Judges7chapter 7

Judges 7:1-3

The name Jerubbaal was given at 6:32, after Gideon pulled down his father's altar, and it carries the sense of let Baal plead against him. The man who leads Israel against Midian goes into the field under a name that argues with Baal. Harod means trembling, and the well is named for what happens three verses later when twenty and two thousand men go home afraid. The proclamation at verse 3 is Deuteronomy 20:8 being carried out, where the law told the officers to send the fearful home before a battle.

Judges 7:4-6

Verse 2 has already given the reason for both tests, that the people are too many for me to give the Midianites into their hands, so the cutting down is the work rather than an obstacle to it. The text records what the men did at the water and never says what it distinguished. Albert Barnes reads the lappers as the watchful men who kept their eyes on the enemy while they drank, John Gill says plainly that it is hard to tell whether the action showed weakness or courage, and a third reading takes it as a means of separating out a number with no judgment on the men at all. Where the text gives no reason, none is supplied here.

Judges 7:7-8

Thirty and two thousand is what verse 3 implies when twenty and two thousand leave and ten thousand remain, and three hundred is under one man in a hundred of what Gideon started with. What the three hundred keep is food and trumpets, and the trumpets are handed out here, eight verses before any reader learns what they are for. Verse 8 closes by putting the host of Midian beneath him in the valley, which is where verse 1 put them, so the ground has not moved and only the army has.

Judges 7:9-11

The condition in verse 10 is put to Gideon before he says anything, but if thou fear to go down, so the strengthening is offered rather than requested. In chapter 6 he had asked for confirmation three times, at the meal that burned up at 6:21 and the fleece wet and then dry at 6:37 and 6:39, and here a fourth comes without his asking. Verse 3 had sent the fearful home, and the man left in command is met at the point of the same fear instead of being dismissed for it. Phurah appears in these two verses and nowhere else in Scripture.

Judges 7:12-14

The figure is turned around from Numbers 13:33, where the spies said that in their own sight they were as grasshoppers before the giants, and here it is the enemy who fills the valley like grasshoppers. Barley was the poor man's grain and the food of beasts, and 6:11 had Gideon threshing wheat inside a winepress to hide it from these same raiders, so the cake in the dream is the cheapest thing a stripped country could bake. The comfort Gideon is sent down to hear is spoken by a Midianite, who names Gideon and says that God delivered Midian into his hand, so the outcome is stated in the enemy camp before Israel says it.

Judges 7:15-16

Gideon worships inside the enemy's lines on the strength of a stranger's dream, and it is the first worship recorded of him since he built the altar at 6:24. Each man carries a trumpet, an empty pitcher and a lamp burning inside the pitcher, which fills both hands, and the three hundred draw no sword anywhere in the chapter. Matthew Henry sets the breaking of the pitchers beside the treasure in earthen vessels of 2 Corinthians 4:7, and that is his reading rather than a link the New Testament makes.

Judges 7:17-18

The whole plan is imitation, look on me and do likewise, and there is no signal in it beyond watching the man in front. The Midianite in verse 14 had called it the sword of Gideon, and the cry Gideon gives his men puts another name in front of his own, the sword of the Lord, and of Gideon. Verse 2 had said the army was cut down lest Israel say mine own hand hath saved me, and the shout still carries a man's name while naming God first.

Judges 7:19-21

the beginning of the middle: The middle watch begins near midnight and the sentries had only just been posted, so the men on duty were the least settled and the camp behind them was asleep. Israel divided the night into three watches, which is why Exodus 14:24 can speak of the morning watch as a fixed part of the night. The three hundred break their pitchers and then do nothing further, and verse 21 says they stood every man in his place while the host ran and cried and fled, which is the posture Moses called for at Exodus 14:13.

Judges 7:22-23

The only sword work in the chapter is Midian's own, and the same thing is recorded at 1 Samuel 14:20 when the Philistine host turns on itself and at 2 Chronicles 20:23 when Ammon and Moab destroy each other. The tribes named in verse 23 are Naphtali, Asher and Manasseh, three of the four Gideon had summoned at 6:35, so the men sent home in verses 3 and 7 come back for the pursuit. The battle is won by three hundred and the chase is worked by the nation.

Judges 7:24-25

Ephraim is called after the fighting rather than before it, and 8:1 opens with that tribe complaining about exactly this. Holding the waters and the fords of Jordan shuts the escape route, which is the tactic Ehud used at 3:28. Oreb means raven and Zeeb means wolf, and the rock and the winepress carry their names afterward from what happened at them. Isaiah 10:26 reaches back to this day at the rock of Oreb, and Psalm 83:11 names both princes in a prayer asking God to do it again.