Behold, I dreamed a dream. — Since dreams, no less than the Bath Kol, were recognised channels for Divine intimations (Genesis 41:12; Numbers 12:6; 1 Samuel 28:6; Joel 2:28, &c.), Gideon would feel doubly assured.
A cake. — The Hebrew word tsalol (or tselil in the Keri, or margin) is a word which occurs nowhere else. Rabbis Kimchi and Tanchun derive it from tsalal, “he tinkled” (as in tselselim and other names for musical instruments), or “he overshadowed.” Neither derivation yields any sense. The Chaldee, Syriac, and Rashi render it “a cake baked on coals,” and so, too, the LXX. (since such is the meaning of magie), the Vulgate (panis subcinericius), and Josephus (maza krithinç); this seems to be the true sense. Ewald makes it mean “a dry rattling crust.” Niebuhr tells us that the desert Arabs thrust a round lump of dough into hot ashes, then take it out and eat it. (Arab., p. 52.)
Of barley bread. — Josephus helps us to see the significance of the symbol by adding, “which men can (hardly) eat for its coarseness.” It must be remembered that the Israelites had been reduced to such poverty by these raids that the mass of them would have nothing to subsist on but common barley bread such as that used to this day, with bitter complaints, by the Fellahîn of Palestine. Among the Greeks also “barley bread” was proverbial as a kind of food hardly fit to be eaten, although such was the poverty which the Saviour bore for our sakes that it seems to have been the ordinary food of Him and His apostles (John 6:9). “A cake of barley bread” would, therefore, naturally recall the thought of the Israelites, who were no doubt taunted by their enemies with being reduced to this food; just as Dr. Johnson defined oats as “food for horses in England, and for men in Scotland.” Thus, in 1 Kings 4:28, the “barley” is only for the horses and dromedaries. “If the Midianites were accustomed to call Gideon and his band ‘eaters of barley bread,’ as their successors, the haughty Bedouins, often do to ridicule their enemies, the application would be the more natural” (Thomson, Land and Book, p. 447). Josephus makes the soldier say that, as barley is the vilest of all seed, so the Israelites were the vilest of all the people of Asia.
Tumbled. — Rather, was rolling itself.
Unto a tent. — Rather, into the tent, which doubtless means (as Josephus says) the tent-royal — the tent of Zebah and Salmanah.
Smote it. — Perhaps the dream involved that it also (as Josephus says) “threw down the tents of all the soldiers.”
Overturned it, that the tent lay along. — The latter words are involved in the first verb, and are only added for emphasis in accordance with the full picturesque Hebrew style. (Comp. “A bullock that hath horns and hoofs;” “I am a widow woman, and my husband is dead,” &c.) This leisurely stateliness of description is found again and again in the Bible. (See my Origin of Language, p. 168, and Brief Greek Syntax, p. 200.)