And there came an angel of the Lord
This was not the prophet before mentioned, as Ben Gersom thinks, but an angel of God, as expressed, and not a created one, but the Angel of Jehovah's presence, the Word and Son of God, and who is expressly called Jehovah himself, ( Judges 6:14 Judges 6:23 Judges 6:24 )
and sat under an oak;
or stayed there a while, as Kimchi interprets it, seeing, according to his observation, angels are not said to sit, but stand:
which was in Ophrah, that pertaineth to Joash the Abiezrite;
which shows that this Ophrah is different from a city of this name in the tribe of Benjamin, ( Joshua 18:23 ) for the oak that was in it, under which the angel sat, belonged to Joash an Abiezrite, a descendant of Abiezer, son of the sister of Gilead, who was the son of Machir the son of Manasseh, ( Joshua 17:2 ) ( 1 Chronicles 7:17 1 Chronicles 7:18 1 Chronicles 7:14 ) , it is called by Josephus F8 Ephra, and by Jerom F9 Ephrata:
and his son Gideon threshed wheat by the winepress, to hide it from
the Midianites;
lest they should take it away, and bereave his father's family of their sustenance, as they were wont to do, wherever they could find it; and all circumstances attending this affair were on this account; he threshed it himself, this he chose to do, and not trust his servants, lest it should be discovered; and he beat the wheat out with a staff, that it might be more silently done, and not with oxen, which was the usual way of treading out corn, who, bellowing F11, would discover it; and this was done not on a threshing floor, but where a winepress stood, where there could be no suspicion of such work being doing.