Though fraud in other activities be
detestable, in the management of war it is laudable and glorious, and he who
overcomes an enemy by fraud is as much to be praised as he who does so by force.
Machiavelli
Deception appears to be one of those techniques of war, like
psychological warfare, that seems fated to cycles of loss and resurgence
despite the fact that they have been around since the birth of time. Sun Tzu
writes "All warfare is based on deception!" Writing around 500 B.C.,
Sun Tzu was one of the first to envision it as a "principle of war"
but he was not the first to employ it.
Legends, such as stories of Gideon and the Midianites, and
the Trojan Horse, lay testament to practice of deception since man began waging
war. In 1190 B.C., Gideon, the wise Judge of the Israelites, is credited with a
classic coup in the annals of military deception when he outwitted and defeated
Israel's ancient foe, the Midianites.
Midianites were living near the desert on the east of
Israel, came against the Israelites’ tribes. The two tribes that suffered the
hardest fate were Ephraim, and the part of Manasseh on the west of Jordan. For
seven years the Midianites swept over their land every year, just at the time
of harvest, and carried away all the crops of grain, until the Israelites had
no food for themselves, and none for their sheep and cattle. The Midianites
brought also their own flocks and camels without number, which ate all the
grass of the field.
The people of Israel were driven away from their villages
and their farms, and were compelled to hide in the caves of the mountains. And
if any Israelite could raise any grain, he buried it in pits covered with
earth, or in empty winepresses, where the Midianites could not find it.
Inspired by G-d, Gideon decided to give a fight to the
enemy. He sent messengers through all Manasseh on the west of Jordan, and the
tribes near on the north; and the men of the tribes gathered around him, with a
few swords and spears, but very few, for the Israelites were not ready for war.
They met beside a great spring on Mount Gilboa, called "the fountain of
Harod." On the plain, stretching up the side of another of these
mountains, called "the Hill of Moreh," was the camp of a vast
Midianite army. For as soon as the Midianites heard that Gideon had undertaken
to set his people free, they came against him with a mighty army of 120,000
soldiers.
While the
Israelite army, led by Gideon, had initially contained 32,000 men, the G-d
requested from commander to dismiss all but three hundred of them, so as to
clearly show how He would be the one to whom victory belonged, not to Israel.
Needless to say, the odds of Gideon winning such a battle seemed rather slim.
"So Gideon
sent the rest of the Israelites to their tents but kept the three hundred, who
took over the provisions and trumpets of the others." "...'Watch me,' he told them. 'Follow my lead. When I get to the edge of the
camp, do exactly as I do. When I and all who are with me blow our trumpets,
then from all around the camp blow yours and shout, 'For the G-d and for
Gideon.''
Well aware that the table
of organization and equipment for a standard night attack called for one light
carrier and one trumpeter per 100 men, Gideon used this same awareness on the
part of his enemy, the Midianites, to rout them. Gideon's plan did not need a
large army; but it needed a few careful, bold men, who should do exactly as
their leader commanded them. Each of his 300 Israelites was equipped with a
lamp, a pitcher, and a trumpet; and they were told to follow the instructions
exactly as given. The lamp was lighted, but was placed inside the pitcher, so
that it could not be seen. He divided his men into three companies, and very
quietly led them down the mountain in the middle of the night, and arranged
them all in order around the camp of the Midianites.
At Gideon's word, they each broke their pot to
reveal the torch and sounded on the horn. The Midianites, sleeping blissfully
in a valley, were suddenly subjected to a deafening blare of trumpets. The
noise, in combination with 300 lights, was perceived by them to represent a
force of some 30,000 men. Midianites were filled with sudden terror, and
thought only of escape, not of fighting. But wherever they turned, their
enemies seemed to be standing with swords drawn. They trampled each other down
to death, flying from the Israelites. Their own land was in the east, across
the river Jordan, and they fled in that direction, down one of the valleys
between the mountains. Gideon had thought that the Midianites would turn toward
their own land, if they should be beaten in the battle, and he had already planned
to cut off their flight. The ten thousand men in the camp he had placed on the
sides of the valley leading to the Jordan. There they slew very many of the
Midianites as they fled down the steep pass toward the river.
In the end, the
great psychological battle stood as a total victory for the Israelites and a
symbol of God's miraculous power.
The idea was
replicated when "less than 50 miles from the spot of Gideon's triumph--and
3,000 years later--another night attack took place. In 1918, during the First
World War, a British brigade mounted a successful night raid on Turkish lines
and, interestingly, also used deceptive noise and light."
Sources and Additional
Information:
4 comments:
I am John Cyrus from Kairos Multimedia founded by late Dr. Emil Jebasingh, founder of Vishwa Vani. We request you to give us permission of your photos: “23wwbd.jpg” from your blog post, "Gideon's Trumpets – Biblical Military Deception" to use in in our “Emil Annan's Testimony and His Farewell Address” video by Kairos Multimedia, Pvt. Ltd., New Delhi - 110019.
We want to use it as a visual background to Dr. Emil Jebasingh’s Tamil Christian mission song about Gideon’s army.
Thanking you for your kind permission.
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John S. Cyrus
Production Editor
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All the pictures on the blog are not owned by the blog developers. They found on the Web, therefore you do not need my permission to reuse them for any legitimate purposes.
Thanks Michael for the information. If I can find out the copyright owner of this image and write them for permission.
Thanks Michael for the information. If I can find out the copyright owner of this image and write them for permission.
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