The pursuit of the Midianites

THE WAR OF GIDEON AND THE PURSUIT OF THE MIDIANITES, 12th to 11th, Centuries B.C.

Three chapters in the Book of Judges (6–8) are devoted to the career of a hero – Gideon – from the central hills of Ephraim, from the clan of Abiezer, a branch of the tribe of Manasseh. The core of the narrative has to do with a known phenomenon: the oppression of the agricultural villagers by the camel nomads of the desert. The raiders would come seasonally to plunder the crops collected in the harvest. The desert incursions may have been made possible by the weakening of the Canaanite forces in the area due to the disaster of Sisera’s defeat. This same situation prevailed in the nineteenth century when Ottoman rule from Damascus was largely ineffective. There are many witnesses to the domination of the Lower Galilee and the Jordan Valley by aggressive Bedouin tribes (see Judg 6:1–5).

Article abstract from The Sacred Bridge