Charles Ellicott Commentary Judges 6:3

"And so it was, when Israel had sown, that the Midianites came up, and the Amalekites, and the children of the east; they came up against them;" — Judges 6:3 (ASV)

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.