Gideon גדעון

For seven years Midian ravaged the country, coming from the east "like locusts", burning crops and driving off livestock. An angel finds Gidon threshing wheat in a winepress to hide it, and greets him: "The Lord is with you, mighty warrior!" Gidon answers: "If the Lord is with us, why has all this befallen us?"

His first task is not war but tearing down the altar of Baal in his own father's household. He does it at night, out of fear; in the morning the townsmen demand his death, and his father replies that if Baal is a god, let him defend himself. Hence Gidon's second name, Yerubaal.

Gathering thirty-two thousand men, he is told to reduce the army: the fearful go home, and only three hundred remain. At night they surround the camp with horns and torches hidden in jars, and the enemy turns on itself. The victory plainly does not belong to numbers.

Offered kingship, he refuses: "I will not rule over you, nor my son; the Lord will rule over you." The land was quiet forty years.