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GIDEON

(Heb. giḏĕʿôn) (also JERUBBAAL)

According to Judg. 6–8, a premonarchical leader celebrated for ridding Israel of Midianite invaders; also known as Jerubbaal. He was also remembered for divinatory activity (Judg. 6:21, 25, 36-40; 7:9-14; 8:27).

An editorial introduction (Judg. 6:1-10) sets the Gideon traditions within the redactional framework of apostasy, oppression, outcry, and deliverance. The first of the older traditions is a commissioning scene (Judg. 6:11-24). The unrecognized messenger of Yahweh commands a timorous Gideon to go and deliver Israel (cf. Judg. 13). Like Moses (Exod. 3:10-12), Gideon protests (Judg. 6:13) but is assured by God that “I will be with you” (v. 16; cf. Exod. 3:12).

The newly commissioned Gideon’s first act is to tear down his father’s altar to Baal and its sacred pole (asherah) and build an altar to Yahweh (Judg. 6:25-32). This story identifies Gideon with Jerubbaal (cf. 1 Sam. 12:11; 2 Sam. 11:21), and gives a Yahwistic explanation of his Baal name.

With Yahweh, not Baal, confirmed as Gideon’s God, the scene is set for battle. The various traditions of Judg. 6:33–8:3 serve to establish that victory over the Midianites is wholly the work of the divine warrior. By stages 32 thousand Israelite troops are reduced to 300 men who, as at Jericho (Josh. 6), defeat the enemy without actively fighting.

The battle is followed by two mopping-up campaigns. West of the Jordan the troops earlier excused from battle, along with the Ephraimites, attack the fleeing Midianites, killing their princes, Oreb and Zeeb. This is followed by inter-Israelite tension, as Gideon diplomatically averts battle with Ephraim, a dominant tribe angered by Gideon’s failure to enlist their aid and, presumably, threatened by the upstart’s rise in power.

The Transjordanian campaign involves the capture and death of Midianite kings Zebah and Zamnunna. This time intertribal conflict involves Gideon’s brutal vengeance against Succoth and Penuel for failing to succor his troops.

The Israelites invite the victorious Gideon to rule over them. Gideon rejects the offer for reasons of piety: Yahweh is to be their ruler. Gideon does, however, claim oracular authority, making an ephod which ensnares him and his family.

The Gideon cycle, together with the closely related story of Gideon’s son Abimelech’s effort to claim kingship (Judg. 9), is among the longest and most complex sets of tradition in the book of Judges. The hero’s two names suggest two originally independent traditions. The view of the initial battle as a local affair involving 300 members of Gideon’s clan (the Abiezrites of Manasseh) is in tension with the depiction of an intertribal alliance warring against 130 thousand Midianites. The Transjordanian campaign, depicted as a matter of blood vengeance for the previously unmentioned slaughter of Gideon’s brothers, fits poorly with the military campaign narrated in Judg. 7. While there is no scholarly consensus on the details of the composition history, there is widespread agreement that a variety of originally independent local traditions have been brought together into an uneasy unity, given an “all Israel” cast, and set within the characteristic framework of Judges.

This complex composition history erodes the Gideon stories’ usefulness for historical reconstruction. In particular, efforts to identify a historical basis to the Israelites’ request that Gideon rule them are dubious. The passage serves as a foil for the anti-monarchical story of Abimelech (Judg. 9). Moreover, the stories have been shaped to stress a theological point: the sovereignty of Yahweh. Yahweh, not Baal, is God; Yahweh, not human armies, wins victory against Israel’s enemies; Yahweh, not Gideon, shall rule.

Bibliography. A. G. Auld, “Gideon: Hacking at the Heart of the Old Testament,” VT 39 (1989): 257-67; R. G. Boling, Judges. AB 6A (Garden City, 1975); J. A. Emerton, “Gideon and Jerubbaal,” JTS n.s. 27 (1976): 289-312; J. A. Soggin, Judges. OTL (Philadelphia, 1981).

Carolyn Pressler

Prayer Tents Bible References - Prayer Tents

GIDEON

Eerdmans Dictionary of the Bible (2000)