Smashing Jars

So Gideon roused his army of 300 and issued them with their 'weapons'.

Swords? . . . No.

Spears? . . . No.

Bow & Arrows? . . . No.

Halbred? . . . No.

Pike? . . . No.

Sharpened Vedgetables? . . . No!

They were armed with a jar, torch, and a trumpet.

Gideon's strategical battle plan wouldn't have won him a a game of RISK [the game of world domination!] _ On his command they had to blow their trumpet, shout a war cry, smash their jar, wave their torches, and give another shout.

That was it.

End of plan.

Picture the Isrealites removing the jars from their torches, this would surely reveal their exact whereabouts to the enemy. Not to mention shouting

"a sword for the Lord and for Gideon!".

AND thinks about how thinly spread out 300 Isrealites would have to be to surround the Midianite camp. Each man would have been tens, or even hundreds, of yards away from his nearest companion.

Within seconds the Midianites would have been awakened to the sound of 300 trumpets, smashing jars, and shouts.

Jeff Lucas comments . . .

"They shouted for theur lost children. They shouted for the famine years. They yelled and screamed for the loss of their dignity and hope that had been so ruthlessly crushed by Midian."

The Midianites would have been confused and disorientated.

'Surely there were hundreds of thousands of men behind these torches?'

In the blind panic that followed they ended up slashing and stabbing at one another. A few were focused enough to grab little possessions and retreat eastwards down the valley.

The ironic thing was that there had been no huge horde behind those torches and trumpets, no back-up troops, no one at all.

Except God.

Love you X