The three companies blew the trumpets, broke the pitchers, and held the torches in their left hands and the trumpets in their right hands with which to blow; and they shouted, “The sword of Yahweh and of Gideon!”
Parallel Translations
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The three companies blew the trumpets, broke the pitchers, and held the torches in their left hands and the trumpets in their right hands with which to blow; and they shouted, “The sword of Yahweh and of Gideon!”
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And the three companies blew the trumpets, and brake the pitchers, and held the lamps in their left hands, and the trumpets in their right hands to blow withal: and they cried, The sword of the LORD, and of Gideon.
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And the three companies blew the horns, and broke the pitchers, and held the torches in their left hands, and the horns in their right hands wherewith to blow; and they cried: 'The sword for the LORD and for Gideon!'
Cross-references (9)
Passages linked to Judges 7:20 in the Treasury of Scripture Knowledge, ordered by reader-vote popularity; verse text shown in World English Bible.
- Joshua 6:16 At the seventh time, when the priests blew the trumpets, Joshua said to the people, “Shout, for Yahweh has given you the city!
- Isaiah 27:13 It will happen in that day that a great trumpet will be blown; and those who were ready to perish in the land of Assyria, and those who were outcasts in the land of Egypt, shall come; and they will worship Yahweh in the holy mountain at Jerusalem.
- 1 Corinthians 15:52 in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet. For the trumpet will sound and the dead will be raised incorruptible, and we will be changed.
- Joshua 6:20 So the people shouted and the priests blew the trumpets. When the people heard the sound of the trumpet, the people shouted with a great shout, and the wall fell down flat, so that the people went up into the city, every man straight in front of him, and they took the city.
- 2 Corinthians 4:7 But we have this treasure in clay vessels, that the exceeding greatness of the power may be of God, and not from ourselves.
- Numbers 10:1-10 Yahweh spoke to Moses, saying, “Make two trumpets of silver. You shall make them of beaten work. You shall use them for the calling of the congregation, and for the journeying of the camps. When they blow them, all the congregation shall gather themselves to you at the door of the Tent of Meeting. If they blow just one, then the princes, the heads of the thousands of Israel, shall gather themselves to you. When you blow an alarm, the camps that lie on the east side shall go forward. When you blow an alarm the second time, the camps that lie on the south side shall go forward. They shall blow an alarm for their journeys. But when the assembly is to be gathered together, you shall blow, but you shall not sound an alarm. “The sons of Aaron, the priests, shall blow the trumpets. This shall be to you for a statute forever throughout your generations. When you go to war in your land against the adversary who oppresses you, then you shall sound an alarm with the trumpets. Then you will be remembered before Yahweh your God, and you will be saved from your enemies. “Also in the day of your gladness, and in your set feasts, and in the beginnings of your months, you shall blow the trumpets over your burnt offerings, and over the sacrifices of your peace offerings; and they shall be to you for a memorial before your God. I am Yahweh your God.”
- Joshua 6:4 Seven priests shall bear seven trumpets of rams’ horns before the ark. On the seventh day, you shall march around the city seven times, and the priests shall blow the trumpets.
- 1 Thessalonians 4:16 For the Lord himself will descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel and with God’s trumpet. The dead in Christ will rise first,
- Hebrews 11:4 By faith, Abel offered to God a more excellent sacrifice than Cain, through which he had testimony given to him that he was righteous, God testifying with respect to his gifts; and through it he, being dead, still speaks.
Cross-references from openbible.info (CC BY 4.0)
Explain this verse (9 sources)
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Geneva Bible translators 1599 · Public Domain Shall destroy the enemies.
Shall destroy the enemies.
Geneva Bible (1599) marginal notes — public domain.
John Trapp 1656 · Public Domain Jdg 7:20 And the three companies blew the trumpets,…
Jdg 7:20 And the three companies blew the trumpets, and brake the pitchers, and held the lamps in their left hands, and the trumpets in their right hands to blow [withal]: and they cried, The sword of the LORD, and of Gideon.
Ver. 20. Blew the trumpets, and brake the pitchers.] By the sound of trumpets and shining of lamps out of earthen broken vessels, Gideon overcame his enemies: so Christ, by the trumpet of his word, and light of the gospel, carried through the world by weak instruments, hath confounded his enemies. {1Jn 2:14}
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The sword of the Lord, and of Gideon.] Under the conduct of Germanus here in Britain, who came over from France to subdue the Pelagian heresy, which then prevailed amongst us, against a mighty army of Saxons and Picts, the Britains prevailed only by the three times pronouncing the word Hallelujah: which voice echoing and redoubling from the acclamation of his followers among the mountains, nigh to which the enemy had encamped, frightened them, and won the conquest: upon which it was called Victoria Halleluiatica. {a}
{a} Arch. Ussher., De Britan. Eccles. Primord.
John Trapp, A Commentary or Exposition upon All the Books of the Old and New Testament (1647–1656) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Matthew Poole 1685 · Public Domain Held the lamps and the trumpets, that they might…
Held the lamps and the trumpets, that they might be thought to be a mighty host, having as many troops or companies as there were trumpets and lights.
Matthew Poole's English Annotations on the Holy Bible (1683–1685) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
John Gill 1763 · Public Domain And the three companies blew the trumpets, and brake…
And the three companies blew the trumpets, and brake the pitchers,.... The other two, observing what Gideon and his company did, followed their example, and at the same time blew their trumpets, and broke their pitchers; for that there were four companies, three besides Gideon's, as Kimchi and Ben Melech suggest, there is no reason to believe:
and held the lamps in their left hands; which they took out of the pitchers when they broke them, and holding them up in their left hands, gave a great blaze of light, which must be very surprising to the host of Midian, just awaked out of their sleep:
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and the trumpets in their right hands to blow withal; and which they continued blowing, the sound of which must be very dreadful, since it might be concluded, from such a number of trumpets, that there must be a vast army:
and they cried, the sword of the Lord and of Gideon; signifying that was drawn against the Midianites, and they must expect to be cut in pieces by it, since the sword was Jehovah's, sent and commissioned by him, and was put into the hand of Gideon as an instrument, with which execution would be done, the Lord helping him. The Targum is,"the sword of the Lord, and victory by the hand of Gideon''which victory was to be ascribed to the sword and power of God. This was an emblem of the efficacy of the word of God, accompanied with his power, to the destruction of the kingdom of Satan; the blowing of the trumpets may denote the ministration of the Gospel, the great trumpet to be blown by the apostles and ministers of the word; the holding forth the lamps may signify the same, the light of the divine word in the ministers of it, and the holding forth of it to others; and which is carried in earthen vessels, frail mortal men; and done that the excellency of the power may appear to be of God, and not of men; and the sword of the Lord is the word of God in the mouths of ministers, accompanied by the power of God; for it can only be through God that such weapons of warfare can become mighty to do the execution that is done by them; see Co2 4:7 blowing of trumpets, and then a cry or shout of the soldiers to terrify the enemy, were used in later times (k).
(k) "At tuba terribilem sonitum", &c. Virgil Aeneid. 9.
John Gill's Exposition of the Whole Bible (1746–1763) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.
Adam Clarke 1810 · Public Domain Verse 20. Blew the trumpets, and brake the pitchers]…
Verse 20. Blew the trumpets, and brake the pitchers] How astonishing must the effect be, in a dark night, of the sudden glare of three hundred torches, darting their splendour, in the same instant, on the half-awakened eyes of the terrified Midianites, accompanied with the clangour of three hundred trumpets, alternately mingled with the thundering shout of חרב ליהוה ולגדעון chereb layhovah ulegidon, "A sword for the Lord and for Gideon!"
Origen, in his ninth homily on this book, makes these three hundred men types of the preachers of the Gospel; their trumpets of the preaching of Christ crucified; and their lights or torches, of the holy conduct of righteous men. In some verses of an ancient author, attributed to Tertullian, and written against the heretic Marcion, Gideon's three hundred men are represented as horsemen; and in this number he finds the mystery of the cross; because the Greek letter T, tau which is the numeral for 300, is itself the sign of the cross. The verses, which may be found in vol. v. of the Pisaurian Collection of the Latin heathen and Christian poets, Advers, Marcion., lib. 3, ver. 18, as being very curious, and not often to be met with, I shall here subjoin: -
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Ex quibus ut Gideon dux agminis, acer in hostem,
Non virtute sua tutelam acquirere genti,
Firmatusque fide signum petit excita menti,
Quo vel non posset, vel posset vincere bellum,
Vellus ut in noctem positum de rore maderet,
Et tellus omnis circum siccata jaceret,
Hoc inimicorum palmam coalescere mundo;
Atque iterum solo remanenti vellere sicco,
Hoc eadem tellus roraret nocte liquore,
Hoc etenim signo praedonum stravit acervos.
Congressus populo Christi, sine milite multo:
Tercenteno equite (numerus Tau littera Graeca)
Armatis facibusque et cornibus ore canentum.
Vellus erat populus ovium de semine sancto.
Nam tellus variae gentes fusaeque per orbem,
Verbum quod nutrit, sed nox est mortis imago.
Tau signum crucis et cornu praeconia vitae,
Lucentesque faces in lychno spiritus ardens.
"Gideon, keen in arms, was captain of the host,
And acquired redemption for his people, but not by his own
power.
Being strengthened in faith, his heart was influenced to ask a
sign
By which he might know whether or not he should be successful
in battle.
A fleece was so placed by night, that it might be wet with dew;
And all the surrounding earth remain dry.
By this he was to learn that he should gain the victory over
his enemies.
The sign was reversed; the fleece remaining dry while all the
ground was moist;
And by this sign he was to know that he should slaughter those
troops of robbers.
The people of Christ conquer without any military force;
Three hundred horsemen, (for the Greek letter T, tau, is the
emblem of the number,)
Armed with torches, and blowing with trumpets.
The fleece of the sheep are the people sprung from the Messiah,
And the earth are the various nations dispersed over the world.
It is the word which nourishes; but might is the image of
death.
Tau is the sign of the cross; and the trumpets, the emblems of
the heralds of life;
And the burning torches in the pitchers, the emblems of the Holy
Spirit."
We see here what abstruse meanings a strong imagination, assisted by a little piety, may extract from what was never intended to be understood as a mystery.
Adam Clarke's Commentary on the Bible (1810–1826) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
Daniel D. Whedon 1874 · Public Domain 20. Sword of the Lord — In Jdg_7:18 the…
20. Sword of the Lord — In Jdg_7:18 the word sword is supplied from this passage. The battle cry as there given is, literally, For Jehovah and for Gideon. This cry, ringing out from the three companies on different sides of the camp, together with the sound of the trumpets and the crashing of the pitchers, and the sudden glare of three hundred torches in the midnight darkness, might well bewilder and confound an army just waking out of sleep.
Daniel D. Whedon (gen. ed.), Commentary on the Old and New Testaments (1874–1909) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges 1878 · Public Domain 20. Gideon’s company having given the signal (Jdg_7:19), the…
20. Gideon’s company having given the signal (Jdg_7:19), the two others reply, and all three together (Jdg_7:20) carry out the preconcerted plan.
The sentence ‘and the trumpets in their right hands to blow withal’ seems to be, either in whole or in part, an addition, possibly from the ‘trumpet-story’; but the original form of the verse is past recovery.
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The sword etc.] A sword for Jehovah and Gideon! The battle-cry as agreed was simply ‘For Jehovah and Gideon,’ Jdg_7:18; a sword has been added.
The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges (gen. ed. J. J. S. Perowne; Cambridge University Press, 1878–1918) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Ellicott's Commentary for English Readers 1878 · Public Domain (20) The trumpets in their right hands . .…
(20) The trumpets in their right hands . . .—Thus they were comparatively defenceless, though, if they had any armour at all, doubtless they could still hold the shield on the left arm, while the sword was girded on the thigh. The effect of the sudden crash and glare and shout upon the vast unwieldy host of the Bedouins may be imagined. Startled from sleep in a camp which, like Oriental camps, must have been most imperfectly protected and disciplined, they would see on every side blazing torches, and hear on every side the rams’ horns and the terrible shout of the Israelites. (Comp. Tac. Ann. i. 68.) The instant result was a wild panic, such as that which seized the camp of the Persians at Platæe. The first thought which would rise in their minds would be that there was some treachery at work among the motley elements of the camp itself. Even a well-disciplined camp is liable to these outbursts of panic. One such occurred among the Greeks in the camp of the Ten Thousand during their retreat. To shame these groundless alarms, Klearchus next morning caused a reward to be proclaimed for any one who would give information “who had let the ass loose;” and this seems to have been a standing joke to shame Greek soldiers from such panics (Xen. Anab. ii. 2, 20). Several stratagems similar to that of Gideon are recorded in history. Polyænus, in his book on the “Art of War,” tells us that Diœtas, when attacking Heræa, “ordered the trumpeters to stand apart, and sound a charge opposite to many quarters of the city; and that the Heræans, hearing the blasts of many trumpets from many directions, thinking that the whole region was crowded with enemies, abandoned the city.” Frontinus also tells us that the Tarquinians and Faliscans tried to frighten the Romans with torches, and Minucius Rufus terrified the Scordisci by trumpets blown among the rocks (Strateg. ii. 3). Hannibal on one occasion escaped from Fabius Maximus by tying torches to the heads of cattle, and having them driven about the hills. The Druids waved torches to repel the attack of Suetonius Paulinus on the island of Mona (Tac. Ann. xiv. 30). An Arab chief (Bel-Arab) in the eighteenth century used trumpets in exactly the same manner as Gideon did on this occasion, and with the same success (Niebuhr, Beschr. von Arabien, p. 304). Ewald alludes to similar stratagems in Neapolitan and Hungarian wars, the latter so recently as 1849 (Gesch. ii. 503).
A Bible Commentary for English Readers, edited by Charles John Ellicott (1878–1897) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
unfoldingWord translationNotes 2017 · CC BY-SA 4.0 The sword of Yahweh and of Gideon
The sword of Yahweh and of Gideon
Here "sword" refers to their fighting. AT: "We fight for Yahweh and for Gideon" (See: Metonymy)
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translationWords
trumpet
sword
Yahweh
Gideon
Midian
run
unfoldingWord translationNotes — © Distant Shores Media and the Door43 World Missions Community, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Source: git.door43.org/Door43/en_tn.