And [when] king Arad the Canaanite, which dwelt in the south, heard tell that Israel came by the way of the spies; then he fought against Israel, and took [some] of them prisoners.
Ver. 1. And took some of them prisoners.] A sore affliction, worse than any of those outward crosses that Job suffered, whose captivity therefore, as that which comprehended all the rest, God is said to have turned, Job 42:10 Barbarossa, the Turkish general, returned from Tunis towards Constantinople with such a multitude of poor Christian captives, shut up so close under hatches among the excrements of nature, that all the way as he went, almost every hour, some of them were cast dead overboard. a The late Duke of Alva, governor of Flanders, roasted some of his prisoners to death, starved others, and that even after quarter; saying, though he promised to give them their lives, he did not promise to find them meat. b
a Turk. Hist., fol. 750.
b Grimst., Hist. of Netherl.