Judges8chapter 8

Judges 8:1-3

Ephraim was called in at 7:24 to hold the waters against the fleeing Midianites, and it took Oreb and Zeeb; the complaint is that the call came late. Gideon answers by setting their gleaning above his whole campaign, the grapes of Ephraim against the vintage of Abiezer, and the anger is abated inside one verse. Judges 12:1 opens with the same tribe bringing the same charge to Jephthah, who answers differently, and forty and two thousand Ephraimites fall at the fords of Jordan. Matthew Henry reads verse 3 against Proverbs 15:1, a soft answer turneth away wrath.

Judges 8:4-6

The three hundred of chapter 7 are still the whole force, and verse 4 gives their condition in three words, faint yet pursuing. Succoth sits east of Jordan, and Genesis 33:17 says Jacob built booths there and gave the place its name, so bread is being asked of a town inside Israel's own story. The princes make their answer conditional on a victory already won, are the hands of Zebah and Zalmunna now in thine hand, which is a refusal to back a man still chasing.

Judges 8:7-9

I will tear your flesh with the thorns: Both threats are carried out later in the same chapter, the thorns and briers at verse 16 and the tower at verse 17, so the text plants them to be collected. Penuel is where Jacob wrestled and was renamed Israel at Genesis 32:30, which makes the two towns that refuse Gideon the two places east of Jordan carrying Jacob's own names. No word from God is recorded over either threat, and the narrative reports the swearing and the doing without approval or blame.

Judges 8:10-12

Zebah and Zalmunna were in Karkor: Karkor lies far east of the Jezreel valley where chapter 7 began, so three hundred exhausted men have crossed Jordan and gone deep into open desert after a broken army. The count is fifteen thousand left of a hundred and twenty thousand that drew sword, the loss already made by the panic of 7:22 when every man's sword was set against his fellow. The host was secure means the camp reckoned itself past pursuit, and the same idea returns at Judges 18:7 and 18:27 of Laish, a people at quiet and secure the day before they are destroyed.

Judges 8:13-14

A young man of Succoth is caught and questioned, and where the King James says he described unto him the princes, the Hebrew verb is the ordinary word for writing. Keil and Delitzsch take it that the young man wrote the seventy seven names down, which would put reading and writing in the hands of an ordinary townsman in the Judges period. Gideon reaches Succoth holding a list of every man who refused him.

Judges 8:15-17

Verse 15 quotes the princes of Succoth back to them word for word out of verse 6, which is how the text marks the reckoning as exact. What verse 7 threatened is done in verse 16, and the King James keeps the Hebrew idiom, he taught the men of Succoth, treating the thorns as instruction. Penuel loses its tower and its men, which is more than verse 9 named, and the text gives no reason for the difference.

Judges 8:18-19

The pursuit is now shown to have had a cause the narrative held back for eighteen verses: these kings had killed Gideon's brothers at Tabor. Their answer, each one resembled the children of a king, describes the family Gideon comes from and sits oddly beside 6:15, where he called his family poor in Manasseh and himself the least in his father's house. Verse 19 says he would have spared them had they spared his brothers, which puts the killing under the office of the avenger of blood in Numbers 35:19 and Deuteronomy 19:12, executed here by a judge on foreign kings.

Judges 8:20-21

Gideon lays the execution on his eldest son, which would have made the boy an avenger of blood in his own right, and Jether will not draw. The kings ask Gideon to strike them himself and give the reason, as the man is, so is his strength, asking to fall by a soldier's hand rather than a child's. The ornaments taken off the camels are crescents in the Hebrew, moon shapes worn as jewellery, and Isaiah 3:18 lists the same item among the finery stripped from the daughters of Zion.

Judges 8:22-23

What Israel offers is a dynasty three generations deep, and the ground they give for it is deliverance from Midian, credited to Gideon himself. That credit is the exact thing 7:2 said the army was cut to three hundred to prevent, lest Israel say mine own hand hath saved me. Gideon's refusal names the alternative in plain words, the Lord shall rule over you, which is the ground Samuel stands on at 1 Samuel 8:7 when Israel asks for a king and is told they have rejected God from reigning over them.

Judges 8:24-26

The request follows the refusal in the same breath, and what it asks for is gold. The verse calls the beaten enemy Ishmaelites where the chapter has called them Midianites throughout, the same interchange Genesis 37:25 to 37:28 makes of the traders who carried Joseph into Egypt. Israel spread a garment and gave willingly, the manner Exodus 35:22 uses of the earrings brought for the tabernacle and Exodus 32:2 to 32:3 uses of the earrings brought for the calf. A thousand and seven hundred shekels of gold is somewhere near fifty pounds weight, beside the purple raiment and the chains.

Judges 8:27

An ephod in Exodus 28 is a garment worn by the high priest, carrying the breastplate with the Urim and Thummim, so a gold one set up in a private town is an instrument for enquiring of God away from the tabernacle at Shiloh. The verb for what Israel then does is the book's word for Baal worship, went thither a whoring after it, and it returns six verses later at verse 33. Snare is the word the angel used at 2:3 of the gods of the nations Israel failed to drive out, and the snare here is made out of the spoil of a victory God gave. Four verses after refusing a crown Gideon leaves an object his own house will fall over.

Judges 8:28-29

Midian is put down here and troubles Israel nowhere else in the book. The wording is that the country was in quietness forty years, where 3:11, 3:30 and 5:31 read the land had rest; those three are the only places the rest formula falls, and it stops with Deborah, so this chapter records peace in different words. Verse 29 uses Gideon's other name, Jerubbaal, which 6:32 explains as let Baal plead against him, and it is the name chapter 9 keeps for his house.

Judges 8:30-31

Seventy sons and many wives is the household of a ruling man, kept by the one who said he would not rule. The son borne by the concubine at Shechem is named Abimelech, which carries the word for king inside it, and the naming stands eight verses after the crown was declined. Shechem is where Joshua 24 set the covenant renewal, and it is where chapter 9 has this son kill the seventy upon one stone.

Judges 8:32-35

Gideon dies in a good old age, a phrase Genesis 15:15 and 25:8 use of Abraham, and he is buried in his father's grave at Ophrah where the whole account began in chapter 6. The turn comes in the next breath, as soon as Gideon was dead, which is the descent 2:19 described, each round starting lower than the last. The god taken up is Baalberith, lord of the covenant, a covenant word fastened to a Canaanite name, and 9:4 says the silver that hires Abimelech's men comes out of that house. The chapter closes by charging Israel with showing no kindness to the house of Jerubbaal, and chapter 9 reports what became of that house.