After forty years of peace, religious blending caused political instability, and roaming nomads forced the Israelites to live as fugitives.
The Midianites, once thought to be purely nomadic and based in northwest Arabia, are now known to have built cities and, for a time, controlled much of the Arabian Peninsula and southern Transjordan (the area east of the Jordan). They are joined by the Amalekites (who were earlier part of a Moabite coalition; see study note on Judges 3:12–13) and the mysterious people of the east (compare 1 Kings 4:30; Ezekiel 25:4, 10). The attacks were seasonal but very destructive.