Where did Gideon defeat the Midianites?

Question

Accepted Answer

At the eastern end of the Jezreel valley, in the north of today's Israel. Gideon's men camped at the spring of Harod, Ain Jalud at the foot of Mount Gilboa, 3 km east of Jezreel and 15 km west of Beth-shan; the Midianites lay across the valley to the north by the hill of Moreh, Givat HaMoreh, about 8 km away. The map puts Gideon's home, Ophrah, 9 km to the west at Afula, though the site is disputed. The night attack of the three hundred sent the enemy fleeing down the valley toward the Jordan, to Beth-shittah 5 km away and Abel-meholah 27 km away on the river, and Gideon pursued them across the Jordan far into the desert, to Karkor. Judges sets the scene: “all the Midianites and the Amalekites and the children of the east were gathered together, and went over, and pitched in the valley of Jezreel”; “Then Jerubbaal, who is Gideon, and all the people that were with him, rose up early, and pitched beside the well of Harod: so that the host of the Midianites were on the north side of them, by the hill of Moreh, in the valley.” The raiders “lay along in the valley like grasshoppers for multitude; and their camels were without number”. When the trumpets sounded, “the LORD set every man's sword against his fellow, even throughout all the host: and the host fled to Beth-shittah in Zererath, and to the border of Abel-meholah”; “And Gideon came to Jordan, and passed over, he, and the three hundred men that were with him, faint, yet pursuing them.” The Midianites were camel nomads from the deserts east and south of the land, and this is often called the first picture in the Bible of raiders mounted on camels; they came at harvest to strip the fields, which is why Gideon was threshing wheat in a winepress to hide it. The Jezreel valley, the broad plain between Galilee and the hills of Samaria, is the natural way in from the Jordan fords at Beth-shan. The date is uncertain, like all the judges; the map's conventional year is about 1150 BC. The spring of Harod kept its fame: Saul's army probably camped here before Gilboa, and here at Ain Jalut in 1260 the Mamluks of Egypt defeated the Mongols.