Gideon Gideon Gideon () or Gedeon, also named Jerubbaal, and Jerubbesheth, was a military leader, judge and prophet whose calling and victory over the Midianites are recounted in chapters 6 to 8 of the Book of Judges in the Hebrew Bible. Gideon was the son of Joash, from the Abiezrite clan in the tribe of Manasseh and lived in Ephra (Ophrah). As a leader of the Israelites, he won a decisive victory over a Midianite army despite a vast numerical disadvantage, leading a troop of 300 'valiant' men. The nineteenth-century Strong's Concordance derives the name "Jerubbaal" from "Baal will contend", in
Tribe of Naphtali to others in the Israelite confederation. Militarism is featured in Naphtali's history. In the ancient Song of Deborah, Naphtali is commended, along with Zebulun, for risking their lives in the fight against Sisera; in the prose account of the event, which textual scholars regard as a much later narrative based on the poem, there is the addition that Barak, the leader of the anti-Sisera forces, hails from the tribe of Naphtali. In the Gideon narrative Naphtali are one of the tribes which join in an attack against Midianite invaders, though textual scholars regard the Gideon narrative as being spliced together