Biblion Bible Commentary
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Ephraim's Complaint and Gideon's Pursuit
Judges 8:1-21
1 The men of Ephraim said to him, “Why have you treated us this way, that you didn’t call us when you went to fight with Midian?” They rebuked him sharply. · WEB
Gideon defuses a tribal quarrel with a compliment and then turns savage on two Israelite towns that refused his men bread.
The men of Ephraim said to him, "Why have you treated us this way, that you didn't call us when you went to fight with Midian?" They rebuked him sharply Judges 8:1.
The complaint is about being left out of a victory, from a tribe that arrived in time to take the fords and two princes Judges 7:24–25. It is the confederation's characteristic disorder — no authority to summon anyone, and injured pride afterward.
"Isn't the gleaning of the grapes of Ephraim better than the vintage of Abiezer?... What was I able to do in comparison with you?" Judges 8:2–3.
His answer is a piece of skilled diplomacy: Ephraim's leftovers outrank his own clan's whole harvest. He credits them with the princes and their anger was abated Judges 8:3. The same man handles the next two towns without a trace of it.
Gideon came to the Jordan and passed over, he and the three hundred men who were with him, faint, yet pursuing Judges 8:4.
Three words that carry the chapter: faint, yet pursuing. The battle is won and the work is not finished, and the men who broke the jars are now exhausted and still going.
"Are the hands of Zebah and Zalmunna now in your hand, that we should give bread to your army?" Judges 8:6.
Succoth refuses food, and Penuel does the same Judges 8:8. These are Israelite towns east of the Jordan, and the refusal is calculated: if Gideon fails, Midian will come back and remember who fed his men. It is the neutrality the song had cursed at Meroz Judges 5:23, here expressed as a sneer.
"Then I will tear your flesh with the thorns of the wilderness and with briers" Judges 8:7.
And Gideon's reply is a promise of torture, made in advance and kept. He returns with the kings, obtains the names of seventy-seven elders from a young man, and with them he taught the men of Succoth Judges 8:14–16 — a grim use of the word. At Penuel he breaks the tower and kills the men of the city Judges 8:17.
The text reports all of this without comment, which is this book's habit and not its approval. What it does supply is a comparison the reader cannot miss: the man who soothed a powerful tribe with flattery destroyed two small towns for an insult. And the campaign has quietly changed character — from the sword of Yahweh and of Gideon Judges 7:20 to a private score being settled.
"They were my brothers, the sons of my mother. As Yahweh lives, if you had saved them alive, I would not kill you" Judges 8:19.
The interrogation of the two kings reveals the motive that has been driving the pursuit: they had killed his brothers at Tabor. So the execution is blood vengeance, and he says so. Then he orders his son to do it — but the youth didn't draw his sword; for he was afraid, because he was yet a youth Judges 8:20, a father trying to make a boy a killer and the boy refusing. Gideon kills them himself and takes the crescents that were on their camels' necks Judges 8:21. The gold he collects here is the material of the next paragraph's disaster.
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