Charles Ellicott Commentary Judges 7:20

"And the three companies blew the trumpets, and brake the pitchers, and held the torches in their left hands, and the trumpets in their right hands wherewith to blow; and they cried, The sword of Jehovah and of Gideon." — Judges 7:20 (ASV)

The trumpets in their right hands ... —Thus they were comparatively defenseless, though, if they had any armor at all, no doubt they could still hold the shield on the left arm, while the sword was girded on the thigh. The effect of the sudden crash and glare and shout upon the vast unwieldy host of the Bedouins may be imagined.

Startled from sleep in a camp that, like Eastern camps, must have been most imperfectly protected and disciplined, they would see on every side blazing torches, and hear on every side the rams’ horns and the terrible shout of the Israelites. (Compare to Tacitus, Annals 1.68.) The instant result was a wild panic, such as that which seized the camp of the Persians at Plataea. The first thought that would rise in their minds would be that there was some treachery at work among the motley elements of the camp itself.

Even a well-disciplined camp is liable to these outbursts of panic. One such occurred among the Greeks in the camp of the Ten Thousand during their retreat. To shame these groundless alarms, Clearchus next morning caused a reward to be proclaimed for anyone who would give information “who had let the ass loose;” and this seems to have been a standing joke to shame Greek soldiers from such panics (Xenophon, Anabasis 2.2.20).

Several stratagems similar to that of Gideon are recorded in history. Polyaenus, in his book on the “Art of War,” tells us that Dioetas, when attacking Heraea, “ordered the trumpeters to stand apart, and sound a charge opposite to many quarters of the city; and that the Heraeans, hearing the blasts of many trumpets from many directions, thinking that the whole region was crowded with enemies, abandoned the city.” Frontinus also tells us that the Tarquinians and Faliscans tried to frighten the Romans with torches, and Minucius Rufus terrified the Scordisci by trumpets blown among the rocks (Strategemata 2.3).

Hannibal on one occasion escaped from Fabius Maximus by tying torches to the heads of cattle and having them driven about the hills. The Druids waved torches to repel the attack of Suetonius Paulinus on the island of Mona (Tacitus, Annals 14.30). An Arab chief (Bel-Arab) in the eighteenth century used trumpets in exactly the same manner as Gideon did on this occasion, and with the same success (Niebuhr, Beschreibung von Arabien, p. 304). Ewald alludes to similar stratagems in Neapolitan and Hungarian wars, the latter so recently as 1849 (Geschichte 2.503).