Gideon and His 300 Men

For seven years, Israel is ravaged by Midian, which invades the land like a swarm of locusts. The angel of the LORD finds Gideon threshing wheat in a winepress, hiding it from the Midianites: “The LORD is with you, mighty man of valor!” Gideon objects: his family is the poorest in Manasseh, and he is the least in his father’s house. “I will be with you,” God answers. Gideon first tears down his father’s altar to Baal. Then he asks for a sign: a fleece wet with dew on dry ground, and then the reverse. He gathers thirty-two thousand men, but God says that is too many. Twenty-two thousand who are afraid go home; then, at the water’s edge, only three hundred men, those who lapped the water, are kept. At night, armed with trumpets and with jars hiding torches, they surround the camp, smash the jars, and shout: “A sword for the LORD and for Gideon!” In a panic, the Midianites turn on one another and flee.