(11)And thou shalt hear what they say. — This was the kind of omen known by the Jews as the Bath Kol, or “Daughter of a Voice.” For a similar instance see 1 Samuel 14:6 (Jonathan and his armour-bearer). The word is used in slightly different senses. Sometimes it means a voice from heaven (Matthew 3:17, &c): such voices from heaven are described in the Talmud; sometimes it means the first chance words which a man hears after being bidden to look out for them as a Divine intimation; sometimes it means an actual echo (see Hamburger’s Talmud. Wörterb., s.5).
It was one of the four recognised modes of Divine direction (viz., prophets, dreams, Urim, and the Bath Kol, 1 Samuel 28:6-15), but stood lowest of the four. It was also known to the Greeks, among whom the oracle sometimes bade a man to take as his answer the first casual words which he heard spoken on leaving the Temple.
The armed men. — Literally, ranks by, five, the word (chamooshim) rendered “harnessed” in Exodus 13:18, “armed” in Joshua 1:14. Probably here the word means “foreposts,” or “sentries”; and the Vulgate renders it “vigiliae.” The LXX. curiously render it “to the beginning,” (or in other MSS.) “to part of the fifty,” following a wrong punctuation.
That were in the host. — Probably “the host” was in some respects more like a temporary nomad migration, such as is so common among all wandering tribes. If so, it would not be by any means entirely composed of “armed men,” but would, like the Persians under Xerxes, trail with it a vast mass of camp followers, &c., who would probably be encamped in the centre with the baggage.