13. “My lord,” Gideon said to him, “if the Lord is with us, why has all this happened to us? Where are his wondrous deeds about which our ancestors told us when they said, ‘Did not the Lord bring us up from Egypt?’ For now the Lord has abandoned us and has delivered us into the power of Midian.”
14. The Lord turned to him and said: Go with the strength you have, and save Israel from the power of Midian. Is it not I who send you?
15. But he answered him, “Please, my Lord, how can I save Israel? My family is the poorest in Manasseh, and I am the most insignificant in my father’s house.”
16. The Lord said to him: I will be with you, and you will cut down Midian to the last man.
17. He answered him, “If you look on me with favor, give me a sign that you are the one speaking with me.
18. Please do not depart from here until I come to you and bring out my offering and set it before you.” He answered: I will await your return.
19. So Gideon went off and prepared a young goat and an ephah of flour in the form of unleavened cakes. Putting the meat in a basket and the broth in a pot, he brought them out to him under the terebinth and presented them.
20. The messenger of God said to him: Take the meat and unleavened cakes and lay them on this rock; then pour out the broth. When he had done so,
21. the messenger of the Lord stretched out the tip of the staff he held. When he touched the meat and unleavened cakes, a fire came up from the rock and consumed the meat and unleavened cakes. Then the messenger of the Lord disappeared from sight.
22. Gideon, now aware that it had been the messenger of the Lord, said, “Alas, Lord God, that I have seen the messenger of the Lord face to face!”
23. The Lord answered him: You are safe. Do not fear. You shall not die.
24. So Gideon built there an altar to the Lord and called it Yahweh-shalom. To this day it is still in Ophrah of the Abiezrites.
25. That same night the Lord said to him: Take your father’s bull, the bull fattened for seven years, and pull down your father’s altar to Baal. As for the asherah beside it, cut it down
26. and build an altar to the Lord, your God, on top of this stronghold with the pile of wood. Then take the fattened bull and offer it as a whole-burnt sacrifice on the wood from the asherah you have cut down.
27. So Gideon took ten of his servants and did as the Lord had commanded him. But he was too afraid of his family and of the townspeople to do it by day; he did it at night.