(34) Ten thousand chosen men.--Though the verse is obscurely expressed, the meaning probably is that this was the number of the ambuscade of picked warriors. If it means that this was the Israelite force left after the slaughter of 40,000, we are not told the number of the ambush.

The battle was sore.--It would be a battle in which the Benjamites were now attacked both in front and rear.

But.--Rather, and.

They knew not that evil was near them--i.e., as we should say, "that the hour of their ruin had come," or, as the Vulg. has it, quod ex omni parte illis instaret interitus, "that destruction was threatening them on every side." (Comp. Isaiah 47:10.)

Verse 34. - Against Gibeah, i.e. against the army of Gibeah. The sense seems to be that the 10,000 Israelites who had been fleeing before Benjamin, and drawing them away from the city, now faced them, and commenced a resolute attack upon them, which at first the Benjamites, not knowing of the ambushment in their rear met with equal resolution, so that "the battle was sore." But the result, the details of which are given at length in vers. 36-46, was that 25,100 Benjamites fell that day (see ver. 46).

17:7-13 Micah thought it was a sign of God's favour to him and his images, that a Levite should come to his door. Thus those who please themselves with their own delusions, if Providence unexpectedly bring any thing to their hands that further them in their evil way, are apt from thence to think that God is pleased with them.And there came against Gibeah ten thousand chosen men out of all Israel,.... Which, according to Ben Gersom, were the liers in wait; and came from the south, as the Targum says:

and the battle was sore; not between those liers in wait, and the Benjaminites, but between those at Baaltamar, and them who set themselves in battle array against them, and they fought stoutly on both sides:

but they knew not that evil was near them; that there was an ambush laid, by which they were in great danger; they knew nothing of the 10,000 men that were now come out against Gibeah, and were between them and that.