Judges 7: What the Passage Says

The Chapter in a Sentence

Gideon and his men camp near the spring of Harod, facing the Midianite camp in the valley. The LORD tells Gideon his army is too large, so the fearful are sent home and the rest are sifted at the water until only three hundred men remain. That night Gideon overhears a Midianite tell a dream about a barley loaf and hears it read as Gideon's victory, so he divides his men into three companies with horns, jars, and torches. When they blow the horns and smash the jars at night, the Midianite army panics, the LORD turns every man's sword against his fellow, and they flee; Israelites from several tribes join the pursuit, and Ephraim captures and kills the Midianite leaders Oreb and Zeeb.

Claim by Claim

1. 7:1
   • Jerubbaal, who is Gideon, rose up early, along with all the people who were with him.
   • Jerubbaal is Gideon.
   • They camped beside the spring of Harod.
   • The camp of Midian was to the north of them.
   • The camp of Midian was by the hill of Moreh, in the valley.
2. 7:2
   • The LORD spoke to Gideon.
   • The LORD said the people with Gideon were too many for him to give Midian into their hand.
   • The LORD said the reason was that Israel might otherwise boast against him.
   • The LORD said Israel would say, 'My own hand has saved me.'
3. 7:3
   • The LORD told Gideon to proclaim in the ears of the people.
   • The proclamation was that whoever is fearful and trembling should turn back and depart from Mount Gilead.
   • Twenty-two thousand of the people turned back.
   • Ten thousand remained.
4. 7:4
   • The LORD spoke to Gideon again.
   • The LORD said the people were still too many.
   • The LORD told Gideon to bring them down to the water.
   • The LORD said he would test and sift them for Gideon there.
   • The LORD said that whoever he named as one who should go with Gideon would go with him.
   • The LORD said that whoever he named as one who should not go with Gideon would not go.
5. 7:5
   • Gideon brought the people down to the water.
   • The LORD spoke to Gideon.
   • The LORD said that everyone who laps the water with his tongue, as a dog laps, Gideon should set apart by himself.
   • The LORD likewise named everyone who kneels down on his knees to drink.
6. 7:6
   • The number of those who lapped, putting their hand to their mouth, was three hundred men.
   • All the rest of the people knelt down on their knees to drink water.
7. 7:7
   • The LORD spoke to Gideon.
   • The LORD said he would save them by the three hundred men who lapped.
   • The LORD said he would deliver Midian into Gideon's hand.
   • The LORD said all the other people should go, each man to his own place.
8. 7:8
   • The people took provisions in their hand.
   • The people took their ram's horn trumpets.
   • Gideon sent all the rest of Israel away, each man to his tent.
   • Gideon retained the three hundred men.
   • The camp of Midian was below him in the valley.
9. 7:9
   • That same night the LORD spoke to Gideon.
   • The LORD told Gideon to arise and go down against the camp.
   • The LORD said he had given the camp into Gideon's hand.
10. 7:10
    • The LORD said that if Gideon was afraid to go down, he should go down to the camp with Purah his servant.
11. 7:11
    • The LORD said Gideon would hear what they were saying.
    • The LORD said that afterward Gideon's hands would be strengthened to go down against the camp.
    • Gideon went down with Purah his servant.
    • They went to the edge of the armed men who were in the camp.
12. 7:12
    • Midian, Amalek, and all the people of the east were lying in the valley.
    • They were as numerous as locusts.
    • Their camels were without number.
    • Their camels were as many as the sand on the seashore.
13. 7:13
    • Gideon arrived.
    • A man was telling a dream to his companion.
    • The man said he had dreamed a dream.
    • In the dream a round loaf of barley bread came tumbling into the camp of Midian.
    • The loaf came to a tent.
    • The loaf struck the tent so that it fell.
    • The loaf overturned the tent.
    • The tent fell flat.
14. 7:14
    • The man's companion answered him.
    • The companion said this was nothing other than the sword of Gideon son of Joash, a man of Israel.
    • The companion said God had given Midian and all the camp into Gideon's hand.
15. 7:15
    • Gideon heard the telling of the dream and its interpretation.
    • Gideon bowed down in worship.
    • Gideon returned to the camp of Israel.
    • Gideon told them to arise.
    • Gideon said the LORD had given the camp of Midian into their hand.
16. 7:16
    • Gideon divided the three hundred men into three companies.
    • Gideon put a ram's horn trumpet in the hand of every man.
    • Gideon gave them empty jars.
    • There were torches inside the jars.
17. 7:17
    • Gideon spoke to them.
    • Gideon told them to watch him and do the same.
    • Gideon said he would come to the edge of the camp.
    • Gideon said that as he did, so they should do.
18. 7:18
    • Gideon said he and all who were with him would blow the ram's horn trumpet.
    • Gideon said they too should then blow their trumpets all around the whole camp.
    • Gideon said they should shout, 'For the LORD and for Gideon.'
19. 7:19
    • Gideon and the hundred men with him came to the edge of the camp.
    • They came at the beginning of the middle watch.
    • The guards had just been posted.
    • They blew the trumpets.
    • They smashed the jars that were in their hands.
20. 7:20
    • The three companies blew the trumpets.
    • They broke the jars.
    • They held the torches in their left hands.
    • They held the trumpets in their right hands to blow.
    • They cried out, 'The sword of the LORD and of Gideon.'
21. 7:21
    • Each man stood in his place around the camp.
    • The whole camp ran.
    • They cried out.
    • They fled.
22. 7:22
    • The three hundred blew the trumpets.
    • The LORD set every man's sword against his companion throughout all the camp.
    • The camp fled to Beth-shittah toward Zererah.
    • The camp fled as far as the border of Abel-meholah, by Tabbath.
23. 7:23
    • The men of Israel were called out from Naphtali, from Asher, and from all Manasseh.
    • They pursued after Midian.
24. 7:24
    • Gideon sent messengers throughout all the hill country of Ephraim.
    • The message told them to come down against Midian.
    • The message told them to seize the waters ahead of Midian as far as Beth-barah, and the Jordan.
    • All the men of Ephraim were called out.
    • They seized the waters as far as Beth-barah, and the Jordan.
25. 7:25
    • They captured two princes of Midian, Oreb and Zeeb.
    • They killed Oreb at the rock of Oreb.
    • They killed Zeeb at the winepress of Zeeb.
    • They pursued Midian.
    • They brought the heads of Oreb and Zeeb to Gideon on the other side of the Jordan.

Words Worth Explaining

Every language note in this chapter, gathered. These explain what a word meant, never what it means for the reader.

7:1

"Jerubbaal" is a second name given to Gideon earlier in the story (Judges 6:32). It was explained there as meaning something like "let Baal contend against him," after Gideon tore down an altar of the god Baal. The narrator uses both names for the same man. "Harod" comes from a Hebrew root meaning trembling or shaking, the same word used two verses later of the frightened soldiers who are sent home. The spring and the hill of Moreh lie in the broad Jezreel valley in northern Israel.

7:2

"Vaunt themselves" in the King James means boast or swagger. The concern in the verse is about who gets the credit for the victory, not about the size of the army as a military problem.

7:3

Mount Gilead is puzzling here: Gilead is normally the highland region east of the Jordan River, while this battle is being fought west of it. Some take it as the name of a local hill not otherwise recorded, some as a scribal slip; the Hebrew is simply what it is, and the difficulty is left standing. The Hebrew for "afraid and shaking" echoes the name of the spring of Harod in verse 1.

7:4

"I will try them" means "I will test them" or "sift them." The old sense of "try" is to put something to the test, the way you try metal to see if it is pure.

7:5

The Hebrew of this verse is compressed and difficult, and the two ancient groups are hard to distinguish precisely. More importantly, the story never says why one way of drinking was better than the other, or which group was the better soldiers. The test is simply a way of cutting the number down; no reason is given.

7:8

The "trumpets" are shofars, rams' horns. They were signaling instruments, not musical ones: a horn blast summoned troops, gave orders in battle, or raised an alarm. A single horn normally stood for a whole unit of men, which is why three hundred of them blowing at once could sound like a vast army.

7:10

The King James spells the servant's name Phurah and modern translations spell it Purah; it is the same man. The Hebrew letter behind it can be written either way in English.

7:11

"Thine hands be strengthened" is a Hebrew idiom for gaining courage or resolve, not for physical strength. We would say "then you will have the nerve to go through with it."

7:12

The Amalekites were a nomadic people of the southern desert, long-standing enemies of Israel; "the peoples from the east" is a general term for tribes from the desert beyond the Jordan. The King James "grasshoppers" means locusts, not harmless insects but the swarming kind that strip a country's crops bare, which is exactly what these raiders had been doing to Israel's harvests. Camels in this period were the animals of desert raiders, giving them the speed to strike farmland and vanish.

7:13

Barley was the cheap grain, grown by settled farmers and eaten by the poor; wheat was the better bread. A tumbling loaf of the farmers' bread flattening a nomad's tent would have been an obvious picture of Israelite peasants overturning the camel-riding raiders, which is why the second man reads the dream as he does.

7:14

"The sword of Gideon" is a way of saying Gideon and his fighting men, the same way we might say a country's flag when we mean its army.

7:15

"He bowed down and worshiped" translates a Hebrew verb that means physically prostrating oneself, lying face down on the ground. It describes the posture, not a state of mind.

7:16

The jars are large pottery water jars. A burning torch sealed inside one gives off no light, so three hundred men could get into position in the dark unseen; smashing the jars all at once made three hundred fires appear from nowhere. Since each man now held a torch in one hand and a horn in the other, no one had a hand free for a weapon.

7:18

In this verse the Hebrew shout is simply "For the LORD and for Gideon"; in verse 20, when they actually shout it, the word "sword" is there. The slight difference between the two is in the original text and has been kept.

7:19

The night was divided into three watches, each about four hours, with a fresh set of sentries taking over at each change. The middle watch ran roughly from ten at night to two in the morning. Attacking just after the changeover meant the new guards had barely settled and everyone else was deeply asleep.

7:20

With a torch in one hand and a horn in the other, not one of the three hundred had a hand free for a weapon.

7:22

These are places running east and south-east, down the valley toward the Jordan River, the direction of the raiders' escape route home.

7:23

Naphtali, Asher and Manasseh were the Israelite tribes whose territory lay in and around this northern valley; they were the men closest to hand and the ones the raiders had been plundering.

7:24

The Jordan could only be crossed on foot at certain shallow places, called fords. Seizing them ahead of the fleeing army (Ephraim's hill country lay to the south, between the Midianites and the river) meant the raiders arrived at the water with no way over and nowhere to go.

7:25

The names Oreb and Zeeb mean "raven" and "wolf." The rock and the winepress were later named after the men killed there, which is the narrator's way of noting that these places still carried the names in his own day. A winepress was a basin cut into rock where grapes were trodden. Carrying an enemy commander's head back was standard proof that he was genuinely dead. "The other side of the Jordan" here means the eastern side, where Gideon had already crossed in pursuit.