Richtere 4:3

3 Toen riepen de kinderen Israels tot den HEERE; want hij had negenhonderd ijzeren wagenen, en hij had de kinderen Israels met geweld onderdrukt, twintig jaren.

Richtere 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.

Richtere 4:3 In-Context

1 Maar de kinderen Israels voeren voort te doen, dat kwaad was in de ogen des HEEREN, als Ehud gestorven was.

2 Zo verkocht hen de HEERE in de hand van Jabin, koning der Kanaanieten, die te Hazor regeerde; en zijn krijgsoverste was Sisera; dezelve nu woonde in Haroseth der heidenen.

3 Toen riepen de kinderen Israels tot den HEERE; want hij had negenhonderd ijzeren wagenen, en hij had de kinderen Israels met geweld onderdrukt, twintig jaren.

4 Debora nu, een vrouw, die een profetesse was, de huisvrouw van Lappidoth, deze richtte te dier tijd Israel.

5 En zij woonde onder den palmboom van Debora, tussen Rama en tussen Beth-El, op het gebergte van Efraim; en de kinderen Israels gingen op tot haar ten gerichte.