And so it was, when Israel had sown,.... Their land, and it was grown up, and near being ripe, or quite; for the Midianites gave them no disturbance in the winter, and during seedtime, when they came out of their lurking holes, and manured their land, and sowed it:that the Midianites came up; into the land of Canaan, from the other side Jordan, where their country lay, and which it seems lay lower than the land of Israel:and the Amalekites, and the children of the east: the former were implacable enemies of Israel, and on every occasion would join other nations in oppressing them; and the children of the east were Arabians, as Josephus expressly affirms:even they came up against them; all these three sorts of people in a confederacy.
Antiqu. l. 5. c. 6. sect.