ach a handful of water.
These are the men whom I have chosen to set Israel free."

Gideon counted these men, and found that there were only three hundred
of them, while all the rest bowed down on their faces to drink. The
difference between them was that the three hundred were earnest men, of
one purpose; not turning aside from their aim even to drink, as the
others did. Then, too, they were watchful men, always ready to meet
their enemies.

So Gideon, at God's command, sent back to the camp on Mount Gilboa all
the rest of his army, nearly ten thousand men, keeping with himself only
his little band of three hundred.

Gideon's plan did not need a large army; but it needed a few careful,
bold men, who should do exactly as their leader commanded them. He gave
to each man a lamp, a pitcher, and a trumpet, and told the men just what
was to be done with them. The lamp was lighted, but was placed inside
the pitcher, so that it could not be seen. He divided his men into three
companies, and very quietly led them down the mountain in the middle of
the night, and arranged them all in order around the camp of the
Midianites.

[Illustration: _The men blew their trumpets with a mighty noise_]

Then at one moment a great shout rang out in the darkness, "The sword of
the Lord and of Gideon," and after it came a crash of breaking pitchers,
and then a flash of light in every direction. The three hundred men had
given the shout, and broken their pitchers, so that on every side
lights were shining. The men blew their trumpets with a mighty noise;
and the Midianites were roused from sleep, to see enemies all round
them, lights beaming and swords flashing, while everywhere the sharp
sound of the trumpets was heard.

They were filled with sudden terror, and thought only of escape, not of
fighting. But wherever they turned, their enemies seemed to be standing
with swords drawn. They trampled each other down to death, flying from
the Israelites. Their own land was in the east, across the river Jordan,
and they fled in that direction, down one of the valleys between the
mountains.

Gideon had thought that the Midianites would turn toward their own land,
if they should be beaten in the battle, and he had already planned to
cut off their flight. The ten thousand men in the camp he had placed on
the sides of the valley leading to the Jordan. There they slew very many
of the Midianites as they fled down the steep pass toward the river. And