Charles Ellicott Commentary Judges 6:11

"And the angel of Jehovah came, and sat under the oak which was in Ophrah, that pertained unto Joash the Abiezrite: and his son Gideon was beating out wheat in the winepress, to hide it from the Midianites." — Judges 6:11 (ASV)

There came an angel of the Lord. — It is obviously absurd to suppose, as some have done, that a prophet is intended, like the one in Judges 6:8. There the word is Nabi; here it is Maleak-Jehovah, as in Judges 2:1. Josephus, when he says that “a phantasm stood by him in the shape of a youth,” is merely motivated by his usual desire to give the story as classical an aspect as possible for his Gentile readers.

Under an oak. — Rather, under the terebinth (haêlah): some well-known tree beside the altar in Ophrath. .

Ophrah. — This Ophrah was in Western Manasseh. There was another in Benjamin (Joshua 18:23). The name means “fawn,” and the place is identified by Van de Velde with Erfai, near the north border of Ephraim.

Joash the Abi-ezrite. — Joash was the head of the family which descended from Abiezer, the son of Gilead, the son of Machir, the son of Manasseh (Numbers 26:30; Joshua 17:2).

Gideon. — The name means “hewer.”

Threshed wheat by the winepress. — Perhaps, rather, beating it out than threshing it, as in Ruth 2:17 (Septuagint, rhabdizôn). There would hardly be room for regular threshing in the confined space of a winepress, for winepresses were vats sunk in the ground.

To hide it. — Literally, to make it fly (Exodus 9:20). The threshing-floors—open circular places in the fields where the corn was trodden out by oxen—would naturally be the first places where an invading enemy would come to forage, as in 1 Samuel 23:1.