Judges 7:13

Behold, I dreamed a dream, and, lo The phraseology recalls Genesis 37:6 f., Genesis 40:9 E. No doubt the two Midianites were lying in their tent: Gideon could listen without being seen.

a cake of barley bread The word rendered cakeoccurs only here, and is of doubtful meaning; the context suggests a flat circular cake. Barley bread, the coarse food of the poor, was a symbol of the peasantry; the tent a symbol of the nomad.

tumbled This same form of the verb is used of the flaming sword which turned in every direction, Genesis 3:24. So the cake turned over and over, this way and that, until it smote the tentwhich the man saw in his dream, not thetent, i.e. of the king, as Josephus takes it, misunderstanding the idiomatic use of the article; Ant. Judges 7:6; Judges 7:4.

and it fell The words are out of place; the text as it stands makes the tent fall, then be turned upside down, and then fall. At the end of the verse, thatthe tent lay alongought probably to be rendered andthe tent remained fallen. Perhaps some reader wrote the normal form and it fellin the margin, whence it crept into the text after and smote it.