Charles Ellicott Commentary 1 Samuel 11:8

"And he numbered them in Bezek; and the children of Israel were three hundred thousand, and the men of Judah thirty thousand." — 1 Samuel 11:8 (ASV)

Bezek. —Bezek was in the tribe of Issachar, in the plain of Jezreel, an open district, well suited for assembling the great host that so promptly obeyed the peremptory summons of King Saul’s war signal.

The children of Israel were three hundred thousand, and the men of Judah thirty thousand. —It has been suggested that this verse was added by some late reviser of the book, who lived in the northern kingdom after the final separation of Israel and Judah. However, such a supposition is not necessary to account for the separate mention of Judah and Israel, or for the apparently great disproportion in the numbers supplied by the great southern tribe.

The chronicler, with pardonable exultation, specifically mentions the splendid result of the young hero’s first summons to the tribes. He adds, perhaps with an undertone of sadness, that the rich and populous Judah contributed only 30,000 to that great host.

There is no doubt, as Dean Payne Smith well observes, that “as a matter of fact Judah always stood apart until it had its own king. Then, in David’s time, it first took an active interest in the national welfare, and it was its vast power and numbers that made the shepherd-king, who sprang from Judah, so powerful.”

In the reign of King Asa of Judah, the numbers of the men of war of that proud tribe amounted to 300,000. It is, however, to be remembered that in the Old Testament Books, owing to the mistakes of copyists, numbers are not always to be strictly relied upon.