Judges 8:30

30 and he had seventy sons, that went out of his thigh, for he had many wives.

Judges 8:30 Meaning and Commentary

Judges 8:30

And Gideon had seventy sons of his body begotten
Not after his victories, for it is plain he had children before; mention is made of Jether, his firstborn, as a youth able to draw a sword, and slay with it, ( Judges 8:20 ) but this was the number of all his sons, both before and after, and a large number it was; and the phrase "of his body begotten", or "that went out of his thigh" is used to show that they were his own sons, begotten in wedlock, and not sons that he had taken into his family by adoption, or that he was father-in-law to, having married a woman or women that had sons by a former husband; but these were all his own:

for he had many wives;
which, though not agreeable to the original law of marriage, was customary in those times, and even with good men, and was connived at; and this is a reason accounting for his having so many sons.

Judges 8:30 In-Context

28 But Midian was made low before the sons of Israel, and they might no more raise up their nolls; and the land rested forty years, in which Gideon was sovereign.

29 And so Jerubbaal, the son of Joash, went, and dwelled in his house;

30 and he had seventy sons, that went out of his thigh, for he had many wives.

31 And a concubine, that is, (the) secondary wife, of him, whom he had in Shechem, engendered to him a son, Abimelech by name.

32 And Gideon, the son of Joash, died in [a] good eld [age], and was buried in the sepulchre of Joash, his father, in Ophrah, of the family of Abiezrites.