Why is this come to pass...? — This is not so much an inquiry into the cause, which was indeed too patent, but a wail of regret, implying a prayer to be enlightened as to the best means of averting the calamity. The repetition of the name “Israel” three times shows that the nation had not yet lost its sense of corporate unity, often as that unity had been rent asunder by their civil dissensions. Their wild justice is mingled with a still wilder mercy.
One tribe lacking. — The number twelve had an almost mystic significance, and is always preserved in reckoning up the tribes, whether Levi is included or excluded.