8-9. Then the Lord sent a prophet to them with this message:I am the Lord God of Israel, so listen to what I say. You were slaves in Egypt, but I set you free and led you out of Egypt into this land. And when nations here made life miserable for you, I rescued you and helped you get rid of them and take their land.
10. I am your God, and I told you not to worship Amorite gods, even though you are living in the land of the Amorites. But you refused to listen.
11. One day an angel from the Lord went to the town of Ophrah and sat down under the big tree that belonged to Joash, a member of the Abiezer clan. Joash's son Gideon was nearby, threshing grain in a shallow pit, where he could not be seen by the Midianites.
12. The angel appeared and spoke to Gideon, “The Lord is helping you, and you are a strong warrior.”
13. Gideon answered, “Please don't take this wrong, but if the Lord is helping us, then why have all these awful things happened? We've heard how the Lord performed miracles and rescued our ancestors from Egypt. But those things happened long ago. Now the Lord has abandoned us to the Midianites.”
14. Then the Lord himself said, “Gideon, you will be strong, because I am giving you the power to rescue Israel from the Midianites.”
15. Gideon replied, “But how can I rescue Israel? My clan is the weakest one in Manasseh, and everyone else in my family is more important than I am.”
16. “Gideon,” the Lord answered, “you can rescue Israel because I am going to help you! Defeating the Midianites will be as easy as beating up one man.”
17. Gideon said, “It's hard to believe that I'm actually talking to the Lord. Please do something so I'll know that you really are the Lord.
18. And wait here until I bring you an offering.”“All right, I'll wait,” the Lord answered.
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.”