GIDEON.  A "judge," sprung from the tribe of Manasseh, divinely summoned about 1249 B.C. to deliver the Israelites from the oppressive tyranny of the Midianites, who had invaded and seized on Palestine.  As he was threshing wheat by the wine-press at Abiezer, to hide it from the Midianites, an angel appearing thus saluted him: "The Lord is with thee, thou mighty man of valour."  Then he was commissioned to undertake the deliverance of his people.  The first step in the revolt was to be directed against his father's altar of Baal, which he was to throw down.  As might have been expected, the idolatrous worshippers demanded his death; but his father Joash called on his opponents to hand over the pleading for Baal to Baal himself.  If he was a god, of course this was within his power.  The multitude were pacified, and Gideon received a second name, or perhaps a nickname, Jerubbaal, i.e. "let Baal plead."  Next, going forward to the battle with his followers intentionally reduced to 300, that the glory of the victory might be not with man but with Jehovah, he made a night attack on the Midianite camp, with the result that in the confusion thus produced the Midianite soldiers slaughtered each other.  Then inducing the Ephraimites to seize the fords of Jordan, he had fresh losses inflicted on the fugitives as they attempted to cross.  Troubles followed with his Ephraimite allies, but the dispute was at length settled amicably; and the Midianite domination being terminated, the land had rest for the normal period of forty years.  It is painful to add that the victor took the earrings and made them into an ephod for worship, as Aaron in similar circumstances had fashioned the golden calf.  He had many wives, and seventy sons legitimately begotten, besides one by a concubine, and died in a good old age, it is believed about 1209 B.C. (Judg. vi.-viii.; Heb. xi. 32). (The Sunday School Teacher's Bible Manual, Hunter, 1894)