Deeper Commentary
Jdg 21:1 Now the men of Israel had sworn in Mizpah: Not one of us
will give his daughter to a Benjamite as wife-
Here we have another repetition of theme, that of unwise oaths. For
Jephthah had done the same. And it resulted at very best in his daughter
going unmarried. We think too of Joshua's over hasty oath to the Gibeonites.
We are to discern the hand of God in all these things and to learn from the
repeated mistakes of His people as recorded in the Biblical record.
We are surely intended to contrast this with how the Israelites
had freely given their daughters to marry Gentiles. Their oath is therefore
hypocritical. It is religious extremism, not spirituality. They treat their
own brethren as if they are worse than Gentiles.
Jdg 21:2 The people came to Bethel where they sat until evening before God,
raising their voices and weeping bitterly-
They had likewise sat before God, i.e. before His manifestation and
presence in the ark and priesthood, when they had enquired why they had been
defeated twice when fighting the Benjamites. It was tears all around, as
they began to realize the extreme folly of what they had done. But it was
grief they themselves had brought about. Their weeping before Yahweh recalls
Joshua's after the defeat at Ai. The great victory they had just won was in
reality a defeat for Israel. Because in conflict between brethren, there can
only be losers. Any apparent victory is in fact a further loss.
Jdg 21:3 They said, Yahweh, the God of Israel, why has this happened to
Israel, that there should be today one tribe missing from Israel?-
If Yahweh was indeed Israel's God, then to destroy a part of Israel was
clearly to have sinned against Him. This is what we do whenever we
separate or effectively cut off a part of the body of Christ. As noted on
Jud. 20:23, the request was really its own answer. Should they fight
against "our brothers"? Obviously not. You do not fight and kill your
brothers. Why has this happened? Because they had done it. So often our
prayers reveal their own answer. We see this in David's prayers as
recorded in the Psalms. Some of them end up providing the answer to the
opening question or struggle. This is one advantage of praying out loud,
of verbalizing our questions to God. The answer sometimes becomes apparent
just through the process of verbalizing our thoughts.
They ask the God of Israel why one tribe has almost perished from Israel. They imply that Israel's God should preserve Israel. Yet it was they who had dismembered Israel. This is a classic case of blaming God for what is clearly man's fault.
"Why did God let this happen?" is a common question today. But the answer is simply that man made it happen. The history here is a helpful window onto the question. There is no recorded answer of God to their question, as there isn't today. But the humble, reflective mind will immediately see the answer as soon as the question is framed. It's not a case of God letting things happen, but of man making bad things happen. In this case, Yahweh confirmed them in their course of action, by saying that Judah should go up first and be destroyed by Benjamin.
Jdg 21:4 Next day the people rose early and built an altar and offered burnt
offerings and peace offerings-
Peace offerings were offered in times of Israel's sadness and
defeat (Jud. 20:26; 21:4), as well as in celebration. In our traumas of life, we need to remember
that the only thing that matters is our peace with God, the joyful fact
that we have nothing separating us. As Israel made their peace offerings
at those times, so we too should consider the possibility of breaking
bread, perhaps alone, as we meet the desperate traumas of our lives.
But as in Jud. 20:26, we note that
Jdg 21:5 They asked, Who is there among all the tribes of Israel who
didn’t come up to the assembly before Yahweh? For they had taken a solemn
oath that anyone who didn’t come up to Yahweh to Mizpah should surely be
put to death-
The implication of Jud. 20:3 ["The
Benjamites heard that the Israelites had gone up to Mizpah"] is that
the Benjamites weren't
represented at the Mizpah conference. And Israel had threatened death to
anyone who didn't come to this gathering. So the Benjamites stood
condemned to death just because they didn't attend a meeting. Just as some
have been disfellowshiped for "long continued absence" from a church. This
is not at all Biblical, and the attitude of the Israelites here was not at
all in accord with the Law of Moses. Nor did they take any advice from God
about this; they simply promised death to any who didn't attend their
gathering. Perhaps this was why they thought they were justified in
slaying the Benjamites- because they had broken the Israelites' self
declared law and commandment to come to Mizpah.
Jdg 21:6 The Israelites grieved for Benjamin their brother. There is one
tribe cut off from Israel this day-
Their requests to God for guidance about attacking Benjamin had
featured the phrase "our brother". They ought to have followed their
conscience toward God, and their sense that any murder of a brother must
be wrong. Instead the power of groupthink and transferring the guilt of
their own sins onto Benjamin was stronger than that. And now they grieve
for what they had done. Their exclusion and cutting off of their brother
had in fact diminished all Israel. And this is what we do to the body of
Christ by cutting off parts of it; it is as Paul puts it, as bizarre as
cutting off our own limbs. The body will not function well without those
limbs. I suggested on Jud. 20:2 that initially, the other
Israelites wanted to destroy Benjamin in order to take their territory.
But now they apparently genuinely repent. We see how even in the depths of
unspirituality, there is still an element of conscience. And that is the
theme of Judges 13-21, that flesh and Spirit were hopelessly mixed in
God's people at this time. So mixed that the mere presence of 'Spirit'
element did not at all guarantee their salvation. We think of the rejected
in the Lord's parables addressing him as "Lord, Lord"; and the foolish
virgins eager to enter His Kingdom when it was all too late. And yet
Jabesh Gilead was in Manasseh. By making Benjamites intermarry with
another tribe, they were weakening Benjamin's claim to the land.
As noted on :3, God was silent in response to their enquiries. They don't get it- His silence was to elicit within them the awareness that it was their fault, not His, and their questioning of Him was inappropriate. They fail to get this, and so go ahead in yet more folly. Just as man does so often. Their efforts to save their brother will involve murder, kidnap and forced marriage- showing that their apparent 'love' and 'repentance' concerning Benjamin was fake. And Israel will do these things against Jabesh Gilead, probably the only city which had responded rightly to their demand to go and fight Benjamin.
Jdg 21:7 How shall we provide wives for those who remain, since we have
sworn by Yahweh that we will not give them our daughters as wives?-
It seems the idea was that if the virgins were stolen and
forced to marry, then the oath not to freely give daughters as wives was
still kept. Even though it involved kidnapping, forced marriage, and the
murder of many innocent people, including children. All these gross sins
were done in order to keep a foolish and hasty oath. The appearance was
that they were careful to avoid the sin of breaking an oath. But they
commit far greater sins in order to avoid that sin. The real issue was
that they didn't want Benjamites to marry their daughters. Again we see
how badly things go when there is no personal devotion to Divine
principle, and rather a desire to appear religiously correct in order to
justify what man wants to do naturally. Another attraction of stealing the
virgins was that there would then no issue about the husbands needing to
pay the usual bride price.
Here we have one of several examples of men caught up in unwise oaths. We think of Darius promising to slay anyone who prayed to anyone apart from himself; of Herod vowing to do anything for the daughter of Herodias, including murdering John the Baptist. They could get out of their oaths by humility... but they didn't. In this case, the easiest option would have been to just repent of their oath and let the remaining Benjamites marry women from other tribes. But for all their apostacy, they had a legalistic mindset. And there was a pride factor in their society when it came to not following through on an oath. As many do today, they went to the most bizarre lengths to get around the oath they had made, and to save face. And yet their bizarre method of getting around it was all the same unethical, and involved the massacre of yet more of their brethren at Jabesh Gilead, and the kidnapping of girls from Shiloh. It would have been far better to humble themselves and retract their rash oath. We see this lesson repeated in the rulers who swore too hastily, resulting in Daniel and John the Baptist suffering greatly- just because the rulers were too proud to take back their words.
Jdg 21:8 They asked, Which of the tribes of Israel didn’t come up to
Yahweh to Mizpah? They found that none from the camp from Jabesh Gilead
came to the assembly-
We note that they had not attempted to murder these people because
they had not come to the meeting at Mizpah. And yet they apparently used
Benjamin's absence from that meeting [when it was clearly biased against
them from the start] as justification for slaying Benjamin (:5). So
clearly the whole miserable, quasi legal process was set up from the start
in order to cut off Benjamin. And this is how church politics so often
goes, when there is a predetermined desire to cut someone off.
Jdg 21:9 For when the people were counted, none of the inhabitants of
Jabesh Gilead were there-
We wonder why Jabesh did not attend. Perhaps they like Benjamin had
seen through the manic feeding frenzy of the groupthink, and had objected
to the absolutely unBiblical judgment being taken- with so much depending
on just one questionable witness, with Dt. 17:6,7 being so totally
ignored. See on Jud. 20:13. And yet still Israel were impenitent for all
that; and they were to go ahead and punish Jabesh with a massacre, killing
even innocent children, because of it. The implication is that absolutely
every town of Israel outside of Benjamin was represented in this great
assembly, including the totally apostate people of Laish of Dan (Jud.
17,18). Only Jabesh didn't come. This is the extent to which the people
were caught up in a shark tank feeding frenzy of judgmentalism, self
congratulation and hatred against their brethren. These things happen
today; brethren are demonized and hated on a mass scale on flimsy grounds
by brethren who are only as weak as themselves. It is a basic
psychological reaction, the unchecked movement of the flesh rather than of
the Spirit.
Jdg 21:10 The congregation sent twelve thousand valiant fighting men and
commanded them: Go and put the inhabitants of Jabesh Gilead to the sword,
including the women and children-
The idea was, a thousand from each tribe, following the principle of
Num. 31:4. Yet they were following an isolated Biblical precedent in a
very misplaced way- for they were going to massacre innocent people, all
because they were too proud to accept they had made a foolish oath (see on
:7). We see here a common human feature- of apparent obedience to the
letter of the law, whilst breaking the obvious spirit of the law. We think
of the Jews being scrupulous to be ritually clean for the Passover- at
which they crucified God's Son. It's a case of having a plank in our own
eye whilst noticing the splinter in the eye of another.
Jdg 21:11 This is what you are to do: kill every male and every woman who
is not a virgin-
Whilst it is not recorded that this was done, this massacre of their
own brethren was necessitated by their refusal to humble themselves and
retract their oaths, as discussed on :7. They had not really learned the
depth of their sin- for here they were advocating the cutting off of yet
more of their brethren in a massacre, for the sake of undoing the damage
done by cutting off their brethren from Benjamin. They had not learned the
lesson.
More exactly, “You shall devote to utter destruction” or “cherem” (Lev. 27:28). They were also alluding to the uttermost destruction of the Midianites in Num. 31:7,17. But they failed to perceive that they are again treating their own brethren as Gentiles.
Jdg 21:12 They found among the inhabitants of Jabesh Gilead four hundred
young virgins who had not known man by lying with him, and they brought
them to the camp at Shiloh in the land of Canaan-
This may imply they did not in fact destroy Jabesh as they had
promised to Yahweh to do, and as the elders had told them to do. The town
was still inhabited at the time of 1 Sam. 11:1. It seems they were very
selective in their obedience, and yet claimed such utter and careful
loyalty to Yahweh. The record continually demonstrates their hypocrisy and
ignorance of true spirituality, whilst having a knowledge and apparent
devotion to isolated parts of God's law. The same is seen amongst so many
professing to be God's people today. Yet "saved alive" in :14 implies they
did indeed massacre the town. The description of the conflict with Jabesh
as a "war" in :22 suggests that there was indeed bloodshed, probably on
both sides; and yet despite that, the required number of young female
captives weren't taken. So all the bloodshed and "war" just didn't achieve
the desired end anyway. The logical process in thought behind the
decisions taken in all this appears very lacking in wisdom. Clearly they
did not progress on God's advice, but only on their own.
The treatment of these women is not far from rape. The rape of two women by Benjamites leads to the effective rape of 400 women by the rest of Israel, and kidnapping and forcible marriage of another 200. This is how out of proportion was Israel's response.
Jdg 21:13 The whole congregation sent an offer of peace to the Benjamites
who were in the rock of Rimmon-
They 'proclaimed peace', using the same phrase as in Dt. 20:10: "When
you draw near to a city to fight against it, proclaim peace to it". But
the Israelites did this to the few remaining Benjamites after
they had massacred most of them (Jud 21:13). This was typical of how
Israel at this time were taking fragments of God's law and applying them,
but absolutely out of context. Whilst they disregarded the majority of the
Law, both in letter and spirit. And we see this in the wider Christian
movement. Bits and pieces of Divine principle are used in a misplaced way,
when the majority of God's revelation and will is ignored.
Jdg 21:14 So then Benjamin returned and they gave them the women whom they
had saved alive from Jabesh Gilead, but they weren’t enough for them-
"Saved alive" implies they did indeed massacre the town. They had
clearly had a bad conscience about fighting against Benjamin their
"brother". But they fail to really grasp why that was wrong. For in the
flush of final victory against Benjamin, they now go and do exactly the
same sin of murdering their brothers. And in this case, for no reason
other than that Jabesh hadn't come up to some kangaroo court they had set
up to judge Benjamin. They were acting absolutely against God's will and
without any seeking of His guidance. And all because, as discussed on :7,
they lacked the faith to let God resolve the issue of the remnant of
Benjamin having no wives; and because they lacked the humility to take
back their oath not to let their daughters marry Benjamites.
Jdg 21:15 The people grieved for Benjamin because Yahweh had made a gap in
the tribes of Israel-
AV "repented them", they had a change of mind. But this is not
necessarily the same as perceiving their own moral wrong. There is no
reference to their seeking counsel from God as to whether or not to
massacre yet more of their brethren in Jabesh, which was apparently of
another tribe and east of the Jordan [presumably it was near the wadi
Jabesh which is east of Jordan]. The people had not asked counsel of God
about how to judge the matter. They had all eagerly condemned Gibeah to
destruction, without referring to God, and in studied disobedience to His
word (see on Jud. 20:13). Yet having made their own judgment, they then
made a great show of asking His advice as to which tribe should lead the
assault, or, should attack Gibeah first (Jud. 20:18). Yet God responded to
their request. He said Judah should go first. He wanted to use this
incident to punish Israel, as well as Benjamin. And as so often, His
judgments are in terms of brethren destroying each other, rather than Him
doing it directly Himself. See on Jud. 20:7. It was Yahweh who made a
breach in Israel over this matter. He worked through it all. It was His
way of judging His apostate, hypocritical people. The same word is used of
His making a breach upon Uzzah, in judgment (2 Sam. 6:8). A breach from
Yahweh is a judgment for sin (Is. 30:13; Ez. 22:30 s.w.).
Division and
conflict amongst God's children is therefore somehow of Him- but it is His
judgment upon the community. Alternatively we can
read this as the people still not facing up to the enormity of their sins.
It was they who had made a breach in Israel, but they blame it on
Yahweh. The ambiguity is intentional. They had made the breach, and blamed
God for it [see on :3]. And yet He had confirmed them in what they really
wanted to do, which was to dismember Israel. Just as whether the
Levite murdered his concubine is ambiguous.
Jdg 21:16 Then the elders of the congregation said, How shall we provide
wives for those who remain, since the women are destroyed out of Benjamin?-
A wife is "from the Lord", not from purely human device. Massacring a
town to steal their virgin daughters, and then kidnapping girls from a
Passover dance... is all the way of the flesh. We see how misguided were
these people, partly concerned with the Divine concept of raising up seed
for their brother, and yet with no basic moral backbone at all. They would
have been better to have faith that God would provide, in His own
wonderful way- rather than massacring Jabesh and kidnapping girls.
Jdg 21:17 They said, There must be an inheritance for the surviving
Benjamites so that a tribe will not be blotted out from Israel-
They are arguing from the basis of the levirate law, that brothers
must somehow ensure that seed is raised up to their brother in the case of
death. But, as noted on :16, they are focusing upon just one aspect of
Divine truth, and ignoring the wider moral teachings of the Mosaic law and
indeed of basic ethics and morality. "There must be an
inheritance..." again reflects their legalistic mind, driven by a devotion
to quasi logic to do things which were plain wrong on every count. An
inheritance is "of the Lord", just as a wife is (:16); their attempt to
play God in all this just made things far worse. And we must
ponder whether our own spirituality is no more, at times, than out of
context obedience to a few Biblical commands, whilst our flesh runs
rampant and we refuse to humble ourselves beneath the essence of a truly
spiritual life.
Jdg 21:18 We can’t give them wives from our daughters since the Israelites
have taken this oath saying, ‘Cursed be he who gives a wife to Benjamin’-
I discussed on :7 how if they had humbled themselves and retracted
their oaths, then they would not have needed to do the bizarre and sinful
things which they did- massacre of Jabesh Gilead and kidnapping young
girls. Their legalistic mindset is incredible; and yet they themselves
were far astray from Yahweh themselves, and this was why they had been
punished at the hands of the Benjamites, losing 40,000 men.
Jdg 21:19 They said, Look, there is an annual feast of Yahweh in Shiloh,
which is on the north of Bethel, east of the highway from Bethel to
Shechem, and south of Lebonah-
If the feast involved dancing (:21) then it was likely the feast of
the Passover, with the girls replicating the dancing of Miriam and the
women. The exact geographical description is given so that the Benjamites
knew precisely where to go. But they ought to have been celebrating
Yahweh's deliverance of His people by grace, rather than using it as an
opportunity to kidnap wives for themselves. But
again this is mixing the flesh and the Spirit. The girls were to be
kidnapped during a feast to Yahweh, without consequence. But the Canaanite
tribes also allowed bride kidnapping during feasts. They were following a
pagan practice. And it has been observed that "The Pokot people of East
Africa permit kidnapping unmarried women during the summer solstice
ceremonial cycle".
Jdg 21:20 They instructed the Benjamites: Go and lie in wait in the
vineyards-
This bizarre idea of grabbing young unmarried females was all
necessitated by the impenitence of the Israelites and their refusal to
humble themselves and retract their oath, as discussed on :7.
Jdg 21:21 and watch. When the daughters of Shiloh come out to join in the
dances, then rush out of the vineyards and each of you catch a wife from
the girls of Shiloh and go to the land of Benjamin-
The language of lying in wait in ambush and then rushing forward upon
the unsuspecting is the language of how the Benjamites had finally
captured Gibeah, and how Israel had captured Ai. Again, we see the
misplaced idea of appealing to past precedent in God's dealings with His
people. They wished to follow some aspects of God's ways in the past,
whilst ignoring the vast majority of His teaching, even on a most basic
moral level. And we wonder whether the majority of those identifying as
'Christian' at this point in world history are not similar.
Jdg 21:22 When their fathers or their brothers come to complain to us, we
will say to them, ‘Allow them to do this because we didn’t get wives for
them in the war-
The war is presumably the war against Jabesh of :12. The way it is
called a "war" suggests the people of Jabesh fought back. There would have
been yet more bloodshed, and it seems there were fewer virgin women
captured than the Israelites had initially imagined. "Allow them"
is literally 'show us grace'. Like many today, they spoke of grace with no
idea of what it really means. They use the grace argument when the whole
story shows that nobody knows anything about grace. Rather this is stilted
legalism and yet further abuse of people. In response to the grabbing of
one woman, the concubine, they are going to grab hundreds of women against
their will. And to kidnap a person was a capital offence (Ex. 21:16).
You didn’t give them to them, so you are not guilty’-
Perhaps they mean 'Not guilty of breaking the oath not to give your
daughter in marriage to Benjamites'. But the way of humility would have
been to simply ask God to forgive them for a rash oath, or to just leave
it all to God to decide, with faith He would somehow work it out. But when
there is no human answer visible, then we tend to abandon faith in God and
go for these kinds of bizarre human ways of resolving things.
Or the idea may have been that to give a daughter in marriage to a man of another tribe was a sin. But as the daughters had been taken away forcibly, it wouldn't count as a sin. We note their extreme legalism. And yet as legalists often do, they seriously contradicted themselves. For in this case, it would have been a sin for Benjamites to be marrying women from another tribe. So their solution to the problem was only leading people into sin. There seems no direct statement in the law of Moses that intermarriage amongst the tribes was a sin, although the implication of the principles of inheritance amongst the tribes was that it was far from ideal.
Jdg 21:23 So that is what the Benjamites did. They took wives for each of
them from the girls who danced, and carried them off. They returned to
their inheritance, rebuilt the cities and lived in them-
See on :22. Carrying them off implies to captivity. They were
treating these Israelite girls as prey, taken in some Divinely sanctioned
war. But God had not been consulted, and was not in any of this.
Jdg 21:24 Then the Israelites departed each to his tribe and family-
This is perhaps stating the obvious but in order that we imagine them
returning home, with only tales of woe and not glorious victory. For they
had lost 40,000 of their own men, and slain a huge number of their
brethren both from Jabesh and all Benjamin. And arranged the kidnap of
innocent girls from their families. Not much to boast about to their
families. And so the point is made, that in conflict between brethren,
there are only shameful losers.
Jdg 21:25 In those days there was no king in Israel; each man did that which
was right in his own eyes-
This implies that the book of Judges as we have it was edited, under
Divine inspiration, some time after Israel began to have kings. Perhaps
during the exile, when again they had no king; and therefore the book
becomes a warning to the exiles about likely apostacy. The lament may be
that there was no authority, no teacher, no modelling of Godly living;
because every man did what was right in his own eyes, rather than doing
what was right in the eyes of Yahweh. For so often we read of Israel being
condemned for doing what was wrong in His eyes. This is
clear enough
evidence that 'just follow your heart' is poor advice. For what is right
in our own eyes results in the Godless confusion of what we find now at
the time of the Judges. However it could be argued that having no human
king was a good thing; for God didn't want them to have one. And therefore
a situation where everyone judges things by their own judgment is in fact
good; the problem was that the people didn't base their view upon God's
word, His "eyes" or perspective, but solely upon their own unenlightened
opinions.
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