He caught a young man of the men of Succoth, and inquired of him: and he described for him the princes of Succoth, and the elders of it, seventy-seven men.
It's sort of a gold kind of a robe out of them. But this gold robe that he made became a snare. It became a tourist attraction. People used to travel down to Gideon's house to see this golden ephod that he had made out of the earrings of the Midianites. And the people began to worship it. They made it sort of an object of worship; thus, it became a snare unto Israel. Now I don't think that Gideon had that in mind at all, that the people would make sort of an idol out of this golden ephod that he made from these earrings but nonetheless the people did. Now at that point, I think, was where Gideon did make a mistake. When he saw how the people were, you know, sort of revering this gold ephod he should have just tossed the thing in the fire, melted it down and made a gold brick or something. And so if he was guilty of any mistakes it was this: his allowing the ephod to remain after the people had made an idolatrous kind of a symbol of this ephod.