Judges 6:11

CALL OF GIDEON, Judges 6:11-24.

11. There came an angel Judges 6:14; Judges 6:16; Judges 6:22-23, show that this Angel was the manifestation of Jehovah himself, the Angel of the Covenant, who so often appeared in human form to the worthies of the Old Testament, and thus partially anticipated the incarnation of a later age, the man Christ Jesus. The prophet (Judges 6:8) came to reprove the people and show them the cause of their woes; the Angel came to commission their deliverer.

Sat under an oak Literally, the oak; a well-known tree hard by Gideon’s wine-press. The Angel took the form of a wayfaring man with a staff in his hand. Judges 6:21. Compare note on Judges 2:1.

Ophrah A village in the tribe of Manasseh, belonging to the family of Abi-ezer, but famous only in connection with the history of Gideon. It lay, probably, among the hills on the east of the great Plain of Esdraelon, but its exact location is unknown.

Joash the Abi-ezrite Abi-ezer was a descendant of Manasseh, (Joshua 17:2,) and his family, of whom Joash was probably now the head, was small in that tribe. Judges 6:15.

Gideon threshed wheat by the winepress Knocked or beat out the wheat with a stick, in distinction from threshing by means of oxen or by instruments used on the large open threshing floors of the country.

To hide it from the Midianites This was why he threshed by the winepress. “The summer threshing floors are in the open country, and on an elevated position, to catch the wind when winnowing the grain, and would be altogether unsafe at such a time; while the vineyards are hid away in the wadies, and out on the wooded hills, and thus adapted for concealment. I myself have seen grain thus concealed in this same country during the lawless days of civil war.” Thomson.