Gideon is one of the outstanding judges mentioned in the book of Judges as delivering the people from danger or oppression. His preparation seems to have been more along agricultural lines than along political or military ones, for he was threshing wheat on his father's farm when he received this assurance: "The Lord is with thee, thou mighty man of valour" (Judg. 6: 12).
While acknowledging God's previous deliverances of Israel, Gideon admitted that he could see little proof of such protection in his own day, for the roving Midianites, "as grasshoppers for multitude" (verse 5), were ravaging the country, destroying livestock and crops alike. But he was reassured that the Lord would be with him, in spite of, or perhaps because of, his humble plea of personal inadequacy. Through him, the thrall of the Midianites would be broken.
The first task assigned to Gideon was a specific challenge to idolatry. His father, Joash, had erected an altar to the Canaanite deity Baal and had set up beside it what the King James Version terms a "grove"—now generally viewed as a carved wooden idol or totem pole. In obedience to a divine command, Gideon destroyed the altar and used the wood of the pole as fuel for burning a bullock in honor of the Lord. Thus he braved the wrath of his neighbors, who threatened him with death. However his father stood by him, observing sarcastically that if Baal's honor had been violated, it was his responsibility to vindicate it for himself if he were indeed a deity.
