in Judges, when he localises the defeat at Endor, which lies on the eastern edge of the great plain of Esdraelon. In ver. 11 he returns to his first example of defeat--the slaughter of Midian by Gideon. Oreb (raven) and Zeeb (wolf) were in command of the Midianites, and were killed by the Ephraimites in the retreat. Zebah and Zalmunnah were kings of Midian, and fell by Gideon's own hand (Judg. viii. 21). The psalmist bases his prayer for such a dread fate for the foes on their insolent purpose and sacrilegious purpose of making me dwellings (or, possibly, the pastures) of God their own property. Not because the land and its peaceful homes belonged to the suppliant and his nation, but because they were God's, does he thus pray. The enemies had drawn the sword; it was permissible to pray that they might fall by the sword, or by some Divine intervention, since such was the only way of defeating their God-insulting plans. The psalm rises to high poetic fervour and imaginative beauty in the terrible petitions of vv. 13-16. The word rendered "whirling dust" in ver. 13 is somewhat doubtful. It literally means _a rolling thing_, but what particular thing of the sort is difficult to determine. The reference is perhaps to "spherical masses of dry weeds which course over the plains." Thomson ("Land and Book," 1870, p. 563) suggests the wild artichoke, which, when ripe, forms a globe of about a foot in diameter. "In autumn the branches become dry and as light as a feather, the parent stem breaks off at the ground, and the wind carries these vegetable globes whithersoever it pleaseth. At the proper season thousands of them come scudding over the plain, rolling, leaping, bounding." So understood, the clause would form a complete parallel with the next, which compares the fleeing foe to stubble, not, of course, rooted, but loose and whirled before the wind. The metaphor of ver. 14 is highly poetic, likening the flight of the foe to the swift rush of a forest fire, which licks up (for so the word rendered _scorches_ means) the woods on the hillsides, and leaves a bare, blackened space. Still more terrible is the petition in ver. 15, which asks that God Himself should chase the flying remnants, and beat them down, helpless and panic-stricken, with storm and hurricane, as He did the other confederacy of Canaanitish kings, when they fled down the pass of Beth-Horon, and "Jehovah cast down great stones on them from heaven" (Josh. x. 10, 11).