suggests that his refusal was, in reality, ‘an acceptance couched in the form of a pious refusal with the motive of expressing piety and of gaining favour with his would be subjects’.22 This he supports by an examination of three other incidents, the ‘anonymous refusal’ of Exodus 4:13ff. and the transactions of Genesis 23 and 2 Samuel 24, where property ostensibly offered as a gift passes hands for a considerable price. That Gideon exercised many of the privileges of a typical monarch of the Ancient