Judges 6:3-6

6:3 Whenever the Israelites planted their crops, ¹  the Midianites, Amalekites, and the people from the east would attack them. ²  6:4 They invaded the land ³  and devoured ⁴  its crops ⁵  all the way to Gaza. They left nothing for the Israelites to eat, ⁶  and they took away ⁷  the sheep, oxen, and donkeys. 6:5 When they invaded ⁸  with their cattle and tents, they were as thick ⁹  as locusts. Neither they nor their camels could be counted. ¹⁰  They came to devour ¹¹  the land. 6:6 Israel was so severely weakened by Midian that the Israelites cried out to the Lord for help.

Judges 6:11

Gideon Meets Some Visitors

6:11 The Lord’s angelic messenger ¹²  came and sat down under the oak tree in Ophrah owned by Joash the Abiezrite. He arrived while Joash’s son Gideon ¹³  was threshing ¹⁴  wheat in a winepress ¹⁵  so he could hide it from the Midianites. ¹⁶ 

¹ tn Heb “Whenever Israel sowed seed.”

² tn Heb “Midian, Amalek, and the sons of the east would go up, they would go up against him.” The translation assumes that וְעָלוּ (vÿ’alu) is dittographic (note the following עָלָיו, ’alayv).

³ tn Heb “They encamped against them.”

⁴ tn Heb “destroyed.”

⁵ tn Heb “the crops of the land.”

⁶ tn Heb “They left no sustenance in Israel.”

⁷ tn The words “they took away” are supplied in the translation for clarification.

⁸ tn Heb “came up.”

⁹ tn Heb “numerous.”

¹⁰ tn Heb “To them and to their camels there was no number.”

¹¹ tn Heb “destroy.” The translation “devour” carries through the imagery of a locust plague earlier in this verse.

¹² tn The adjective “angelic” is interpretive.

¹³ tn Heb “Now Gideon his son…” The Hebrew circumstantial clause (note the pattern vav [ו] + subject + predicate) breaks the narrative sequence and indicates that the angel’s arrival coincided with Gideon’s threshing.

¹⁴ tn Heb “beating out.”

¹⁵ sn Threshing wheat in a winepress. One would normally thresh wheat at the threshing floor outside the city. Animals and a threshing sledge would be employed. Because of the Midianite threat, Gideon was forced to thresh with a stick in a winepress inside the city. For further discussion see O. Borowski, Agriculture in Iron Age Israel, 63.

¹⁶ tn Heb “Midian.”