Gideon

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In Purgatorio XXIV the voice coming from the tree proclaims examples of punished gluttony, according to the law of Dante's Purgatory. The second example is drawn from the Book of Judges: ten thousand Israelites were ready to fight the Midianites, but Gideon, by God's order, led them to the water and chose for battle only those who had brought the water to their mouth with their hand, without bending their knees; these were three hundred and defeated the enemy. The others, having bent down to drink their fill, had shown themselves to be soft. The verse recalls this with the famous sentence "per che no i volle Gedeon compagni," which explains why he did not want them with him in the expedition against Midian.