Judges 6 - Introduction

Gideon delivers Israel from the Midianites

For some years the Midianites had been the terror of Central Palestine. These nomad Arabs from the S.E. desert used to pour into the country during harvest time, and devastate the fertile neighbourhood of Shechem and the plain of Jezreel. At last Gideon, a Manassite belonging to the clan of Abiezer, contrived with a small band of fellow clansmen to rid the land of this intolerable scourge: he inflicted a severe defeat upon the invaders, and put their chiefs to death. As a trophy of the victory he made out of the spoils an ephod, which he set up in the sanctuary of Jehovah at Ophrah, his native village, where he spent the rest of his days with much dignity and influence. The -day of Midian" was long remembered as a notable instance of. Jehovah's intervention on behalf of Israel: see Isaiah 9:4; Isaiah 10:26; Psalms 83:9-12.

The main outlines of the story are clear, but the details raise problems which have not yet been solved. Different traditions have been pieced together; these again have received later additions; and the various elements are interwoven in a manner which renders the literary analysis of these Chapter s unusually difficult and uncertain. (a) It will be noticed at once that Judges 8:4-21 is not the sequel of the preceding narrative. In Judges 8:4-21 Gideon with 300 men pursues the Midianite kings Zeba and Zalmunna on the E. of the Jordan as far as the edge of the desert, captures them, and slays them with his own hand; on one of their forays they had murdered his brothers at Tabor; the motive of Gideon's pursuit is to satisfy his personal revenge. In Judges 6:1 to Judges 8:3 Gideon is called by God to deliver Israel from the repeated incursions of the Midianites; he attacks their camp near Mt Gilboa and creates a disastrous panic; the men of Ephraim are summoned to his aid, and they cut off the fugitives at the fords of Jordan; they capture and kill the two princes Oreb and Zeeb. Here the whole action, like the deliverance, is national. In Judges 7:25 b and Judges 8:10 b an editor has tried to harmonize the two accounts. They do not necessarily contradict one another. It is quite likely that private motives spurred Gideon to place himself at the head of a united resistance, when God called him, and that he took the opportunity to wipe off a score of his own against the common enemy, (b) But Judges 6:1 to Judges 8:3 itself is not a consistent whole. Thus the call of Gideon is described in Judges 6:11-24 and again, altogether differently, in Judges 6:25-32; the summons to the neighbouring tribes is sent out before the battle in Judges 6:35, and after it in Judges 7:23; two traditions seem to be mingled in the account of the attack, Judges 7:15-21, in one of them the trumpetswere remembered as a feature of the story, in the other the torchesand pitchers.

It is difficult to decide whether the antecedents of Judges 8:4-21 can or cannot be traced in the composite narrative, Judges 6:1 to Judges 8:3. Some critics regard Judges 8:4-21 as an excerpt from a third source and unrelated to what precedes; others attempt to connect it with one of the two accounts of Gideon's call and his attack upon the camp near Mt Gilboa. On the one hand Judges 8:4-21 does not suggest that a disastrous battle and a desperate flight had just occurred; the Midianite kings are encamped on the edge of the E. desert in careless security; apparently they have returned from a foray in the West, most likely the one in which they killed Gideon's brothers; they do not suspect any pursuit. But, on the other hand, this episode does imply some previous account of Gideon and of a Midianite invasion; possibly too (but this is more questionable), some tradition of a recent attack upon the Midianites on the W. of Jordan (cf. Judges 8:5). We may therefore connect Judges 6:2-6 (in part), Judges 6:11-24; Judges 6:34; Judges 7:1; Judges 7:16-21 (in part) with Judges 8:4-21, remembering, however, that the connexion with Judges 7:1; Judges 7:16-21 (in part) is less evident. The other narrative, generally allowed to be the later of the two, will then consist of Judges 6:7-10; Judges 6:25-33; Judges 6:35 a, Judges 6:36-40; Judges 7:9-21 (in part), Judges 8:3; Judges 8:3.

It will be seen that both in the older (Judges 8:4) and in the later narrative (Judges 8:2 f.) Gideon's force was composed of his own Abiezrites; the number 300 seems to have been a fixed element in the general tradition. The description of the way in which the immense host of volunteers was reduced to this figure, Judges 6:35 f., Judges 7:2-8, must have been added later to the two main narratives.

The closing verses, Judges 8:22-35, contain the loose ends of the fragmentary traditions which have been pieced together in the preceding history. The ephodbelongs to the archaic stage of religion; Judges 8:24 a (to Ophrah) fit in very well as the conclusion of the early narrative, Judges 8:4-21. As it stands, Judges 8:29 is obviously out of place after Judges 8:27, but it would form a suitable sequel to Judges 8:3. The offer and refusal of the kingship, Judges 8:22, betray the theocratic bias of a later age. Judges 8:30-32 furnish the transition to the story of Abimelech, and shew signs of a late editorial hand. In Judges 8:27 b, Judges 8:33; Judges 8:33-35, as in Judges 6:1 and here and there in Judges 6:2-6, we recognize the familiar handiwork of the Deuteronomic redactor, who, in his customary manner, provided the whole story with introduction and conclusion, and interpreted it on his own religious principles.

The preceding analysis is merely an attempt to account for the way in which the narrative has been put together. The text as we have it contains inconsistent and duplicate versions, which to a certain extent can be distinguished, but it is impossible to trace them apart all the way through.