Judges 6:3

3 For whenever the Israelites put in seed the Mid'ianites and the Amal'ekites and the people of the East would come up and attack them;

Judges 6:3 Meaning and Commentary

Judges 6:3

And so it was, when Israel had sown
Their land, and it was grown up, and near being ripe, or quite; for the Midianites gave them no disturbance in the winter, and during seedtime, when they came out of their lurking holes, and manured their land, and sowed it:

that the Midianites came up;
into the land of Canaan, from the other side Jordan, where their country lay, and which it seems lay lower than the land of Israel:

and the Amalekites, and the children of the east:
the former were implacable enemies of Israel, and on every occasion would join other nations in oppressing them; and the children of the east were Arabians, as Josephus ^F2 expressly affirms:

even they came up against them;
all these three sorts of people in a confederacy.

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FOOTNOTES:

F2 Antiqu. l. 5. c. 6. sect. 1.

Judges 6:3 In-Context

1 The people of Israel did what was evil in the sight of the LORD; and the LORD gave them into the hand of Mid'ian seven years.

2 And the hand of Mid'ian prevailed over Israel; and because of Mid'ian the people of Israel made for themselves the dens which are in the mountains, and the caves and the strongholds.

3 For whenever the Israelites put in seed the Mid'ianites and the Amal'ekites and the people of the East would come up and attack them;

4 they would encamp against them and destroy the produce of the land, as far as the neighborhood of Gaza, and leave no sustenance in Israel, and no sheep or ox or ass.

5 For they would come up with their cattle and their tents, coming like locusts for number; both they and their camels could not be counted; so that they wasted the land as they came in.