Judges 3:31 - Joseph Benson’s Commentary on the Old and New Testaments

After him was Shamgar He was the third judge of the Israelites, and delivered them from some small oppressions which they suffered from the Philistines. The sacred text gives us no further particulars concerning him than that he slew six hundred of them with an ox-goad; or, as the Latin and Greek versions render it, with a plough-share. Indeed the Hebrew מלמד הבקר, malmad habakar, signifies any instrument by which oxen are broken to labour. The Philistines, it seems, were more careful than any other nation to strip the Israelites of all their military weapons whenever they had them in subjection; and if this was the case at present, it is likely that the expression means only such rustic instruments as he could lay his hand on. It is probable he was following the plough when the Philistines made an inroad into the country, and having neither sword nor spear, when God put it into his heart to oppose them, he took up the instrument which was next at hand. “It is no matter,” says Henry, “how weak the weapon is, if God direct and strengthen the arm. An ox- goad, when God pleaseth, shall do more than Goliah's sword. And sometimes he chooseth to work by such unlikely means, that the excellence of the power may appear to be of God,” and that he may have all the glory. If we may believe Mr. Maundrell, however, he saw goads used in Palestine which were of an extraordinary size, several of them being about eight feet long, and at the thicker end six inches in circumference. They were armed, he tells us, at the smaller end, with a sharp prickle for driving the oxen, and at the other end with a small spade or paddle of iron, strong and massy, for cleansing the plough from the clay that is wont to encumber it in working. And he conjectures it was with such a goad as one of these that Shamgar made this prodigious slaughter, and judges that such an instrument “was not less fit, perhaps fitter, than a sword for such an execution.” See Journey from Aleppo, p. 110. It is evident, however, that the sacred writer here does not attribute the slaughter made, and victory obtained by Shamgar, to the excellence of the weapon which he used, but to the power of God.