Judges 7:20

Blew the trumpets , and brake the pitchers - How astonishing must the effect be, in a dark night, of the sudden glare of three hundred torches, darting their splendor, in the same instant, on the half-awakened eyes of the terrified Midianites, accompanied with the clangour of three hundred trumpets, alternately mingled with the thundering shout of ולגדעון ליהוה חרב chereb layhovah ulegidon , "A sword for the Lord and for Gideon!" Origen, in his ninth homily on this book, makes these three hundred men types of the preachers of the Gospel; their trumpets of the preaching of Christ crucified; and their lights or torches, of the holy conduct of righteous men. In some verses of an ancient author, attributed to Tertullian, and written against the heretic Marcion, Gideon's three hundred men are represented as horsemen; and in this number he finds the mystery of the cross; because the Greek letter Τ , tau , which is the numeral for 300, is itself the sign of the cross. The verses, which may be found in vol. v. of the Pisaurian Collection of the Latin heathen and Christian poets, Advers, Marcion., lib. 3, ver. 18, as being very curious, and not often to be met with, I shall here subjoin: -

Ex quibus ut Gideon dux agminis, acer in hostem,

Non virtute sua tutelam acquirere genti

Firmatusque fide signum petit excita menti,

Quo vel non posset, vel posset vincere bellum,

Vellus ut in noctem positum de rore maderet,

Et tellus omnis circum siccata jaceret,

Hoc inimicorum palmam coalescere mundo;

Atque iterum solo remanenti vellere sicco,

Hoc eadem tellus roraret nocte liquore,

Hoc etenim signo praedonum stravit acervos.

Congressus populo Christi, sine milite multo:

Tercenteno equite (numerus Tau littera Graeca)

Armatis facibusque et cornibus ore canentum.

Vellus erat populus ovium de semine sancto.

Nam tellus variae gentes fusaeque per orbem,

Verbum quod nutrit, sed nox est mortis imago.

Tau signum crucis et cornu praeconia vitae,

Lucentesque faces in lychno spiritus ardens