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So the sense is, We may well venture these horses, though we have no more, because both they and we are ready to perish through hunger; and therefore let us use them whilst we may for our common good, or to make the discovery. But the repetition of the phrase seems to imply something more emphatical and significant than the saving of four or five horses, for which it is not probable they would be so much concerned in their circumstances. The words therefore may be reordered otherwise, Behold, they are of a truth (the Hebrew prefix caph being not here a note of similitude, as the other translations make it, and as it is commonly used; but an affirmation of the truth and certainty of the things, as it is taken Num_11:1 Deu_9:10 Hos_4:4 5:10 Joh_1:14)
all the multitude of the horses of Israel that are left in it (to wit, in the city); behold, I say, they are even all the multitude of the horses of the Israelites which (i.e. which multitude) are consumed, i.e. reduced to this small number, all consumed except these five. And thus the vulgar Latin, and some others, understand it. And this was indeed a memorable passage, and worthy of a double
behold, to show what mischief the famine had done both upon men and beasts, and to what a low ebb the king of Israel was come, that all his troops of horses, to which he had trusted, were shrunk to so small a number.