Each member of Gideon's small army carried a trumpet and a torch hidden under a pitcher as they surrounded the Midianite camp. The Midanite soldiers abandoned the camp and ran for their lives. Torches were carried in all kinds of processions both to provide necessary illumination and to signify various concepts. Wedding torches are a male fertility symbol. In funerary and initiation rites, torches were used to guide the subject along unfamiliar paths either to the Underworld or to one's new place in society.
Torches are also a symbol of awakening.
The Olympic torch is still carried in a relay today to announce the start of the Olympic Games. In Jerusalem torches were carried by the Captain of the Temple Guard as he made his rounds. Burning torches are symbols of zeal, passion, rage, enthusiasm, destruction, enlightenment, the living spirit, immortality, truth, purification, intelligence, love, illumination, hope, the cauterization of wounds, and cleansing by fire. They are an emblem of the witnesses of Christ who let their good works shine before men like a light drawing them to the Father.