Gideon defeats the Midianites
7
📚Then Jerubbaal, who is Gideon, and all the people who were with him, got up early and camped beside Harod’s well, so that the army of the Midianites was to the north of them, by the hill of Moreh, in the valley 📖. 2 📚And the LORD said to Gideon, “The people who are with you are too many 📖 for me to give the Midianites into their hands. If I did, Israel would boast 📖 against me, saying, ‘My own hand has saved me’. 3 📚Now therefore make an announcement in the hearing of the people and say, ‘Whoever is trembling and afraid 📖, let him go back and leave early from Mount Gilead.’ ” And twenty-two thousand of the people went back, leaving ten thousand.4 📚And the LORD said to Gideon, “The people are still too many. Bring them down to the water, and I will test them 📖 for you there. And it shall be like this: if I say to you about someone, ‘This one shall go with you’, he shall go with you; and if I say about someone else, ‘This one shall not go with you’, he shall not go”.
5 So he brought the people down to the water. And the LORD said to Gideon, “Everyone who laps the water with his tongue, like a dog laps, set him apart by himself; likewise everyone who kneels down to drink”. 6 📖And the number of those who lapped, putting their hand to their mouth, was three hundred men, but all the rest of the people knelt down to drink water.
7 📚And the LORD said to Gideon, “I will save you through the three hundred men who lapped, and deliver the Midianites into your hand. As for all the others, let each man go to his place”. 8 📚So the people took provisions in their hands and their trumpets. And he sent all the rest of Israel away, each man to his tent, and kept those three hundred men. And the army of Midian was below him in the valley.
9 📚And it came about the same night that the LORD said to him, “Arise, go down to the army, for I have delivered it into your hands. 10 📚But if you are afraid 📖 to go down, go down with your servant Phurah to the army, 11 📚and you can hear what they are saying. And after that your hands will be strengthened to go down to the army”. Then he went down with Phurah his servant to the outposts of the armed men in the camp. 12 📚And the Midianites and the Amalekites and all the eastern people lay along in the valley like grasshoppers in number; and their camels were beyond counting, as many as the sand on the seashore.
13 📚And when Gideon came, just then a man was telling a dream to his companion and saying, “Look, I had a dream, and, see, a cake of barley bread came rolling into the camp of Midian, and came to a tent and struck it so that it fell and overturned it, so that the tent lay flat”.
14 📚And his companion answered and said, “This is nothing else except the sword of Gideon the son of Joash, a man of Israel. For God has delivered Midian and all the army into his hands”.
15 📚And it happened that when Gideon heard the dream being told and its interpretation, he worshipped and returned to the camp of Israel and said, “Arise! For the LORD has delivered the army of Midian into your hands”.
7:15 God’s method of encouraging His timid servant bore fruit. In general we can say that anything that encourages our faith in the one true God is from God (compare 2 Thess 2:16-17), anything that discourages our faith is from some source in opposition to God.⚜
16 📚And he divided the three hundred men into three companies, and he put a trumpet in each man’s hand, with empty pitchers, with torches inside the pitchers.
17 📚And he said to them, “Watch me and do likewise. And, look, when I come to the outskirts of the camp, you must do just as I do. 18 📚When I blow on a trumpet, I and all those who are with me, then you also blow the trumpets on all sides of the whole camp and say, ‘The sword of the LORD and of Gideon 📖.’ ”
19 📚So Gideon and the hundred men who were with him came to the outskirts of the camp at the beginning of the middle watch 📖, when they had just set a new guard. And they blew the trumpets and broke the pitchers in their hands. 20 📚And the three companies blew the trumpets and broke the pitchers, and held the torches in their left hands and the trumpets in their right hands to blow on. And they cried out, “The sword of the LORD and of Gideon!” 21 📚And each man stood in his place around the camp. And the whole army ran, and cried out as they fled.
22 📚And the three hundred blew the trumpets, and the LORD set every man’s sword against his fellow soldier, throughout the whole army. And the army fled to Beth-Shittah in Zererah and to the border of Abel-Meholah, to Tabbath.
7:21-22 Compare Josh 23:10; 1 Sam 14:14-15; 2 Kings 7:6-7. Obedience to God and boldness of faith can always defeat superior forces. Compare Luke 10:9, 20; Jam 4:7; 1 Pet 5:8-9.⚜
23 📚And the men of Israel gathered together from Naphtali and from Asher and from all Manasseh and chased after the Midianites. 24 📚And Gideon sent messengers throughout all the hill country of Ephraim, saying, “Come down against the Midianites and in advance of them seize the water crossings as far as Beth-Barah and the Jordan”. Then all the men of Ephraim gathered together and seized the water crossings as far as Beth-Barah and the Jordan 📖.
25 📚And they captured two princes of the Midianites, Oreb and Zeeb; and they killed Oreb on the rock Oreb, and Zeeb they killed at the winepress of Zeeb. And they pursued Midian and brought the heads of Oreb and Zeeb 📖 to Gideon on the other side of the Jordan.