Catholic Public Domain Version

Judges 7:10-24 Catholic Public Domain Version (CPDV)

10. But if you dread to go alone, let your servant Purah descend with you.

11. And when you will hear what they are saying, then your hands will be strengthened, and you will descend more confidently to the camp of the enemy." Therefore, he descended with his servant Purah into a portion of the camp, where there was a watch of armed men.

12. But Midian, and Amalek, and all the eastern peoples lay spread out in the valley, like a multitude of locusts. Their camels, too, were innumerable, like the sand that lies on the shore of the sea.

13. And when Gideon had arrived, someone told his neighbor a dream. And he related what he had seen, in this way: "I saw a dream, and it seemed to me as if bread, baked under ashes from rolled barley, descended into the camp of Midian. And whenever it arrived at a tent, it struck it, and overturned it, and utterly leveled it to the ground."

14. He to whom he spoke, responded: "This is nothing else but the sword of Gideon, the son of Joash, a man of Israel. For the Lord has delivered Midian into his hands, with their entire camp."

15. And when Gideon had heard the dream and its interpretation, he worshipped. And he returned to the camp of Israel, and he said: "Rise up! For the Lord has delivered the camp of Midian into our hands."

16. And he divided the three hundred men into three parts. And he gave trumpets, and empty pitchers, and lamps for the middle of the pitchers, into their hands.

17. And he said to them: "What you will see me do, do the same. I will enter a portion of the camp, and what I do, you shall follow.

18. When the trumpet in my hand blares out, you also shall sound the trumpets, on every side of the camp, and shout together to the Lord and to Gideon."

19. And Gideon, and the three hundred men who were with him, entered a portion of the camp, at the beginning of the watch in the middle of the night. And when the guards were alerted, they began to sound the trumpets and to clap the pitchers against one another.

20. And when they had sounded their trumpets in three places around the camp, and had broken their water pitchers, they held the lamps in their left hands, and sounded the trumpets in their right hands. And they cried out, "The sword of the Lord and of Gideon!"

21. And each one was standing in his place throughout the camp of the enemies. And so the entire camp was in confusion; and they fled away, wailing and crying out.

22. And the three hundred men nevertheless continued sounding the trumpets. And the Lord sent the sword into the entire camp, and they maimed and cut down one another,

23. fleeing as far as Bethshittah, and the base of Abelmeholah in Tabbath. But the men of Israel pursued Midian, shouting from Naphtali and Asher, and from all of Manasseh.

24. And Gideon sent messengers throughout all of Mount Ephraim, saying, "Descend to meet Midian, and occupy the waters ahead of them as far as Bethbarah and the Jordan." And all of Ephraim cried out, and they occupied the waters ahead of them, from the Jordan even to Bethbarah.