Blew the trumpets. — They continued to blow incessantly, to add to the panic.
The Lord set every man’s sword against his fellow. — We have an exact parallel to this in the mutual slaughter of the Ammonites, Moabites, and Edomites, when stricken with a similar panic before the army of Jehoshaphat, in 2 Chronicles 20:21-22; and on a smaller scale in the camp of the Philistines at Gibeah (1 Samuel 14). The tremendous tragedy of their flight can only be appreciated by the vivid impression which it made on the national imagination (Isaiah 9:4; Isaiah 10:26). In Psalms 83:13-14, it is compared to the whirling flight of dry weeds before a rush of flame and wind, recalling the Arab imprecation, “May you be whirled like the akukb (‘wild artichoke,’ ‘a wheel,’ ‘a rolling thing’) before the wind, until you are caught in the thorns or plunged into the sea” (Thomson, Land and Book, Judges 36).
Beth-shittah. — It should be rather, Beth hash-shit-tah, “the house of the acacia” — a place named from the trees which are still abundant in that neighbourhood, just as we have such names as Burntash, Seven-oaks, Nine Elms, &c. (Comp. Abel-Shittim, Numbers 33:49; Joshua 21.) If Beth hash-shittah was the village Shultah, with which Robinson (Bibl. Reg., 3:219) identifies it, some of the host must have fled northwards. It is improbable that it was another name for Beth-shean, though the LXX. have Bethsead in some MSS. It is, however, by no means unlikely that some of the marauders would fly towards the fords of the Jordan near Bethshean (comp. Jos. Antt. v. 6, § 5), as others fled south to the fords near Succoth, which lay to the south of the Jabbok.
In. — Rather, towards, as in the margin.
Zererath. — Rather, Zererah. This is omitted in the Vulgate; the LXX. have the extraordinary reading Tagaragatha, or in some MSS. “and he led them.” The final th is no part of the name, but the mode of connecting the name with the particle of motion. Zererath is not again mentioned, but the distinction between the Hebrew letters r (ר) and d (ד) is so slight that the reading Zeredath may here be correct; and if so, it may be the Zeredath in Ephraim, which was the birthplace of Jeroboam (1 Kings 11:26), and the Zaretan of Joshua 3:16; 1 Kings 7:46, which is sixteen miles north of Jericho.
To the border. — Literally, as in the margin, to the lip, or brink, as in Genesis 22:17; Exodus 4:30. It does not, however, necessarily prove that Abel-meholah was on the edge of the Jordan valley.
Abel-meholah. — “The meadow of the dance.” It was in Ephraim, and was the native place of Elisha (1 Kings 19:16; see, too, 1 Kings 4:12). Eusebius and Jerome place it ten miles south of Bethshean, at Wady Maleb. Abel means “a moist, grassy meadow.”
Unto Tabbath. — Literally, upon Tabbath. The name seems to mean “famous,” but the site is unknown, unless it be the remarkable bank called Tubukhat Fahil,