Judges 6:5

As grasshoppers. — See Judges 7:12. Rather, as locusts. The magnificent imagery of Joel 2:2 enables us to realise the force of the metaphor, and Exodus 10:4 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 Oriental 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).