Into three companies. — See Judges 9:43. This division of the attacking force was a common stratagem. We find it in Job 1:17 — “the Chaldæans made out three bands “ — and it was adopted by Saul against the Ammonites (1 Samuel 11:11), and by David against Absalom (2 Samuel 18:2). (Comp. Genesis 14:15.)
A trumpet. — Hearing the sound of three hundred rams’ horns, the Midianites would naturally suppose that they were being attacked by three hundred companies.
Pitchers. — The Hebrew word is caddim, which is connected with our cask — the Greek, kados. They were of earthenware (Judges 7:19-20), (LXX., hydrias), and hence the Vulgate rendering (lagenas) is mistaken.
Lamps. — The LXX., perhaps, chose the word lampadas from its resemblance to lappîdîm — a principle by which they are often guided. Lampadas, however, here means not “lamps,” but (as the margin gives it) “firebrands,” or “torches.” The best illustration is furnished by a passage in Lane’s Modern Egyptians (I., Judges 4), where he tells us that the zabit or agha of the police in Cairo carries with him at night “a torch, which burns, soon after it is lighted, without a flame, excepting when it is waved through the air, when it suddenly blazes forth: it therefore answers the same purpose as our dark lantern. The burning end is sometimes concealed in a small pot or jar, or covered with something else when not required to give light.” These torches are simply of wood dipped in turpentine or pitch, which are not easily extinguished.