Judges 7:2

JEHOVAH REDUCES GIDEON'S ARMY

"And Jehovah said unto Gideon, The people that are with thee are too many for me to give the Midianites into their hand, lest Israel vaunt themselves against me, saying; Mine own hand hath saved me. Now therefore proclaim in the ears of the people, saying; Whomsoever is fearful and trembling; let him turn and depart from mount Gilead. And there returned of the people twenty and two thousand; and there remained ten thousand."

The character of ancient Israel being what it was, for any victory to have been achieved involving large numbers of them would surely have resulted exactly as the Lord here said to Gideon. The great purpose of God in the defeat of the Midianites was that it might thwart the movement of God's people toward idolatry and turn them again to their allegiance to God. For the accomplishment of that goal, it was absolutely necessary that the victory should be clearly that of God Himself and not by Israel in their own might.

"The number of the Midianites and their allies was about 135,000 men (Judges 8:10)."[2] And the reduction which God accomplished in Gideon's forces would have appeared to be absolute madness by any general not endowed with Gideon's faith.

"Proclaim in the ears of the people" (Judges 7:3). "This proclamation was in full accordance with the Law of Moses (Deuteronomy 20:8)."[3] If this is a fair cross-section of human opinion, it indicates that the vast majority of men involved in warfare actually have no enthusiasm for it, but are merely involved due to peer pressure or some other motivation.

"Let him return and depart from mount Gilead" (Judges 7:3). The difficulty with this is that Gilead was east of the Jordan River, and the confrontation between Gideon's forces and the Midianites was west of the Jordan. Scholars have "solved" the difficulty by "emending" (that means substituting their own opinion for what is written) the text to make it read: "From mount Gilboa."[4] The suggestion of Keil is a far better solution. "There was a mountain or a mountain range named Gilead in western Palestine, just as there was a range of mountains called Seir in the territory of Judah."[5] Just look at a map of the U.S.A., for example, there are multiple cities named, Lincoln, Georgetown, Paducah, Washington, Nashville, Atlanta and dozens of others. The fact that an "unknown" Mount Gilead is mentioned here is fully in keeping with the fact that not any of the places mentioned here can be identified with any certainty. Hervey also mentioned the fact that, "`Mount Gilead,' was a stereotyped expression for `home,' used by all the tribe of Manasseh, both by those on the east of Jordan in whose territory Gilead was located, and by those on the west side of Jordan also."[6] It is this writer's opinion that alleged "scholars" have been far too ready to "emend" difficult passages to change their meaning instead of seeking an explanation of the text as it stands.