5. When Gideon led the soldiers down to the water, the Lord said to him: Everyone who laps up the water as a dog does with its tongue you shall set aside by himself; and everyone who kneels down to drink raising his hand to his mouth you shall set aside by himself.
6. Those who lapped up the water with their tongues numbered three hundred, but all the rest of the soldiers knelt down to drink the water.
7. The Lord said to Gideon: By means of the three hundred who lapped up the water I will save you and deliver Midian into your power. So let all the other soldiers go home.
8. They took up such supplies as the soldiers had with them, as well as their horns, and Gideon sent the rest of the Israelites to their tents, but kept the three hundred men. Now the camp of Midian was below him in the valley.
9. That night the Lord said to Gideon: Go, descend on the camp, for I have delivered it into your power.
10. If you are afraid to attack, go down to the camp with your aide Purah
11. and listen to what they are saying. After that you will have the courage to descend on the camp. So he went down with his aide Purah to the outposts of the armed men in the camp.
12. The Midianites, Amalekites, and all the Kedemites were lying in the valley, thick as locusts. Their camels could not be counted, for they were as many as the sands on the seashore.
13. When Gideon arrived, one man was telling another about a dream. “I had a dream,” he said, “that a round loaf of barley bread was rolling into the camp of Midian. It came to a certain tent and struck it and turned it upside down, and the tent collapsed.”
14. “This can only be the sword of the Israelite Gideon, son of Joash,” the other replied. “God has delivered Midian and all the camp into his power.”
15. When Gideon heard the account of the dream and its explanation, he bowed down. Then returning to the camp of Israel, he said, “Arise, for the Lord has delivered the camp of Midian into your power.”
16. He divided the three hundred men into three companies, and provided them all with horns and with empty jars and torches inside the jars.
17. “Watch me and follow my lead,” he told them. “I shall go to the edge of the camp, and as I do, you must do also.
18. When I and those with me blow horns, you too must blow horns all around the camp and cry out, ‘For the Lord and for Gideon!’”
19. So Gideon and the hundred men who were with him came to the edge of the camp at the beginning of the middle watch, just after the posting of the guards. They blew the horns and broke the jars they were holding.
20. When the three companies had blown their horns and broken their jars, they took the torches in their left hands, and in their right the horns they had been blowing, and cried out, “A sword for the Lord and for Gideon!”