Judges 6:11

11 One day the angel of God came and sat down under the oak in Ophrah that belonged to Joash the Abiezrite, whose son Gideon was threshing wheat in the winepress, out of sight of the Midianites.

Judges 6:11 Meaning and Commentary

Judges 6:11

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.

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FOOTNOTES:

F8 Antiqu. l. 5. c. 6. sect. 5, 7.
F9 De loc. Heb. fol. 90. K.
F11 Vid. Homer. Iliad. 20. ver. 495, 496, 497.

Judges 6:11 In-Context

9 I rescued you from Egypt's brutality and then from every oppressor; I pushed them out of your way and gave you their land.

10 "And I said to you, 'I am God, your God. Don't for a minute be afraid of the gods of the Amorites in whose land you are living.' But you didn't listen to me."

11 One day the angel of God came and sat down under the oak in Ophrah that belonged to Joash the Abiezrite, whose son Gideon was threshing wheat in the winepress, out of sight of the Midianites.

12 The angel of God appeared to him and said, "God is with you, O mighty warrior!"

13 Gideon replied, "With me, my master? If God is with us, why has all this happened to us? Where are all the miracle-wonders our parents and grandparents told us about, telling us, 'Didn't God deliver us from Egypt?' The fact is, God has nothing to do with us - he has turned us over to Midian."