Judges 7:1

GIDEON’S ARMY REDUCED TO THREE HUNDRED, Judges 7:1-8.

1. The well of Harod Or, fountain of trembling. See on Judges 7:3. Probably the large fountain Ain Jalud, at the northern base of Mount Gilboa. It is a large pool forty or fifty feet in diameter, and from it flows, down the valley, eastward, a stream strong enough to turn a mill. By this same spring the Israelitish army encamped at a later day, before their disastrous battle with the Philistines. in which Saul was slain. See note on 1 Samuel 29:1.

By the hill of Moreh, in the valley This hill of Moreh is not to be confounded with the oak or oaks of Moreh, (wrongly rendered plain in English versions.) near Shechem, (Genesis 12:6; Deuteronomy 11:30,) but was the Little Hermon, lying directly north of the Ain Jalud; and the valley was the broad plain situated between this mountain and Mount Gilboa on the south. This valley is really the eastern arm of the great Plain of Jezreel, and runs quite down to the Jordan. It was doubtless the great highway by which the Midianites came from the Jordan and pitched in the Valley of Jezreel. Judges 6:33. Between Mount Gilboa and the Little Hermon the valley is about two and a half miles wide, and all along in it lay the children of the East, like grasshoppers for multitude. Judges 7:12.