Gideon's Calling and the Missing Qumran Speech

Midian, Amalek and "the children of the east" come "as grasshoppers for multitude; for both they and their camels were without number," and destroy the crops "till thou come unto Gaza." Israel hides in caves and dens and cries to the LORD.

"The LORD sent a prophet unto the children of Israel, which said unto them, Thus saith the LORD God of Israel, I brought you up from Egypt… but ye have not obeyed my voice." (These verses, 6:7–10, are absent from the Qumran manuscript 4QJudg-a; see below.)

The angel of the LORD sits under the oak at Ophrah while Gideon "threshed wheat by the winepress, to hide it from the Midianites." "The LORD is with thee, thou mighty man of valour." Gideon: "if the LORD be with us, why then is all this befallen us?" "Go in this thy might… have not I sent thee?" "My family is poor in Manasseh, and I am the least in my father's house." Fire from the rock consumes his offering; Gideon builds an altar, "Jehovah-shalom."

That night he pulls down his father's altar of Baal and cuts down the Asherah. The townsmen demand his death; his father Joash answers, "Will ye plead for Baal?… if he be a god, let him plead for himself," and Gideon is called Jerubbaal. Then the fleece: wet with dew on dry ground, then dry on wet ground.

The missing speech: 4QJudg-a

4QJudg-a (4Q49), a fragment from Qumran Cave 4 dated to the second half of the 1st century BC, preserves parts of Judges 6:2–6 followed directly by 6:11–13. As published by Julio Trebolle Barrera, the prophet's speech of 6:7–10 is not there. The fragment is small, so the scale of the gap is reconstructed from line lengths, but the join between 6:6 and 6:11 is on the preserved text.

Many scholars think 6:7–10 is a later addition: a Deuteronomistic sermon inserted into the story, and the Qumran scroll preserves the earlier, shorter form. Others think the scroll's scribe skipped the verses, or that it was an excerpted text. Robert Rezetko and Trebolle Barrera discuss what it means for how Judges was composed. The passage page marks what is preserved and what is reconstructed.

Camels and raiders

Domesticated camels were used in Arabia and the southern Levant from at least the late 2nd millennium BC; camel bones at Timna's copper mines appear around the 10th century BC. Camel-riding raiders would fit the eastern desert frontier. The exact date of the Midianite raids is unknown.

Testing God?

The fleece is Gideon's request, granted in mercy, not a command to seek signs. Deuteronomy 6:16 forbids testing God; readers have long debated whether Gideon's fleece is a model or a warning.