Gideon said to the men of Succoth, “Please give my soldiers some bread because they are very tired. I am chasing Zebah and Zalmunna, the kings of Midian.”
This is because the Ammonites and Moabites did not give you bread and water when you came out of Egypt. And they hired Balaam son of Beor, from Pethor in Northwest Mesopotamia, to put a curse on you.
‘May the town of Meroz be cursed,’ said the angel of the Lord. ‘Bitterly curse its people, because they did not come to help the Lord. They did not fight the strong enemy.’
Zebah and Zalmunna and their army were in the city of Karkor. About fifteen thousand men were left of the armies of the peoples of the east. Already one hundred twenty thousand soldiers had been killed.
When Gideon came to Succoth, he said to the people of that city, “Here are Zebah and Zalmunna. You made fun of me by saying, ‘Why should we give bread to your tired men? You have not caught Zebah and Zalmunna yet.’ ”
Abigail hurried. She took two hundred loaves of bread, two leather bags full of wine, five cooked sheep, a bushel of cooked grain, a hundred cakes of raisins, and two hundred cakes of pressed figs and put all these on donkeys.