Professor Driver and other modern scientific critics hold that the story of the war between Benjamin and the other tribes is not truthfully represented in the Book of Judges, because the latter represents the army of the [367] tribes as numbering four hundred thousand footmen (20:2) whereas Deborah, who lived not far from the same time, "places the number of warriors of entire Israel at not more than forty thousand" (Introduction, 168). But Deborah does no such thing. She says nothing at all about the number of warriors in "entire Israel." What she does say is this: "Was there a shield or spear seen among forty thousand in Israel?" (Judg. 5:8). She was speaking, as the preceding context shows, of the oppression under Jabin, which preceded her call to arms, and emphasizing the scarcity of weapons in the hands of her people. When will these critics learn to inform themselves in the Scriptures which they criticize, and to represent them correctly? Not, I suppose, until they get to believing them. If a man believes the word of God, this makes him careful how he quotes it; but if he believes it to be a bundle of myths, legends and folklore, he is apt to spend his time hunting for these; and he finds them whether they are there or not.

[SEBC 367-368]