13. Gideon said to him, “If I may ask, sir, why has all this happened to us if the Lord is with us? What about all the wonderful things that our fathers told us the Lord used to do — how he brought them out of Egypt? The Lord has abandoned us and left us to the mercy of the Midianites.”
14. Then the Lord ordered him, “Go with all your great strength and rescue Israel from the Midianites. I myself am sending you.”
15. Gideon replied, “But Lord, how can I rescue Israel? My clan is the weakest in the tribe of Manasseh, and I am the least important member of my family.”
16. The Lord answered, “You can do it because I will help you. You will crush the Midianites as easily as if they were only one man.”
17. Gideon replied, “If you are pleased with me, give me some proof that you are really the Lord.
18. Please do not leave until I bring you an offering of food.”He said, “I will stay until you come back.”
19. So Gideon went into his house and cooked a young goat and used ten kilogrammes of flour to make bread without any yeast. He put the meat in a basket and the broth in a pot, brought them to the Lord's angel under the oak tree, and gave them to him.
20. The angel ordered him, “Put the meat and the bread on this rock, and pour the broth over them.” Gideon did so.
21. Then the Lord's angel reached out and touched the meat and the bread with the end of the stick he was holding. Fire came out of the rock and burnt up the meat and the bread. Then the angel disappeared.
22. Gideon then realized that it was the Lord's angel he had seen, and he said in terror, “Sovereign Lord! I have seen your angel face to face!”
23. But the Lord said to him, “Peace. Don't be afraid. You will not die.”
24. Gideon built an altar to the Lord there and named it “The Lord is Peace”. (It is still standing at Ophrah, which belongs to the clan of Abiezer.)
25. That night the Lord told Gideon, “Take your father's bull and another bull seven years old, tear down your father's altar to Baal, and cut down the symbol of the goddess Asherah, which is beside it.
26. Build a well-constructed altar to the Lord your God on top of this mound. Then take the second bull and burn it whole as an offering, using for firewood the symbol of Asherah you have cut down.”
27. So Gideon took ten of his servants and did what the Lord had told him. He was too afraid of his family and the people of the town to do it by day, so he did it at night.
28. When the people of the town got up early the next morning, they found that the altar to Baal and the symbol of Asherah had been cut down, and that the second bull had been burnt on the altar that had been built there.
29. They asked each other, “Who did this?” They investigated and found out that Gideon son of Joash had done it.
30. Then they said to Joash, “Bring your son out here, so that we can kill him! He tore down the altar to Baal and cut down the symbol of Asherah beside it.”
31. But Joash said to all those who confronted him, “Are you standing up for Baal? Are you defending him? Anyone who stands up for him will be killed before morning. If Baal is a god, let him defend himself. It is his altar that was torn down.”
32. From then on Gideon was known as Jerubbaal, because Joash said, “Let Baal defend himself; it is his altar that was torn down.”
33. Then all the Midianites, the Amalekites, and the desert tribes assembled, crossed the River Jordan, and camped in the Valley of Jezreel.