Study Desk

Jael reached out and took the tent peg. Her right hand reached for the workman's hammer. She hit Sisera! She smashed his head! She crushed and pierced the side of his head!

‘Surely they are robbing the people they defeated! Surely they are dividing those things among themselves! Each soldier is given a girl or two. Maybe Sisera is taking pieces of dyed cloth. Maybe they are even taking pieces of dyed, embroidered cloth for the necks of the victors!'

"Let all your enemies die this way, Lord ! But let all the people who love you be as strong as the rising sun!" Then there was peace in the land for forty years.

Again the Israelites did what the Lord said was wrong. So for seven years the Lord handed them over to Midian.

They camped in the land and destroyed the crops that the Israelites had planted as far away as Gaza. They left nothing for Israel to eat, and no sheep, cattle, or donkeys.

When the men of the city got up the next morning, they saw that the altar for Baal had been destroyed and that the Asherah idol beside it had been cut down! They also saw the altar Gideon had built and the second bull that had been sacrificed on it.

But Joash said to the angry crowd around him, "Are you going to take Baal's side? Are you going to defend him? Anyone who takes Baal's side will be killed by morning! If Baal is a god, let him fight for himself. It's his altar that has been pulled down."

Then the Lord said to Gideon, "There are still too many men. Take the men down to the water, and I will test them for you there. If I say, ‘This man will go with you, he will go. But if I say, ‘That one will not go with you,' he will not go."

Surround the enemy camp. When I and everyone with me blow our trumpets, you blow your trumpets, too. Then shout, ‘For the Lord and for Gideon!'"

All three groups of Gideon's men blew their trumpets and smashed their jars. They held the torches in their left hands and the trumpets in their right hands. Then they shouted, "A sword for the Lord and for Gideon!"

Gideon left Succoth and went to the city of Peniel and asked them for food. But the people of Peniel gave him the same answer as the people of Succoth.

Gideon captured a young man from Succoth and asked him some questions. So the young man wrote down for Gideon the names of seventy-seven officers and elders of Succoth.

He said, "I want you to do this one thing for me. I want each of you to give me a gold earring from the things you took in the fighting." (The Ishmaelites wore gold earrings.)

Gideon used the gold to make a holy vest, which he put in his hometown of Ophrah. But all the Israelites were unfaithful to God and worshiped it, so it became a trap for Gideon and his family.

So Midian was under the rule of Israel; they did not cause trouble anymore. And the land had peace for forty years, as long as Gideon was alive.

And they were not kind to the family of Jerub-Baal, also called Gideon, for all the good he had done for Israel.

"Ask the leaders of Shechem, ‘Is it better for the seventy sons of Gideon to rule over you or for one man to rule?' Remember, I am your relative."

Remember, my father fought for you and risked his life to save you from the power of the Midianites.

Abimelech ruled Israel for three years.

In that way God punished Abimelech for all the evil he had done to his father by killing his seventy brothers.