Exhausted pursuit becomes retaliation and execution

Faint yet pursuing, and two towns refuse unfinished war

Gideon comes to Jordan, passes over, he and the three hundred, faint, yet pursuing. He asks the men of Succoth for loaves for the people who follow, because they chase Zebah and Zalmunna, kings of Midian. The princes of Succoth say, Are the hands of Zebah and Zalmunna now in thine hand, that we should give bread unto thine army? Gideon vows to tear their flesh with thorns of the wilderness and briers when the LORD has delivered the kings into his hand. He asks Penuel and receives the same answer; he vows to break down their tower.

Faint yet pursuing describes exhaustion in a hunt. It is not a slogan for unsafe overwork. The towns' refusal may be fear of Midianite reprisal while the kings still live. That fear does not later justify collective torture or killing.

Capture turns into thorns, a razed tower, and a son's test

Gideon goes up by the way of them that dwelt in tents, smites the host, and takes Zebah and Zalmunna. He returns, catches a young man of Succoth, and is written a list of the seventy-seven princes and elders. He teaches the elders with thorns and briers, a difficult verb over a severe punishment. He beats down the tower of Penuel and slays the men of the city.

He asks the captured kings what manner of men they slew at Tabor. They answer, As thou art, so were they; each one resembled the children of a king. He says they were his brothers, his mother's sons, and he would have spared the kings if they had not killed them. He tells Jether his firstborn to rise and slay them. The youth does not draw his sword, for he fears, because he is yet a youth. Zebah and Zalmunna tell Gideon to rise himself, and he kills them and takes the ornaments off their camels' necks. Family vengeance, collective punishment, and the attempt to make a child finish the killing show a deliverer becoming an agent of fear. Torah's concern for proportion and for children stands against copying any of it.