A CAMP IN THE DESERT
The black tents of the Arabs on the desert sands.
From a photograph belonging to Mr. S. E. Bridgman and used by his kind permission.

"The Midianites came up with their cattle and their tents, they came in as locusts for multitude; both they and their camels were without number: and they came into the land to destroy it." This is no doubt just the way in which the camps of the Midianites looked in the old days when they raided the farms of the Israelites.

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GIDEON
The Story of a Brave Man Who Freed His People from Oppression.

(There was a time when every year one of the tribes of the desert which lies south and east of Palestine raided the farms and pastures of the Israelites, plundering and burning, and carrying off the crops and herds.)

The Midianites came up with their cattle and their tents, they came in as locusts for multitude; both they and their camels were without number: and they came into the land to destroy it. And Israel was brought very low because of Midian; and the children of Israel cried unto the Lord.

And it came to pass, when the children of Israel cried unto the Lord because of Midian, that the Lord sent a prophet to the children of Israel: and he said unto them, "Thus saith the Lord, the God of Israel, 'I brought you up from Egypt, and brought you forth out of the house of bondage; and I delivered you out of the hand of the Egyptians, and out of the hand of all that oppressed you, and drove them out from before you, and gave you their land; and I said to you, I am the Lord your God; ye shall not fear the gods of the Amorites, in whose land ye dwell: but ye have not hearkened unto my voice.'"

And the angel of the Lord came, and sat under the [{320}] oak which was in Ophrah, which was on the land of Joash the Abiezrite: and his son Gideon was beating out wheat in the wine press, to hide it from the Midianites. And the angel of the Lord appeared to him, and said to him, "The Lord is with thee, thou mighty man of valor."

And Gideon said to him, "O my lord, if the Lord is with us, why then is all this befallen us? and where are all his wondrous works of which our fathers told us, saying, 'Did not the Lord bring us up from Egypt?' but now the Lord hath cast us off, and delivered us into the hand of Midian."