Judges 9:37

37 Gaal spoke again and said, "Look, people are coming down from Tabbur-erez, and one company is coming from the direction of Elon-meonenim."

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 When Gaal son of Ebed went out and stood in the entrance of the gate of the city, Abimelech and the troops with him rose from the ambush.
36 And when Gaal saw them, he said to Zebul, "Look, people are coming down from the mountain tops!" And Zebul said to him, "The shadows on the mountains look like people to you."
37 Gaal spoke again and said, "Look, people are coming down from Tabbur-erez, and one company is coming from the direction of Elon-meonenim."
38 Then Zebul said to him, "Where is your boast now, you who said, "Who is Abimelech, that we should serve him?' Are not these the troops you made light of? Go out now and fight with them."
39 So Gaal went out at the head of the lords of Shechem, and fought with Abimelech.

Footnotes 1

  • [a]. That is [Diviners' Oak]
New Revised Standard Version Bible, copyright 1989, Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved.