The Fallible · Synthetic · Study Bible
Gideon Destroys Baal’s Altar
Judges 6:25–32 — Gideon Destroys Baal’s Altar. Each verse below carries the full apparatus: the Berean Standard Bible, the vocalized original (tap any word), and a parsed breakdown of every term transcribed from the interlinear. Synthesized commentary, canonical threads, and the reading of Christ gather at the end, over the whole unit.
25On that very night the LORD said to Gideon, “Take your father’s young bull and a second bull seven years old, tear down your father’s altar to Baal, and cut down the Asherah pole beside it.
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Hebrew — tap a word ↓
way·hî ha·hū bal·lay·lāh Yah·weh way·yō·mer lōw qaḥ ’eṯ- lə·’ā·ḇî·ḵā par- haš·šō·wr ’ă·šer haš·šê·nî ū·p̄ar še·ḇa‘ šā·nîm wə·hā·ras·tā ’eṯ- lə·’ā·ḇî·ḵā miz·baḥ hab·ba·‘al ’ă·šer wə·’eṯ- tiḵ·rōṯ hā·’ă·šê·rāh ’ă·šer- ‘ā·lāw
Literal — word-for-word from the original
And-it-came-to-pass in-the-night that-same, and-said to-him YHWH: “Take the-bull-of the-ox which is-to-thy-father, and-the-bull the-second of-seven years; and-thou-shalt-tear-down the-altar-of the-Baal which is-to-thy-father, and the-Asherah which is-upon-it thou-shalt-cut-down.”
Where the English smooths the original
It was distinctly revealed to Gideon that he must be an iconoclast before he could be a deliverer.
because the seven years which constituted the age of the bullock contained an inward allusion to the seven years of the Midianitish oppression.K&D's reading is theological arithmetic, not a claim the text makes explicitly; Poole and the Chaldee reach the same result by a different route (a beast fattened seven years for Baal).
The text is unintelligible and corrupt. The ‘bullock’ (lit. ‘the steer of the ox’) and ‘the second bullock’ are probably doublets; ‘the second bullock’ in Jdg 6:26 ; Jdg 6:28 must be derived from the corrupt form here. The LXX, cod. A and Luc, reads ‘the fatted calf’ instead of ‘the steer of the ox’; but no satisfactory emendation has been proposed.Cambridge writes from a late nineteenth-century source-critical stance and is the sharpest dissent in this unit; Ellicott answers the same difficulty by insisting the unexplained detail shows we are not moving in the region of legend. Both verdicts are printed here so the reader can weigh them.
for being seven years old, it began with the Midianitish calamity, and being now to be sacrificed, did fitly signify, that the period of that misery was now come.
26Then build a proper altar to the LORD your God on the top of this stronghold. And with the wood of the Asherah pole you cut down, take the second bull and offer it as a burnt offering.”
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Hebrew — tap a word ↓
ū·ḇā·nî·ṯā bam·ma·‘ă·rā·ḵāh miz·bê·aḥ Yah·weh ’ĕ·lō·he·ḵā ‘al rōš haz·zeh ham·mā·‘ō·wz ba·‘ă·ṣê hā·’ă·šê·rāh ’ă·šer tiḵ·rōṯ wə·lā·qaḥ·tā ’eṯ- haš·šê·nî hap·pār wə·ha·‘ă·lî·ṯā ‘ō·w·lāh
Literal — word-for-word from the original
“And-thou-shalt-build an-altar to-YHWH thy-God upon the-head-of this-stronghold, in-the-arrangement; and-thou-shalt-take the-bull the-second, and-thou-shalt-cause-to-go-up a-going-up with-the-timbers-of the-Asherah which thou-shalt-cut-down.”
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The Jews point out the peculiar features of this burnt offering: (1) It was not at Shiloh; (2) it was not offered by a priest; (3) it was offered at night; and (4) the fire was kindled with the unhallowed materials of an idol.Ellicott is reporting a rabbinic observation, not his own tally; Gill cites the same tradition from Temurah, counting eight irregularities rather than four.
It was needful he should make peace with God, before he made war on Midian.
everything ordered and done were different from the laws and usages directed to by Moses, and practised by the Jews. Gideon was no priest, and yet bid to offer sacrifice, and that on an altar of his own erecting, and not the altar of God; and upon the top of a rock, and not at the tabernacle; and the wood of a grove or idol was to be made use of, which in other cases was not allowed; and all this done in the night, which was not the time of sacrificing; but the divine warrant was sufficient for Gideon.
The noun generally means a row or rank , esp. the ranks of an army, e.g. 1 Samuel 4:2 ; 1 Samuel 4:12 (‘army,’ marg. ‘array’); hence it may denote here the row or course of stones built into the altar. But the exact sense of the word is uncertain.
27So Gideon took ten of his servants and did as the LORD had told him. But because he was too afraid of his father’s household and the men of the city, he did it by night rather than in the daytime.
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Hebrew — tap a word ↓
giḏ·‘ō·wn way·yiq·qaḥ ‘ă·śā·rāh ’ă·nā·šîm mê·‘ă·ḇā·ḏāw way·ya·‘aś ka·’ă·šer Yah·weh way·hî dib·ber ’ê·lāw ka·’ă·šer yā·rê ’eṯ- ’ā·ḇîw bêṯ wə·’eṯ- ’an·šê hā·‘îr way·ya·‘aś lā·yə·lāh mê·‘ă·śō·wṯ yō·w·mām
Literal — word-for-word from the original
And-took Gideon ten men from-his-servants, and-did according-to-all-that YHWH spoke unto-him. And-it-came-to-pass, because he-feared the-house-of his-father and the-men-of the-city from-doing-it by-day, that-he-did-it by-night.
Where the English smooths the original
He feared — Not so much lest he should suffer for it, as lest he should be prevented from doing it.
With the aid of ten confidential servants he demolished the one altar and raised on the appointed spot the altar of the Lord; but, for fear of opposition, the work had to be done under cover of night.
Because he feared; not so much lest he should suffer for it, for he knew very well the doing it by night with so many hands could not hinder the discovery, and consequently the punishment of it; but lest he should be prevented from doing it.Poole adds a cool judgment of the ten helpers that Benson omits: he thinks they may have joined “if not sincerely, yet for the expectation of advantage to themselves by it.”
28When the men of the city got up in the morning, there was Baal’s altar torn down, with the Asherah pole cut down beside it and the second bull offered up on the newly built altar.
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Hebrew — tap a word ↓
’an·šê hā·‘îr way·yaš·kî·mū bab·bō·qer wə·hin·nêh hab·ba·‘al miz·baḥ nut·taṣ wə·hā·’ă·šê·rāh ’ă·šer- kō·rā·ṯāh ‘ā·lāw wə·’êṯ haš·šê·nî hap·pār hō·‘ă·lāh ‘al- hab·bā·nui ham·miz·bê·aḥ
Literal — word-for-word from the original
And-rose-early the-men-of the-city in-the-morning, and-behold! torn-down was the-altar-of the-Baal, and-the-Asherah which was-upon-it cut-down, and the-bull the-second had-been-caused-to-go-up upon the-altar the-built-one.
Where the English smooths the original
Meaning, the fat bull, which was kept to be offered to Baal.The Geneva note follows the Chaldee tradition that the animal had been fattened for Baal, which is a reading of the ambiguity in v. 25, not a datum of the Hebrew.
There must be some special meaning in this description, the second. Can it refer to his place in the team, the young bullock being the leader, the first , and the seven-year-old the wheeler, the second?Offered by the Pulpit Commentary itself as a question, not a conclusion; no other voice in this unit supports the plough-team reading.
the bullock sacrificed upon the (newly) erected altar (the bullock would not be entirely consumed), they asked who had done it, and soon learned that Gideon had done it all.
29“Who did this?” they said to one another. And after they had investigated thoroughly, they were told, “Gideon son of Joash did it.”
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Hebrew — tap a word ↓
mî ‘ā·śāh had·dā·ḇār haz·zeh way·yō·mə·rū ’el- ’îš rê·‘ê·hū way·yiḏ·rə·šū way·ḇaq·šū way·yō·mə·rū giḏ·‘ō·wn ben- yō·w·’āš ‘ā·śāh had·dā·ḇār haz·zeh
Literal — word-for-word from the original
And-they-said, a-man unto his-neighbour: “Who did this-word?” And-they-sought-out and-they-searched, and-they-said: “Gideon son-of-Joash did this-word.”
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Gideon had proved himself to be what his name signifies—“a hewer.” A man so brave and so patriotic must have stood almost alone among a cringing and apostate people.Ellicott's etymology of the name Gideon as “a hewer” is a nineteenth-century derivation offered in passing, not a lexical entry; the brief's own lexicon gives H1439 only as a proper name.
partly because they knew he was no friend of Baal, and partly because he was a man of spirit and courage, and they concluded none but such an one would have ventured to have done it
No doubt one of the ten servants (ver. 27) employed by him had spoken about it.A reasonable inference, but the text names no informer; Ellicott notes only that suspicion would naturally fall on Gideon.
30Then the men of the city said to Joash, “Bring out your son. He must die, because he has torn down Baal’s altar and cut down the Asherah pole beside it.”
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Hebrew — tap a word ↓
’an·šê hā·‘îr way·yō·mə·rū ’el- yō·w·’āš hō·w·ṣê ’eṯ- bin·ḵā wə·yā·mōṯ kî nā·ṯaṣ ’eṯ- hab·ba·‘al wə·ḵî miz·baḥ ḵā·raṯ hā·’ă·šê·rāh ’ă·šer- ‘ā·lāw
Literal — word-for-word from the original
And-said the-men-of the-city unto Joash: “Bring-out thy-son, and-let-him-die, because he-tore-down the-altar-of the-Baal, and-because he-cut-down the-Asherah which was-upon-it.”
Where the English smooths the original
a strange request of Israelites, whose law judged no man before it heard him; and besides, according to that, the worshippers of Baal, and not the destroyers of him, and his altars, were to be put to death
If the father gave up his son there would be no blood-feud.
suggests the probability of their being a remnant of the Canaanite population, and the special patrons of Baal-worship.Barnes and Ellicott both suspect the men of the city were Canaanites rather than Israelites; this is an inference about demography, and the text says only “the men of the city.”
31But Joash said to all who stood against him, “Are you contending for Baal? Are you trying to save him? Whoever pleads his case will be put to death by morning! If Baal is a god, let him contend for himself with the one who has torn down his altar.”
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Hebrew — tap a word ↓
yō·w·’āš way·yō·mer lə·ḵōl ’ă·šer- ‘ā·mə·ḏū ‘ā·lāw ha·’at·tem tə·rî·ḇūn lab·ba·‘al ’im- ’at·tem tō·wō·šî·‘ūn ’ō·w·ṯōw ’ă·šer yā·rîḇ lōw yū·maṯ ‘aḏ- hab·bō·qer ’im- hū ’ĕ·lō·hîm yā·reḇ lōw kî nā·ṯaṣ ’eṯ- miz·bə·ḥōw
Literal — word-for-word from the original
And-said Joash to-all who stood against-him: “Will-ye, ye, contend for-the-Baal? if ye will-save him? Whoever contends for-him shall-be-put-to-death by the-morning. If a-god is-he, let-him-contend for-himself, because he-tore-down his-altar.”
Where the English smooths the original
But he saves his son’s life, not by excusing his act, but by feigning such a zeal for Baal as to denounce it as a blasphemous impiety to suppose that Baal will not avenge his own insultEllicott reads Joash as feigning zeal for Baal; K&D reads the same speech as genuine believing courage kindled by his son. The Hebrew is silent about Joash's motive and both readings survive it.
But Baal hath now showed, that he is neither able to help you nor himself; and therefore is not worthy to be served any longer.
Gideon's daring act of faith had inspired his father Joash with believing courage, so that he took the part of his son, and left the whole matter to the deity to decide.
Thus we ought to justify those who are zealous of God's cause, though all the multitude are against us.The Geneva annotators, writing as exiles in 1599, read Joash as a model for standing with the persecuted; that is application, and the verse itself records only a father protecting a son.
32So on that day Gideon was called Jerubbaal, that is to say, “Let Baal contend with him,” because he had torn down Baal’s altar.
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Hebrew — tap a word ↓
ḇay·yō·wm- ha·hū way·yiq·rā- lōw yə·rub·ba·‘al lê·mōr hab·ba·‘al yā·reḇ bōw kî nā·ṯaṣ ’eṯ- miz·bə·ḥōw
Literal — word-for-word from the original
And-he-called to-him in-that-day Jerubbaal, saying: “Let-contend against-him the-Baal,” because he-tore-down his-altar.
Where the English smooths the original
of course Baal did not contend against Gideon, the point of the story is Baal’s impotence.Cambridge rejects the verse's own etymology as an assonance rather than a derivation, and reconstructs an original ‘Baal founds.’ That is a nineteenth-century critical reconstruction, and the reading here follows the sense the text itself gives.
Bosheth means “shame,” i.e., “that shameful thing,” and was a term of scorn for Baal
This surname very soon became an honourable title for Gideon. When, for example, it became apparent to the people that Baal could not do him any harm, Jerubbaal became a Baal-fighter, one who had fought against Baal.
Jerubbaal is used as the synonym of Gideon , just as in English history Coeur de Lion is used as a synonym for Richard.
The verse-by-verse work is done. What follows gathers the whole unit. All three layers below are machine-generated (⚙). Weigh them; they have no authority.
AI synthesis — woven from the public-domain voices above and the original text; generated and fallible.
⚙ The angel has gone; the fire has come up out of the rock; Gideon has built an altar and called it Peace. Then, the same night, the word comes back with a crowbar in its hand. Ellicott states the logic of the unit in one sentence: “It was distinctly revealed to Gideon that he must be an iconoclast before he could be a deliverer.” Henry, working the same seam, puts it in covenant terms: “It was needful he should make peace with God, before he made war on Midian.” Both are reading the same structural fact, that the deliverer's first commission is domestic demolition, and the altar he must pull down stands on his father's land.
The Hebrew is precise about that. Twice in v. 25 the phrase אֲשֶׁר לְאָבִיךָ (which is to thy father) attaches the idolatry to Joash, and Ellicott notices that “the pointed repetition of these words” is deliberate. Cambridge, following Lagrange, suspects instead that the repetition is a scribal accident and that the second occurrence is a corrupt duplicate; the same commentary declares the bullock clause outright “unintelligible and corrupt.” Ellicott answers that objection from the opposite direction, arguing that a “minute and unexplained detail shows that we are not moving in the region of legend.” The reader should have both verdicts, because neither can be checked from the consonantal text alone.
On the animal itself the voices do not converge. K&D take וּפַר הַשֵּׁנִי as an explanatory waw, one bullock described twice, and read the seven years as an “inward allusion to the seven years of the Midianitish oppression.” Poole says the same of the age by a different route, that the beast “began with the Midianitish calamity.” Barnes, Pulpit and Ellicott all argue for two animals, with the pair's labour needed to haul the altar apart. Gill records Kimchi's reason for taking the first bullock at all, namely to keep Joash from sacrificing it to the idol. The Verifier cannot adjudicate a question of syntax, and none of these readings contradicts the parse.
The altar to be built is specified in two words English cannot carry. הַמָּעוֹז is a fortified refuge, not the selaʻ or tsur of vv. 20 and 21, as Ellicott observes; Benson explains that in that ruinous time Israelites “retreated to such rocks, and hid and fortified themselves in them.” And בַּמַּעֲרָכָה remains genuinely unsolved: Barnes and Pulpit favour “with the arranged material,” which would mean the LORD's altar is built out of Baal's, while Poole and Benson favour a levelled place. Ellicott simply says that “probably neither version is quite correct.” What is certain is the fuel: the idol burns. Ellicott passes on the Jewish tally of four ritual irregularities here, not at Shiloh, not by a priest, at night, and kindled with unhallowed wood; Gill cites the Talmudic tradition of eight. Every commentator resolves them the same way, by divine warrant.
⚙ The obedience is complete and the courage is partial, and the narrator says so without apology. יָרֵא (yā·rê, H3372) is the plain verb “he feared,” and it governs both his father's house and the men of the city. Benson and Poole independently argue that the object of the fear was interference, not reprisal, Benson writing that he feared “not so much lest he should suffer for it, as lest he should be prevented from doing it,” and Poole adding the practical reason: ten men in on a secret could never have hidden the deed, only delayed the discovery. Gill agrees, calling the night work “a point of prudence, and consulting the honour of God and religion, and not his own safety.” They may be right. The Hebrew itself only says that he feared and then did it anyway, and that combination is the chapter's working definition of faith.
JFB gives the night's inventory: “With the aid of ten confidential servants he demolished the one altar and raised on the appointed spot the altar of the Lord.” Ellicott draws a further inference from the number, that Gideon's household was substantial and that he had kept it clear of the general defection; Cambridge concurs that the family “held a position of consequence in the village.” Poole is the one dissenting voice on the helpers' motives, allowing that they may have joined “if not sincerely, yet for the expectation of advantage to themselves by it.” It is an unflattering guess and the text neither supports nor refutes it.
⚙ Dawn is written entirely in passives. נֻתַּץ is Pual, כֹּרָתָה is Qal passive, הֹעֲלָה is Hofal, and K&D pause over that last form because it governs a direct object marked with ʼêth, a construction he calls “by no means rare, especially in the earlier Hebrew.” The effect is that the townsmen see three finished facts and no agent, which is exactly why v. 29 is a manhunt. K&D adds one realistic detail that holds the scene together: the bullock “would not be entirely consumed,” so there was still a fire smoking when they arrived. Ellicott itemises the three sights and suggests, plausibly given Baal's solar associations, that the men were up early to greet the rising sun.
The hunt is described with two verbs of seeking, וַיִּדְרְשׁוּ וַיְבַקְשׁוּ, and both roots are elsewhere the vocabulary of seeking God; H1245 bâqash is glossed in the lexicon itself as searching out “specifically in worship or prayer.” ⚙ The town expends real religious energy, aimed at a man. Gill reconstructs how the name surfaced, partly from Gideon's known aversion to Baal and partly, he suspects, from the servants; Pulpit says flatly that one of the ten must have talked; Ellicott declines to accuse anyone and observes only that deeds needing this many hands are rarely kept quiet.
Then the demand. Gill's indignation is the right register: this was “a strange request of Israelites, whose law judged no man before it heard him,” and, he adds, under that law it was the worshippers of Baal and not his destroyers who were liable to death. Cambridge supplies the social logic instead of the legal one, that a father's surrender of his son would forestall a blood-feud. Ellicott and Barnes both suspect the crowd was Canaanite rather than Israelite, Barnes calling them “the special patrons of Baal-worship”; that is an inference about the population of Ophrah, and the verse says only “the men of the city.” Note what is not charged: not theft of the bull, not irregular sacrifice, not trespass. The whole indictment is Baal's honour, which is the opening Joash is about to walk through.
⚙ Joash answers with a courtroom verb. רִיב (H7378) sounds four times across these two verses and it means to plead a case, and every move Joash makes is jurisdictional. The pronoun in “will ye contend” is doubled in the Hebrew, as Ellicott notes; Barnes renders the force as “What business is it of yours?” Then the second question turns the knife, because תּוֹשִׁיעוּן is the Hiphil of yâshaʻ (H3467), the salvation root that names the judges themselves and that the angel used of Gideon in 6:14. A town whose god requires rescuing is being asked to perform the rescue.
The commentators divide on עַד־הַבֹּקֶר, and the division changes the shape of the scene. Poole, Benson and Gill read “immediately, before noon,” making the clause a threat that scatters the mob. Ellicott and K&D read “until tomorrow morning,” making it a deadline served on a deity, and Ellicott explains the tactic: “Joash knew that in popular outbreaks procrastination means security.” They divide again on motive. Ellicott thinks Joash “saves his son's life, not by excusing his act, but by feigning such a zeal for Baal” that failing to avenge the insult becomes the capital offence. K&D thinks the courage genuine, kindled by the son: Gideon's “daring act of faith had inspired his father Joash with believing courage.” Benson stands nearer K&D, and Poole allows a third possibility, that Joash was simply indifferent in matters of religion and switched sides to save his boy. The Hebrew records the speech and not the heart.
What the day produced was a name. יְרֻבַּעַל is given in the verse as “let Baal contend against him,” with bĕ replacing the lĕ of v. 31 so that the plea becomes a challenge. Cambridge disputes the derivation on morphological grounds, since the imperfect of rîb is yârîb and not yârôb, and proposes that the name originally meant “Baal founds,” with baal used innocently of the LORD as in Eshbaal and Merib-baal; the same commentary concedes the decisive narrative point anyway, that “the point of the story is Baal's impotence.” K&D traces how the intended curse turned into a title: “Jerubbaal became a Baal-fighter, one who had fought against Baal.” Ellicott and Pulpit both follow the name to 2 Samuel 11:21, where Israel's distaste for idol-names has already rewritten it as Jerubbesheth, “let the shameful thing contend.” Gill and Benson add the curiosity that Philo of Byblos knew of a Hierombalos, priest of the god Iao, whom some have identified with Gideon; Ellicott reports the same and does not endorse it.
⚙ This is the tool's own fallible reading, offered to be tested against the text. Judges 6:25-32 is a trial in which the defendant never appears. The town brings a capital charge; Joash moves to change the venue; the plaintiff is given until morning and does not come. Baal loses by default, and the whole burden of the passage is that this is what always happens, because there was never anyone on that side of the case. Benson says it outright, that Baal is “a mere nonentity.”
But the more uncomfortable half of the unit is the first half. God's opening order to the man who will save Israel is not to raise troops. It is to walk onto his father's property and destroy his father's religion, and the Hebrew makes sure we cannot miss whose altar it was, repeating “which is to thy father” twice in one verse. Israel's occupation by Midian is real, and it is not the root problem; the root problem is a family altar on a Manassite hilltop and seven years of national convenience built around it. The seven-year-old bullock, if K&D and Poole are right about the number, is the oppression itself going up in smoke, and it burns on firewood cut from the idol that caused it.
⚙ Two things in this text resist every pious flattening. The first is that Gideon obeyed at night, afraid, and the narrator neither excuses it nor scolds him for it; obedience here is not the absence of fear but the thing done while afraid. The second is that the decisive act of faith in the chapter is performed by the idolater. Joash, who built the altar, is the one who stands in front of the mob. Henry credits the change to grace: God “influenced Joash to appear for his son against the advocates for Baal, though he had joined formerly in the worship of Baal.” We would add only this, that a father who has spent years feeding a god discovers what that god is worth on the morning he has to choose between it and his son, and the discovery takes about one sentence. The line below is this tool's sentence, not Scripture, and should be weighed as such.
A god who has to be defended by a mob has already answered the question the mob came to ask.
AI-generated connections. Each carries a verification badge with a recorded basis; contested links are flagged.
⚙ Gideon is not improvising. The command he receives at night is the wording of a standing covenant clause. Exodus 34:13 and Deuteronomy 7:5 both pair an altar verb with כָּרַת (kârath, H3772) against the אֲשֵׁרָה (H842), and Deuteronomy 12:3 repeats it among the laws of the central sanctuary. The Verifier confirms all three lexemes shared. Ellicott names the connection at Judges 6:25 in so many words, citing the Exodus and Deuteronomy commands as what is being obeyed here. The point of the thread is not that Gideon does something new but that for seven years nobody had done something old.
Exodus 34:13 · Deuteronomy 7:5 · Deuteronomy 12:3
basis: Verifier: shared Hebrew lexemes H842 ʼăshêrâh (rare, in 40 vv), H3772 kârath (in 280 vv), H4196 mizbêach (in 338 vv) across Exodus 34:13, Deuteronomy 7:5 and Deuteronomy 12:3. H842 is the rare hinge, and its co-occurrence with the altar-and-cutting pair is the recorded basis. This is reuse of statutory command language, not a citation formula. Provenance caution: Ellicott's printed cross-reference reads “Exodus 32:13,” which contains no such command; Exodus 34:13 does, and that is where the Verifier's shared-lexeme basis lands.
⚙ The verb the narrator and the townsmen use for what Gideon did, נָתַץ (nâthats, H5422), is rare, occurring in only 41 verses, and it is the signature word of Israel's and Judah's demolition reforms. The Verifier links 2 Kings 23:7, where Josiah tears down quarters by the Asherah, and 2 Kings 23:15; 2 Kings 11:18 and 2 Chronicles 23:17 record Jehoiada's mob tearing down the house of Baal; 2 Chronicles 31:1 and 34:4, 34:7 record Hezekiah's and Josiah's work with the same altar-and-Asherah pairing. The same candidate list also returns 2 Chronicles 33:3 and 2 Kings 21:3, where Manasseh rebuilds exactly what these verses tear down, which is the same vocabulary running backwards. Gideon's night is the first entry in that ledger, and it is carried out by a private man on his father's farm, with no throne, no priest and no army.
2 Kings 23:7 · 2 Kings 23:15 · 2 Chronicles 34:4 · 2 Kings 11:18 · 2 Chronicles 33:3
basis: Verifier: 2 Kings 23:7 shares H842 ʼăshêrâh twice (in 40 vv) with H5422 nâthats (in 41 vv) — two independently rare lexemes; 2 Kings 23:15, 2 Chronicles 34:4 and 34:7 share H4196 mizbêach (in 338 vv) with H842 and, at 34:4, H1168 Baʻal (in 70 vv); 2 Kings 11:18 and 2 Chronicles 23:17 share H4196 twice with H1168; 2 Chronicles 33:3 and 2 Kings 21:3 share H4196, H1168 and H842 in the reverse direction (rebuilding). Verbal link on rare shared lexemes, not a quotation of one text by another.
⚙ Barnes makes the connection explicitly at Judges 6:26, calling the divine command to build an altar and sacrifice on it “analogous to Elijah's sacrifice 1 Kings 18,” and Ellicott hears Joash's conditional, “if he be a god,” as the language Elijah aims at the prophets of Baal and Asherah in 1 Kings 18:21 and 27. The Verifier records the shared lexemes, but the real link is the shape: an unlawful altar built at a moment when the lawful sanctuary is unavailable, a sacrifice offered outside the Levitical order, a challenge issued to Baal to act, and silence. Judges 6 is the smaller, earlier, domestic version. Barnes also supplies the reason both irregularities were tolerated, “the extraordinary circumstance of the defection of the Israelites from the worship of the true God.”
1 Kings 18:19 · 1 Kings 18:21 · 1 Kings 18:27
basis: Verifier: 1 Kings 18:19 shares H1168 Baʻal (in 70 vv) and H842 ʼăshêrâh twice (in 40 vv). Tiered structural rather than verbal because the two passages share no distinctive phrase — the link is a repeated narrative pattern (irregular altar, challenge to Baal, divine silence from the idol) plus a common cast of divine names. Named by Barnes and Ellicott in the commentary tradition, not by the text itself.
⚙ The book's own summary charge against Israel is that they “served the Baals and the Asheroth,” Judges 3:7, and the Verifier confirms that the same two names are the shared lexemes here. Cambridge points out that the immediate antecedent of this story is not the angel scene of 6:11-24 at all but the prophet's speech in 6:7-10, which denounces exactly the worship of the Amorite gods. Read that way, vv. 25-32 are the first place in Judges where the standing indictment is actually acted upon rather than merely repeated, and it is acted upon in one household.
Judges 3:7 · Judges 6:10
basis: Verifier: Judges 3:7 shares H1168 Baʻal (in 70 vv) and H842 ʼăshêrâh twice (in 40 vv). Structural rather than verbal: the lexemes are the book's stock indictment vocabulary rather than a distinctive phrase, and the link is the editorial frame of Judges. The Judges 6:10 reference is Cambridge's proposed narrative antecedent and returned no shared-lexeme basis from the Verifier.
⚙ JFB, quoting Chalmers, reaches for a New Testament parallel here: “Joash, his father, quieted the mob in a manner similar to that of the town clerk of Ephesus.” The comparison holds at the level of procedure. In Acts 19 a riot gathers over an insult to a goddess, and the magistrate disperses it by pointing to the courts and to the goddess's own standing, exactly as Joash moves the case from the town's jurisdiction into Baal's. Cambridge cites Moore's parallel from Tacitus, the saying of Tiberius that Deorum injuriae diis curae, wrongs done to the gods are the gods' concern. ⚙ The implicit argument in all three is the same: a deity who requires a human mob as his enforcement arm has been demoted by his own defenders.
Acts 19:35-41
basis: Cross-Testament (Greek ↔ Hebrew), so no shared Strong's number is possible and none is claimed; the Verifier returned no basis for this pair. Recorded basis is (a) the named commentary link, JFB quoting Chalmers at Judges 6:25, and (b) a matching narrative structure: cultic insult, assembled mob, magistrate redirecting the case away from lynch justice. Never to be tiered verbal.
⚙ The verse gives its own etymology, “let Baal contend,” and the later canon treats the name as settled: it stands for Gideon through Judges 7 to 9, and at 2 Samuel 11:21 it appears as Jerubbesheth, with bosheth, “shame,” substituted for the idol's name, a practice Ellicott documents from Eshbaal and Merib-baal and connects to Hosea 9:10 and Jeremiah 11:13. Cambridge disputes the derivation on linguistic grounds, noting that the imperfect of rîb is yârîb and not yârôb and that no Septuagint form doubles the letter, and proposes “Baal founds,” with baal used of the LORD. Beyond that, Ellicott, Gill and Benson all report the conjecture that the Hierombalos named by Philo of Byblos as a priest of the god Iao is this man; Ellicott reports it without endorsing it. This thread is flagged because the philology is genuinely contested and the Sanchuniathon identification rests on a fragment preserved at third hand in Eusebius.
2 Samuel 11:21 · Judges 9:1 · Hosea 9:10
basis: The 2 Samuel 11:21 link is secure in substance (Jerubbesheth for Jerubbaal) but was not returned with a shared-lexeme basis by the Verifier, since the two names are distinct lexemes. The etymology itself is disputed within this unit's own sources: the verse and K&D read it from H7378 rîyb, Cambridge rejects that derivation on morphological grounds. The Hierombalos identification (Philo of Byblos via Eusebius) is a conjecture reported by Ellicott, Gill and Benson and should not be treated as established.
AI-generated reading; weigh it against the text.
⚙ Before Gideon is given a single soldier he is given an altar and a whole-burnt offering. Henry states the order as a rule: “It was needful he should make peace with God, before he made war on Midian,” and adds the sentence that reaches past Gideon entirely: “Till sin be pardoned through the great Sacrifice, no good is to be expected.” Benson reasons the same way at v. 25, that “till sin was pardoned through sacrifice offered for it, no good was to be expected,” and even wonders whether both bullocks were required, one for Gideon and one for the people he was to deliver.
The Hebrew presses the point. עוֹלָה (ʻôlâh, H5930) is the offering wholly consumed, with no portion returned to the worshipper, and the verb that carries it is the Hiphil of ʻâlâh, “to cause to go up.” If K&D and Poole are right that the seven years of the beast answer the seven years of the oppression, then what ascends from that hilltop is the nation's punishment, ended by fire. ⚙ Deliverance in Scripture is consistently downstream of atonement, never upstream of it, and Hebrews states the principle the judges only enact: the once-for-all offering comes first, and everything else follows it. That deliverance rests on sacrifice is the ancient and widely held reading, recorded here in Henry and Benson; the specific application of Gideon's bullock to Christ is ours and is offered as inference, not as exegesis of the verse.
Hebrews 10:11-14 · Romans 5:1 · Leviticus 1:3-9
⚙ The demand of v. 30 is one of the most disquieting sentences in Judges, and it is addressed to a father. הוֹצֵא אֶת־בִּנְךָ וְיָמֹת, “bring out thy son and let him die,” a Hiphil imperative requiring the father himself to perform the surrender. Cambridge explains the calculation behind it: hand him over and the family escapes the blood-feud. Joash refuses, and refuses on the ground that the offended party must prosecute his own case.
⚙ Set that against John 19:7, where a crowd tells a magistrate “we have a law, and by that law he ought to die,” for an offence against religion, and the magistrate looks for a way out and fails to find one. The structural rhyme is close, and the outcome is inverted at every point. Joash withheld his son and the accused walked away with a new name. Romans 8:32 says that God “spared not his own Son, but delivered him up for us all,” The Greek verb of handing over there is not Joash's Hebrew one, and no lexical link is claimed; what matches is the act, and the Father performed the one Joash refused. Gideon was named for a case Baal never came to argue; Christ was condemned in a case the Father did not contest on his behalf, and the silence that saved Gideon is the silence that killed him. We mark this as a novel reading: it is a contrastive typology built by us, and none of the voices in this unit draws it. It should be tested, and dropped if it will not hold.
John 19:7 · Romans 8:32 · Genesis 22:12
⚙ Ellicott's formula, that Gideon “must be an iconoclast before he could be a deliverer,” names a pattern that runs through the whole redemptive story rather than a peculiarity of Judges 6. Deliverance in Scripture begins with the purging of false worship in the house of God's own people, not in the enemy's camp. Gideon starts on his father's farm; the reforming kings start in the temple precinct, which is why the Verifier's strongest verbal links from this unit run to 2 Kings 23 and 2 Chronicles 34; and the Gospels open their account of the Passion week with a man clearing a temple court, not a Roman garrison.
⚙ The identity of the enemy is the part that offends. Israel is occupied by Midian and God's first order concerns a wooden pole in Ophrah. The occupation is the symptom; the altar is the disease, and it belongs to the family. That God's judgment begins at his own house is stated plainly in 1 Peter 4:17 and is an ancient and widely held principle. The narrower move, reading Gideon's night specifically as a foreshadowing of the temple cleansing, is ours, and we mark it novel; the structural observation that reform precedes rescue is what carries the weight here, and Henry, Ellicott and Gill all state it independently.
John 2:13-17 · 1 Peter 4:17 · Malachi 3:1-3
The biblical text is the Berean Standard Bible (BSB), public domain (CC0). Hebrew/Greek text, transliteration, morphology and Strong’s are transcribed from the Berean interlinear (CC0) + Strong’s lexicons (PD); the literal renderings, divergence notes, word notes and all synthesis are this tool’s own work (⚙) — fallible; verify them.
Named voices, quoted verbatim from public-domain works:
Text. The most contested words in this unit are in v. 25. The phrase פַּר־הַשּׁוֹר אֲשֶׁר לְאָבִיךָ וּפַר הַשֵּׁנִי שֶׁבַע שָׁנִים can be read as one bullock or two, and the sources here divide roughly evenly: K&D, Poole, Gill (reporting Kimchi) and the AV tradition read one; Ellicott, Barnes, Pulpit and BSB read two. Benson reports Houbigant's suspicion of a lacuna and Dodd's conjecture of a transcription error, and Cambridge declares the clause outright corrupt and the “second bullock” of vv. 26 and 28 a secondary harmonisation. No emendation has been adopted here. The literal renderings follow the Masoretic consonants as supplied in the interlinear and leave the ambiguity standing.
Interlinear ordering. The word indices in this unit come from the Berean interlinear, which aligns Hebrew words to their English gloss positions rather than to Hebrew word order. In v. 25, for instance, index 0 is wayhî while indices 1 and 2 are hahū and ballaylāh, which is the reverse of the Hebrew sequence. The literal renderings above follow Hebrew order; the note keys follow the supplied indices. One gloss in the source data is a placeholder: v. 27 index 3, אֲנָשִׁים, is glossed “vvv” rather than “men.” The Strong's number and parse for that word are intact and are what the note relies on.
Sources. All eleven commentators in this unit are public domain and are quoted verbatim by anchor, never retyped or modernised. JFB's entry is a single note keyed to v. 25 and repeated by the source across vv. 25-32; Henry's is a block note on 6:25-32; K&D's v. 25 and v. 26 entries are the same capped block, and roughly 2,400 characters of it were not available in the brief, so nothing is claimed here about the portion beyond the cap. Cambridge represents a late nineteenth-century critical position (Moore, Lagrange) that is materially at odds with Ellicott, K&D and the older annotators at several points; both sides are printed rather than harmonised.
What is uncertain. Whether one bullock or two. Whether bammaʻărākāh means “on the levelled place” or “with the arranged material.” Whether ʻad-habbōqer means “immediately” or “by tomorrow morning,” a disagreement that changes the whole rhetorical shape of Joash's speech. Whether the Asherah stood beside the altar or upon it. Whether Joash spoke from conviction, from cunning, or from indifference. Whether the men of the city were Israelites or Canaanites. Whether Jerubbaal derives from rîb at all. None of these is settled by the parse, the lexicon or the Verifier, and the synthesis above marks each as open rather than choosing for the reader.
Thread bases. Every Hebrew-to-Hebrew badge cites the Verifier's computed shared lexemes with frequencies. The Acts 19 thread is cross-Testament and therefore carries no shared Strong's basis and is tiered structural; the Jerubbesheth thread is flagged because the etymology is disputed inside this unit's own sources and the Sanchuniathon identification is a third-hand conjecture.
✦ = human, public-domain source, quoted and named. ⚙ = machine synthesis, to be verified. Flagged cross-references are left visible on purpose — the verifier working in the open. “Search the Scriptures daily, whether those things were so.” (Acts 17:11)