What Does Judges 7:1 Mean?

(1) **Jerubbaal, who is Gideon.**—Abraham, Sarah, Jacob, Joseph, Esther, Daniel, St. Paul, &c, are other instances of Scriptural characters who have two names. **Beside.**—Rather, *above. *It would have been foolish and dangerous to encamp on the plain. **The well of Harod.**—The name “Harod” means “trembling,” with an obvious allusion to the timidity of the people (*chareed, *Judges 7:3), to which there may be again an allusion in 1Samuel 28:5. The name is here used by anticipation. It occurs here only, though two *Harodites *are mentioned in 2Samuel 23:25; and the same fountain is obviously alluded to in 1Samuel 29:1. From the fact that Gideon’s camp was on Mount Gilboa there can be little doubt that Harod must be identified with the abundant and beautiful fountain at the foot of the hill now known as *Ain Jalûd, *or “the spring of Goliath,” from a mistaken legend that this was the scene of the giant’s death; or possibly from a mistaken corruption of the name Harod itself. There is another reading, “Endor” (comp. Ps. 82:10). **By the hill of Moreh.**—Bertheau renders it, “stretching from the hill of Moreh into the valley.” The only hill of this name which we know from other sources is that at Shechem (Genesis 12:6; Deuteronomy 11:30), but that is twenty-five miles south of Mount Gilboa. There can be no doubt that Moreh is here used for Little Hermon, now Jebel ed-Duhy. The Vulgate renders it “of a lofty hill,” perhaps to avoid a supposed difficulty. The word Moreh means “archer,” and Little Hermon may have been called “the Archer’s Hill,” from the bowmen of the Amalekites.