In this chapter we have an account of the distressed condition Israel was in through the Midianites, Jud 6:1, of a prophet being sent unto them to reprieve them for their sins, Jud 6:7 of an angel appearing to Gideon, with an order to him to go and save Israel out of the hands of the Midianites, Jud 6:11 and of a sign given him by the angel, whereby he knew this order was of God, Jud 6:17, and of the reformation from idolatry in his father's family he made upon this, throwing down the altar of Baal, and building one for the Lord, Jud 6:25, and of the preparation he made to fight the Midianites and others, Jud 6:33, but first desired a sign of the Lord, that Israel would be saved by his hand, which was granted and repeated, Jud 6:36.
Ver. 1. And the children of Israel did evil in the sight of the Lord,.... After the death of Deborah and Barak, during whose life they kept to the pure worship of God, and who, perhaps, lived pretty near the close of the forty years' rest, or of the twenty years from their victory over Jabin; but they dying, the children of Israel fell into idolatry, for that that was the evil they did appears from Jud 6:10, even worshipping the gods of the Amorites:and the Lord delivered them into the hand of Midian seven years: this was not the Midian where Jethro, the father-in-law of Moses, lived, which lay more southward, but that which joined to Moab, and was more eastward.