What Does Judges 8:18 Mean?

(18) **Then said he unto Zebah and Zalmunna.**—They had been kept alive in order to answer the cowardly taunt of the elders of Succoth. There is nothing to show whether they were put to death at Succoth, as Josephus says, or taken to Ophrah (*Antt. iv.* 7, § 5). Perhaps Gideon reserved their death for the place where he had once lived with his brothers, whom they had slain. **What manner of men were they.**—Literally, *where *(*are*)* the men? *Evidently this colloquy is only related in a shortened form, and Gideon’s enquiry is rather a taunt or an expression of grief (Job 17:15), to show them that he now meant to act as the *goel, *or blood-avenger of his brothers. Up till this time these great chiefs seem to have been led in triumph on their camels, in all their splendid apparel and golden ornaments; and they may have thought, with Agag, that the bitterness of death was passed. **Whom ye slew at Tabor?**—We are left completely in the dark as to the circumstances of this battle, or massacre. In the complete uncertainty as to all the details of the chronology, it is not impossible that Gideon’s brothers—at least three or four in number—may have perished in Barak’s “battle of Mount Tabor,” or in some early struggle of this Midianite invasion, or in the first night battle (Judges 7:22). **As thou . . . so they.**—A similar phrase occurs in 1Kings 22:4. **Resembled the children of a king.**—We learn from this reference that Gideon added to his other gifts that tall, commanding presence which always carried weight in early days (1Samuel 10:24; 1Samuel 16:6-7). In *Iliad, iii.* 170, Priam says: “One so fair I never saw with my eyes, nor so stately, for he is like a king” (βασιλῆἰ γἀρ άνδρὶ ἔоικεν)*.*