17
Gid'on replied, "If indeed you favor me, would you mind giving me a sign that it is really you talking with me?
18
Please don't leave until I go and return with a gift and present it to you." He replied, "I'll wait till you come back."
19
Gid'on went in, cooked a young goat and made matzot from a bushel of flour. He put the meat in a basket and the broth in a pot, brought them out to him under the pistachio tree and presented them.
20
The angel of God said to him, "Take the meat and matzot, lay them on this rock, and pour out the broth." Gid'on did so.
21
Then the angel of ADONAI reached out with the stick he was holding, touched the meat and matzot, and fire shot up out of the rock and burned up the meat and matzot. Then the angel of ADONAI disappeared before his eyes.
22
Gid'on realized that he was the angel of ADONAI and said, "Oh no! My Lord! ADONAI! Because I've seen the angel of ADONAI face-to-face!"
23
But ADONAI reassured him, "Shalom to you, don't be afraid, you won't die!"
24
Then Gid'on built an altar there to ADONAI and called it "ADONAI-Shalom"; to this day it remains in 'Ofrah of the Avi'ezri.
25
That very night ADONAI said to him, "Take your father's bull and the other bull, the seven-year-old. Destroy the altar to Ba'al that belongs to your father, cut down the sacred pole next to it,
26
and build a proper altar to ADONAI your God on top of this strong-point. Then take the second bull; and offer it as a burnt offering, using the wood of the sacred pole you cut down."
27
Gid'on took ten of his servants and did what ADONAI had told him to do. He didn't do it by day, because he was afraid of the men in his father's household and those from the city, so he did it at night.