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no living man can now decide: all that can be done is to accept the fact and work
accordingly. Dr. Robert Young, whose knowledge of Hebrew and of Oriental languages
is such as to command universal respect, renders the passage thus: "He smiteth among
the people seventy men--fifty chief men." Twice the word "men" occurs and twice
Dr. Young uses it. The word eleph, translated 1000, also means a family, a tribe, and the
head of a tribe, examples of which can be found by anyone able to use a Concordance. If
therefore 50,070 can be the alternative of 70, of which 50 were chief men, are we not
right in saying that the whole subject needs serious investigation?
All we will do at the moment is to suggest that 2,020 and not 22,000 men returned
from mount Gilead, and that the number that fell at the fords of Jordan (Judges 12: 6) was
2,040 and not 42,000, a number that exceeds the census of the whole tribe that is
recorded in Num. 26: 37, even if we take the figure of 32,500 as given in this version.
Emphasis upon the small and the despised is found in the record of the battle itself,
first in the dream of barley loaf, and secondly, in the use of pitchers and lamps in place of
weapons. The dream is as follows:--
"Lo, a cake of barley bread tumbled into the host of Midian, and came unto a tent, and
smote it that it fell, and overturned it, and the tent lay along" (Judges 7: 13).
The interpretation is:
"This is nothing else save the sword of Gideon the son of Joash, a man of Israel, for
into his hand hath God delivered Midian and all the host" (Judges 7: 14).
Dr. Thomson, in "The Land and the Book" page 447, says:--
"Nothing is more common for the poor of Canaan at this day to complain that their
oppressors have left them nothing but barley bread to eat; and if the Midianites, were
accustomed to call Gideon and his band `eaters of barley bread', as their successors, the
haughty Bedouins, often do to ridicule their enemies, the application would be more
natural."
Upon hearing the dream Gideon called upon his little band to arise and prepare for
victory. He divided them into three companies and provided each man with a trumpet,
a pitcher and a torch. The pitcher is a symbol of the human body in its frailty
(Eccles. 12: 6). Eastern watchmen often carried a smouldering torch in an earthen vessel
so that when a blaze was needed it could be withdrawn and waved in the air. These
simple instruments find their parallel in the Apostle's words when he wrote:--
"For God who commanded the LIGHT to shine out of darkness, hath shined in our
hearts, to give the LIGHT of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus
Christ. But we have this treasure in EARTHEN VESSELS, that the excellency of the
power may be of God, and not of ourselves" (II Cor. 4: 6, 7).
And so in the case of Gideon, the Lord says: