ed along, they left the
land a sorrowful wreck behind them, and having utterly spoiled the plain
of Akka, they turned southwards, and continued their march as far as
Gaza, the southern limit of the territory of Israel.

God was surely punishing them for their sins, the Israelites rightly
thought; and they began to call to mind how they had forsaken His ways,
and grieved Him with the blackness of their sins. What must become of
them they scarcely dared think, as they huddled together in the dark
holes in the rocks, their sunken-eyed wives wringing their hands in
despair, and their hungry children crying for bread. No one would ever
be able to drive out the terrible invaders. Not the boldest man in all
Israel dared face them. Unopposed, they would continue their ravages;
and the land that had flowed with milk and honey would soon be one vast
ruin.

The wild men of the desert spread their black tents over the land, and
for multitude they could only be compared to the sands of the sea-shore,
or uncountable myriads of locusts.

All the Israelites together would but be as a handful, compared with the
wild Arabs; and how could they hope ever to drive them out?

"O Israel, trust thou in the Lord: He is their help and their shield!"
When the human arm fails, there is help in the Lord Jehovah; and He can
drive out the most dreaded foe.

A solitary man, who was of the tribe of Manasseh, and who had got his
name of Gideon, or _the hewer_, from his stature and his great strength,
was threshing wheat by a winepress in Ophrah. His father had had a large
farm, with smiling cornfields and sunny meadows; and Gideon had seen the
day when he had ploughed with his yoked oxen, and when his patient
animals had trodden out for him heaps of precious corn, and there was no
sign of lack to any. But now, what a change had come! Instead of
well-stored barns, he had only a little wheat, which he had contrived to
conceal from the Arab invaders; and, instead of its being trodden out by
plump oxen, he was glad to beat it with a stick, not possessing even the
poor man's flail, and hiding in a winepress, where no one would expect
to find him.

Striking only gentle blows lest he should be discovered, and sorrowfully
contrasting the present with the past, his heart sank within him, when
raising his head he was startled to find that he was no longer alone.

Close beside him, under an oak-tree, sat One who appeared to be a
traveller resting, with his