Gideon came to the Jordan, [and] passed over, he, and the three hundred men who were with him, faint, yet pursuing.
How could they have done such an unpatriotic and shameful thing? Dalglish thought that, "The citizens of these two cities might have been Canaanites, or that they may have suffered much already from the Midianites and feared reprisals if they aided Gideon, or that they were Israelites who felt that Gideon's mission was unwarranted, and doomed to utter failure."[6]  It appears to this writer that the middle one of these possibilities is correct.