Verse 5
5. Thirty thousand chariots, and six thousand horsemen Here we meet another instance of manifest error of numbers in the text. “Thirty thousand war chariots bear no proportion whatever to six thousand horsemen, not only because the number of war-chariots is invariably smaller than that of the horsemen, (compare 2 Samuel 10:18; 1Ki 10:26 ; 2 Chronicles 12:3,) but also because such a number of war chariots is never met with either in sacred or profane history, not even in the case of nations that were much more powerful than the Philistines. The number is, therefore, certainly corrupt, and we must either read three thousand, according to the Syriac and Arabic, or else simply one thousand. In the latter case the origin of the number thirty must be attributed to the fact that, through the oversight of a copyist, the ל (Hebrew numeral for thirty) of the word ישׂראל , Israel, was written twice, and consequently the second ל was taken for the numeral thirty.” Keil.
Came up… pitched in Michmash Thus occupying the heights from which Saul had fallen back.
Beth-aven This place was on the east of Beth-el, (Joshua 7:2,) and, as we infer from this passage, between it and Michmash; but it has not yet been satisfactorily identified with any modern site.
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