The next great struggle in this plain was one upon which the Survey of Palestine has thrown some new light, enabling us to follow the fugitives in their retreat, and to fix some sites which are named in the narrative. The fruitfulness of the Great Plain has been, in our own times and all through the ages, an irresistible attraction to the Bedouin from the east of Jordan. Pressed by war or famine, they have crossed the Jordan at the fords near Beisan, poured up the Valley of Jezreel, and covered the plain with their tents and camels. The peaceful husbandmen have laboured, only to be periodically plundered and oppressed. Thus in 1870 only about a sixth part of the beautiful corn land was tilled, and the plain was black with Arab “houses of hair.” But the Turks wrought a great and sudden change; they armed their cavalry with the Remington breech-loading rifle, and the Bedouin disappeared as if by magic. In 1872 nine-tenths of the plain was cultivated, nearly half with corn, the rest with millet, sesame, cotton, tobacco, and the castor-oil plant. It was, of course, to be expected that when external troubles had weakened the Government, the lawless Nomads would again encroach and levy toll as before. Accordingly, in 1877, Fendi el Fais and the Sukr Arabs once more invaded the plain and levied blackmail on the luckless peasantry. Thus it has ever been; for the history of Palestine seems constantly to repeat itself from the earliest period recorded, in a recurring struggle between the settled population and the Nomads.
Some time after the days of Barak and Deborah, the historian tells us, “the children of Israel did that which was evil in the sight of the Lord, and the Lord delivered them into the hand of Midian seven years.” These marauders from the east came across the Jordan, bringing their cattle and their camels, and pitching their black tents. They came as locusts for multitude, eating up the fruitful country and levying tribute on the villages, all the way round to Gaza. The Israelites fled in alarm, taking refuge in the mountains, and existing in dens and caves. No sustenance was left them, either for sheep, or ox, or ass; and “Israel was brought very low because of Midian.” Perhaps they might have borne the oppression longer, only that their lives were not safe from the sword, and they smarted under losses inflicted on their families. In some petty struggle, perhaps it was, in which one brother came to the assistance of another, that seven fine young men, sons of Joash of Abiezer, were put to death by Zeba and Zalmunna the Chiefs of Midian. But there was one son left, whose name was Gideon, and he was a man of valour. He felt this oppression to be insupportable: the spirit of the Lord came upon him, and after destroying the altar of Baal in his native place, he blew a trumpet, and raised a revolt. His own tribesmen (the men of Menasseh) gathered to his standard, and the men of the northern tribes also, even Asher assisting on this occasion.