We first meet Gideon in Judges chapter 6, but it’s not until almost three chapters later when he’s on his deathbed, that we discover Gideon had many wives plus at least one concubine.
Gideon started off a humble man. The Angel of the Lord came to him while he threshed wheat in the winepress in order to hide it from the Midianites. When the angel called him a “mighty man of valor” he denied it fiercely. He pointed out that his clan was the weakest of clans, and he was the weakest in his family. But God told him that He would be with him, and he would defeat the Midianites.
We see Gideon’s humility and fear when he obeyed God’s command to destroy his fathers altar to Baal, replacing it with an altar to God, but doing it at night, so no one would know it was him.
Before Gideon committed to following God in battle, he asked for a sign from God to make sure it was really him. Then he spied out the Median camp to hear reassurance that what God said was true. Then once he was convinced, he obeyed God’s instructions.
When the men of Israel asked Gideon to rule over them, he turned them down. However, though he wasn’t an official king, he lived a royal life with wealth and women in abundance. Gideon’s wives bore him seventy sons, and his concubine bore him a son who he called Abimelech, which means “my father is king”.
The Bible doesn’t provide any detail about Gideon’s wives. All we know is there were many, and together they bore seventy sons and who knows how many daughters.
Read about Gideon’s wives in the Bible:
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