Gideon

Gideon, the name of the greatest of all the judges of Israel. He was the youngest son of Joash, of the house of Abiczzer, and lived with his father at Ophrah, in Manasseh. During his youth Israel was sunk in idolatry and sloth, and was oppressed by the plundering incursions of the Amalekites and Midianites. The young Gideon nursed his patriotic and religious wrath in quietness until he saw that the people were ripe for resistance to the enemy. The Book of Judges gives us a dramatic glimpse of him 'threshing wheat by the wine-press to hide it from the Midianites.' Confident in the assurance of supernatural direction, he mustered the people, next reduced the unwieldy host to a handful of resolute men, fell suddenly upon the enemy in the neighbourhood of Mount Gilboa, and routed them with great slaughter. The effect of the victory was most decisive, and Israel enjoyed 'quietness forty years in the days of Gideon,' who was magnanimous enough to decline the proffered crown. Gideon's name occurs also in Heb. xi. 32, as that of a hero by faith, but nowhere else. In 1 Sam. xii. 11 he is called Jerubbaal, and Kuenen, refusing to accept the explanation offered (Judges, vi. 31-32), thinks this his original name; Gideon ('the hewer' or 'warrior') being an epithet attached afterwards. There are good grounds for believing the history of Gideon's conquest, given in Judges, to be but a dramatised and epitomised account of the course and issue of a struggle that extended over a long period; and that his rôle as a religious reformer, instead of being completed in early youth, was a continuous occupation throughout a long life.