Judges 9:37

37 Gaal spoke again * and said, "Behold, people are coming down from 1the highest part of the land, and one company comes by the way of the diviners' oak."

Judges 9:37 Meaning and Commentary

Judges 9:37

And Gaal spake again, and said
Looking towards the mountains, and taking another view of what he before saw, for further satisfaction:

see, there come people down by the middle of the land;
either in the valley between the two mountains; or rather those he first saw on the top of the mountains were now come down about the middle of them, called in the Hebrew text the navel, from the prominence of the mountains thereabout, or because the navel is in the middle of the body, as this part of them was the middle on which he saw them. R. Isaiah interprets it, between the two cities:

and another company come along by the plain of Meonenim;
of which we read nowhere else. Montanus renders it, "the oak of Meonenim"; or of the soothsayers; oaks being had in great esteem with idolaters for their oracles and divinations; and perhaps this was a place, whether an oak or, a plain, where such persons used to meet to make their divinations.

Judges 9:37 In-Context

35 Now Gaal the son of Ebed went out and stood in the entrance of the city gate; and Abimelech and the people who were with him arose from the ambush.
36 When Gaal saw the people, he said to Zebul, "Look, people are coming down from the tops of the mountains." But Zebul said to him, "You are seeing the shadow of the mountains as if they were men."
37 Gaal spoke again and said, "Behold, people are coming down from the highest part of the land, and one company comes by the way of the diviners' oak."
38 Then Zebul said to him, "Where is your boasting now with which you said, 'Who is Abimelech that we should serve him?' Is this not the people whom you despised? Go out now and fight with them!"
39 So Gaal went out before the leaders of Shechem and fought with Abimelech.

Cross References 1

Footnotes 4

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