Study Desk

Then 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. So it shall be that he of whom I say to you, 'This one shall go with you,' he shall go with you; but everyone of whom I say to you, 'This one shall not go with you,' he shall not go."

So he brought the people down to the water. Then the LORD said to Gideon, "You shall put everyone who laps the water with his tongue as a dog laps in one group, and everyone who kneels down to drink in another."

And the LORD said to Gideon, "I will save you with the three hundred men who lapped, and will hand the Midianites over to you; so have all the other people go, each man to his home."

"But if you are afraid to go down, go with Purah your servant down to the camp,

so that you will hear what they say; and afterward you will have the courage to go down against the camp." So he went down with Purah his servant to the outposts of the army that was in the camp.

And he divided the three hundred men into three units, and he put trumpets and empty pitchers into the hands of all of them, with torches inside the pitchers.

"When I and all who are with me blow the trumpet, then you also blow the trumpets around the entire camp and say, 'For the LORD and for Gideon!'"

So Gideon and the hundred men who were with him came to the outskirts of the camp at the beginning of the middle night watch, when they had just posted the watch; and they blew the trumpets and smashed the pitchers that were in their hands.

Then the men of Ephraim said to Gideon, "What is this thing that you have done to us, not calling upon us when you went to fight against Midian?" And they quarreled with him vehemently.

But he said to them, "What have I done now in comparison with you? Is the gleaning of the grapes of Ephraim not better than the vintage of Abiezer?

"God has handed over to you the leaders of Midian, Oreb and Zeeb; and what was I able to do in comparison with you?" Then their anger toward him subsided when he said that.

Then Gideon and the three hundred men who were with him came to the Jordan and crossed over, exhausted yet still pursuing.

So Gideon said, "For this answer, when the LORD has handed over to me Zebah and Zalmunna, I will thrash your bodies with the thorns of the wilderness and with briers."

Now Zebah and Zalmunna were in Karkor, and their armies with them, about fifteen thousand men, all who were left of the entire army of the people of the east; for the fallen were 120,000 swordsmen.

Then he took the elders of the city, and thorns of the wilderness and briers, and he disciplined the men of Succoth with them.

Gideon made it into an ephod, and placed it in his city, Ophrah; but all Israel committed infidelity with it there, and it became a snare to Gideon and his household.

Then it came about, as soon as Gideon was dead, that the sons of Israel again committed infidelity with the Baals, and made Baal-berith their god.

nor did they show kindness to the household of Jerubbaal (that is, Gideon) in accordance with all the good that he had done for Israel.

And they gave him seventy pieces of silver from the house of Baal-berith, with which Abimelech hired worthless and reckless men, and they followed him.

"But the olive tree said to them, 'Shall I give up my fatness with which God and mankind are honored, and go to wave over the trees?'