Judge Gideon

Judges 6–8 tells that for seven years Midianites, Amalekites and "people of the East" swept over Israel with their camels "like locusts", stripping the harvest. An angel found Gideon son of Joash, of the clan of Abiezer in Manasseh, threshing wheat in a winepress at Ophrah to hide it. He tore down his father's altar to Baal and its Asherah pole, earning the name Jerubbaal, "let Baal contend", and asked for a sign: a fleece wet with dew while the ground stayed dry. God reduced his 32,000 men to 10,000 and then to the 300 who lapped water from their hands. At night they surrounded the Midianite camp with shofars and torches hidden in jars, smashed the jars and cried "A sword for the LORD and for Gideon!", and the enemy fled in panic. Gideon captured the princes Oreb and Zeeb and the kings Zebah and Zalmunna.

Offered a hereditary crown, he refused: "I will not rule over you, nor will my son; the LORD will rule over you" (Judges 8:23). Yet he made a golden ephod from 1,700 shekels of captured earrings that became a snare for Israel, and his 70 sons set the stage for Abimelech's bloody coup. Isaiah 9:3 recalls "the day of Midian".