Judges 20:33

And all the men of Israel rose up out of their place,.... The main body of the army, which fled before Benjamin, when they were come to a proper place, stopped, and rose up out of it, and stood in

And all the men of Israel rose up out of their place, and put themselves in array at Baaltamar: and the liers in wait of Israel came forth out of their places, even out of the meadows of Gibeah.

Out of their place; where they had disposed themselves, that they might fall upon the Benjamites, when they were drawn forth to a sufficient distance from their city, and when they were pursuing that party, mentioned . Came forth out of their places, to execute what was agreed upon, even to take Gibeah, and burn it, as they actually did, .

Judges 20:33 And all the men of Israel rose up out of their place, and put themselves in array at Baaltamar: and the liers in wait of Israel came forth out of their places, [even] out of the meadows of Gibeah.Ver. 33. Out of the meadows.] Or, Dens, as Pagnine and others render it.

(33) Put themselves in array at Baal-tamar.—This is either a detail added out of place (so that we might almost suppose that there has been some accidental transposition of clauses), or it means that when the Israelites in their pretended rout had got as far as Baal-tamar (“Lord of the Palm”) they saw the appointed smoke-signal of the ambuscade, and at that point rallied against their pursuers. What makes this probable is that Baal-tamar can only have derived its name from some famous, and therefore isolated, palm-tree. Now there was exactly such a palm tree—the well known “Palm of Deborah” (see Note on Judges 4:5)—“between Ramah and Bethel,” and therefore at a little distance from the spot where the roads branch. The place was still called Bathamar in the days of Eusebius and Jerome. The Chaldee rendering, “in the plains of Jericho” (“the palm city,” Judges 1:16), is singularly erroneous. Out of the meadows of Gibeah.—The word maareh, rendered “meadows,” occurs nowhere else. Some derive it from arah, “to strip.” The LXX., not understanding it, render it as a name, Maraagabe, and in Cod. A (following a different reading), “from the west of Gibeah,” as also does the Vulg. Rashi renders it, “because of the stripping of Gibeah,” and Buxtorf, “after the stripping of Gibeah.” It is, however, clear that the words are in apposition to and in explanation of “out of their places:” The Syriac and Arabic understand maareh to mean “a cave” or “caves,” printing it maarah instead of maareh. Similarly the reading “from the west” only involves the change of a single letter (maarab). If the text be left unaltered, the “meadows” may have been concealed from the town by intervening rocks. In Isaiah 19:7 aroth mean “pastures.”

Verse 33. Put themselves in array at Baal-tamar] The Israelites seem to have divided their army into three divisions; one was at Baal-tamar, a second behind the city in ambush, and the third skirmished with the Benjamites before Gibeah.

33. rose up … set themselves in array] The Israelites had taken up their position opposite Gibeah and then retired northwards (Judges 20:30-32); now, apparently, after the feigned retreat they take up a second position at a further distance from Gibeah. But this is hardly the natural meaning of the words; rose up implies a new action (e.g. Judges 20:19) rather than the repetition of a movement which had already begun. It is in fact difficult to fit Judges 20:33 a into the context. May it then come from the A narrative, and form the sequel of Jdg 20:29? This would give us an allusion to the battle, which otherwise is missing from A: after the ambush was set round Gibeah (Judges 20:29), the main army of Israel took up its position in Baal-tamar (Judges 20:33 a). But the language of the verse does not inspire confidence in its originality (lit. the men of Israel rose up from his place!); on the other hand the mention of Baal-tamar may well be ancient. Perhaps we may describe this half-verse as an early addition. See further below. Baal-tamar] Site unknown, but not far from Gibeah; Eusebius (OS 238, 75) declares that the name was surviving in the locality as Beth-tamar. Baal-tamar = B. of the palm-tree, a rare instance of the god Baal being associated with a tree; cf. Jeremiah 2:27[63]. The palm was a symbol of Ashtoreth rather than of Baal. [63] See Baudissin, Adonis u. Esmun (1911), p. 176. Winckler interprets differently, Baal is Tamar, i.e. Ishtar-Ashtoreth, the local deity possessing the attributes of god and goddess: Gesch. Israels ii. 98 ff. brake forth] Elsewhere of the sea or a river, Job 38:8; Job 40:23, Ezekiel 32:2; from the same root comes the name of the fountain at Jerusalem, Gihon the gusher. So here, of the Hers in wait bursting forth from ambush; as applied in this way to warfare the word is used in Aramaic. Cf. the parallel account from A in Judges 20:37. Maareh-geba] Supposed to mean the bare or open space of G., but probably a mistake for maarâb legeba, i.e. west of Geba, LXX. cod. A and mss., Vulgate; a late usage, 2 Chronicles 32:30; 2 Chronicles 33:14. Geba is either a mistake for Gibeah (as in Judges 20:10), or more probably = Jeba‘, N.E. of Gibeah.

Baal-tamar is only mentioned here. It took its name from some palm-tree that grew there; perhaps the same as the “palm-tree of Deborah, between Ramah and Bethel” Judges 4:5, the exact locality here

33. All the men of Israel rose up out of their place — These were the main forces of the army, while those mentioned in Judges 20:30 were probably a lesser body of men, several thousand, perhaps,