Gideon said to him, Oh, my lord, if Yahweh is with us, why then has all this happened to us? and where are all his wondrous works which our fathers told us of, saying, Did not Yahweh bring us up from Egypt? but now Yahweh has cast us off, and delivered us into the hand of Midian.
      I. The person to be commissioned for this service was Gideon, the son of Joash, Judges 5:14; Judges 5:14. The father was now living, but he was passed by, and this honour put upon the son, for the father kept up in his own family the worship of Baal (Judges 5:25; Judges 5:25), which we may suppose this son, as far as was in his power, witnessed against. He was of the half tribe of Manasseh that lay in Canaan, of the family of Abiezer; the eldest house of that tribe, Joshua 17:2. Hitherto the judges were raised up out of that tribe which suffered most by the oppression, and probably it was so here.