Judges 6:3-13

3 For whenever the Israelites put in seed, the Midianites and the Amalekites and the people of the east would come up against them.

4 They would encamp against them and destroy the produce of the land, as far as the neighborhood of Gaza, and leave no sustenance in Israel, and no sheep or ox or donkey.

5 For they and their livestock would come up, and they would even bring their tents, as thick as locusts; neither they nor their camels could be counted; so they wasted the land as they came in.

6 Thus Israel was greatly impoverished because of Midian; and the Israelites cried out to the Lord for help.

7 When the Israelites cried to the Lord on account of the Midianites,

8 the Lord sent a prophet to the Israelites; and he said to them, "Thus says the Lord, the God of Israel: I led you up from Egypt, and brought you out of the house of slavery;

9 and I delivered you from the hand of the Egyptians, and from the hand of all who oppressed you, and drove them out before you, and gave you their land;

10 and I said to you, "I am the Lord your God; you shall not pay reverence to the gods of the Amorites, in whose land you live.' But you have not given heed to my voice."

11 Now the angel of the Lord came and sat under the oak at Ophrah, which belonged to Joash the Abiezrite, as his son Gideon was beating out wheat in the wine press, to hide it from the Midianites.

12 The angel of the Lord appeared to him and said to him, "The Lord is with you, you mighty warrior."

13 Gideon answered him, "But sir, if the Lord is with us, why then has all this happened to us? And where are all his wonderful deeds that our ancestors recounted to us, saying, "Did not the Lord bring us up from Egypt?' But now the Lord has cast us off, and given us into the hand of Midian."

Judges 6:3-13 Meaning and Commentary

INTRODUCTION TO JUDGES 6

In this chapter we have an account of the distressed condition Israel was in through the Midianites, Jud 6:1-6, of a prophet being sent unto them to reprieve them for their sins, Jud 6:7-10 of an angel appearing to Gideon, with an order to him to go and save Israel out of the hands of the Midianites, Jud 6:11-16 and of a sign given him by the angel, whereby he knew this order was of God, Jud 6:17-24, and of the reformation from idolatry in his father's family he made upon this, throwing down the altar of Baal, and building one for the Lord, Jud 6:25-32, and of the preparation he made to fight the Midianites and others, Jud 6:33-35, but first desired a sign of the Lord, that Israel would be saved by his hand, which was granted and repeated, Jud 6:36-40.