The struggle at Mount Tabor, in which the brothers of Jerubbaal had fallen, laid the fruitful valley of Jezreel at the feet of the Bedâwin plunderers. The plain of Megiddo was now in the hands of the Israelites. The battle on the banks of the Kishon had broken for ever the power of the Canaanites and their ‘chariots of iron,’ and they were now tributary to Manasseh.[341] The Canaanite townsman and the Israelitish peasant were now living in peaceful intermixture, and the torrent of raiders from the desert fell upon both alike. We hear no more of any attempts made by the older population to shake off the Hebrew yoke; it suffers from the Midianite invasion equally with its Hebrew masters, and the family of Joash govern it as much as they govern the Israelites themselves. Jerubbaal is the deliverer of the Canaanite as well as of the Israelite. From Ophrah he sends messengers throughout Manasseh, as well as to the tribes of Asher, Zebulon, and Naphtali, and their fighting-men gather together at his summons. He thus acts like a king, and is obeyed like a king. Though he may not have actually borne the royal title, he was more than a mere ‘judge.’ Barak may have assumed the name and prerogatives of the Canaanitish kings he had conquered, and have passed them on to the family of Ebi-ezer. At any rate the power of Joash must have extended beyond Shechem and Ophrah; all Manasseh obeys the call of his son, and even the more distant northern tribes come at his bidding. The subjugation of the Canaanites had demanded a head to the state, and their union with their conquerors implied an organised community under a common king. It was, however, with three hundred chosen followers that Jerubbaal made his first attack upon the foe. Encouraged by a dream, he fell upon their camp by night, and his followers, breaking the pitchers they carried with them, and waving torches in their left hands, caused such a panic among the undisciplined hordes of the desert that they fled in all directions.[342] The rout of the enemy was completed by the rest of the Israelitish army, which pursued the Midianites eastward towards the Jordan. Part of them under the shêkhs Oreb and Zeeb made for the ford at Beth-barah, where, however, they were intercepted by the Ephraimites, and their chiefs slain at ‘the rock of Oreb’ and the ‘winepress of Zeeb.’[343]