They and the other desert tribes “went over,” that is, the Jordan, perhaps for their usual annual raid to steal the wheat that thousands besides Gideon were doubtless threshing in secret places as soon as it was barely ripe, but probably also because news of an uprising headed by Gideon had reached their ears. Crossing the Jordan at the fords near Bethshan, they encamped, not in the wide plain west of Jezreel, but in the valley east of Jezreel leading from the Jordan between Mt. Gilboa and the Hill of Moreh up to the broad, fertile plain of Esdraelon. This valley and the broad plain into which it leads divide the central highlands of Palestine from the hills of Galilee.