A Reduced Army Receives an Unexpected Victory

The well of Harod is En-harod, “the spring of trembling”, from charad, to tremble. Two verses later everyone who is chared, “afraid”, is sent home: the trembling ones leave from the Spring of Trembling. The hill of Moreh, “the teacher”, rises across the valley, with Midian camped below it.

“Mine own hand hath saved me” is the boast Moses warned against in Deuteronomy 8:17: “My power and the might of mine hand hath gotten me this wealth.” “Vaunt themselves” is hitpaer, to glorify oneself. God reduces the army before there is anything to boast about.

“Mount Gilead” is puzzling, since Gilead lies east of the Jordan; some suggest the text once read Gilboa, the ridge beside Harod. “Depart early” renders a verb found only here, perhaps “flit away” like a bird. Twenty two thousand of thirty two thousand leave: more than two thirds.

“Try” is tsaraf, to refine metal in a furnace, the verb of Malachi 3:3, “he shall sit as a refiner and purifier of silver”. The water is the smith’s crucible, and God, not Gideon, will say who goes and who stays.

Josephus gives the opposite reading from the usual one: he says God chose the men who drank hastily and in disorder, the cowardly ones, so that the victory would plainly be his (Antiquities 5.217). The chapter itself gives no verdict on the drinkers, only the count.

The Hebrew places “putting their hand to their mouth” awkwardly, and some translators move it to describe the kneeling group of verse 5 instead; the picture of who drank how is not certain. Three hundred is close to the 318 trained servants with whom Abraham routed four kings to rescue Lot (Genesis 14:14).

Jonathan will say the same thing to his armour bearer before attacking a Philistine garrison: “there is no restraint to the LORD to save by many or by few” (1 Samuel 14:6). “Every man unto his place” sends the rest home, though not for long (verse 23).

The three hundred took the provisions and trumpets from the departing men, which explains how so small a band had a trumpet for every hand. Midian lies “beneath him in the valley”: Gideon holds the high ground above the camp.

“Get thee down unto the host” can mean “go down against the camp”, an order to attack at once. The next verse offers a second, smaller mission for a frightened man: go down to the camp, only to listen.

Phurah is Gideon’s naar, his servant or armour bearer, the same word used of Jonathan’s companion (1 Samuel 14:1). God himself names the fear and supplies the company. Phurah’s name appears nowhere else.

“Be strengthened” is chazaq, the root of “be strong and of a good courage”. The strengthening will come through what Gideon hears. “The armed men” are the chamushim, the arrayed outposts at the edge of the camp, the word for the eastern tribes crossing armed (Joshua 1:14).

The Philistines at Michmash are described the same way: “people as the sand which is on the sea shore in multitude” (1 Samuel 13:5). The verse repeats the grasshoppers and camels of 6:5, now seen at night from a hiding place a few yards away.

Barley bread was the cheap loaf: when the siege of Samaria lifted, a measure of fine flour sold for the same shekel as two measures of barley (2 Kings 7:1). A barley cake is a peasant farmer’s bread tumbling into a nomad camp. “Tumbled” is the verb used of the flaming sword “which turned every way” at Eden (Genesis 3:24).

The Midianite knows Gideon’s name and his father’s. News of the man from Ophrah has reached the enemy, as news of Israel reached Rahab in Jericho. “God hath delivered” is said by a Midianite, who uses the general word Elohim.

Gideon bows down where he stands, at the edge of the enemy camp, before going back. Then he gives his men the word God gave him in verse 9, “Arise”, adding “the LORD hath delivered”. He passes on the promise in the words he received it.

Dividing into three companies is a tactic the book repeats: Abimelech uses it against Shechem (9:43) and Saul against Ammon (1 Samuel 11:11). The pitchers are kaddim, clay jars like the one Rebekah carried to the well (Genesis 24:14). The lamps are lappidim, torches.

The whole battle order is one sentence: watch me and do what I do. Abimelech gives his men the same order at Mount Zalmon: “What ye have seen me do, make haste, and do as I have done” (9:48).

The cry is “The sword of the LORD, and of Gideon”, yet verse 20 shows every man with a torch in his left hand and a trumpet in his right. No hand is free to hold a sword. The sword is shouted, not drawn.

The night was divided into three watches (Lamentations 2:19; Exodus 14:24), so “the middle watch” began around ten at night. “They had but newly set the watch”: the fresh guards had just come on duty, and those relieved were only just asleep.

The breaking of clay jars to show the light inside has reminded many readers of Paul’s words, “we have this treasure in earthen vessels” (2 Corinthians 4:7), written after he speaks of God shining in the heart. The chapter records the tactic; the echo is a later reader’s.

At Jericho Israel had shouted and the walls fell. Here Israel stands still, “every man in his place”, and it is the Midianites who shout, run and flee. “Cried” is rua, the alarm or war cry.

The same collapse happens to the Philistines when Jonathan attacks their garrison: “every man’s sword was against his fellow” (1 Samuel 14:20), and to Ammon, Moab and Edom in Jehoshaphat’s day (2 Chronicles 20:23). Abel-meholah, on the escape route, was later the home of Elisha (1 Kings 19:16).

“Gathered themselves together” is the verb of mustering by a cry. The men of Naphtali, Asher and Manasseh were likely the very soldiers sent home in verses 3 and 7, called back for the pursuit once the camp had broken.

Beth-barah may mean “house of the ford”. Some manuscripts of John 1:28 name the place where John baptised “Bethabara beyond Jordan”, which the King James follows, and some have linked the two names; the connection is uncertain.

Oreb means “raven” and Zeeb “wolf”. Isaiah remembers “the slaughter of Midian at the rock of Oreb” (Isaiah 10:26), and Psalm 83:11 prays, “Make their nobles like Oreb, and like Zeeb.” The chapter ends with Gideon already across the Jordan, ahead of the next chapter’s account of the crossing.