Judges 8:27

made an ephod thereof i.e. out of a large amount of precious metal the gold of the earrings 26a, not of the ornaments in 26b. Gideon dedicated his spoil to Jehovah, cf. 2 Samuel 8:11; Micah 4:13, Moabite St. ll. 12 f., 17 f. (Mesha- dedicates his spoil from Israel to Kĕmôsh).

The ephod we find associated with terâphim in Judges 17:5; Judges 18:14 ff., Hosea 3:4, and in connexion with the Urim and Thummim or sacred lots, 1 Samuel 14:18 cf. 1 Samuel 14:41 LXX; it was carried, not -worn," by the priest, 1Sa 2:28; 1 Samuel 14:3; 1 Samuel 14:18 LXX (see RVm., but render carried), 1 Samuel 22:18 (omit linenwith LXX. cod. B, and render carry), 1 Samuel 23:6; 1 Samuel 30:7; we gather, therefore, that it was used in consulting Jehovah to obtain an oracle. But what the ephod was itself is not so clear. It may have been a rich vestment or embroidered loin-cloth, such as we see in Egyptian paintings, which the priest put on when he consulted Jehovah; this may explain the amount of gold which Gideon devoted to its making. In the sanctuary at Nob the ephod stood or hung near the wall, but free from it; and here Gideon setor placedhis ephod in the sanctuary at Ophrah. The root apparently means -to sheathe," and a derivative is used in Isaiah 30:22 for - the platingof thy molten images of gold"; hence many suppose that it must have been an image, but it is very doubtful whether the platingof the image could come to mean the image itself. Different in some way from the oracular ephod was the ephod of linenwith which Samuel and David were girtwhen performing religious functions: a closely fittinggarment is what the meaning of the root implies. A richer development of this was the ephodof the High-Priest described in Exodus 28:6-12 P, shaped like a kind of waistcoat, over which he wore the jewelled pouch or breastplate containing the Urim and Thummim; in its latest development the ephod thus maintained its association with the divine oracle. See esp. Sellin, Orient. Studien Theodor Nöldeke … gewidmet1906, ii. 701 f. and Benzinger, Hebr. Arch.2, 347 f., 359; Driver, Exodus, p. 312.

went a whoring after it Cf. Judges 8:33 and Judges 2:17 n.In Gideon's day there was no wide-spread objection to an image in Jehovah's sanctuary; the prohibition in Exodus 20:4, though it may have been laid down by Moses, was not observed by the people generally. A later age, however, trained in more spiritual conceptions, took offence at Gideon's action and saw in it the cause of the disaster which befell his family.