Judges6:25–32

i. The night word: demolition before deliverance — 6:25-26

⚙ 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.

ii. Ten men and the cover of darkness — 6:27

⚙ 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.

iii. Morning, and a town that seeks in the wrong direction — 6:28-30

⚙ 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.

iv. Let Baal contend: the case dismissed for non-appearance — 6:31-32

⚙ 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.