Zebah and Zalmunna זבח וצלמנע
kings of Midian, whom Gideon pursued beyond the Jordan
"And Gideon came to the Jordan, he and the three hundred men with him, weary and pursuing." He asks the men of Succoth for bread, and they refuse: "are the palms of Zebah and Zalmunna already in your hand, that we should give bread to your army?" The men of Penuel answer the same. On the way back he returns to both.
He takes the kings at Karkor, where about fifteen thousand were left them out of the whole host of the children of the east. And before the execution he asks: "where are the men whom you killed at Tabor?" They answer: "as you are, so were they; each one resembled the son of a king." And Gideon says: "they were my brothers, the sons of my mother; as the Lord lives, if you had let them live I would not kill you."
First he tells his firstborn Jether to kill them, but the boy did not draw his sword—"for he was afraid, because he was yet a youth." Then the kings say: "rise yourself and fall upon us, for as the man is, so is his strength."
The window is the first seven years of Gideon, following the term of the Midianite oppression (Judges 6:1). Seder Olam Rabbah 12 counts those seven years apart from Gideon's forty; in our count the terms of the judges run end to end and there is no separate room for them. We name the divergence rather than hide it.
On the timeline
Related
Sources
Tanakh
- Shoftim 8:4–21 — the pursuit beyond the Jordan, Succoth and Penuel, the words about the brothers at Tabor
- Tehillim 83:12 — "make their nobles like Oreb and Zeeb, like Zebah and Zalmunna"
Chazal: Mishnah, Talmud, midrash, Zohar
- Seder Olam Rabbah 12 — the seven years of Midian did not fall within Gideon's forty
Basis: stated in the Tanakh.