“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.” Judges 6:11
The Almighty God of the Universe, the Angel of the Lord sits under the Terebinth tree signifying strength and protection watching the man He has chosen to deliver Israel work. What does the Lord see? Some say a fearful coward but that is not the way the Lord sees the situation.
Gideon threshed wheat. It is harvest time and Gideon is doing what faithful people do – he is busy trying to bring in the crops God has sent while there is time, before they are stolen by the Midianites. We
note a couple of things about Gideon.
First, he is alone. He does his work in private. Either he is fearful of gathering a group to help him or others are afraid to join in. In either case Gideon does this work when no one else will.
Second, we notice he is threshing. This is the act of violent separation of the wheat from the chaff. When farmers threshed wheat they would have animals tread over the grain multiple times. After the wheat stalks were threshed (separated), the grain was thrown high into the air so the chaff floated away and the grain fell to the floor. The farmer would burn the unwanted things, the straw and chaff, that remained.
The Lord would use the illustration of threshing wheat in a parable describing how the wheat would be separated from the tares at the end of the age. His timing to met Gideon as he threshed was no accident. God had been threshing Israel for seven years. It is time to harvest the nation.
In the winepress Third we note Gideon is threshing wheat in a winepress. A winepress is usually a pit where grapes were collected and the juice squeezed from them. The juice then flowed into into a large container. The winepress was usually dug into the ground while a threshing floor was usually a flat surface located on a large flat rock outcropping. A higher elevation was chosen to allow the winds to carry the chaff away.
Tn order to hide it from the Midianites. We read Gideon’s motive. He feared the Midianites would see the cloud of chaff thrown into the air, discover his efforts and location and come and seize his grain. So he hid his activities in the deepest hole he could find..
What can we learn? At first glance we think of Gideon as cowardly. That is the point of many commentators – the fear of Gideon. There is
another aspect to consider about his behavior. Gideon recognized the situation. He did not sit back and complain and do nothing, He recognized what he faced and he did something about it. (We don’t read that he prayed and asked God for guidance but that does not stop God from intervening in his life.) Ecclesiastes 11:4 states, “He who observes the wind will not sow, and he who regards the clouds will not reap.” In other words Gideon did not wait for everything to be in his favor before he did something. He and his family needed food so he did what he could -he threshed his grain in a winepress. To gain appreciation for his action remember that we are told other Israelites were hiding in caves and dens out of fear. He was scared but he acted.
The last thing we notice about Gideon is that he is busy. This is a common theme in scripture. God does not call the lazy or slothful to do his work. He calls the busy ones. God did this with Moses. He had spent 40 years in the desert tending sheep before God called him.
David tended his father’s sheep and Elisha was ploughing his father’s fields when the call to serve God came. apostles from fishing, washing, and mending their nets. What does this tell us? No matter how bad the situation gets, no matter how wicked the days become or how fierce the danger threatened, we need to serve the Lord– do something! We might have to find different ways to get our service done – the old convenient ways may not be possible. That cannot stop the true believer. It
won’t stop the followers of the Lord during the days of the Tribulation and it should not stop those of us who live in the days leading up to it! “Redeem the time because the days are evil!’