Bible Commentaries

Judges 7:7

Nothing is done effectually through untrained human nature; and such is ever the condition of the multitude.... Every great change is effected by the few, not by the many; by the resolute, undaunted, zealous few. Doubtless, much may be undone by the many, but nothing is done except by those who are specially trained for action.

—Newman.

The Three Hundred Men That Lapped (a Church Guild Sermon)

Judges 7:7

Here is one of these battles of God which are being waged in century after century, crisis after crisis, by the armies of Truth against the hordes of unrighteousness. I. Gideon, trusting manfully in his Divine commission, sets himself to deliver Israel from the Midianites. Cheered himself by God's manifest goodness he succeeds, as men count success, in gathering together a strong army. And what is the first message that reaches him from God as he has encamped before the Midianites? "The people that are with thee are too many." So Gideon has to submit there in the presence of the enemy with a tradition of disgrace behind him; Judges 7:13

The machinery for dreaming planted in the human brain was not planted for nothing. That faculty, in alliance with the mystery of darkness, is the one great tube through which man communicates with the shadowy. And the dreaming organ, in connexion with the heart, the eye, and the ear, compose the magnificent apparatus which forces the infinite into the chambers of a human brain, and throws dark reflections from eternities below all life upon the mirrors of that mysterious camera obscura—the sleeping mind.

—De Quincey.

Only lightly and seldom did the Greeks and Romans dream: a distinct and vivid dream was with them an event to be recorded in their historical books. Real dreaming is first found among the ancient Jews.

—Heine.

A Cake of Barley Bread

Judges 7:13

Here we have a tiny nation oppressed by powerful neighbours. They have been maltreated by the oppressors, and at this, the darkest moment in the fortunes of Israel, a deliverer arises, not from among the leaders of the people, nor from those who stand in high places, but as has often been the case in history, from the lower ranks themselves. Gideon is the hero in question. A man of the same stature and quality as Wallace and William Tell. Some one must have the courage to speak and to do something more than speak, some one must have the intrepidity to Judges 7:17

Is example nothing? It is everything. Example is the school of mankind, and they will learn at no other.

—Burke.

Judges 7:18

Set it downe to thyselfe, as well to create good Presidents as to follow them.

—Bacon.

For an extended popular movement a great name is like a consecrated banner.

—George Meredith.

References.—VII:18.—Bishop Woodford, Sermons on Subjects from the Old Testament, p54. VII:19.—Christian World Pulpit, 10 Dec, 1890. G. Brooks, Outlines of Sermons, p413. Spurgeon, Morning by Morning, p264. VII:19-25.—Ibid. Sermons, vol. xl. No2343. VIII1-27.—Ibid.