Judges 4:3

3 The people of Isra'el cried out to ADONAI, because he had 900 iron chariots, and for twenty years he cruelly oppressed the people of Isra'el.

Judges 4:3 Meaning and Commentary

Judges 4:3

And the children of Israel cried unto the Lord
Because of their hard bondage, and begged deliverance from it, being brought to a sense of their sins, and humbled for them:

for he had nine hundred chariots of iron;
the same with the (armata) (to drepanhfora) , chariots which carried scythes at the side of them, fastened to the orbs of the wheels ^F24, and were on both sides; and in some stood out ten cubits ^F25 which running furiously among the infantry, cut them to pieces in a terrible manner; of which Cyrus had in his army at first but an hundred, afterwards increased to three hundred ^F26; and yet here a petty prince of Canaan had nine hundred of them; and which Josephus ^F1 has increased, beyond all belief, to the number of three thousand; which struck great terror into the Israelites, and who therefore durst not attempt to shake off his yoke, but cried to the Lord for help:

and twenty years he mightily oppressed the children of Israel;
as they increased their sins, and repeated their revolts, the Lord increased their oppressions, and continued them the longer; the first was only eight years, the next eighteen, and this twenty, and which was a very heavy one; the other being foreign princes that oppressed them, but this a Canaanitish king, an implacable enemy, and who doubtless used them the more severely for what they had done to his ancestors, killed his father or grandfather, burnt the city of Hazor, and destroyed the inhabitants of it in Joshua's time; and the servitude was the harder, and the more intolerable to the Israelites, that they were under a people whose land had been given them to possess, and whom they had expelled, and now were become subject to them.

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FOOTNOTES:

F24 Vid. Suidam in voce (drepanhfora) .
F25 Curtius, l. 4. c. 9, 12, 15. Liv. Hist. l. 37. c. 41.
F26 Xenophon. Cyropaedia, l. 6. c. 13.
F1 Antiqu. l. 5. c. 5. sect. 1.

Judges 4:3 In-Context

1 But after Ehud had died, the people of Isra'el again did what was evil from ADONAI's perspective.

2 So ADONAI handed them over to Yavin king of Kena'an. He ruled from Hatzor; and the commander of his army was Sisra, who lived in Haroshet-HaGoyim.

3 The people of Isra'el cried out to ADONAI, because he had 900 iron chariots, and for twenty years he cruelly oppressed the people of Isra'el.

4 Now D'vorah, a woman and a prophet, the wife of Lapidot, was judging Isra'el at that time.

5 She used to sit under D'vorah's Palm between Ramah and Beit-El, in the hills of Efrayim; and the people of Isra'el would come to her for judgment.