Gideon in the Winepress

A young man crouches in a stone pit, beating wheat with a stick, glancing over his shoulder every few seconds. He's hiding. And then a stranger sitting under the nearby oak tree says, “The Lord is with you, mighty warrior.”

Israel had turned away from God again, and this time the trouble came from the desert. Every year, at harvest time, the Midianites swept in from the east with the Amalekites and other raiders. They came with their tents and their cattle and camels, so many that the Bible compares them to swarms of locusts. They camped on Israel's land and stripped it bare: crops, sheep, oxen, donkeys. For seven years Israel hid in caves and mountain strongholds. And at last they cried out to the Lord.

In the town of Ophrah, a young man named Gideon is threshing wheat. But not out in the open, where wheat is usually threshed. He's down in a winepress, a pit cut into the rock, where the Midianites won't see him. The angel of the Lord sits under the oak nearby and greets him. “The Lord is with you, mighty warrior.” Gideon doesn't feel mighty. He has questions, and they spill out.

“Excuse me, sir, but if the Lord is with us, why has all this happened to us? Where are all the miracles our parents told us about? The Lord has abandoned us.”

The Lord doesn't argue. He turns to Gideon and says, “Go in this strength you have, and save Israel from the Midianites. Am I not sending you?” “But how?” says Gideon. “My clan is the weakest in Manasseh, and I'm the least in my family.” “I will be with you,” says the Lord. “And you will strike down the Midianites as if they were one man.” Gideon asks for a sign. He hurries home and comes back with a young goat, bread and broth. The angel tells him to lay the food on a rock. Then he touches it with the tip of his staff, and fire flares up from the rock and burns it all. And the angel is gone. Gideon is terrified. “I've seen the angel of the Lord face to face!” But the Lord says, “Peace. Don't be afraid. You will not die.” So Gideon builds an altar there and calls it, The Lord is Peace.

That same night, God gives Gideon a first task, close to home. His own father has an altar to the god Baal, with a wooden pole for the goddess Asherah beside it. “Tear it down, and build a proper altar to the Lord.” Gideon obeys, with ten servants, but at night, because he's afraid of his family and the townspeople. In the morning the town is furious. “Who did this?” They find out. “Bring out your son,” they tell Gideon's father, Joash. “He must die.” But Joash stands at his door. “Are you going to fight Baal's battles for him? If Baal is a god, let him defend himself.” From then on Gideon gets a nickname, Jerubbaal, meaning let Baal contend with him.

Now the Midianites cross the Jordan again and camp in the valley of Jezreel. And the Spirit of the Lord comes upon Gideon. He blows a trumpet, and men from across the northern tribes come to follow him. Still, Gideon wants to be sure. “If you will save Israel by my hand, then here's a fleece of wool on the threshing floor. If there's dew on the fleece only, and the ground is dry, I'll know.” Next morning he wrings out a whole bowl of water from the fleece. Then he asks again, the other way round. “Don't be angry with me. This time let the fleece be dry and the ground wet.” And that night God does exactly that.

To see how much Gideon was hiding, picture how threshing normally worked. Farmers beat or trampled grain on a threshing floor, a flat, open space, often on high ground, so the wind could carry away the light chaff when they tossed it in the air. A winepress was the opposite: a small pit cut into rock, low and enclosed, made for treading grapes. It was a terrible place to thresh, but a good place not to be seen. That's where God found his mighty warrior.

Gideon in the Winepress. You'll find it in Judges chapter 6. God called Gideon what he would become, not what he felt like. And he was patient with every one of Gideon's questions. So here's the question to carry with you. Where are you hiding, and what might God be calling you to step out and do?