Then Zebah and Zalmunna said, Rise thou, and fall upon us: for as the man is, so is his strength. And Gideon arose, and slew Zebah and Zalmunna, and took away the ornaments that were on their camels' necks. Then Zebah and Zalmunna said, Rise, thou, and fall upon us - It was disgraceful to fall by the hands of a child; and the death occasioned by the blows of such a person must be much more lingering and tormenting. Some have even employed children to despatch captives. Civilis, a Roman knight, headed a revolt of the Gauls against Rome, in the year of the city 824. Of him Tacitus says, Hist. lib. iv., c. 61: Ferebatur parvulo filio quosdam captivorum sagittis jaculisque puerilibus figendos obtulisse: "He is said to have given to his little son some prisoners, as butts to be shot at with little darts and arrows." This was for their greater torment and dishonor; and to inure his child to blood! Could any thing like this have been the design of Gideon?
The ornaments that were on their camels' necks. - The heads, necks, bodies, and legs of camels, horses, and elephants, are highly ornamented in the eastern countries, and indeed this was common, from the remotest antiquity, in all countries. Virgil refers to it as a thing long before his time, and thus describes the horses given by King Latinus to the ambassadors of Aeneas. - Aen. lib. vii., ver. 274.
Haec effatus equos numero pater eligit omni.
Stabant tercentum nitidi in praesepibus altis:
Omnibus extemplo Teucris jubet ordine duci
Instratos ostro alipedes pictisque tapetis. Aurea
pectoribus demissa monilia pendent: Tecti auro
fulvum mandunt sub dentibus aurum.
"He said, and order'd steeds to mount the band: In
lofty stalls three hundred coursers stand; Their
shining sides with crimson cover'd o'er; The
sprightly steeds embroider'd trappings wore, With
golden chains, refulgent to behold: Gold were their
bridles, and they champ'd on gold."
Pitt.
Instead of ornaments, the Septuagint translate τους μηνισκους, the crescents or half-moons; and this is followed by the Syriac and Arabic. The worship of the moon was very ancient; and, with that of the sun, constituted the earliest idolatry of mankind. We learn from Judges 8:24 that the Ishmaelites, or Arabs, as they are termed by the Targum, Syriac, and Arabic, had golden ear-rings, and probably a crescent in each; for it is well known that the Ishmaelites, and the Arabs who descended from them, were addicted very early to the worship of the moon; and so attached were they to this superstition, that although Mohammed destroyed the idolatrous use of the crescent, yet it was universally borne in their ensigns, and on the tops of their mosques, as well as in various ornaments.