Judges 8:15

15 Then he came to the people of Sukkot and said: "You insulted me when you said, 'You haven't captured Zevach and Tzalmuna yet, so why should we give bread to your exhausted men?' Well, here are Zevach and Tzalmuna!"

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 When Gid'on the son of Yo'ash returned from the battle by way of the Heres Pass,

14 he captured a young man from Sukkot and asked him about the chiefs and leaders of Sukkot; he wrote down for him the names of seventy-seven of them.

15 Then he came to the people of Sukkot and said: "You insulted me when you said, 'You haven't captured Zevach and Tzalmuna yet, so why should we give bread to your exhausted men?' Well, here are Zevach and Tzalmuna!"

16 And he took the leaders of the city and desert thorns and thistles, and used them to teach the people of Sukkot a lesson!

17 He also broke down the tower of P'nu'el and put the men of the city to death.