Charles Ellicott Commentary Judges 6

Did evil. —Judges 2:11; Judges 3:12; Judges 4:1.

Midian.—Midian was the son of Abraham and Keturah (Genesis 25:2), and from him descended the numerous and wealthy nomadic tribes which occupied the plains east of Moab (Numbers 31:32–39). The name belongs, properly, to the tribes on the southeast of the Gulf of Aqaba (1 Kings 11:18). Moses himself had lived for forty years among them (Exodus 3:1; Exodus 18:1); but the Israelites had been commanded to maintain deadly hostility against the nation because of the shameful worship of Baal-peor, to which, under the instigation of Balaam, the Midianites had tempted them (Numbers 25:1–18).

The hand of Midian prevailed. — . This oppression is wholly different from that with which we have been dealing in the last chapter. That was the last great attempt of the old inhabitants to recover their lost country; this is a foreign invasion.

The dens which are in the mountains. — The word mineharoth, rendered dens (Septuagint, mandrai), occurs here only. Rashi and Kimchi render it “caves lighted from above,” deriving it from neharah, “light” (Job 3:4). They were probably thinking of the subterranean galleries like those found by Wetzstein in the Hauran (p. 45). R. Tanchum and others take it to mean fire-signals.

But the more probable derivation is nahar, “a river,” and then the meaning is “torrent-gullies,” which they easily converted into places of concealment, since the limestone hills of Palestine abound in caves. Josephus understood it to mean mines and caverns (Antt. v. 6. § 1). (Compare to 1 Samuel 13:6: When the men of Israel saw that they were in a strait, then the people did hide themselves in caves, and in thickets, and in rocks, and in high places, and in pits.Hebrews 11:38: in dens and caves of the earth.)

Three places of hiding are mentioned:

1. The mineharoth, perhaps catacombs and galleries in the rocks, which, as the article shows, were pointed out long afterwards.
2. Craggy peaks, like Rimmon, Magada, etc.
3. “Limestone caves, here first mentioned, and afterwards often used, like the Corycian cave in Greece during the Persian invasion, and the caves of the Asturias in Spain during the occupation of the Moors. It was returning to the old troglodyte habits of the Horites and Phoenicians” (Stanley, i. 340).

These caves were used, long afterwards, by the brigands whom Herod and the Romans found it so hard to extirpate.

When Israel had sown. —The invasions of these Arab tribes were of the most crushing and irritating kind. Living in idleness and marauding expeditions, they let the Israelites sow their corn, and came themselves to reap and carry it away. They said, “Let us take to ourselves the pastures of God”—that is, the rich, blessed pastures—“in possession” (Psalms 83:12). Alyattes, king of Lydia, treated the people of Miletus in exactly the same way, leaving their houses undestroyed, solely that they might be tempted to return to them, and plow and sow once more (Herodotus 1.17).

The same thing goes on to this day. The wretched Fellahîn, neglected and oppressed by the effete and corrupt Turkish Government, sow their corn, with the constant dread that they are but sowing it for the Bedouin, who yearly plunder them, unrepressed and unpunished. Hence the squalid towns and villages of the Fellahîn abound in huge subterranean places of concealment, in which they stow away their corn, and everything else of value which they possess, to save them from these wild marauders.

The Amalekites. —See Judges 3:13; Genesis 36:12.

The children of the east. —Benî Kedem (Genesis 25:6; Job 1:3) is a general name for Arabs, as Josephus rightly calls them. From Judges 8:26 we can derive a picture of their chiefs in their gorgeous robes and golden earrings, mounted on dromedaries and camels, whose necks were hung with moon-shaped ornaments of gold.

They encamped against them. —It is not implied that there were any battles. The Israelites were too wretched and helpless to offer any resistance. These Arabs would swarm over the Jordan, at the fords of Bethshean, about harvest-time, and would sweep away the produce of the rich plain of Jezreel and the whole Shephelah, even as far south as Gaza. (Compare to the Scythian invasion, alluded to in Zephaniah 2:5-6.)

Destroyed the increase of the earth. —You shall sow your seed in vain, for your enemies shall eat it (Leviticus 26:16). (Deuteronomy 28:51; Micah 6:15.)

No sustenance for Israel. —No support of life, or, as some render the word, “nothing alive.”

Sheep. —The margin has, “or goat.” The word means “smaller cattle.”

As grasshoppers. —See Judges 7:12. Rather, as locusts. The magnificent imagery of Joel 2:2-11 enables us to realize the force of the metaphor, and Exodus 10:4-6 the number of locusts, which are a common metaphor for countless hordes. Aristophanes (Ach. 150) speaks of an army so numerous that the Athenians will cry out, “What a mass of locusts is coming!” The Bedouin call the locusts Gurrud Allah, “Host of God” (Wetzstein, Hauran, p. 138).

Their camels. —These were very uncommon in Palestine, and were brought by the invaders from the Eastern deserts.

Without number. —This is Eastern hyperbole. “When Burckhardt asked a Bedouin, who belonged to a tribe of 300 tents, how many brothers he had, he flung a handful of sand into the air, and replied, ‘Equally numberless’” (Cassel).