Judges 6:29
And they said one to another, Who hath done this thing? And when they enquired and asked, they said, Gideon the son of Joash hath done this thing. And they said one to another, Who hath done this thing? And when they enquired and asked, they said, Gideon the son of Joash hath done this thing.
The verse belongs to the account of God raising up faithful and valiant men to put down idolatry and to deliver the Israelites from their enemies. It stands in the repeated cycle in which the Israelites mingled with the heathen and learned their ways, forsook the Lord God of their fathers, served idols, were separated from God with His strength removed, were subjected to the nations they might have subdued through God, were granted deliverance upon confession, and then returned to idols when the deliverer died. More specifically, it stands when the children of Israel again did evil and the Lord delivered them into the hand of Midian, after Othniel, Shamgar, Ehud, Deborah and Barak, with the Midianites from the eastern border and the deserts beyond and the Amalekites from the south becoming the oppressors. The Midianites had nearly been destroyed in the days of Moses but had grown numerous and powerful and thirsted for revenge, and their opportunity came when the protecting hand of God was withdrawn.
The oppression first fell on the tribes east of the Jordan and then on the whole land, as wild desert dwellers in locust-like multitude swarmed in with flocks and herds from the Jordan to the Philistine plain, arriving when harvests ripened and remaining until the last fruits were gathered, stripping the fields, robbing and maltreating the people, and then returning to the deserts. Israelites in the open country therefore abandoned homes for walled towns, fortresses, and caves and rocky fastnesses in the mountains. The oppression lasted seven years, until in distress the people heeded the Lord's reproof and confessed their sins, and God raised up a helper for them.
The verse records the moment when the men of Ophrah discovered that Baal's altar had been torn down and other commanded work had been carried out, and when they inquired and asked, they identified the one responsible as Gideon the son of Joash. In anger at the discovery, they sought his life and demanded his death. Joash defended Gideon, and the threat of violence passed.