The Hebrew word eleph
is normally translated as thousand
but it can also mean tribe or clan or just a military group (a commando unit).1 This is how this word is translated in Numbers 10:4, Judges 6:5 and 1 Samuel 10:19. As a result, it is unlikely that there were three hundred thousand Israelites and thirty thousand men from Judah. The precise number cannot be confirmed with certainty, but it was definitely a large force with every tribe sending men to battle.2
8 When he mustered them at Bezek, the people of Israel were three hundred thousand, and the men of Judah thirty thousand.