Three hundred men with clay jars and torches routed an army of over a hundred thousand. That is the story of Gideon, and according to Josephus, God designed it specifically so that no one could credit the victory to human strength.
But first came Deborah. After Ehud's death, Israel fell back into lawlessness, and Jabin, king of the Canaanites, enslaved them for twenty years. His general Sisera commanded three hundred thousand infantry, ten thousand cavalry, and three thousand chariots. The Israelites were so thoroughly beaten they had to pay tribute just to survive. When they finally repented, they turned to Deborah—a prophetess whose name, Josephus notes, means "bee" in Hebrew (Devorah, דבורה). She declared that God had chosen Barak of the tribe of Naphtali as their general. Barak refused to go unless Deborah came with him. She agreed, but told him the glory of the kill would belong to a woman.
Ten thousand Israelites faced Sisera's massive force at Mount Tabor. Then God intervened. A violent storm crashed down—rain, hail, wind driving directly into the Canaanites' faces. Their archers couldn't see. Their swords were too cold to grip. The Israelites, with the storm at their backs, cut through them. Sisera fled on foot to the tent of Jael, a Kenite woman, who offered him shelter and sour milk. He drank until he fell asleep. Then she took an iron nail and hammered it through his temple into the ground (Judges 4:21). When Barak arrived, she showed him Sisera—pinned to the earth. Victory by a woman, exactly as Deborah had promised.
Forty years of peace followed. Then, after Deborah and Barak died, the Midianites and their Amalekite and Arabian allies devastated Israel for seven years. They burned crops at harvest and left the fields alone only in winter—letting the Israelites do the hard work of plowing, then stealing everything they grew. The people were reduced to hiding in caves and underground hollows, starving.
Gideon, from the tribe of Manasseh, was secretly threshing wheat in a winepress—too afraid to use the open threshing floor—when an angel appeared and told him he was chosen to deliver Israel. Gideon protested. His tribe was small. He was young and insignificant. The angel insisted. Ten thousand volunteers assembled, but God ordered Gideon to thin the ranks. He brought the soldiers to a river. Those who knelt and drank carefully were sent home. Only the three hundred who scooped water hastily with their hands—too eager to fight to kneel—remained.
That night, Gideon divided his three hundred into three companies. Each man carried an empty clay pitcher hiding a lit torch, and a ram's horn. At the fourth watch of the night, they surrounded the Midianite camp and gave the signal. Three hundred pitchers shattered at once. Three hundred torches blazed in the darkness. Three hundred horns screamed. The Midianites, jolted from sleep, panicked. In the chaos and the dark, they turned on each other—unable to distinguish friend from enemy because of the many different languages spoken among their allied forces. The slaughter was catastrophic. One hundred and twenty thousand soldiers died, many by their own comrades' swords. Gideon pursued the survivors, captured the Midianite kings Zeba and Zalmuna, and executed them. Israel begged him to become their ruler. He governed for forty years and was buried in his homeland of Ophrah.