After Handel’s death in 1759 his assistant, the younger John Christopher Smith, continued the tradition of regular oratorio performances. For some of these occasions he compiled new works, making use of the Handel manuscripts he had inherited. The 1769 oratorio Gideon, with a new libretto by Handel’s former collaborator Thomas Morell, uses music largely drawn from Handel’s work, sacred and secular, with a lesser number of elements by Smith himself. It deals with Gideon’s destruction of the idol of Baal, the defeat of the Midianites and the miracle of the fleece.