diff --git a/lucene/core/src/java/org/apache/lucene/index/DefaultIndexingChain.java b/lucene/core/src/java/org/apache/lucene/index/DefaultIndexingChain.java
index df739d85061..f2c3de11a4c 100644
--- a/lucene/core/src/java/org/apache/lucene/index/DefaultIndexingChain.java
+++ b/lucene/core/src/java/org/apache/lucene/index/DefaultIndexingChain.java
@@ -770,7 +770,11 @@ final class DefaultIndexingChain extends DocConsumer {
           }
           invertState.lastStartOffset = startOffset;
 
-          invertState.length = Math.addExact(invertState.length, invertState.termFreqAttribute.getTermFrequency());
+          try {
+            invertState.length = Math.addExact(invertState.length, invertState.termFreqAttribute.getTermFrequency());
+          } catch (ArithmeticException ae) {
+            throw new IllegalArgumentException("too many tokens for field \"" + field.name() + "\"");
+          }
           
           //System.out.println("  term=" + invertState.termAttribute);
 
diff --git a/lucene/core/src/test/org/apache/lucene/index/TestCustomTermFreq.java b/lucene/core/src/test/org/apache/lucene/index/TestCustomTermFreq.java
index 5b38f576644..d2eff257648 100644
--- a/lucene/core/src/test/org/apache/lucene/index/TestCustomTermFreq.java
+++ b/lucene/core/src/test/org/apache/lucene/index/TestCustomTermFreq.java
@@ -303,7 +303,7 @@ public class TestCustomTermFreq extends LuceneTestCase {
                                                 new int[] {3, Integer.MAX_VALUE}),
                             fieldType);
     doc2.add(field);
-    expectThrows(ArithmeticException.class, () -> {w.addDocument(doc2);});
+    expectThrows(IllegalArgumentException.class, () -> {w.addDocument(doc2);});
 
     IndexReader r = DirectoryReader.open(w);
     assertEquals(1, r.numDocs());