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Bible Book: Judges
Bible Book Code: 0700601201
Scene no: 5 of 13

Bible Reference & Cartoon Description

Judges 6:12-18 (NLT)
12 The angel of the Lord appeared to him [Gideon] and said, “Mighty hero, the Lord is with you!”
13 “Sir,” Gideon replied, “if the Lord is with us, why has all this happened to us? And where are all the miracles our ancestors told us about? Didn’t they say, ‘The Lord brought us up out of Egypt’? But now the Lord has abandoned us and handed us over to the Midianites.”
14 Then the Lord turned to him and said, “Go with the strength you have, and rescue Israel from the Midianites. I am sending you!”
15 “But Lord,” Gideon replied, “how can I rescue Israel? My clan is the weakest in the whole tribe of Manasseh, and I am the least in my entire family!”
16 The Lord said to him, “I will be with you. And you will destroy the Midianites as if you were fighting against one man.”
17 Gideon replied, “If you are truly going to help me, show me a sign to prove that it is really the Lord speaking to me. 18 Don’t go away until I come back and bring my offering to you.”
He answered, “I will stay here until you return.”

DRAWING NOTES:

TIME OF DAY:
Shortly after sunrise.

LIGHTING NOTES:
The yellow/orange clouds in the sky are illuminated by the sun (unseen), low on the horizon & on the right, casting vague shadows to the left & below the figure & objects.

CHARACTERS PRESENT:
The angel of the Lord, Gideon, a Marbled Polecat, a donkey and a mouse.

RESEARCH/ADDITIONAL NOTES:
This scene occurs immediately after the previous one in time. The Angel of the Lord has appeared before Gideon in the bottom of the winepress where he is threshing wheat, to remain hidden from the invading Midianites.

The polecat and donkey are peering over the edge of the winepress to watch the interaction between the Angel and Gideon!

I have used the same background from the previous scene (Judges 06 – Gideon – Scene 04b – Gideon in the winepress), however I have altered the sky to reflect the rising sun, and changed some of the shadows and highlights in the winepress, on the buildings and on the tree.

Joash (Gideon’s father) was the lord of the town called Ophrah. Amidst the moral and spiritual decay surrounding him in Israel, the ancient spiritual faith of Israel seems still to linger, though even Joash had built an idolatrous alter to the local Canaanite “god” Baal (see Judges 6:25). Under the great oak by Ophrah, suddenly appeared the Angel of Jehovah, the Angel of the Covenant. Interestingly, this same mysterious figure had visited Abraham at Mamre (Genesis 18), roughly 700 to 800 years earlier [1].

The Angel of the Lord appeared to Abraham in order to enter into fellowship with him, and confirm his faith, especially in view of the judgment about to burst for on Sodom and Gomorrah.

With the encounter with Gideon the object was to call forth faith, and to prove that the Lord was ready to receive the vows and prayers of His people, if they would but remember and turn to Him in the appointed way. Perhaps this explains the Angel’s different response to the food set before Him: with Abraham the heavenly visitor joined in the meal, while with Gideon fire from heaven consumed the offering (compare Judges 13:16; 1 Kings 18:38; 2 Chronicles 7:1).

[1]
Based on biblical chronology, the time span between the Angel of the Lord visiting Abraham (approx. 1898 B.C., when he was 99 years old) and Gideon (the period of the Judges: approx. 1100–1200 B.C.) is roughly 700 to 800 years

Historical Gaps: The 430 years from the Father God’s promise to Abraham to the Exodus (see Galatians 3:17), followed by roughly 40 years in the wilderness and several hundred years of the Judges era, make up the total time span.

The Angel of the Lord appears in both narratives as a divine figure, with Gideon directly referencing the miracles his ancestors told him about from the Exodus, bridging the historical gap between the two events.

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Bible Doctrine Notes
6:17 MIRACLE, God’s Working (2.21A)
Miracles demonstrate that Father God is working among His people. Gideon lacked confidence that God would appear to him and use him for divine purposes and therefore asked for a sign (see note on 1 Samuel 10:9) involving his offering. The Angel of the Lord set fire to Gideon’s offering. God’s miracles may relate to the timing of natural events, but also can involve the extraordinary use of the laws of nature. They may also, as here (the burning of the offering), be the work of special angelic messengers miraculously producing actions which occur in nature but do not follow the normal laws of nature.
Some people think that God’s miraculous powers should always overthrow natural law, while others limit the miraculous by insisting that all history must be explained within natural laws. The Bible testifies that God works miraculously to reveal Himself and His purposes both through miracles timed with natural events and also through ones that defy any natural explanation. The greatest of the latter include the virgin birth and the resurrection of Jesus.