Biblical Commentary on the Old Testament

returning again to the plains of the land, and the towns that were now delivered from the foe.

Ver. 12 forms the introduction to the second part, viz. the description of the conflict and the victory. Throwing herself into the great event which she is about to commemorate, Deborah calls upon herself to strike up a song, and upon Barak to lead off his prisoners:

Rise up, Barak, and lead captive thy captives, 0 son of Abinoam!

*W has the tone upon the last syllable on the first two occasions, to answer to the rapid summoning burst of the Lord in the opening address (Bertheau). *3B> rot^ to lead away captives, as the fruit of the victory; not merely to lead in triumph. On the form H3E^ with Chateph-patach, see Ewald, § 90, b. In the next three strophes of this part (vers. 13-21) the progress of the conflict is described; and in the first two the part taken in the battle by the different tribes (vers. 13-15a, and 156-18).

Ver. 13. Then came down a remnant of nobles of the nation; Jehovah came down to me among the heroes. 14. Of Ephraim, whose root in Amalek;

Behind thee Benjamin among thy peoples. From Machir came down leaders,

And from Zebulun marchers with the staff of the conductor. 15a. And princes in Jssachar with Deborah, And Issachar as well as Barak, Driven into the valley through his feet.

Looking back to the commencement of the battle, the poetess describes the streaming of the brave men of the nation down from the mountains, to fight the enemy with Barak and Deborah in the valley of Jezreel; though the whole nation did not rise as one man against its oppressors, but only a remnant of the noble and brave in the nation, with whom Jehovah went into the battle. In ver. 13 the Masoretic pointing of TJ is connected with the rabbinical idea of the word as the fut. apoc. of «TTi: u then (now) will the remnant rule over the glorious" i.e. the remnant left in Israel over the stately foe; " Jehovah rules for me (or through me) over the heroes in Sisera's army," which Luther has also adopted. But, as Schnurr. has maintained, this view is decidedly erroneous, inasmuch as it is altogether irreconcilable with the description which follows of the marching of the tribes of Israel into the battle. TV is to be understood in the same sense as VTV in ver. 14, and to be pointed as a perfect TV.1 " There came down" sc. from the mountains of the land into the plain of Jezreel, a remnant of nobles. DH'HfcO is used instead of a closer subordination through the construct state, to bring out the idea of Tib> into greater prominence (see Fwald, § 292). DJ? is in apposition to D^TW?, and not to be connected with the following word Hjrp as it is by some, in opposition to the accents. The thought is rather this: with the nobles or among the brave Jehovah himself went against the foe. v is a dat. commodi, equivalent to " for my joy." — Ver. 14. " From ('■JO, poetical for jp) Ephraim" sc. there came fighting men; not the whole tribe, but only nobles or brave men, and indeed those whose roots were in Amalek, i.e. those who were rooted or had taken root, i.e. had settled and spread themselves out upon the tribe-territory of Ephraim, which had formerly been inhabited by Amalekites, the mount of the Amalekites, mentioned in chap. xii. 15 (for the figure itself, see Isa. xxvii. 6, Ps. lxxx. 10, and Job v. 3). " Behind thee" i.e. behind Ephraim, there followed Benjamin among thy (Ephraim' s) people (D^ODy, a poetical form for D^V, in the sense of hosts). Benjamin lived farther south than Ephraim, and therefore, when looked at from the stand-point of the plain of Jezreel, behind Ephraim; " but he came upon the scene of battle, either in subordination to the more powerful Ephraimites, or rushing on with the Ephraimitish hosts" (Bertheau). " From Machir" i.e. from western Manasseh, there came down leaders (see at ver. 9), sc. with warriors in their train. Machir cannot refer to the Manassite family of Machir, to which Moses gave the northern part of Gilead, and Bashan, for an inheritance (comp. Josh. xvii. 1 with xiii. 29-31), but it stands poetically for Manasseh generally, as Machir was the only son of Manasseh, from whom all the Manassites were descended (Gen. 1. 23; Num. xxvi. 29 sqq.j xxvii. 1). The reference here, however, is simply to that portion of the tribe of Manasseh which had received its inheritance by the side of Ephraim, in the land to the west of the Jordan. This explanation of the word is required, not only by the fact that Machir is mentioned after Ephraim and Benjamin, and

1 The Cod. Al. of the LXX. contains the correct rendering, rore xccTifiv KaTuhuppct. In the Targum also TV is correctly translated nru, descendit^ although the germs of the rabbinical interpretation are contained in the paraphrase of the whole verse: tunc descendit unus ex exercitu Israel et fregit fortiludinem fortium gentium. Ecce non ex fortitudine manus eorum fuit hoc; sed Dominns /regit ante pop ulum suum for -titudinem virorum osorum eorum.

before Zebulun and Issachar, but still more decidedly by the introduction of Gilead beyond Jordan in connection with Reuben, in ver. 17, which can only signify Gad and eastern Manasseh. Hence the two names Machir and Gilead, the names of Manasseh's son and grandson, are poetically employed to denote the two halves of the tribe of Manasseh; Machir signifying the western Manassites, and Gilead the eastern. u From Zebulun marchers (J\^>, to approach in long processions, as in chap. iv. 6) with the staff of the conductor" "id'd, writer or numberer, was the technical name given to the musterer-general, whose duty it was to levy and muster the troops (2 Kings xxv. 19; cf. 2 Chron. xxvi. 11); here it denotes the military leader generally. — Yer. 15a. *]K>, u my princes" does not furnish any appropriate meaning, as neither Deborah nor Barak was of the tribe of Issachar, and it is not stated anywhere that the Issacharites gathered round Deborah as their leader. The reading ^W (stat. conslr.), adopted by the old versions, must be taken as the correct one, and the introduction of the preposition 2 does not preclude this (compare V^ *in, 2 Sam. i. 21, and Ewald, § 289, b.). DJJ, which is used to denote an outward equality, as in 1 Sam. xvii. 42, and is substantially the same as the |3 which follows (" just as"), is construed without 3 in the first clause, as in Ps. xlviii. 6. ppys: into the valley of Jezreel, the plain of Kishon. ^v)i3 r\W9 as in Job xviii. 8, to be sent off, i.e. incessantly impelled, through his feet; here it is applied to an irresistible force of enthusiasm for the battle. The nominative to rw is Issachar and Barak.

16. "Why reinainest thou between the hurdles, To hear the piping of the flocks?

At the brooks of Reuben were great projects of heart.

17. Gilead rests on the other side of the Jordan; And Dan... why tarries he by ships? Asher sits on the shore of the sea,

And by his bays he reposes.

18. Zebulun, a people that despises its soul even to death, And Naphtali upon the heights of the field.

In this strophe Deborah first of all mentions the tribes which took no part in the conflict (vers. 155-17), and then returns in ver. 18 to the Zebulunites, who staked their life along with Naphtali for the deliverance of Israel from the yoke of the enemy. The enumeration of the tribes who remained at a distance from the conflict commences with Reuben (vers. 15b and 16). In this tribe there did arise a lively sympathy with the national elevation. They held meetings, passed great resolutions, but it led to no practical result; and at length they preferred to remain quietly at home in their own comfortable pastoral life. The meaning brooks for Hiaps is well established by Job xx. 17, and there is no reason whatever for explaining the word as equivalent to Hiaps, niapDD, divisions (2 Chron. xxxv. 5, 12; Ezra vi. 18). The territory of Reuben, which was celebrated for its splendid pastures, must have abounded in brooks. The question, Why satest thou, or remainedst thou sitting between the hurdles? i.e. in the comfortable repose of a shepherd's life, is an utterance of amazement; and the irony is very apparent in the next clause, to hear the bleating of the flocks, i.e. the piping of the shepherds, instead of the blast of the war-trumpets. — Ver. 17. Gilead, Dan, and Asher took no part at all. By Gilead, the tribes of Gad and half Manasseh are intended. The use of the term lypan to denote the whole of the territory of the Israelites on the east of the Jordan probably gave occasion to this, although W3 (without the article) does not refer to the land even here, but refers primarily to the grandson of Manasseh, as the representative of his family which dwelt in Gilead. (For further remarks, see at ver. 14.) Dan also did not let the national movement disturb it in its earthly trade and commerce. "H3, to keep one's self in a place, is construed here with the accusative of the place, as in Ps. cxx. 5. The territory of Dan included the port of Joppa (see at Josb. xix. 46), where the Danites probably carried on a trade with the Phoenicians. Asher also in his land upon the coast did not allow himself to be disturbed from his rest, to join in the common war of its nation. WW *)in is used, as in Gen. xlix. 13, for the shore of the Mediterranean Sea. D^yjBJD, air. \ey.y literally a rent, and hence applied to a bay, as an incision made in the sea-shore. — Yer. 18. Zebulun and Naphtali acted quite differently. Zebulun showed itself as a people that despised its life even to death, i.e. that sacrificed its life for the deliverance of its fatherland. Naphtali did the same in its mountain home. The two tribes had raised 10,000 fighting men at Barak's call (chap. iv. 10), who constituted at any rate the kernel of the Israelitish army.

If we run over the tribes enumerated, it seems strange that the tribes of Judah and Simeon are not mentioned either among those who joined in the battle, or among those who stayed away. The only way in which this can be explained is on the supposition that these two tribes were never summoned by Barak, either because they were so involved in conflict with the Philistines, that they were unable to render any assistance to the northern tribes against their Canaanitish oppressors, as we might infer from chap. iii. 31, or because of some inward disagreement between these tribes and the rest. But even apart from Judah and Simeon, the want of sympathy on the part of the tribes that are reproved is a sufficient proof that the enthusiasm for the cause of the Lord had greatly diminished in the nation, and that the internal unity of the congregation was considerably loosened.

In the next strophe the battle and the victory are described:—

Ver. 19. Kings came,... they fought; The kings of Canaan fought At Taanach, at the waters of Megiddo. A piece of silver they did not take.

20. From heaven they fought,

The stars from their courses fought against Sisera.

21. The brook of Kishon swept them away,

The brook of the olden time, the brook Kishon. Go on, my soul, in strength!

The advance of the foe is described in few words. Kings came on and fought. They were the kings of Canaan, since Jabin, like his ancestor (Josh. xi. 1 sqq.), had formed an alliance with other kings of northern Canaan, who went to the battle under the command of Sisera. The battle took place at Taanach (see at Josh, xii. 21), by the water of Megiddo, the present Lejun (see at Josh, xii. 21), i.e. by the brook Kishon (cf. chap. iv. 7). Taanach and Megiddo were not quite five miles apart, "and beside and between them there were several brooks which ran into the southern arm of the Kishon, that flowed through the plain to the north of both these towns. The hostile kings went into the battle with the hope of slaying the Israelites and making a rich capture of booty. But their hopes were disappointed. They could not take with them a piece of silver as booty. JW3, which generally signifies booty or gain, is probably to be taken here in its primary sense of frustum, from S^3, to cut off or cut in pieces, a a piece of silver," equivalent to a single piece of valuable booty. — Ver. 20. For not only did the Israelites fight against them, but the powers of heaven also. " From heaven" is more minutely defined by "the stars from their courses." These words explain the statement in chap. iv. 15, " the Lord discomfited Sisera;" though in our opinion not so clearly as to enable us to define more precisely the natural phenomenon by which God threw the enemy into confusion. In all probability we have to think of a terrible storm, with thunder and lightning and hail, or the sudden bursting of a cloud, which is poetically described as though the stars of heaven had left their courses to fight for the Lord and His kingdom upon earth. — Ver. 21. The kings of Canaan could do nothing against these powers. They were smitten; the brook Kishon washed them (i.e. their corpses) away. The meaning " to wash away" is well established by the dialects and the context, though the verb itself only occurs here. As the battle was fought between Taanach and Megiddo, i.e. to the south of the brook Kishon, and the smitten foe fled towards the north, many of them met with their death in the waves of the brook, which was flowing over its banks at the time. The brook is called E^VTj? tru, i.e. the brook of the old world or the olden time (according to the LXX. Cod. Vat. xet/jsdppovs dp^alcov), as the stream that had been flowing from time immemorial, and not, as the Chaldee interprets it, the stream that had been celebrated from olden time on account of the mighty acts that had been performed there. The meaning suggested by Ewald and others, " brook of attacks, or slaughters," is not well sustained, although D"np is sometimes used to denote a hostile encounter. The last clause interrupts the description of the slaughter and the victory. Borne away by the might of the acts to be commemorated, Deborah stimulates her soul, i.e. herself, to a vigorous continuation of her song, WW is jussive, and T'y an accusative governed by the verb, in strength, vigorously; for she had still to celebrate the glorious results of the victory. This is done in the third part of the song (vers. 22-31), the first strophe of which (vers. 22-24) describes in brief drastic traits the flight of the foe, and the treatment of the fugitives by the people of the land.

With the hunting, the hunting of his strong ones.

23. Curse ye Meroz, saith the angel of the Lord; Curse ye, curse ye the inhabitants thereof! Because they came not to the help of Jehovah, To the help of Jehovah among the mighty.

24. Blessed before women be Jael, The wife of Heber the Kenite, Blessed before women in the tent!

The war-chariots of the enemy hunted away in the wildest flight (ver. 22). The horses stamped the ground with the continuous hunting or galloping away of the warriors. 'TJl1.^, the hunting (cf. "tfHj Nah. iii. 2). The repetition of the word expresses the continuance or incessant duration of the same thing (see Ewald, § 313, a.). &*■??*?, strong ones, are not the horses, but the warriors in the war-chariots. The suffix refers to DID, which is used collectively. The mighty ones on horses are not, however, merely the Canaanitish princes, such as Sisera, as Ewald maintains, but the warriors generally who hunted away upon their war-chariots. — Ver. 23. The enemy, or at all events Sisera, might have been destroyed in his flight by the inhabitants of Meroz; but they did not come to the help of the Israelites, and brought down the curse of God upon themselves in consequence. That this is the thought of ver. 23 is evident from the context, and more especially from the blessing pronounced upon Jael in ver. 24. The situation of Meroz, which is not mentioned again, cannot be determined with certainty Wilson and v. Raumer imagine that it may be Kefr Musr on the south of Tabor, the situation of which at all events is more suitable than Marussus, which was an hour and a half to the north of Beisan, and which Rabbi Schwarz supposed to be Meroz (see V. de Velde, Mem. p. 334). The curse upon the inhabitants of this place is described as a word or command of the angel of the Lord, inasmuch as it was the angel of the Lord who fought for Israel at Megiddo, as the revealer of the invisible God, and smote the Canaanites. Deborah heard from him the words of the curse upon the inhabitants of Meroz, because they did not come to help Jehovah when He was fighting with and for the Israelites. " Among the heroes" or mighty men, i.e. associating with the warriors of Israel. — Yer. 24. Jael behaved altogether differently, although she was not an Israelite, but a woman of the tribe of the Kenites, which was only allied with Israel (see chap. iv. 11, 17 sqq.). For her heroic deed she was to be blessed before women (jp as in Gen. ill. 14, literally removed away from women). The u women in the tent" are dwellers in tents, or shepherdesses. This heroic act is poetically commemorated in the strophe which follows in vers. 25-27.

She handed him cream in the dish of nobles.

26. She stretched out her hand to the plug,

And her right hand to the workmen's hammer,

And hammered Sisera, broke his head,

And dashed in pieces and pierced his temples.

27. Between her feet he bowed, he fell, he lay down: Between her feet he bowed, he fell:

"Where he bowed, there he fell down dead.

Assuming that the fact itself is well known, Deborah does not think it necessary to mention Sisera's name in ver. 25. n^Pn, which generally signifies thick curdled milk, is used here as synonymous with Spn, in the sense of good superior milk.?SD is only used here and in chap. vi. 38, and signifies a bowl or vessel for holding liquids (see Arab., Chald., and Talm.; also Bochart, Hieroz. i. pp. 625 sqq., ed. Ros.). The dish of nobles is a fine costly bowl, such as they are accustomed to hand to noble guests. The whole verse is simply intended to express the thought, that Jael had given to her guest Sisera a friendly reception, and treated him honourably and hospitably, simply in order to make him feel secure. — Ver. 26. " Her hand" i.e. the left hand, as is shown by the antithesis, " her right hand," which follows. On the form n:iw'n? the third pers. fern, sing, with n: attached, to distinguish it the more clearly from the second pers., see- the remarks on Ex. i. 10. DyPV ^k^, hammer or mallet of the hard workers, is a large heavy hammer. For the purpose of depicting the boldness and greatness of the deed, the words are crowded together in the second hemistich: D?n, to hammer, or smite with the hammer; pn)0, cltt. \&y., to smite in pieces, smite through; pno? to smite or dash in pieces; *)?n? to pierce or bore through. The heaping up of the words in ver. 27 answers the same purpose. They do not " express the delight of a satisfied thirst for revenge," but simply bring out the thought that Sisera, who was for years the terror of Israel, was now struck dead with a single blow. JT}3 "»BW3, at the place where he bowed, there he fell "int?? overpowered and destroyed. In conclusion, the singer refers once more in the last strophe (vers. 28-30) to the mother of Sisera, as she waited impatiently for the return of her son, and foreboded his death, whilst the prudent princesses who surrounded her sought to cheer her with the prospect of a rich arrival of booty.

Ver. 28. Through the window there looks out and cries aloud The mother of Sisera, through the lattice work, Why does his chariot delay its coming? "Why tarry the steps of his team?

29. The wise of her princesses reply:

— But she repeats her words to herself —

30. Surely they are finding and sharing booty: A maiden, two maideDS to the head of a man, Booty of variegated cloths for Sisera;

Booty of variegated cloths, garments worked in divers colours, A variegated cloth, two garments worked in divers colours for his neck as booty.

Sisera' s mother looks out with impatience for the return of her son, and cries aloud out of the window, Why is he never coming I — foreboding the disastrous result of the war. 2Tny air. \ey., signifies to cry; in Aramaean it is used for JTnn and \p_, to denote a loud joyful cry; here it evidently signifies a loud cry of anxiety. For the repeated question, Why does his chariot delay its coming? is evidently expressive of anxiety and alarm. The form *"*£!£, perf. Piel for FlQfctj may be attributed to the influence of the aleph, which favours the seghol sound, like %DITJ in Gen. xxx. 39. The combination of VT)U3"iD WS, " steps of his chariots," cannot be explained, as it is by Bertheau, on the ground that the word *DJJB, as a general expression for intermittent movement, might also be applied to the jerking of the wheels in rolling, but simply on the supposition that ni23"}E>, as a synonym for 33% is used for the horses yoked to the chariot in the sense of team, like 23*1 in 2 Sam. viii. 4, x. 18, etc. — Ver. 29. The princesses in attendance upon Sisera's mother sought to console her with the remark, that Sisera would have to gather together rich booty, and that his return was delayed in consequence. In the expression u the wisest of her princesses" (see Ges. § 119, 2), the irony is very obvious, as the reality put all their wise conjectures to shame, naayri, third pers. plur. fem. for fTOgR. The second hemistich of ver. 29 contains a clause inserted as a parenthesis. &on~?]X is adversative: " but she;" *JK is only an emphatic copula; the antithesis lies in the emphatic change of subject indicated by ton. n^DX ^n, lit. to bring back her words, i.e. to repeat. FP is used in a reflective sense, " to herself." The meaning is: But Sisera's mother did not allow herself to be quieted by the words of her wise princesses; on the contrary, she kept repeating the anxious question, Why does Sisera delay his coming % In ver. 30 there follows the answer of the wise princesses. They imagine that Sisera has been detained by the large amount of booty which has to be divided. K?n, nonne, is he not, in the sense of lively certainty. They will certainly discover rich booty, and divide it. Dnn? uterus, for puella. " A girl (or indeed probably) two girls to the head of tlie man" i.e. for each man. t^jnv, coloured things, cloths or clothes. n*?i?"!, worked stuff, or garments worked in divers colours (see the remarks on Ex. xxvi. 36), is attached without the vav cop. to DNV?V> and is also dependent upon a>K\ The closing words, 7>W ^^Y?, u for the necks" or (as the plural is also frequently used to signify a single neck, e.g. Gen. xxvii. 1G, xlv. 14) "for the neck of the booty," do not give any appropriate sense, as 7?V neither signifies animals taken as booty nor the taker of booty. The idea, however, that 7?W is used for??W £*N, like?pn in 2 Sam. xii. 4 for $[} B*K, viator, and ^nn in Prov. xxiii. 28 for ^nn fc»N? seems inadmissible, since 7?W has just before been used three times in its literal sense. There is just the same objection to the application of 7?W to animals taken as booty, not to mention the fact that they would hardly have thought of having valuable cloths upon the necks of animals taken as booty. Consequently the only explanation that remains, is either to alter ^KW into ViK}¥? or l^WSjp, or else to change 7N) into?3B*, the royal spouse. In the former case,??& would have to be taken as in apposition to D^nipp") JD¥; a variegated cloth, two worked in divers colours for his (Sisera's) neck as booty, as the LXX. have rendered it (tc5 rpa^Xw avrov aicvka). Ewald and Bertheau decide in favour of the second alteration, and defend it on the ground that??& might easily find its way into the text as a copyist's error for?N}, on account of 7?W having been already written three times before, and that we cannot dispense with some such word as?M here, since the repetition of ivBJ three times, and the threefold use of?, evidently show that there were three different kinds of people among whom the booty was to be distributed; and also that it was only a fitting thing that Sisera should set apart one portion of the booty to adorn the neck of his wife, and that the wisest of the noble ladies, when mentioning the booty, should not forget themselves.

But let those who love Him be like the rising of the sun in its strength.

This forms the conclusion of the song. |3, so, refers to the whole of the song: just in the same manner as Sisera and his warriors. The rising of the sun in its strength is a striking image of the exaltation of Israel to a more and more glorious unfolding of its destiny, which Deborah anticipated as the result of this victory. With the last clause, " And the land had rest forty years" (cf. chap. iii. 11, 30, viii. 28), the account of this event is brought to a close.

II. THE TIMES OF GIDEON AND HIS FAMILY, AND OF THE JUDGES TOLA AND JAIR. — CHAP. VI.-X. 5.

In this second stage of the period of the judges, which did not extend over an entire century (only ninety-five years), Israel was only punished for its apostasy from the Lord, it is true, with a seven years' oppression by the Midianites; but the misery which these enemies, who allied themselves with Amalekites and other Arabian hordes, brought upon both land and people, so far surpassed the pressure of the previous chastisements, that the Israelites were obliged to take refuge from the foe in ravines, caves, and strongholds of the mountains. But the more heavily the Lord punishpd His rebellious nation, the more gloriously did He set forth His nearness to help, and also the way which would lead to a lasting peace, and to true deliverance out of every trouble, in the manner in which He called and fitted Gideon to be its deliverer, and gave him the victory over the innumerable army of the hostile hordes, with only 300 chosen warriors. But the tendency to idolatry and to the worship of Baal had already become so strong in Israel, that even Gideon, that distinguished hero of God, who had been so marvellously called, and who refused the title of king when offered to him from genuine fidelity to the Lord, yielded to the temptation to establish for himself an unlawful worship, in a high-priestly ephod which had been prepared for his use, and thus gave the people an occasion for idolatry. For this reason his house was visited with severe judgments, which burst upon it after his death, under the three years' reign of his son Abimelech; although, notwithstanding the deep religious and moral depravity which was manifested in the doings of Abimelech, the Lord gave His people rest for forty-five years longer after the death of Abimelech under two judges, before He punished their apostasy with fresh hostile oppressions.

The history of Gideon and his family is related very fully, because the working of the grace and righteousness of the faithful covenant God was so obviously displayed therein, that it contained a rich treasure of instruction and warning for the church of the Lord in all ages. The account contains such an abundance of special notices of separate events and persons, as can only be explained on the supposition that the author made use of copious records which had been made by contemporaries and eye-witnesses of the events. At the same time, the separate details do not contain any such characteristic marks as will enable us to discover clearly, or determine with any certainty, the nature of the source or sources which the author employed. The only things peculiar to this narrative are the use of the prefix w for 1KW, not only in reports of the sayings of the persons engaged (chap. vi. 17), but also in the direct narrative of facts (chap. vii. 12, viii. 26), and the formula nKQ7 njn* nn (chap. vi. 34), which only occurs again in 1 Chron. xii. 18, 2 Chron. xxiv. 20. On the other hand, neither the interchange of ha-Elohim (chap. vi. 36, 39, vii. 14) and Elohim (chap. vi. 40, viii. 3, ix. 7, 9, 13, 23, 56, 57) with Jehovah, nor the use of the name Jerubbaal for Gideon (chap. vi. 32, vii. 1, viii. 29, ix. 1, 2, 5, 16, 19, 24, 28), nor lastly the absence of the " theocratical pragmatism" in chap, ix., contains any proof of the nature of the source employed, or even of the employment of two different sources, as these peculiarities are founded upon the contents and materials of the narrative itself.1

Oppression of Israel by the Midianites, and call of Gideon to be their Deliverer. — Chap. vi. 1-32.

Vers. 1-10. Renewed Apostasy of the Nation, and its Punishment.— Ver. 1. As the Israelites forsook Jehovah their God again, the Lord delivered them up for seven years into the hands of the Midianites. The Midianites, who wrere descendants of Abraham and Keturah (Gen. xxv. 2), and had penetrated into the grassy steppes on the eastern side of the country of the Moabites and

1 Even BertJieau, who infers from these data that two different sources were employed, admits that ha-Elohim in the mouth of the Midianites (chap. vii. 14) and Elohim in Jotham's fable, where it is put into the mouth of the trees, prove nothing at all, because here, from the different meanings of the divine names, the author could not have used anything but Elohim. But the same difference is quite as unmistakeable in chap. viii. 3, ix. 7, 23, 56, 57, since in these passages, either the antithesis of man and God, or the idea of supernatural causality, made it most natural for the author to use the general name of God even if it did not render it absolutely necessary. There remain, therefore, only chap, vi. 20, 36, 39, 40, where the use of ha-Elohim and Elohim instead of Jehovah may possibly have originated with the source made use of by the author. On the other hand, the name Jerubbaal, which Gideon received in consequence of the destruction of the altar of Baal (chap. vi. 32), is employed with conscious reference to its origin and meaning, not only in chap. vii. 1, viii. 29, 35, but also throughout chap, ix., as we may see more especially in chap. ix. 16, 19, 28. And lastly, even the peculiarities of chap. ix. — namely, that the names Jehovah and Gideon do not occur there at all, and that many historical circumstances are related apparently without any link of connection, and torn away from some wider context, which might have rendered them intelligible, and without which very much remains obscure — do not prove that the author drew these incidents from a different source from the rest of the history of Gideon, — such, for example, as a more complete history of the town of Shechem and its rulers in the time of the judges, as Bertheau imagines. For these peculiarities may be explained satisfactorily enough from the intention so clearly expressed in chap, viii. 34, 35, and ix. 57, of showing how the ingratitude of the Israelites towards Gideon, especially the wickedness of the Shechemites, who helped to murder Gideon's sons to gratify Abimelech, was punished by God. And no other peculiarities can be discovered that could possibly establish a diversity of sources.

Ammonites (see at Num. xxii. 4), had shown hostility to Israel even in the time of Moses, and had been defeated in a war of retaliation on the part of the Israelites (Num. xxxi.). But they had afterwards recovered their strength, so that now, after an interval of 200 years, the Lord used them as a rod of chastisement for His rebellious people. In vers. 1, 2, 6, they alone are mentioned as oppressors of Israel; but in vers. 3, 33, and chap, vii. 12, the Amalekites and children of the east are mentioned in connection with them, from which we may see that the Midianites were the principal enemies, but had allied themselves with other predatory Bedouin tribes, to make war upon the Israelites and devastate their land. On the Amalekites3 those leading enemies of the people of God who had sprung from Esau, see the notes on Gen. xxxvi. 12 and Ex. xvii. 8. " Children of the east" (see Job i. 3) is the general name for the tribes that lived in the desert on the east of Palestine, "like the name of Arabs in the time of Josephus (in Ant. v. 6, 1, he calls the children of the east mentioned here by the name of Arabs), or in later times the names of the Nabataeans and Kedarenes" (Bertheau). Hence we find in chap. viii. 10, that all the enemies who oppressed the Israelites are called " children of the east." — Yers. 2-5. The oppression of Israel by Midian and its allies. Their power pressed so severely upon the Israelites, that before (or because of) them the latter " made them the ravines which are in the mountains, and the caves, and the strongholds" sc. which were to be met with all over the land in after times (viz. at the time when our book was written), and were safe places of refuge in time of war. This is implied in the definite article before f"iV"in:o and the following substantives. The words " they made them " are not at variance with the fact that there are many natural caves to be found in the limestone mountains of Palestine. For, on the one hand, they do not affirm that all the caves to be found in the land were made by the Israelites at that time; and, on the other hand, HK'V does not preclude the use of natural caves as places of refuge, since it not only denotes the digging and making of caves, but also the adaptation of natural caves to the purpose referred to, i.e. the enlargement of them, or whatever was required to make them habitable. The air. \ey. rtVDD does not mean " light holes " (Bertheau), or " holes with openings to the light," from ~»n}, in the sense of to stream, to enlighten (Rashi, Kimchi, etc.), but is to be taken in the sense of " mountain ravines" hollowed out by torrents (from TO, to pour), which the Israelites made into hidingplaces. ftt"N?j fortresses, mountain strongholds. These ravines, caves, and fortresses were not merely to serve as hiding-places for the Israelitish fugitives, but much more as places of concealment for their possessions and necessary supplies. For the Midianites, like genuine Bedouins, thought far more of robbing and plundering and laying waste the land of the Israelites, than of exterminating the people themselves. Herodotus (i. 17) says just the same respecting the war of the Lydian king Alyattes with the Milesians. — Vers. 3, 4. When the Israelites had sown, the Midianites and their allies came upon them, encamped against them, and destroyed the produce of the land (the fruits of the field and soil) as far as Gaza, in the extreme south-west of the land (" till thou come," as in Gen. x. 19, etc.). As the enemy invaded the land with their camels and flocks, and on repeated occasions encamped in the valley of Jezreel (ver. 33), they must have entered the land on the west of the Jordan by the main road which connects the countries on the east with Palestine on the west, crossing the Jordan near Beisan, and passing through the plain of Jezreel; and from this point they spread over Palestine to the sea-coast of Gaza. " They left no sustenance (in the shape of produce of the field and soil) in Israel, and neither sheep, nor oxen, nor asses. For they came on with their flocks, and their tents came like grasshoppers in multitude!' The Chethibh whj is not to be altered into W2\ according to the Keri and certain Codd. If we connect Dn^nsi with the previous words, according to the Masoretic pointing, we have a simple asyndeton. It is more probable, however, that DiT^natt belongs to what follows: u And their tents came in such numbers as grasshoppers" T5, lit. like a multitude of grasshoppers, in such abunance. " Tims they came into the land to devastate it" — Ver. 6. The Israelites were greatly weakened in consequence (/T., the imperf. Niphal of OT), so that in their distress they cried to the Lord for help. — Vers. 7-10. But before helping them, the Lord sent a prophet to reprove the people for not hearkening to the voice of their God, in order that they might reflect, and might recognise in the oppression which crushed them the chastisement of God for their apostasy, and so be brought to sincere repentance and conversion by their remembrance of the former miraculous displays of the grace of God. The Lord God, said the prophet to the people, brought you out of Egypt, the house of bondage, and delivered you out of the hand of Egypt (Ex. xviii. 9), and out of the hand of all your oppressors (see chap. ii. 18, iv. 3, x. 12), whom Pie drove before you (the reference is to the Amorltes and Canaanites who were conquered by Moses and Joshua); but ye have not followed His commandment, that ye should not worship the gods of the Amorites. The Amorites stand here for the Canaanites, as in Gen. xv. 16 and Josh. xxiv. 15

Vers. 11-32. Call of Gideon to be the Deliverer of Israel. — As the reproof of the prophet was intended to turn the hearts of the people once more to the Lord their God and deliverer, so the manner in which God called Gideon to be their deliverer, and rescued Israel from its oppressors through his instrumentality, was intended to furnish the most evident proof that the help and salvation of Israel were not to be found in man, but solely in their God. God had also sent their former judges. The Spirit of Jehovah had come upon Othniel, so that he smote the enemy in the power of God (chap. iii. 10). Ehud had put to death the hostile king by stratagem, and then destroyed his army; and Barak had received the command of the Lord, through the prophetess Deborah, to deliver His people from the dominion of their foes, and had carried out the command with her assistance. But Gideon was called to be the deliverer of Israel through an appearance of the angel of the Lord, to show to him and to all Israel, that Jehovah, the God of the fathers, was still near at hand to His people, and could work miracles as in the days of old, if Israel would only adhere to Him and keep His covenant. The call of Gideon took place in two revelations from God. First of all the Lord appeared to him in the visible form of an angel, in which He had already made himself known to the patriarchs, and summoned him in the strength of God to deliver Israel out of the hand of the Midianites (vers. 11-24). He then commanded him, in a dream of the night, to throw down his father's altar of Baal, and to offer a burnt-offering to Jehovah his God upon an altar erected for the purpose (vers. 25-32). In the first revelation the Lord acknowledged Gideon; in the second He summoned Gideon to acknowledge Him as his God.

Vers. 11-24. Appearance of the Angel of the Lord. — Ver. 11. The angel of the Lord, i.e. Jehovah, in a visible self-revelation in human form (see vol. i. pp. 185 sqq.), appeared this time in the form of a traveller with a staff in his hand (ver. 21), and sat down " under the terebinth which (was) in Ophrah, that (belonged) to Joash the Abi-ezriteV It was not the oak, but Ophrah, that belonged to Joash, as we may see from ver. 24, where the expression i( Ophrah of the Abi-ezrite" occurs. According to Josh. xvii. 2 and t Chron. vii. 18, Abiezer was a family in the tribe of Manasseh, and according to ver. 15 it was a small family of that tribe. Joash was probably the head of the family at that time, and as such was the lord or owner of Ophrah, a town (chap. viii. 27; cf. ix. 5) which was called " Ophrah of the Abi-ezrite," to distinguish it from Ophrah in the tribe of Benjamin (Josh, xviii. 23). The situation of the town has not yet been determined with certainty. Josephus (Ant. v. 6, 5) calls it Ephran. Van de Velde conjectures that it is to be found in the ruins of Erfai, opposite to Akrabeh, towards the s.E., near the Mohammedan Wely of Abu Kharib, on the s.w. of Janun (Mem. pp. 337-8), close to the northern boundary of the tribe-territory of Ephraim, if not actually within it. By this terebinth tree was Gideon the son of Joash " knocking out wheat in the wine-press" B3n does not mean to thresh, but to knock with a stick. The wheat was threshed upon open floors, or in places in the open field that were rolled hard for the purpose, with threshing carriages or threshing shoes, or else with oxen, which they drove about over the scattered sheaves to tread out the grains with their hoofs. Only poor people knocked out the little corn that they had gleaned with a stick (Ruth ii. 17), and Gideon did it in the existing times of distress, namely in the pressing-tub, which, like all wine-presses, was sunk in the ground, in a hole that had been dug out or hewn in the rock (for a description of cisterns of this kind, see Bob. Bibl. Res. pp. 135-6), " to make the wheat fly" (i.e. to make it safe) "from the Midianites" (D^n as in Ex. ix. 20). — Ver. 12. While he was thus engaged the angel of the Lord appeared to him, and addressed him in these words: " Jehovah (is) with thee, thou brave hero" This address contained the promise that the Lord would be with Gideon, and that he would prove himself a mighty hero through the strength of the Lord. This promise was to be a guarantee to him of strength and victory in his conflict with the Midianites. — Ver. 13. But Gideon, who did not recognise the angel of the Lord in the man who was sitting before him, replied doubtingly, " Pray, sir, if Jehovah is with us, why has all this befallen us?" — words which naturally recall to mind the words of Deut. xxxi. 17, "Are not these evils come upon us because our God is not among us?" " And where," continued Gideon, " are all His miracles, of which our fathers have told us?... But now Jehovah hath forsaken us, and delivered us into the hands of the Midianites" Gideon may have been reflecting, while knocking the wheat, upon the misery of his people, and the best means of delivering them from the oppression of the enemy, but without being able to think of any possibility of rescuing them. For this reason he could not understand the address of the unknown traveller, and met his promise with the actual state of things with which it was so directly at variance, namely, the crushing oppression of his people by their enemies, from which he concluded that the Lord had forsaken them and given them up to their foes. — Ver. 14. u Then Jehovah turned to him and said, Go in this thy strength, and deliver Israel from the hand of Midian. Have not I sent thee?" The writer very appropriately uses the name Jehovah here, instead of the angel of Jehovah; for by his reply the angel distinctly manifested himself as Jehovah, more especially in the closing words, "Have not I sent thee?'9 (*^l!> in the sense of lively assurance), which are so suggestive of the call of Moses to be the deliverer of Israel (Ex. iii. 12). " In this thy strength" i.e. the strength which thou now hast, since Jehovah is with thee — Jehovah, who can still perform miracles as in the days of the fathers. The demonstrative u this" points to the strength which had just been given to him through the promise of God. — Yer. 15. Gideon perceived from these words that it was not a mere man who was speaking to him. He therefore said in reply, not "pray sir" (T^.), but "pray, Lord" (*p$, i.e. Lord God), and no longer speaks of deliverance as impossible, but simply inquires, with a consciousness of his own personal weakness and the weakness of his family, u Whereby (with what) shall I save Israel? Behold, my family {lit. l thousand] equivalent to mishpachah: see at Num. i. 16) is the humblest in Manasseh, and I am the least in my father s house (my family)." — Ver. 16. To this difficulty the Lord replies, "/ will be with thee (see Ex. iii. 12, Josh. i. 5), and thou wilt smite the Midianites as one man," i.e. at one blow, as they slay a single man (see Num. xiv. 15). — Vers. 17 sqq. As Gideon could no longer have any doubt after this promise that the person who had appeared to him was speaking in the name of God, he entreated him to assure him by a sign (nitf, a miraculous sign) of the certainty of his appearance. " Do a sign that thou art speaking with me," i.e. that thou art really God, as thou affirmest. nns^, for nn« ibw is taken from the language of ordinary life. At the same time he presents this request: "Depart 7iot hence till I (go and) come to thee, and bring out my offering and set it before thee" and the angel at once assents. Minchah does not mean a sacrifice in the strict sense (Ovaia, sacrifcium), nor merely a " gift of food," but a sacrificial gift in the sense of a gift presented to God, on the acceptance of which he hoped to receive the sign, which would show whether the person who had appeared to him was really God. This sacrificial gift consisted of such food as they were accustomed to set before a guest whom they wished especially to honour. Gideon prepared a kid of the goats (p&y is used to denote the preparation of food, as in Gen. xviii. 7, 8, etc.), and unleavened cakes of an ephah (about 22£ lbs.) of meal, and brought the flesh in a basket and the broth in a pot out to the terebinth tree, and placed it before him. — Vers. 20, 21. The angel of the Lord then commanded him to lay the flesh and the cakes upon a rock close by, and to pour the broth upon it; that is to say, to make use of the rock as an altar for the offering to be presented to the Lord. When he had done this, the angel touched the food with the end of his staff, and fire came out of the rock and consumed the food, and the angel of the Lord vanished out of Gideon's sight. " This rock," i.e. a rocky stone that was lying near. The departure of the angel from his eyes is to be regarded as a sudden disappearance; but the expression does not warrant the assumption that the angel ascended to heaven in this instance, as in chap. xiii. 19, 20, in the flame of the sacrifice. — Ver. 22. In this miracle Gideon received the desired sign, that the person who had appeared to him was God. But the miracle filled his soul with fear, so that he exclaimed, " Alas, Lord Jehovah! for to this end have I seen the angel of the Lord face to facer ^K nnfct IW is an exclamation, sometimes of grief on account of a calamity that has occurred (Josh vii. 7), and sometimes of alarm caused by the foreboding of some anticipated calamity (Jer. i. 6, iv. 10, xxxii. 17; Ezek. iv. 14, etc.). Here it is an expression of alarm, viz. fear of the death which might be the necessary consequence of his seeing God (see Ex. xx. 16 (19), and the remarks on Gen. xvi. 13). The expression which follows, " for to this end" serves to account for the exclamation, without there being any necessity to assume an ellipsis, and supply " that I may die." |3"?JP3 is always used in this sense (see Gen. xviii. 5, xix. 8, xxxiii. 10, etc.). — Vers. 23, 24. But the Lord comforted him with the words, " Peace to thee; fear not: thou wilt not die." These words were not spoken by the angel as he vanished away, but were addressed by God to* Gideon, after the disappearance of the angel, by an inward voice. In gratitude for this comforting assurance, Gideon built an altar to the Lord, which he called Jehovah-shalom, " the Lord is peace." The intention of this altar, which was preserved " unto this day," i.e. till the time when the book of Judges was composed, is indicated in the name that was given to it. It was not to serve as a place of sacrifice, but to be a memorial and a witness of the revelation of God which had been made to Gideon, and of the proof which he had received that Jehovah was peace, i.e. would not destroy Israel in wrath, bui cherished thoughts of peace. For the assurance of peace which He had given to Gideon, was also a confirmation of His announcement that Gideon would conquer the Midianites in the strength of God, and deliver Israel from its oppressors.

The theophany here described resembles so far the appearance of the angel of the Lord to Abram in the grove of Mamre (Gen. xviii.), that he appears in perfect human form, comes as a traveller, and allows food to be set before him; but there is this essential difference between the two, that whereas the three men who came to Abraham took the food that was set before them and ate thereof, — that is to say, allowed themselves to be hospitably entertained by Abraham, — the angel of the Lord in the case before us did indeed accept the minchah that had been made ready for him, but only as a sacrifice of Jehovah which he caused to ascend in fire. The reason for this essential difference is to be found in the different purpose of the two theophanies. To Abraham the Lord came to seal that fellowship of grace into which He had entered with him through the covenant that He had made; but in the case of Gideon His purpose was simply to confirm the truth of His promise, that Jehovah would be with him and would send deliverance through him to His people, or to show that the person who had appeared to him was the God of the fathers, who could still deliver His people out of the power of their enemies by working such miracles as the fathers had seen. But the acceptance of the minchah prepared for Him, as a sacrifice which the Lord himself caused to be miraculously consumed by fire, showed that the Lord would still graciously accept the prayers and sacrifices of Israel, if they would but forsake the worship of the dead idols of the heathen, and return to Him in sincerity. (Compare with this the similar theophany in chap, xiii.)

Vers. 25-32. Gideon set apart as the Deliverer of his People. — In order to be able to carry out the work entrusted to him of setting Israel free, it was necessary that Gideon should first of all purify his father's house from idolatry, and sanctify his own life and labour to Jehovah by sacrificing a burnt-offering. — Ver. 25. " In that night" i.e. the nighi following the day on which the Lord appeared to him, God commanded him to destroy his father's Baal's altar, with the asherah-idol upon it, and to build an altar to Jehovah, and offer a bullock of his father's upon the altar. " Take the ox-bullock which belongs to thy father, and indeed the second bullock of seven years, and destroy the altar of Baal, which belongs to thy father, and throw down the asherah upon it." According to the general explanation of the first clauses, there are two oxen referred to: viz. first, his father's young bullock; and secondly, an ox of seven years old, the latter of which Gideon was to sacrifice (according to ver. 26) upon the altar to be built to Jehovah, and actually did sacrifice, according to vers. 27, 28. But in what follows there is no further allusion to the young bullock, or the first ox of his father; so that there is a difficulty in comprehending for what purpose Gideon was to take it, or what use he was to make of it. Most commentators suppose that Gideon sacrificed both of the oxen, — the young bullock as an expiatory offering for himself, his father, and all his family, and the second ox of seven years old for the deliverance of the whole nation (see Seb. Schmidt). Bertheau supposes, on the other hand, that Gideon was to make use of both oxen, or of the strength they possessed for throwing down or destroying the altar, and (according to ver. 26) for removing the nmyo and the mvm *W to the place of the new altar that was to be built, but that he was only to offer the second in sacrifice to Jehovah, because the first was probably dedicated to Baal, and therefore could not be offered to Jehovah. But these assumptions are both of them equally arbitrary, and have no support whatever from the text. If God had commanded Gideon to take two oxen, He would certainly have told him what he was to do with them both. But as there is only one bullock mentioned in vers. 26-28, we must follow Tremell. and others, who understand ver. 25 as meaning that Gideon was to take only one bullock, namely the young bullock of his father, and therefore regard 'V '$ ^$n *1B} as a more precise definition of that one bullock (vav being used in an explanatory sense, " and indeed," as in Josh. ix. 27, x. 7, etc.). This bullock is called " the second bullock," as being the second in age among the bullocks of Joash. The reason for choosing this second of the bullocks of Joash for a burnt-offering is to be found no doubt in its age (seven years), which is mentioned here simply on account of its significance as a number, as there was no particular age prescribed in the law for a burnt-offering, that is to say, because the seven years which constituted the age of the bullock contained an inward allusion to the seven years of the Midianitish oppression. For seven years had God given Israel into the hands of the Midianites on account of their apostasy; and now, to wipe away this sin, Gideon was to take his father's bullock of seven years old, and offer it as a burnt-offering to the Lord. To this end Gideon was first of all to destroy the altar of Baal and of the asherah which his father possessed, and which, to judge from vers. 28, 29, was the common altar of the whole family of Abiezer in Ophrah. This altar was dedicated to Baal, but there was also upon it an asherah, an idol representing the goddess of nature, which the Canaanites worshipped; not indeed a statue of the goddess, but, as we may learn from the word rn3, to hew down, simply a wooden pillar (see at Deut. xvi. 21). The altar therefore served for the two principal deities of the Canaanites (see Movers, Phonizier, i. pp. 566 sqq.). Jehovah could not be worshipped along with Baal. Whoever would serve the Lord must abolish the worship of Baal. The altar of Baal must be destroyed before the altar of Jehovah could be built. Gideon was to build this altar " upon the top of this stronghold," possibly upon the top of the mountain, upon which the fortress belonging to Ophrah was situated. HD"jyD3, "with the preparation;" the meaning of this' word is a subject of dispute. As nja occurs in 1 Kings xv. 22 with 3, to denote the materials out of which {i.e. with which) a thing is built, Stud, and Berth, suppose that maaracah refers to the materials of the altar of Baal that had been destroyed, with which Gideon was to build the altar of Jehovah. Stud, refers it to the stone foundation of the altar of Baal; Bertheau to the materials that were lying ready upon the altar of Baal for the presentation of sacrifices, more especially the pieces of wood. But this is certainly incorrect, because maaracah does not signify either building materials or pieces of wood, and the definite article attached to the word does not refer to the altar of Baal at all. The verb spy is not only very frequently used to denote the preparation of the wood upon the altar (Gen. xxii. 9; Lev. i. 1, etc.), but is also used for the preparation of an altar for the presentation of sacrifice (Num. xxiii. 4). Consequently maaracah can hardly be understood in any other way than as signifying the preparation of the altar to be built for th<2 sacrificial act, in the sense of build the altar with the preparation required for the sacrifice. This preparation was to consist, according to what follows, in taking the wood of the asherah, that had been hewn down, as the wood for the burntoffering to be offered to the Lord by Gideon. n"}^? svy are not trees, but pieces of wood from the asherah (that was hewn down). — Ver. 27. Gideon executed this command of God with ten men of his servants during the night, no doubt the following night, because he was afraid to do it by day, on account of his family (his father's house), and the people of the town. — Vers. 28, 29. But on the following morning, when the people of the town found the altar of Baal destroyed and the asherah upon it hewn down, and the bullock sacrificed upon the (newly) erected altar (the bullock would not be entirely consumed), they asked who had done it, and soon learned that Gideon had done it all. The accusative ^tfn "isn DX is governed by the Hophal n:>yh (for njjlj see Ges. s. 63, Anm. 4), according to a construction that was by no means rare, especially in the earlier Hebrew, viz. of the passive with HX (see at Gen. iv. 18). " They asked and sought" sc. for the person who had done its u and they said" either those who were making the inquiry, according to a tolerably safe conjecture, or the persons who were asked, and who were aware of what Gideon had done. — Vers. 30, 31. But when they demanded of Joash, " Bring out (give out) thy son, that he may die" he said to all who stood round, " Will ye, ye, fight for Baal, or will ye save him? (' ye* is repeated with special emphasis). Whoever shall fight for him (Baal), shall be put to death till the morning" "^S'T^?, till the (next) morning, is not to be joined to rw, in the sense of "very speedily, before the dawning day shall break" (Bertheau), — a sense which is not to be found in the words: it rather belongs to the subject of the clause, or to the whole clause in the sense of, Whoever shall fight for Baal, and seek to avenge the destruction of his altar by putting the author of it to death, shall be put to death himself; let us wait till to-morrow, and give Baal time to avenge the insult which he has received. "If he be God, let him fight for himself; for they have destroyed his altar," and have thereby challenged his revenge. Gideon's daring act of faith had inspired his father Joash with believing courage, so that he took the part of his son, and left the whole matter to the deity to decide. If Baal were really God, he might be expected to avenge the crime that had been committed against this altar. — Ver. 32. From this fact Gideon received the name of Jerubbaal, i.e. " let Baal fight (or decide)," since they said, " Let Baal fight against him, for he has destroyed his altar." '??"£ is formed from 3*^ = an* or y^ and?V3. This surname very soon became an honourable title for Gideon. When, for example, it became apparent to the people that Baal could not do him any harm, Jeruhbaal became a Baal-fighter, one who had fought against Baal. In 2 Sam. xi. 21, instead of Jeruhbaal we find the name Jerubbesheth, in which Besheth = Bosheth is a nickname of Baal, which also occurs in other Israel itish names, e.g. in Ishbosheth (2 Sam. ii. 8 sqq.) for Eshbaal (1 Chron. viii. 33, ix. 39). The name Jeruhbaal is written 'lepofidaX by the LXX., from which in all probability Philo of Byblus, in his revision of Sanchuniathon, has formed his rIep6fif3a\o<;, a priest of the god 'Ievco.

Chap. vi. 33-40. Equipment of Gideon for tAe Battle. — When the Midianites and their allies once more invaded the land of Israel, Gideon was seized by the Spirit of God, so that he gathered together an army from the northern tribes of Israel (vers. 33-35), and entreated God to assure him by a sign of gaining the victory over the enemy (vers. 36-40). — Vers. 33 sqq. The enemy gathered together again, went over (viz. across) the Jordan in the neighbourhood of Beisan (see at chap. vii. 24 and viii. 4), and encamped in the valley of Jezreel (see at Josh. xvii. 16). "And the Spirit of Jehovah came upon Gideon" (n^r, clothed, i.e. descended upon him, and laid itself around him as it were like a coat of mail, or a strong equipment, so that he became invulnerable and invincible in its might: see 1 Chron. xii. 18, 2 Chron. xxiv. 20, and Luke xxiv. 49). Gideon then blew the trumpet, to call Israel to battle against the foe (see chap. iii. 27); " and Abiezer let itself be summoned after him." His own family, which had recognised the deliverer of Israel in the fighter of Baal, who was safe from Baal's revenge, was the first to gather round him. Their example was followed by all Manasseh, i.e. the Manassites on the west of the Jordan (for the tribes on the east of the Jordan took no part in the war), and the neighbouring tribes of Zebulun and Naphtali on the north, which had been summoned by heralds to the battle. " They advanced to meet them:" i.e. to meet the Manassites, who were coming from the south to the battle, to make war upon the enemy in concert with them and under the guidance of Gideon. njy is used to denote their advance against the enemy (see at Josh. viii. 2), and not in the sense of going up, since the Asherites and Naphtalites would not go up from their mountains into the plain of Jezreel, but could only go down. — Vers. 36 sqq. But before Gideon went into the battle with the assembled army, he asked for a sign from God of the success of his undertaking. u If Thou" he said to God, " art saving Israel through, my handy as Thou hast said, behold, I lay this fleece of wool upon the floor; if there shall be dew upon the fleece only, and dryness upon all the earth (round about), 1 know (by this) that Thou wilt save," etc. "IDJfi] fWJj the shorn of the wool; i.e. the fleece, the wool that had been shorn off a sheep, and still adhered together as one whole fleece. The sign which Gideon asked for, therefore, was that God would cause the dew to fall only upon a shorn fleece, which he would spread the previous night upon the floor, that is to say, upon some open ground, and that the ground all round might not be moistened by the dew. — Yer. 38. God granted the sign. "And so it came to pass; the next morning, Gideon pressed the fleece together ("UJ from ~nr), and squeezed (y®\ from nyj) dew out of the fleece a vessel full of water" (NvD as in Num. xxii. 18, and?2? as in chap. v. 25). So copiously had the dew fallen in the night upon the fleece that was exposed; whereas, as we may supply from the context, the earth all round had remained dry. — Vers. 39, 40. But as this sign was not quite a certain one, since wool generally attracts the dew, even when other objects remain dry, Gideon ventured to solicit the grace of God to grant him another sign with the fleece, — namely, that the fleece might remain dry, and the ground all round be wet with dew. And God granted him this request also. Gideon's prayer for a sign did not arise from want of faith in the divine assurance of a victory, but sprang from the weakness of the flesh, which crippled the strength of the spirit's faith, and often made the servants of God so anxious and despondent, that God had to come to the relief of their weakness by the manifestation of His miraculous power. Gideon knew himself and his own strength, and was well aware that his human strength was not sufficient for the conquest of the foe. But as the Lord had promised him His aid, he wished to make sure of that aid through the desired sign.1 And " the simple fact that such a man could obtain the most daring victory was to be a special glorification of God" (0. v. Gerlach). The sign itself was to manifest the strength of the divine assistance to his weakness of faith. Dew in the Scriptures is a symbol of the

1 " From all these things, the fact that he had seen and heard the angel of Jehovah, and that he had been taught by fire out of the rock, by the disappearance of the angel, by the vision of the night, and by the words addressed to him there, Gideon did indeed believe that God both could and would deliver Israel through his instrumentality; but this faith was not placed above or away from the conflict of the flesh by which it was tested And it is not strange that

beneficent power of God, which quickens, revives, and invigorates the objects of nature, when they have been parched by the burning heat of the sun's rays. The first sign was to be a pledge to him of the visible and tangible blessing of the Lord upon His people, the proof that He would grant them power over their mighty foes by whom Israel was then oppressed. The woollen fleece represented the nation of Israel in its condition at that time, when God had given power to the foe that was devastating its land, and had withdrawn His blessing from Israel. The moistening of the fleece with the dew of heaven whilst the land all round continued dry, was a sign that the Lord God would once more give strength to His people from on high, and withdraw it from the nations of the earth. Hence the second sign acquires the more general signification, " that the Lord manifested himself even in the weakness and forsaken condition of His people, while the nations were flourishing all around" (0. v. Gerl.); and when so explained, it served to confirm and strengthen the first, inasmuch as it contained the comforting assurance for all times, that the Lord has not forsaken His church, even when it cannot discern and trace His beneficent influence, but rules over it and over the nations with His almighty power.

Chap. vii. 1-8. Mustering of the Army that Gideon had collected. — Ver. 1. When Gideon had been assured of the help of God by this double sign, he went to the battle early the next morning with the people that he had gathered around him. The Israelites encamped above the fountain of Harod, i.e. upon a height at the foot of which this fountain sprang; but the camp of Midian was to him (Gideon) to the north of the hill Moreh in the valley (of Jezreel: see chap. vi. 33). The geographical situation of these two places cannot be determined with certainty. The fountain of Harod is never mentioned again, though there is a place of that name referred to in 2 Sam. xxiii. 25 as the home of two of David's heroes; and it was from this, no doubt, that the fountain was named. The hill Moreh is also unknown. As it was by the valley (of Jezreel), we cannot possibly think of the grove of Moreh at Shechem

it rose to its greatest height when the work of deliverance was about to be performed. Wherefore Gideon with his faith sought for a sign from God against the more vehement struggle of the flesh, in order that his faith might be the more confirmed, and might resist the opposing flesh with the greater force. And this petition for a sign was combined with prayers for the strengthening of his faith. "— Se&. Schmidt.

(Gen. xii. 6*; Deut. xi. 30).1 — Vers. 2, 3. The army of the Israelites amounted to 32,000 men (ver. 4), but that of the Midianites and iheir allies was about 135,000 (chap. viii. 10), so that they were greatly superior to the Israelites in numbers. Nevertheless the Lord said to Gideon, " The people that are with thee are too many for me to give Midian into their hands, lest Israel vaunt themselves against me, saying, My hand hath helped me." 2"] followed by \0 is to be understood as a comparative. Gideon was therefore to have a proclamation made before all the people: u Whosoever is fearful and despondent, let him turn and go back from Mount Gilead." The air. \ey. 1BV, judging from the Arabic, which signifies to plait, viz. hair, ropes, etc., and the noun fn^B*, a circle or circuitous orbit, probably signifies to twist one's self round; hence in this instance to return in windings, to slink away in bypaths. The expression " from Mount Gilead,9 however, is very obscure. The mountain (or the mountains) of Gilead was on the eastern side of the Jordan; but the Israelitish army was encamped in or near the plain of Jezreel, in the country to the west of the Jordan, and had been gathered from the western tribes alone; so that even the inadmissible rendering, Let him turn and go home to the mountains of Gilead, would not give any appropriate sense. The only course left therefore is either to pronounce it an error of the text, as Clericus and Bertheau have done, and to regard " Gilead" as a mistake for " Gilboa," or to conclude that there was also a mountain or mountain range named Gilead by the plain of Jezreel in western Palestine, just as, according to Josh. xv. 10, there was a mountain, or range of mountains, called Seir9 in the territory of Judah, of which nothing further is known. The appeal which Gideon is here directed to make to the army was prescribed in the law (Deut. xx. 8) for every war

1 Bertheau endeavours to settle the position of the place from our knowledge of the country, which is for the most part definite enough. Starting with the assumption that the fountain of Harod cannot be any other than the "fountain in Jezreel" mentioned in 1 Sam. xxix. 1, where Saul and the Israelites encamped at Gilboa (1 Sam. xxviii. 4) to fight against the Philistines who were posted at Shunem, a place on the western slope of the so-called Little Hermon, he concludes that the fountain of Harod must be the present Ain Jalud, and the hill of Moreh the Little Hermon itself. These combinations are certainly possible, for we have nothing definite to oppose to them; still they are very uncertain, as they simply rest upon the very doubtful assumption that the only fountain in the plain of Jezreel was the celebrated fountain called Ain Jalud, and are hardly reconcilable with the account given of the route which was taken by the defeated Midianites (vers. 25 sqq. and chap, viii 4).

in which the Israelites should be engaged, and its general object was to fortify the spirit of the army by removing the cowardly and desponding. But in the case before us the intention of the Lord was to deprive His people of all ground for self-glorification. Hence the result of the appeal was one which Gideon himself certainly did not expect, — namely, that more than two-thirds of the soldiers gathered round him — 22,000 men of the people — turned back, and only 10,000 remained. — Yer. 4. But even this number was regarded by the Lord as still too great, so that He gave to Gideon the still further command, il Bring them (the 10,000 men) down to the water" i.e. the waters formed from the fountain of Harod, " and I will purify them for thee there (^D-f, separate those appointed for the battle from the rest of the army; the singular suffix refers to ^^J), and say to thee, This shall go with thee, and that" i.e. show thee each individual who is to go with thee to the battle, and who not. — Vers. 5, 6. Gideon was to divide the people by putting all those who should lick the water with their tongue as a dog licketh into one class, and all those who knelt down to drink into another, and so separating the latter from the former. The number of those who licked the water into their mouth with their hand amounted to 300, and all the rest knelt down to drink. " To lick with their hand to their mouth" i.e. to take the water from the brook with the hollow of their hand, and lap it into the mouth with their tongue as a dog does, is only a more distinct expression for " licking with the tongue." The 300 men who quenched their thirst in this manner were certainly not the cowardly or indolent who did not kneel down to drink in the ordinary way, either from indolence or fear, as Josephus, Theodoret, and others supposed, but rather the bravest, — namely those who, when they reached a brook before the battle, did not allow themselves time to kneel down and satisfy their thirst in the most convenient manner, but simply took up some water with their hands as they stood in their military accoutrements, to strengthen themselves for the battle, and then proceeded without delay against the foe. By such a sign as this, Bertheau supposes that even an ordinary general might have been able to recognise the bravest of his army. No doubt: but if this account had not been handed down, it is certain that it would never have occurred to an ordinary or even a distinguished general to adopt such a method of putting the bravery of his troops to the test; and even Gideon^ the hero of God, would never have thought of diminishing still further through such a trial an army which had already become so small, or of attempting to defeat an army of more than 100,000 men by a few hundred of the bravest men, if the Lord himself had not commanded it.

Whilst the Lord was willing to strengthen the feeble faith of Gideon by the sign with the fleece of wool, and thus to raise him up to full confidence in the divine omnipotence, He also required of him, when thus strengthened, an attestation of his faith, by the purification of his army, that he might give the whole glory to Him, and accept the victory over that great multitude from His hand alone. — Ver. 7. After his fighting men had been divided into a small handful of 300 men on the one hand, and the large host of 9700 on the other, by the fulfilment of the command of God, the Lord required of him that he should send away the latter, " every man to his place," i.e. to his own home, promising that He would save Israel by the 300 men, and deliver the Midianites into their hand. The promise preceded the command, to render it easier to Gideon to obey it. " A 11 the people" after taking out the 300 men, that is to say, the 9700 that remained. — Ver. 8. " So they (the 300 picked men) took the provision of the people in their hand, and their (the people's) trumpets (the suffix points back to DJH, the people); and all the men of Israel (the 9700) he had sent away every one to his tents, i.e. to his home (see at Deut. xvi. 7), and the three hundred men he had kept by himself; but the camp of the Midianites was below to him in the valley" These words bring the preparations for the battle to a close, and the last clause introduces the ensuing conflict and victory. In the first clause D^n (the people) cannot be the subject, partly because of the actual sense, since the 300 warriors, who are no doubt the persons intended (cf. ver. 16), cannot be called " the people," in distinction from " all the men of Israel," and partly also because of the expression rnv~riN? which would be construed in that case without any article in violation of the ordinary rule. We must rather read D^n rmTiK, as the LXX. and the Chaldee have done. The 300 men took the provision of the people, i.e. provision for the war, from the people who had been sent awray, and the war-trumpets; so that every one of the 300 had a trumpet now, and as the provision of the people was also probably kept in vessels or pitchers (caddim: ver. 16), a jug as well. The subject to *nj^ is to be taken from the first clause of the seventh Terse. The sentences which follow from £»K~?3 DN1 are circumstantial clauses, introduced to bring out distinctly the situation in which Gideon was now placed. 3 P7J!I?> the opposite of fw? to send away, signifies to hold fast, to keep back or by himself, as in Ex. ix. 2. ii>, to him, Gideon, who was standing by the fountain of Harod with his 300 men, the situation of Midian was underneath in the valley (see ver. 1, and chap. vi. 33).

Vers. 9-22. Gideon's Battle and Victoky. — Vers. 9-1 la. The following night the Lord commanded Gideon to go down to the camp of the enemy, as He had given it into his hand (the perfect is used to denote the purpose of God which had already been formed, as in chap. iv. 14). But in order to fill him with confidence for such an enterprise, which to all human appearance was a very rash one, God added, u If thou art afraid to go down, go thou with thine attendant Purah dovm to the camp, and thou wilt hear what they say, and thy hands will thereby become strong" The meaning of the protasis is not, If thou art afraid to go down into the camp of the enemy alone, or to visit the enemy unarmed, take Purah thine armour-bearer with thee, to make sure that thou hast weapons to use (Bertheau); for, apart from the fact that the addition " unarmed" is perfectly arbitrary, the apodosis a thou wilt see," etc., by no means agrees with this explanation. The meaning is rather this: Go with thy 300 men into (3) the hostile camp to smite it, for I have given it into thy hand; but if thou art afraid to do this, go down with thine attendant to (?N) the camp, to ascertain the state and feeling of the foe, and thou wilt hear what they say, i.e., as we gather from what follows, how they are discouraged, have lost all hope of defeating you, and from that thou wilt gather courage and strength for the battle. On the expression " thine hands shall be strengthened," see 2 Sam. ii. 7. The expression which follows, nanea pTCI? is not a mere repetition of the command to go down with his attendant to the hostile camp, but describes the result of the stimulus given to his courage: And then thou wilt go fearlessly into the hostile camp to attack the foe. nansa T^ (vers. 9, 11) is to be distinguished from n:inBn"?K TV in ver. 10. The former signifies to go down into the camp to smite the foe; the latter, to go down to the camp to reconnoitre it, and is equivalent to the following clause: " he went to the outside of the camp." — Vers. 116-14. But when Gideon came with his attendant to the end of the armed men (chamushim, as in Josh. i. 14, Ex. xiii. 18) in the hostile camp, and the enemy were lying spread out with their camels in the valley, an innumerable multitude, he heard one (of the fighting men) relate to his fellow {i.e. to another) a dream which he had had: " Behold a cake of barley bread was rolling into the camp of Midian, and it came to the tent and smote it, so that it fell and turned upwards, and the tent lay along." Then the other replied, (i This is nothing else than the sword of Gideon the son of Joash the Israelite: God hath given Midian and all the camp into his hand." " The end of fighting men" signifies the outermost or foremost of the outposts in the enemy's camp, which contained not only fighting men, but the whole of the baggage of the enemy, who had invaded the land as nomads, with their wives, their children, and their flocks. In ver. 12, the innumerable multitude of the enemy is described once more in the form of a circumstantial clause, as in chap. vi. 5, not so much to distinguish the fighting men from the camp generally, as to bring out more vividly the contents and meaning of the following dream. The comparison of the enemy to the sand by the sea-side recalls Josh. xi. 4, and is frequently met with (see Gen. xxii. 17, xxxii. 13; 1 Sam. xiii. 5). With the word K3p in ver. 13, the thread of the narrative, which was broken off by the circumstantial clause in ver. 12, is resumed and carried further. The air. \ey.?v¥ (Keri,?yV) is rendered cake, placenta, by the early translators: see Ges. Thes. p. 1170. The derivation of the word has been disputed, and is by no means certain, as??¥ does not give any suitable meaning, either in the sense of to ring or to be overshadowed, and the meaning to roll {Ges. I.e.) cannot be philologically sustained; whilst n?¥, to roast, can hardly be thought of, since this is merely used to denote the roasting of flesh, and H7[5 was the word commonly applied to the roasting of grains, and even " the roasted of barley bread" would hardly be equivalent to subcinericeus panis ex hordeo (Vulgate). " The tent" with the definite article, is probably the principal tent in the camp, i.e. the tent of the general. ^V*??, upwards, so that the bottom came to the top. " The tent lay along" or the tent fell, lay in ruins, is added to give emphasis to the words. " This is nothing if not" i.e. nothing but. The cake of bread which had rolled into the Midianitish camp and overturned the tent, signifies nothing else than the sword of Gideon, i.e. Gideon, who is bursting into the camp with his sword, and utterly destroying it.

This interpretation of the dream was certainly a natural one under the circumstances. Gideon is especially mentioned simply as the leader of the Israelites; whilst the loaf of barley bread, which was the food of the poorer classes, is to be regarded as strictly speaking the symbol of Israel, which was so despised among the nations. The rising of the Israelites under Gideon had not remained a secret to the Midianites, and no doubt filled them with fear; so that in a dream this fear might easily assume the form of the defeat or desolation and destruction of their camp by Gideon. And the peculiar form of the dream is also psychologically conceivable. As the tent is everything to a nomad, he might very naturally picture the cultivator of the soil as a man whose life is all spent in cultivating and baking bread. In this way bread would become almost involuntarily a symbol of the cultivator of the soil, whilst in his own tent he would see a symbol not only of his mode of life, but of his freedom, greatness, and power. If we add to this, that the free pastoral tribes, particularly the Bedouins of Arabia, look down with pride not only upon the poor tillers of the soil, but even upon the inhabitants of towns, and that in Palestine, the land of wheat, none but the poorer classes feed upon barley bread, we have here all the elements out of which the dream of the Midianitish warrior was formed. The Israelites had really been crushed by the Midianites into a poor nation of slaves. But whilst the dream itself admits of being explained in this manner in a perfectly natural way, it acquires the higher supernatural character of a divine inspiration, from the fact that God not only foreknew it, but really caused the Midianite to dream, and to relate the dream to his comrade, just at the time when Gideon had secretly entered the camp, so that he should hear it, and discover therefrom, as God had foretold him, the despondency of the foe. Under these circumstances, Gideon could not fail to regard the dream as a divine inspiration, and to draw the assurance from it, that God had certainly given the Midianites into his hands. — Vers. 15-18. When therefore he had heard the dream related and interpreted, he worshipped, praising the Lord with joy, and returned to the camp to attack the enemy without delay. He then divided the 300 men into three companies, i.e. three attacking columns, and gave them all trumpets and empty pitchers, with torches in the pitchers in their hands. The pitchers were taken that they might hide the burning torches in them during their advance to surround the enemy's camp, and then increase the noise at the time of the attack, by dashing the pitchers to pieces (ver. 20), and thus through the noise, as well as the sudden lighting up of the burning torches, deceive the enemy as to the strength of the army. At the same time he commanded them, " See from me, and do likewise" — a short expression for, As ye see me do, so do ye also (|3, without the previous 3, or it?*N3, as in chap. v. 15; see Ewald, § 260, a.), — " I blow the trumpet, I and all who are with me; ye also blow the trumpets round about the entire camp" which the 300 men divided into three companies were to surround, " and say, To the Lord and Gideon." According to ver. 20, this war-cry ran fully thus: " Sword to (for) the Lord and Gideon" This addition in ver. 20, however, does not warrant us in inserting " chereb" (sword) in the text here, as some of the early translators and mss. have done.1 — Ver. 19. Gideon then proceeded with the 100 who were with him, i.e. the company which was led by himself personally, to the end of the hostile camp, at the beginning of the middle watch, i.e. at midnight. Wth is an accusative defining the time: see Ges. § 118, 2, and Ewald, § 204, a. The only other watch that is mentioned in the Old Testament beside the middle night-watch, is the morning night-watch (Ex. xiv. 24; 1 Sam. xi. 11), from which it has been correctly inferred, that the Israelites divided the night into three night-watches. The division into four watches (Matt. xiv. 25; Mark vi. 48) was first adopted by the Jews from the Romans. u They (the Midianites) had only (just) posted the watchmen (of the middle watch)," — a circumstantial clause, introduced to give greater distinctness to the situation. When the first sentries were relieved, and the second posted, so that they thought they might make quite sure of their night's rest once more, Gideon and his host arrived at the end of the camp, and, as we must supply from the context, the other two hosts at two other ends of the camp, who all blew their trumpets, breaking the pitchers in their hands at the same time. The inf. abs. }^M, as a continuation of the finite verb WplV, indicates that the fact was contemporaneous with the previous one (see Ewald, § 351, c). — Ver. 20. According to the command which they had received (ver. 17), the other two tribes followed his example. " Then the three companies

1 Similar stratagems to the one adopted by Gideon here are recorded by Polyaenus (Strateg. ii. c. 37) of Dicetas, at the taking of Heraea, and by Plutarch (Fabius Max. c. 6) of Hannibal, when he was surrounded and completely shut in by Fabius Maximus. An example from modern history is given by Niebuhr (Beschr. von Arabien, p. 304). About the middle of the eighteenth century two Arabian chiefs were fighting for the Imamate of Oman. One of them, Bel- Arab, besieged the other, Achmed ben Said, with four or five thousand men, in a small castle on the mountain. But the latter slipped out of the castle, collected together several hundred men, gave every soldier a sign upon his head, that they might be able to distinguish friends from foes, and sent small companies to all the passes. Every one had a trumpet to blow at a given signal, and thus create a noise at the same time on every side. The whole of the opposing army was thrown in this way into disorder, since they found all the passes occupied, and imagined the hostile army to be as great as the noise.

blew the trumpets, broke the pitchers, and held the torches in their left Jiands, and the trumpets in their right to blow, and cried, Sword to the Lord and Gideon! And they stood every one in his place round about the camp," sc. without moving, so that the Midianites necessarily thought that there must be a numerous army advancing behind the torch-bearers. 'tfl yv\y " and the whole army ran," i.e. there began a running hither and thither in the camp of the enemy, who had been frightened out of their night's rest by the unexpected blast of the trumpets, the noise, and the war-cry of the Israelitish warriors; u and they (the enemy) lifted up a cry (of anguish and alarm), and caused to fly" (carried off), sc. their tents (i.e. their families) and their herds, or all their possessions (cf. chap. vi. 11, Ex. ix. 20). The Chethibh *D*J* is the original reading, and the Keri *DttJ a bad emendation. — Ver. 22. Whilst the 300 men blew their trumpets, " Jehovah set the sword of one against the other, and against the whole camp," i.e. caused one to turn his sword against the other and against all the camp, that is to say, not merely man against man, but against every one in the camp, so that there arose a terrible slaughter throughout the whole camp. The first clause, " and the three hundred blew the trumpets" simply resumes the statement in ver. 20, " the three companies blew the trumpets," for the purpose of appending to it the further progress of the attack, and the result of the battle. Bertheau inserts in a very arbitrary manner the words, " the second time." His explanation of the next clause (" then the 300 fighting men of Gideon drew the sword at Jehovah's command, every man against his man") is still more erroneous, since it does violence to the constant usage of the expression *njro K^K (see 1 Sam xiv. 20, 2 Chron. xx. 23, Isa. iii. 5, Zech. viii. 10). " And all the camp of the Midianites fled to Bethshittah to Zeredah, to the shore of Abel-meholah, over Tabbath." The situation of these places, which are only mentioned here, with the exception of Abel-meholah, the home of Elisha (1 Kings xix. 16, iv. 12), has not yet been determined. According to the Syriac, the Arabic, and some of the MSS., we should read Zeredatliah instead of Zererathah, and Zeredathah is only another form for Zarthan (comp. 1 Kings vii. 46 with 2 Chron. iv. 17). This is favoured by the situation of Zarthan in the valley of the Jordan, probably near the modern Kurn Sartabeh (see p. 46), inasmuch as in all probability Beth-shittah and Abel-meholah are to be sought for in the valley of the Jordan; and according to ver. 24, the enemy fled to the Jordan. Beth-shittah, i.e. acacia-house, is not the same place as the village of Shutta mentioned by Robinson (iii. p. 219), since this village, according to Van de Veldes map, was to the north of Gilboa. For although Shutta is favoured by the circumstance, (hat from a very ancient time there was a road running from Jezreel along the valley, between the so-called Little Hermon (Duhy) and the mountains of Gilboa, and past Beisan to the Jordan; and the valley of Jalud, on the northern side of which Shutta was situated, may be regarded as the opening of the plain of Jezreel into the valley of the Jordan (see v. Raumer, Pal. p. 41, and Rob. iii. p. 17b*); and v. Raumer conjectures from this, that " the flight of the Midianites was apparently directed to Eethsean, on account of the nature of the ground," — this assumption is rendered very questionable by the fact that the flying foe did not cross the Jordan in the neighbourhood of Beisan, but much farther to the south, viz., according to chap. viii. 4, in the neighbourhood of Succoth, which was on the south side of the Nahr Zerka (Jabbok). From this we are led to conjecture, that they were not encamped in the north-eastern part of the plain of Jezreel, in the neighbourhood of Jezreel (Zerin) and Shunem (Solam), but in the south-eastern part of this plain, and that after they had been beaten there they fled southwards from Gilboa, say from the district of Gincea (Jenin) to the Jordan. In this case we have to seek for Abel-shittah on the south-east of the mountains of Gilboa, to the north of Zeredathah (Zarthan). From this point they fled on still farther to the " shore of Abel-meholah." HD^ does not mean boundary, but brink; here the bank of the Jordan, like pwi rw in 2 Kings ii. 13. The bank or strand of Abel-meholah is that portion of the western bank of the Jordan or of the Ghor, above which Abel-meholah was situated. According to the Onom. (s. v. 'A/3e\fiae\al, Abelmaula), this place was in the Aulon (or Ghor), ten Roman miles to the south of Scythopolis (Beisan), and was called at that time Bt)0 [iatekd or Bethaula. According to this statement, Abel-meholah would have to be sought for near Churbet es Shuk, in the neighbourhood of the Wady Maleh (see V. de Velde, Mem. p. 280). And lastly, Tabbath must have been situated somewhere to the south of Abel-meholah.

Yer. 23-chap. viii. 3. Pursuit of the Enemy as far as the Jordan, — Ver. 23. As soon as the Midianites had been put to flight, the Israel itish men of Naphtali, Asher, and Manasseh, let themselves be convened for the purpose of pursuing them: i.e. the men of these tribes, whom Gideon had sent away before the battle, and who were on their way home, could be summoned back again in a very short time to join in the pursuit of the flying foe. The omission of Zebulun (chap. vi. 35) is, in all probability, simply to be attributed to the brevity of the account. — Vers. 24, 25. In order to cut off the retreat of the enemy who was flying to the Jordan, Gideon sent messengers into the whole of the mountains of Ephraim with this appeal to the Ephraimites, u Come down (from your mountains into the lowlands of the Jordan) to meet Midian, and take the waters from them to Bethbarah and the Jordan" sc. by taking possession of this district (see chap. iii. 28). " 77te waters" mentioned before the Jordan and distinguished from it, must have been streams across winch the flying foe would have to cross to reach the Jordan, namely, the different brooks and rivers, such as Wady Maleh, Fyadh, Jamel, Tubas, etc., which flowed down from the eastern side of the mountains of Ephraim into the Jordan, and ran through the Ghor to Bethbarah. The situation of Bethbarah is unknown. Even Eusebius could say nothing definite concerning the place; and the conjecture that it is the same as Bethabara, which has been regarded ever since the time of Origen as the place mentioned in John i. 28 where John baptized, throws no light upon the subject, as the situation of Bethabara is also unknown, to say nothing of the fact that the identity of the two names is very questionable. The Ephraimites responded to this appeal and took possession of the waters mentioned, before the Midianites, who could only move slowly with their flocks and herds, were able to reach the Jordan. They then captured two of the princes of the Midianites and put them to death: one of them, Oreb, i.e. the raven, at the rock Oreb; the other, Zeeb, i.e. the wolf, at the winepress of Zeeb. Nothing further is known about these two places. The rock of Oreb is only mentioned again in Isa. x. 2Q, when the prophet alludes to this celebrated victory. So much, however, is evident from the verse before us, viz. that the Midianites were beaten by the Ephraimites at both places, and that the two princes fell there, and the places received their names from that circumstance. They were not situated in the land to the east of the Jordan, as Gesenius (on Isa. x. 26), Rosenmuller, and others infer from the fact that the Ephraimites brought the heads of Oreb and Zeeb to Gideon |T]v 13PD (ver. 25), but on the western side of the Jordan, where the Ephraimites had taken possession of the waters and the Jordan in front of the Midianites. Y}?y_ "^yp does not mean " from the other side of the Jordan," but simply " on the other side of (beyond) the Jordan" as in Josh. xiii. 32, xviii. 7, 1

Kings xiv. 15; and the statement here is not that the Ephraimites brought the heads from the other side to Gideon on the west of the river, but that they brought them to Gideon when he was in the land to the east of the Jordan. This explanation of the words is required by the context, as well as by the foregoing remark, u they pursued Midian," according to which the Ephraimites continued the pursuit of the Midianites after slaying these princes, and also by the complaint brought against Gideon by the Ephraimites, which is not mentioned till afterwards (chap. viii. 1 sqq.), that he had not summoned them to the war. It is true, this is given before the account of Gideon's crossing over the Jordan (chap. viii. 4), but in order of time it did not take place till afterwards, and, as Bertheau has correctly shown, the historical sequence is somewhat anticipated.

Chap. viii. 1-3. When the Ephraimites met with Gideon, after they had smitten the Midianites at Oreb and Zeeb, and were pursuing them farther, they said to him, " What is the thing that thou hast done to us (i.e. what is the reason for your having done this to us), not to call us when thou wentest forth to make war upon Midian? And they did chide with him sharply" less from any dissatisfied longing for booty, than from injured pride or jealousy, because Gideon had made war upon the enemy and defeated them without the co-operation of this tribe, which was striving for the leadership. Gideon's reply especially suggests the idea of injured ambition: " What have I now done like youVy i.e. as if I had done as great things as you. " Is not the gleaning of Ephraim better titan the vintage of AbiezerV The gleaning of Ephraim is the victory gained over the flying Midianites. Gideon declares this to be better than the vintage of Abiezer, i.e. the victory obtained by him the Abiezrite with his 300 men, because the Ephraimites had slain two Midianitish princes. The victory gained by the Ephraimites must indeed have been a very important one, as it is mentioned by Isaiah (x. 26) as a great blow of the Lord upon Midian. a And what could I do like you? " i.e. could I accomplish such great deeds as you. 1 " Then their anger turned away from him? HV), the breathing of the nose, snorting, hence " anger" as in Isa. xxv. 4, etc.

Pursuit of the Midianites. Other Acts of Gideon; his Appointment as Judge. — Chap. viii. 4-35.

Vers. 4-12. Pursuit and complete Overthrow of the Midianites. — That the Midianites whom God had delivered into his hand might be utterly destroyed, Gideon pursued those who had escaped across the Jordan, till he overtook them on the eastern boundary of Gilead and smote them there. — Vers. 4, 5. When he came to the Jordan with his three hundred men, who were exhausted with the pursuit, he asked the inhabitants of Succoth for loaves of bread for the people in his train. So far as the construction is concerned, the words from "H'y to D^EnHl form a circumstantial clause inserted as a parenthesis into the principal sentence, and subordinate to it: " When Gideon came to the Jordan, passing over he and the three hundred men... then he said to the men of Succoth.91 "Exhausted and pursuing" i.e. exhausted with pursuing. The vav is explanatory, lit. " and indeed pursuing," for " because he pursued." The rendering Treiv&vres adopted by the LXX. in the Cod. Alex, is merely an arbitrary rendering of the word 0^1% and without any critical worth. Gideon had crossed the Jordan, therefore, somewhere in the neighbourhood of Succoth. Succoth was upon the eastern side of the valley of the Jordan (Josh. xiii. 27), not opposite to Bethshean, but, according to Gen. xxxiii. 17, on the south side of the Jabbok (Zerka). — Ver. 6. The princes of Succoth, however, showed so little sympathy and nationality of feeling, that instead of taking part in the attack upon the enemies of Israel, they even refused to supply bread to refresh their brethren of the western tribes who were exhausted with the pursuit of the foe. They said (the sing, *T?NS} may be explained on the ground that one spoke in the name of all: see Ewald, § 319, a.), " Is the fist of Zebah and Zalmunna already in thy hand (power), that we should give thine army bread?" In these words there is not only an expression of cowardice, or fear of the vengeance which the Midianites might take when they returned upon those who had supported Gideon and his host, but contempt of the small force which Gideon had, as if it were impossible for him to accomplish anything at all against the foe; and in this contempt they manifested their utter want of confidence in God. — Ver. 7. Gideon threatened them, therefore, with severe chastisement in the event of a victorious return. " If Jehovah give Zebah and Zalmunna into my hand, I will thresh your flesh (your body) with desert thorns and thistles." The verb E*n, constructed with a double accusative (see Ewald, § 283, a.), is used in a figurative sense: " to thresh," in other words, to punish severely. "Thorns of the desert" are strong thorns, as the desert is the natural soil for thorn-bushes. The air. \ey. 0^P")3 also signifies prickly plants, according to the early versions and the Rabbins, probably " such as grow upon stony ground " (Bertheau). The explanation " threshing machines with stones or flints underneath them," which was suggested by J. D. Michaelis and Celsius, and adopted by Gesenius, cannot be sustained. — Vers. 8, 9. The inhabitants of Pnuel on the north bank of the Jabbok (see at Gen. xxxii. 24 sqq.) behaved in the same churlish manner to Gideon, and for this he also threatened them: " If I return in peace " i.e. unhurt, u I will destroy this tower" (probably the castle of Pnuel). — Vers. 10-12. The Midianitish kings were at Karkor with all the remnant of their army, about fifteen thousand men, a hundred and twenty thousand having already fallen. Gideon followed them thither by the road of the dwellers in tents on the east of Nobah and Jogbeha; and falling upon them unawares, smote the whole camp, which thought itself quite secure, and took the two kings prisoners, after discomfiting all the camp. The situation of Karkor, wljich is only mentioned here, cannot be determined with certainty. The statement of Eusebius and Jerome (Onom. s. v. Kap/ca, Carcar), that it was the castle of Carcaria, a day's journey from Petra, is decidedly wrong, since this castle is much too far to the south, as Gesenius (Thes. p. 1210) has shown. Karkor cannot have been very far from Nobah and Jogbeha. These two places are probably preserved in the ruins of Nowakis and Jebeiha, on the north-west of Amman (Rabbath-ammon; see at Num. xxi. 31). Now, as Burckhardt (Syr. p. 612) also mentions a ruin in the neighbourhood, called Karkagheisch, on the left of the road from Szalt to Amman, and at the most an hour and a half to the north-west of Amman, Knobel (on Num. xxxii. 42) is inclined to regard this ruin as Karkor. If this supposition could be proved to be correct, Gideon would have fallen upon the camp of the enemy from the north-east. For " the way of the dwellers in tents on the east of Nobah and Jogbeha " cannot well be any other than the way which ran to the east of Nobah and Jogbeha, past the most easterly frontier city of the Gadites, to the nomads who dwelt in the desert. DvHNn W$n has the article attached to the governing noun, which may easily be explained in this instance from the intervening preposition. The passive participle p£K> has an intransitive force (see Kwald, § 149, a.). The verb *l^nn in the circumstantial clause acquires the force of the pluperfect from the context. When he had startled the camp out of its security, having alarmed it by his unexpected attack, he succeeded in taking the two kings prisoners.