When Gideon rallied an army of 32,000 to battle against a Midian-led invasion, he was commanded by God to reduce the number of his soldiers so that there would be no possibility for assuming that the Divinely orchestrated Israelite victory was due to their own power. The selection process described in Shoftim (7:1-7) took place at the spring called Ein Charod, and Gideon’s tiny remaining force of three hundred won a miraculous victory.

It was at this spring that the Mongol invasion of the Middle East was stopped in 1260 by the Mamluk army of Egypt.

In 1921 Kibbutz Ein Charod established its home near this historical site. The kibbutz split into two communities in 1953 over ideological differences that then swept the socialist kibbutzim in Israel.

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