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.
28. Early the next morning the townspeople found that the altar of Baal had been dismantled, the asherah beside it cut down, and the fattened bull offered on the altar that was built.
29. They asked one another, “Who did this?” They inquired and searched until they were told, “Gideon, son of Joash, did it.”
30. So the townspeople said to Joash, “Bring out your son that he may die, for he has dismantled the altar of Baal and cut down the asherah that was beside it.”
31. But Joash replied to all who were standing around him, “Is it for you to take action for Baal, or be his savior? Anyone who takes action for him shall be put to death by morning. If he is a god, let him act for himself, since his altar has been dismantled!”
32. So on that day Gideon was called Jerubbaal, because of the words, “Let Baal take action against him, since he dismantled his altar.”