He said to the men of Succoth, ‘Please give some loaves of bread to the troops under my command, because they are exhausted, for I am pursuing Zebah and Zalmunna, the kings of Midian.’
Abigail hurried, taking two hundred loaves of bread, two clay jars of wine, five butchered sheep, thirty-seven litres of roasted grain, one hundred clusters of raisins, and two hundred cakes of pressed figs, and loaded them on donkeys.
This is because they did not meet you with food and water on the journey after you came out of Egypt, and because Balaam son of Beor from Pethor in Aram-naharaim was hired to curse you.
Now Zebah and Zalmunna were in Karkor, and with them was their army of about fifteen thousand men, who were all those left of the entire army of the people of the east. Those who had been killed were one hundred and twenty thousand armed men.
Then he went to the men of Succoth and said, ‘Here are Zebah and Zalmunna. You taunted me about them, saying, “Are Zebah and Zalmunna now in your power that we should give bread to your exhausted men? ” ’
‘Curse Meroz,’ says the angel of the Lord, ‘Bitterly curse her inhabitants, for they did not come to help the Lord, to help the Lord with the warriors.’