Charles Ellicott Commentary Judges 20:33

"And all the men of Israel rose up out of their place, and set themselves in array at Baal-tamar: and the liers-in-wait of Israel brake forth out of their place, even out of Maareh-geba." — Judges 20:33 (ASV)

Put themselves in array at Baal-tamar. — This is either a detail added out of place (so that we might almost suppose that there has been some accidental transposition of clauses), or it means that when the Israelites, in their feigned retreat, had advanced as far as Baal-tamar (“Lord of the Palm”), they saw the appointed smoke signal from the ambush, and at that point rallied against their pursuers.

What makes this probable is that Baal-tamar can only have derived its name from some famous, and therefore isolated, palm-tree. Now there was exactly such a palm tree—the well-known Palm of Deborah (see Note on Judges 4:5)—between Ramah and Bethel, and therefore at a little distance from the spot where the roads branch. The place was still called Bathamar in the days of Eusebius and Jerome. The Chaldee rendering, “in the plains of Jericho” (the palm city,Judges 1:16), is singularly erroneous.

Out of the meadows of Gibeah. — The word maareh, rendered “meadows,” occurs nowhere else. Some derive it from arah, “to strip.”

The Septuagint, not understanding it, renders it as a name, Maraagabe, and in Cod. A (following a different reading), “from the west of Gibeah,” as also does the Vulgate. Rashi renders it, “because of the stripping of Gibeah,” and Buxtorf, “after the stripping of Gibeah.”

It is, however, clear that the words are in apposition to, and in explanation of, out of their places: The Syriac and Arabic understand maareh to mean “a cave” or “caves,” printing it maarah instead of maareh. Similarly, the reading “from the west” only involves the change of a single letter (maarab).

If the text be left unaltered, the “meadows” may have been concealed from the town by intervening rocks. In Isaiah 19:7, aroth mean “pastures.”