The 32,000 men with whom he takes the field he is ordered by
Jehovah to send away all but l,000 and again all but 300, "lest
Israel vaunt themselves against Me, and say, Mine own hand hath
saved me." The weapons with which the nocturnal attack of the 300
is made are torches, pitchers, and trumpets; the men have not a
hand left to hold swords (vii. 20); and the hostile army has
accordingly to do itself the work of its own destruction (vii.
22).
Few of the deviations of the religious version from the natural one
are not transparent; one of these few is the removal of the scene
to this side of the Jordan. Most of them are at once recognisable
as due to the process of glorification, illumination, and
religious inflation, by which the body of the tradition is
etherealised and the story lifted up into the region of the air.
For example, the company of Gideon at the main action, the attack
on the hostile camp, consists of 300 men in chap. vii. as well
as in chap viii.; but in chap. vii., to draw out the
significance of the small number, they are treated as the last
residuum of what was at first quite a considerable army; and this
gives rise to a long story.
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