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The DEEP

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Judges 6:11–18

Now the Angel of the LORD came and sat under the terebinth tree which was in Ophrah, which belonged to Joash the Abiezrite, while his son Gideon threshed wheat in the winepress, in order to hide it from the Midianites. And the Angel of the LORD appeared to him, and said to him, “The LORD is with you, you mighty man of valor!”

Gideon said to Him, “O my lord, if the LORD is with us, why then has all this happened to us? And where are all His miracles which our fathers told us about, saying, ‘Did not the LORD bring us up from Egypt?’ But now the LORD has forsaken us and delivered us into the hands of the Midianites.”

Then the LORD turned to him and said, “Go in this might of yours, and you shall save Israel from the hand of the Midianites. Have I not sent you?”

So he said to Him, “O my Lord, how can I save Israel? Indeed my clan is the weakest in Manasseh, and I am the least in my father’s house.”

And the LORD said to him, “Surely I will be with you, and you shall defeat the Midianites as one man.”

Then he said to Him, “If now I have found favor in Your sight, then show me a sign that it is You who talk with me. Do not depart from here, I pray, until I come to You and bring out my offering and set it before You.”

And He said, “I will wait until you come back.”

The Angel of the LORD showing up here is huge; it’s only the sixth time that this has happened so far and it’ll only happen another dozen times in the whole Bible. Any angel is a big deal, but the Angel of the LORD is a direct representative of God. The Hebrew word for angel (מַלְאָךְ, mal-akh) literally means messenger. Often, a king will send a mal-akh with a message to a commander or to an adversary. The Angel of the LORD is the LORD’s authoritative messenger and his speech is the LORD’s. That’s why verse 14 can say, “the LORD turned to him,” when we might expect it to say, “the Angel turned.”

Gideon’s encounter with the Angel of the LORD tracks closely with Moses’s encounter with the Angel of the LORD in the burning bush.


Just like Moses, Gideon thinks he’s not up to the task he’s assigned. So, the LORD uses an amusing trick to set Gideon up to learn. He says, “Go in this might of yours, and you shall save Israel from the hand of the Midianites. Have I not sent you?

Gideon misinterprets “this might of yours” to mean the might of an army he can raise. He misses the significance of the tag line, “Have I not sent you?” Thus, Gideon argues that he can’t do it.

So, the LORD repeats, “Surely I will be with you, and you shall defeat the Midianites as one man.”

This has to leave Gideon a bit chagrinned. So he jumps into worship mode and prepares an offering.


These Monday—Friday DEEPs are written by Mike Slay. The Weekend DEEPs are written by Matt Richardson. To subscribe to all the DEEPs click here:

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The weekly study guides, which include the Monday–Friday devotionals plus related questions for discussion or meditation, are available for download here:

https://www.ailbe.org/resources/itemlist/category/91-deep-studies

Except as indicated, Scripture taken from the New King James Version. © Copyright 1982 by Thomas Nelson, Inc. Used by permission. All rights reserved. ESV stands for the English Standard Version. © Copyright 2001 by Crossway. Used by permission. All rights reserved. NIV stands for The Holy Bible, New International Version®. © Copyright 1973 by International Bible Society. Used by permission. All rights reserved. KJV stands for the King James Version.

Mike Slay

As a mathematician, inventor, and ruling elder in the Presbyterian Church in America, Mike Slay brings an analytical, conversational, and even whimsical approach to the daily study of God's Word.

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