Charles Ellicott Commentary Judges 6:5

"For they came up with their cattle and their tents; they came in as locusts for multitude; both they and their camels were without number: and they came into the land to destroy it." — Judges 6:5 (ASV)

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).