Lives of Scripture

Zalmunna, together with Zebah, was one of two kings of Midian whose army had oppressed Israel until Gideon routed it with just three hundred men (Judges 7:19-25). Zalmunna led the remaining fifteen thousand troops -- survivors of an army once numbering a hundred and twenty thousand -- in flight east of the Jordan, but Gideon caught and captured both kings by surprise at Karkor (8:10-12). Along the chase, the towns of Succoth and Penuel had refused Gideon's exhausted men bread, their leaders mocking the idea that he would ever actually catch Zalmunna and Zebah; Gideon promised to deal with both towns once he returned victorious, and he kept that promise (8:4-9, 13-17). Facing Gideon afterward, Zalmunna and Zebah were asked to describe the men they had killed at Mount Tabor, and their description revealed the victims were Gideon's own brothers -- sealing their fate, since Gideon declared he would have spared them had they spared his brothers (8:18-19). Rather than die at the hand of Gideon's frightened young son Jether, ordered to execute them, Zalmunna and Zebah told Gideon to kill them himself: "As the man is, so is his strength." Gideon did (8:20-21). Centuries later, Psalm 83:11 invokes Zalmunna and Zebah's names as a plea for God to deal as decisively with a later generation of Israel's enemies.