Judges 1:4

‘ And Judah went up. And Yahweh delivered the Canaanites and Perizzites into their hand. And they smote of those in Bezek ten eleph men.'

“And Judah went up.” Judah was obedient to Yahweh's command ‘go up' (Judges 1:2). God had said ‘go up' and they ‘went up'. Simeon went along with them.

“And Yahweh delivered the Canaanites and Perizzites into their hand. And they smote of those in Bezek ten eleph men.” Eleph could mean a clan, a family, a military unit, a captain or a thousand. The number ‘ten' was also used to mean ‘a number of' (Genesis 31:7; Job 19:3; Daniel 1:20). Here ‘a number of military units' is probably what is meant. Numbers tended not to be used exactly, for most people were not numerate. This principle is important to understand. When it came to numbers they thought in approximations, just like we do when we say ‘there were hundreds of them' when we mean ‘quite a lot'.

Numbers in early times had for them that kind of significance. ‘Two' often meant ‘a few' (1 Kings 17:12). ‘Three' often meant ‘quite a few'. ‘Ten' meant ‘a number of' (Genesis 31:7). ‘A hundred' meant ‘a goodly number' (consider the hundred sheep of the parable), an ‘eleph' or ‘thousand' meant a greater number still, and so on. With our mathematically trained minds we find this difficult to appreciate. The aborigines in Australia would understand exactly, as would primitive tribes in many lands. Most of the Israelites would have looked on counting beyond ten as an arduous task. They had little need of numbering. So here ‘ten eleph' might mean anything from say five hundred upwards.

The fulfilment of God's promise had begun. The Canaanites and Perizzites in that part of the land were smitten, including a large number in Bezek.

“The Canaanites.” This was a term often used to designate all the inhabitants of ‘Canaan' and could be used almost interchangeably with ‘the Amorites', a name used in the same way. But at other times they were also distinguished from ‘the Amorites', who when so distinguished were hill dwellers, occupying the hill country. It can, however, as here, denote a special group in the land, distinguished from a number of others (see references below), in this case in contrast with the Perizzites.

“Perizzites.” The name probably means ‘villagers' and they seem to have been hill dwellers, thus living in small communities. They were one of the tribes which identified the land and were to be driven out of it (Genesis 15:20; Exodus 3:8; Deuteronomy 7:1; Deuteronomy 20:17; Joshua 3:10; Joshua 9:1; Jdg 3:5; 1 Kings 9:20; 2 Chronicles 8:7; Ezra 9:1; Nehemiah 9:8).

“Bezek.” The site is not as yet identified. A number of Bezeks have been mooted. It was not an uncommon name, possibly because connected with a god of that name.