Gideon refused to be their king

22 Then a group of Israeli men came to Gideon and said to him, “You be our ruler! We want you and your son and your grandsons to be our rulers, because you rescued us from the Midian army.”

23 But Gideon replied, “No, I will not rule over you, and my son will not rule over you. Yahweh will rule over you.” 24 Then he said, “I request only one thing. I request that each of you give me one earring from the things you captured after the battle.”

[All the men descended from Ishmael wore gold earrings.] 25 They replied, “We will be glad to give earrings to you!” So they spread a cloth on the ground, and each man threw on it one gold earring that he had taken from a man he had killed in the battle. 26 The weight of all the earrings was ◄43 pounds/19.4 kg.►. That did not include other things that they gave to Gideon—the other ornaments or the pendants or the clothes that the kings of Midian wore or the gold chains that were on the necks of their camels. 27 Gideon made/decorated a sacred vest from the gold, and later he put it in his hometown, Ophrah. But soon the Israeli people started to worship the vest. So it became like a trap [MET] for the people, causing them to worship it instead of worshiping only God.