this, so, Gideon “puts out a fleece.” That’s old-timey prayer talk that means asking for a VERY specific sign of confirmation. But when Gideon did it, it was literally putting a sheep’s fleece out on the ground and asking for impossible conditions:

1. A wet fleece on a dry ground and
2. A dry fleece on a wet ground

And the Lord did both.

So Gideon has his signs just like Moses. And now it’s time to go set some people free.