Gideon was the youngest son of Joash of the Abiezrites, an undistinguished family who lived at Ophrah. One important feature of Gideon who like Abraham got his name changed from Gideon, "he that cuts down", to Jerubbaal. When we first learn of Gideon, the angel appeared to him while he was threshing wheat with a flail in the wine-press, to conceal it from the predatory tyrants. His calling is the commencement of the second period in the history of the judges, which made Gideon the fifth judge. Gideon was given the task of delivering the land from the Midianites and Amalekites ultimately with the goal of bring Christianity back into the land. Gideon of course like Moses wished to see a miracle of proof by which he challenged God with an offering of sacrifice and a fleece test which involved dew; all of which God had proven to Gideon.
             After these signs and proofs of God, Gideon, with ten of his servants, overthrew the altars of Baal and cut down it all down. He then had the people flock to the crest of Mount Gilboa. Out of that there were twenty-two thousand men ready to serve under Gideon, which God helped reduce the number to only three hundred by a dog-lapping drinking contest. These men only armed with a trumpet and a pitcher or a torch rushed in from three different points on the camp of Midian at midnight screaming the war-cry, "For the Lord and for Gideon". Within this battle, only fifteen thousand out of the great army of one hundred and twenty thousand escaped alive.
             Gideon died in a good old age, and was buried in the sepulchre of his fathers. The Israelities again forgot Jehovah, and turned to the worship of Baalim, "neither shewed they kindness to the house of Jerubbaal" (Judg. 8:35).
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