Chapter viii. 1-3 concludes
the business, and the following narrative is not a continuation
of what has gone before, but a second version of the story in
which many of the circumstances are quite different. According
to vii. 23 seq. there was a great army on foot, but in viii. 4
seq. Gideon has only his own three hundred men with him. In
viii. 1-3 the vintage and the gleaning are over and the object
of the fighting is attained; but in viii. 4 seq. Gideon pursues
the enemy without any interruption, and when he asks the men of
Succoth and Penuel for bread for his wearied and hungry troops,
they inquire sarcastically whether he is already certain of
success, so that it should be necessary for them to espouse his
cause. The two chiefs who in the former account are called the
princes Oreb and Zeeb, and are already taken, are here called
the kings Zebah and Zalmunna, and are not taken yet. Unfortunately
the beginning of viii. 4 seq. is not preserved, and we cannot make
out whether the pursuit in which we find Gideon here engaged was
preceded by an action. Such a supposition is not exactly impossible,
yet the distance to which the nomads had carried their booty, and
their carelessness in camp, make it more likely that the occurrence
was like that in 1Samuel xxx.
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