Volume 2

Gedeon and the Madianites
337
from the pagans. Everything was very clean in Azo. The
road led down through a gently sloping valley, in which
lay the city flanked on the west by a mountain.
When Deborah ruled in Israel and Sisara was slain by
Jahel, there lived for a long time at Maspha a woman
disguised as a man. She was descended from a woman
who had survived the destruction of the tribe of Benjamin
to which she belonged. This descendant assumed
male attire and knew so well how to conceal her sex as to
arouse the suspicion of no one. She had visions, she
prophesied, and often served the Israelites in quality of
spy. But whenever they employed her in that way, they
met with defeat. The Madianites were encamped at that
time near Azo, and that woman went out to them in the
dress of a distinguished military officer. She called herself
Abinoem after one of the heroes present at the defeat
of Sisara. She passed unperceived through several quarters
of the camp, spying as she went. At last she entered
the general's tent and expressed her readiness to deliver
all Israel into his hands. She had been accustomed to abstain
from wine and to conduct herself with great reserve
and circumspection. But upon this occasion she became
intoxicated, and her sex was discovered. They nailed her
hand and foot to a plank, and cast her into a pit with the
words: "May even her name be here buried with her!"
It was from Azo that Gedeon went out against the
camp of the Madianites. Gedeon was a very handsome,
powerful man of the tribe of Manasses. He dwelt with his
father near Silo. Israel was in a critical condition at that
time. The Madianites and other idolatrous tribes overran
the country, laid waste the fields, and carried off the harvest.
Gedeon, a son of Joas the Ezrite, dwelling in Ephra,
was very brave and liberal. He often threshed his wheat
before his neighbors and generously divided it among the
needy. I saw hinl going out at early morn before
daybreak, while the dew still lay on the ground, to a very