So Midian was subdued before the children of Israel, and they lifted up their heads no more. The land had rest forty years in the days of Gideon.
Gideon made this ephod from some of the jewelry the Israelites had taken from the Midianites. The writer called them "Ishmaelites" (Judges 8:24), a term that described loosely any trading nomadic group (cf. Genesis 37:25; Genesis 37:27-28; Genesis 39:1). [Note: See Kitchen, p. 119.] 