³ Whenever the Israelis sowed their crops,^[a] the Midianites, the Amalekites, and certain groups^[b] from the east would come up and invade them. ⁴ They set up their military encampments to fight them, destroyed the harvest of the land as far as Gaza, and left nothing in Israel, whether harvested grain, sheep, oxen, or donkeys. ⁵ They would invade with their livestock and tents, swooping in as numerous as locusts. It was impossible to count them or their camels—and they came into the land to destroy it.