Judges 6:11

11 Now the angel of the Lord came and sat under the oak at Ophrah, which belonged to Joash the Abiezrite, as his son Gideon was beating out wheat in the wine press, to hide it from 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 and I delivered you from the hand of the Egyptians, and from the hand of all who oppressed you, and drove them out before you, and gave you their land;

10 and I said to you, "I am the Lord your God; you shall not pay reverence to the gods of the Amorites, in whose land you live.' But you have not given heed to my voice."

11 Now the angel of the Lord came and sat under the oak at Ophrah, which belonged to Joash the Abiezrite, as his son Gideon was beating out wheat in the wine press, to hide it from the Midianites.

12 The angel of the Lord appeared to him and said to him, "The Lord is with you, you mighty warrior."

13 Gideon answered him, "But sir, if the Lord is with us, why then has all this happened to us? And where are all his wonderful deeds that our ancestors recounted to us, saying, "Did not the Lord bring us up from Egypt?' But now the Lord has cast us off, and given us into the hand of Midian."