23. Gideon answered, “I will not be your ruler, nor will my son. The Lord will be your ruler.”
24. But he went on to say, “Let me ask one thing of you. Every one of you give me the earrings you took.” (The Midianites, like other desert people, wore gold earrings.)
25. The people answered, “We'll be glad to give them to you.” They spread out a cloth, and everyone put on it the earrings that he had taken.
26. The gold earrings that Gideon received weighed nearly twenty kilogrammes, and this did not include the ornaments, necklaces, and purple clothes that the kings of Midian wore, nor the collars that were round the necks of their camels.
27. Gideon made an idol from the gold and put it in his home town, Ophrah. All the Israelites abandoned God and went there to worship the idol. It was a trap for Gideon and his family.