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.