19. Gideon went home and killed a young goat, then started boiling the meat. Next, he opened a big sack of flour and made it into thin bread. When the meat was done, he put it in a basket and poured the broth into a clay cooking pot. He took the meat, the broth, and the bread and placed them under the big tree.
20. God's angel said, “Gideon, put the meat and the bread on this rock, and pour the broth over them.” Gideon did as he was told.
21. The angel was holding a walking stick, and he touched the meat and the bread with the end of the stick. Flames jumped from the rock and burnt up the meat and the bread.When Gideon looked, the angel was gone.
22. Gideon realized that he had seen one of the Lord's angels. “Oh!” he moaned. “Now I'm going to die.”
23. “Calm down!” the Lord told Gideon. “There's nothing to be afraid of. You're not going to die.”
24. Gideon built an altar for worshipping the Lord and called it “The Lord Calms our Fears”. It still stands there in Ophrah, a town in the territory of the Abiezer clan.
25. That night the Lord spoke to Gideon again:Get your father's second-best bull, the one that's seven years old. Use it to pull down the altar where your father worships Baal and cut down the sacred pole next to the altar.
26. Then build an altar for worshipping me on the highest part of the hill where your town is built. Use layers of stones for my altar, not just a pile of rocks. Cut up the wood from the pole, make a fire, kill the bull, and burn it as a sacrifice to me.
27. Gideon chose ten of his servants to help him, and they did everything God had said. But since Gideon was afraid of his family and the other people in town, he did it all at night.
28. When the people of the town got up the next morning, they saw that Baal's altar had been knocked over, and the sacred pole next to it had been cut down. Then they noticed the new altar covered with the remains of the sacrificed bull.
29. “Who could have done such a thing?” they asked. And they kept on asking, until finally someone told them, “Gideon the son of Joash did it.”
30. The men of the town went to Joash and said, “Your son Gideon knocked over Baal's altar and cut down the sacred pole next to it. Hand him over, so we can kill him!”