Judges 8:15

15 So Gideon went to the people of Succoth and said, "Here are Zebah and Zalmunna! You made fun of me because of them by saying, ‘Haven't you already almost gotten your hands on Zebah and Zalmunna? Why should we give food to your exhausted men now?'"

Judges 8:15 Meaning and Commentary

Judges 8:15

And he came unto the men of Succoth
Entered the city, and bespoke the inhabitants of it in the following manner:

and said, behold, Zebah and Zalmunna, with whom ye did upbraid me;
as not in his hands, and never would be, he being with his three hundred men an unequal match to them with 15,000; but he had taken them, and brought them with him, and perhaps spared them for this very reason, to let them see they were in his hands, and now calls upon them to behold them with their own eyes, concerning whom they had flouted and jeered him:

saying, are the hands of Zebah and Zalmunna now in thy hand, that we
should give bread unto thy men that are weary?
he delivers their own express words, which he had carefully observed and laid up in his memory, for their greater conviction and confusion; only adds the character of his men, that they were "weary", to expose their vile ingratitude the more, that they should refuse them a few loaves of bread, who were faint and weary in the service of them.

Judges 8:15 In-Context

13 Then Gideon, Joash's son, returned from the battle by the Heres Pass.
14 He captured a young man from the people of Succoth and interrogated him. He listed for Gideon the seventy-seven officials and elders of Succoth.
15 So Gideon went to the people of Succoth and said, "Here are Zebah and Zalmunna! You made fun of me because of them by saying, ‘Haven't you already almost gotten your hands on Zebah and Zalmunna? Why should we give food to your exhausted men now?'"
16 Then he seized the city's elders, and he beat the people of Succoth with desert thorns and briars.
17 He also broke down Penuel's tower, and killed the city's people.
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