Numbers 21:1

King Arad the Canaanite; or rather, the Canaanite king of Arad; for Arad is not the name of a man, but of a city or territory, as may seem from Joshua 12:14; Judges 1:16, if at least this was the same place with that. And he seems to be called a

Canaanite in a general sense, as the Amorites and others sometimes are.

In the south, to wit, of Canaan, as appears from Numbers 33:40, towards the east, and near the Dead Sea.

By the way of the spies; not of those spies which Moses sent to spy the land, Numbers 13:17, for that was done thirty-eight years before this, and they went so privately, that the Canaanites took no notice of them, nor knew which way they came or went; but of the spies which he himself sent out to observe the marches and motions of the Israelites. But the words may be otherwise rendered; either thus, in the manner of spies, so the sense is, when he heard that divers of the Israelites came into or towards his country in the nature of spies, to prepare the way for the rest; or thus, by the way of Atharim, a place so called, as the seventy interpreters here take it, and it seems not improbable. Took some of them prisoners; which God permitted for Israel’s humiliation and punishment, and to teach them not to expect the conquest of that land from their own wisdom or valour, but wholly from God’s favour and assistance. See Deuteronomy 9:4; Psalms 44:3,Psalms 44:4.