The setting is that the Midianites had prevailed against the land of Israel for 7 years. Bondage had become so bad the children of Israel had begun to make houses and dens in the mountains to stay hidden from the Midianites. Every year the Midianites would come and take the crops and the fields that the Israelites had worked so hard to plant and tend. Gideon was is in hiding. He was fearful of the Midianites, and that is when God comes to Gideon, the man He calls a "mighty warrior!"