Exegetical and Hermeneutical Commentary of Judges 21:1
Now the men of Israel had sworn in Mizpeh, saying, There shall not any of us give his daughter unto Benjamin to wife.
1. had sworn in Mizpah ] Probably, like Jephthah’s vow (Jdg 11:30 n.), a religious oath made at the sanctuary (Jdg 20:1). This solemn oath, which could neither be broken nor withdrawn, is an essential feature of both narratives ( Jdg 21:18 ; Jdg 21:22 A; 7 B); it created the problem for which some solution had to be found.
Fuente: The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges
Jdg 21:1-25
The men of Israel had sworn.
An unreasonable oath
1. It was an oath that flowed from rash rage rather than from real zeal. Men must swear in judgment (Jer 4:2), not when transported with passion, as Israel was now against Benjamin; their fiery spirits stood now in more need of a bridle than of a spur.
2. It was an uncharitable oath, as it was against the repairing of a perishing tribe, which the law of charity bound them to support, and not to see it perish out of the land through the want of their helping hand.
3. It appears unlawful, as it crossed the revealed will of God in Jacobs prophetical blessing upon this tribe (Gen 49:27), and that of Moses also (Deu 33:12), both which prophecies had been spoiled had this one of the twelve tribes been extinguished.
4. The performance of this unreasonable oath was likewise bloody and barbarous, for by virtue of their oath their blind zeal transported them to destroy many persons in all those cities of Benjamin who had no hand in that foul act of the men of Gibeah. (C. Ness.)
One tribe lacking.
One lacking
This inquiry represents the spirit of the whole Bible; that is all that I have to say. It is indeed not so much an inquiry as a wail, a burst of sorrow, a realised disunion, a shattered kinship. Israel was meant to be foursquare–twelve, without flaw, at every point a noble integer. Benjamin is threatened with extinction, Benjamin is not in the house of God, Bethel, a city literally, but a sanctuary spiritually, and Benjamin is outside. Men should not take these facts with indifference. I have no faith in your indifferent piety, in your piety that can allow any man to be outside, and never ask a question about him or send a message to him. That is not Christianity. From the first Benjamin was a little one, having only some thirty or forty thousand fighting men, a figure that went for nothing in the numbering of old Israel, and over a very delicate and difficult question he came into collision with the rest of Israel. He was alone, and after an almost superhuman resistance he was overborne, all but extirpated, and he went away and hid himself some four months in the rock Rimmon, the inviolable rock of the pomegranate, and there he took account of himself. How many am I? Thousands fell and thousands more; eighteen thousand fell, all men of valour, over against Gibeah towards the sun rising, and we are now dwindled into some six hundred men, and nobody cares for us, and nobody seeks us out. Wait a moment. Perhaps at that very time all Israel was saying, Are we all here? All but Benjamin. And why is Benjamin not here? O Lord God of Israel, why is this come to pass in Israel, that there should be to-day one tribe lacking in Israel? But you are eleven! Yes. What of one? What of one? What man of you, having a hundred sheep, and one of them being gone astray, doth not leave the ninety and nine in the wilderness, and go alter the one that is lost, until he find it? Thrice repeated–that is the way of the dear old Scriptures. Whenever the proper name is repeated, the repetition is the sign of concern, solicitude, anxiety. Martha, Martha; Simon, Simon; O Jerusalem, Jerusalem–the same pathos. O Lord God of Israel, why is this come to pass in Israel, that there should be to-day one tribe lacking in Israel? We see from Bethel what we never saw from the battlefield. Until you have seen the world from the house of God you have never seen it. You have never seen man till you have seen him from the Cross. Keep up the Church. That is the specular tower that is the point of vision. Until you have seen the world religiously you have not seen it, you twaddling, tinkering, niggling reformer. Now you can look at this text as a sentiment, as a discipline, as an encouragement.
I. A sentiment. Why? Is not this the human aspect of the solicitude of Gods heart? In this respect as well as in others is man made after the image and likeness of God. In all such emotion there is a suggestion infinite in scope and tenderness, a suggestion of humility, family completeness, absolute unselfishness, redemption, forgiveness, reconstruction, everlasting joy, the gathered fractions consolidated into an everlasting integer. But you will have that lost man. And Paul, that marvellous compound of Moses and Christ, honouring the majesty of the law as he always did, yet feeling its weakness in the presence of sin, did he not tremble under the same emotion? He says, I am in continual sorrow. Great heavens! what is the matter? It is not enough for him that the forces of the Gentiles are moving towards the Cross, that from Midian, Ephraim, and Sheba men are rising to show forth the praises of the Lord. Not enough; what more do you want? I could wish myself accursed; anathema from Christ and my brethren, my kinsmen according to the flesh. My hearts desire and prayer to God is that Israel might be saved. For see how the doves are flocking to the windows! I know, I know: beautiful! Thank God for it, but–and who is it that speaks thus?–I would know this man. I am of the seed of Israel. What tribe? Ah, what tribe? Hush! You want music now–not the blare of the organ but the whisper of the harp. Of the tribe of Benjamin. Why, that is the tribe that is lacking in the text. Yes. Thus history rolls round in ennobled and amplified repetition and variety–evolution unimaginable in vastness and variety. He is of the tribe of Benjamin. In Judges all Israel mourns that Benjamin was lacking. In the Romans Benjamin mourns that all Israel is away. If you have lost your tears, you have lost your Christianity. The Bible varies a good deal in historical and even moral colour, but it never varies in pity, love, and mercy. From the first God loved man with atoning and redeeming love. We want all the genius, all the poetry, all the letters; we want them and welcome them all if they will be servants in the house of God, and help us in the expression of an inexpressible pity–a contradiction in words, a harmony in experience. I challenge you–graciously and lovingly–and I think you will not find one bare place in all the area of the Book. Let us try it. In Eden there is a promise; in the wilderness there is a tabernacle–a mercy-seat. In Genesis there is a covenant. In Malachi there is a book of remembrance. In Exodus the Lord keeps mercy for thousands, and forgives iniquity, transgression, and sin. In Numbers there will be nothing! Yes, in Numbers the Lord is long-suffering and of great mercy, forgiving iniquity and transgression. Why, what more could He do on Calvary? And that in Numbers, which you thought a bare place. In Judges, the Lord is grieved for the memory of Israel. In Samuel, when the avenging angel had gone forth He recalled the angel, and let the lifted thunder drop. But Chronicles–they will be all details, annals, and a field for the higher critics rather to pull to pieces. There will be nothing, I think, in the Chronicles. Will there not? In the Chronicles, God says, If His people will seek His face and turn away from their wicked ways, He will hear them from heaven. He will forgive their sins. He will heal their land. And as for the Psalms. What need we say of them, or of Isaiah, or Jeremiah, or Ezekiel? They are golden with the love of God. In Hosea God heals the backsliding of His people, and loves them freely. Even James, a man without poetry, a church without a spire, wrote his letter to the twelve tribes–twelve. They were scattered abroad–but no scattering can kill the household of faith. Now is it possible for any tribe to be lacking, to become extinct? Where, for example, is the tribe of Dan? It disappeared beyond record in the 1st Chronicles, and is not named in the Apocalypse, but its few thousand members amalgamated with some other tribe, say, with this very tribe of Benjamin. Yet even in the Apocalypse the number of the tribes is twelve, twelve foundations, and twelve gates of twelve pearls. And we may be absentees, but Gods house shall be filled. Now that is the text as a sentiment. A great moan, a most tender, passionate, evangelistic feeling.
II. This high feeling has also a disciplinary aspect, and therefore there is a whole field of complete and ardent loyalty. When Deborah sang her triumphant song she disclosed the sterner aspect of this case. She mentioned the absentees by name, and consigned them to the withered immortality of oblivion. Why should there? said that mother heart, why should there have been one tribe lacking on that day of the battle? Why? Reuben remained among the sheepfolds and listened to the bleatings of his flock when he ought to have answered the call of the trumpet, and helped to repulse the nine hundred chariots of Sisera. The Lord will have hold of him yet. Why was he lacking on that day? Oh, he was preoccupied; he sent promises, but he remained at home among the flocks when he ought to have been serving with the army. And some are criticising the sermon who ought to be out saving sinners. Oh, these prior engagements, these domestic excuses, these parliament and council and other engagements that prevent our being at the war. And Gilead abode beyond Jordan, and Dan was concealed in ships, and Asher peered from behind the creeks and wondered how the war was going on. Is it not so with you? Do not hinder your fellow-soldiers if you cannot help them. Any fool can do mischief. Stupidity can sneer at enthusiasm, and we may remain away from the battle. Do you think that is going to interfere with the success of these great evangelistic movements and missionary movements? There is another variety, oh, very singular indeed! There is a lacking, or an absence, which affects great indignation because it has not been sent for. Do you know nothing about that? You do! They stand back for a space, that they may see whether they will be missed. You have heard of these men? They say, We are just waiting to see whether a circular will be sent to us. One has been sent next door, and we are simply waiting to see. You are not! You are grieving the Spirit of God. Now, there was a band in old Israel who tried this trick in three instances, but I think the third was the last. Once Gideon overthrew the Midianites, and held in his one hand the head of Prince Oreb and in his other hand the head of Prince Zeeb. The Ephraimites chided him severely because they were not sent for–they would have been very glad to have held somebodys dead head in their hands. It was the trick of Ephraim. They tried it once upon the son of the harlot of Gilead. Ephraim said to Jephthah, When thou passedst over to fight against the children of Ammon, why didst thou not call on us to go with thee? One can be fully valorous the day after the fight, and when all is dead and gone they say, Why were not we sent fort And Jephthah was a bold and plain-spoken man–base-born, but he could not help that–but the Spirit of the Lord was in him, and the wrath of the Divine fire burned in his bones, and he said I will tell you. Ephraim, hear me; I did once send for you, and you did not come. You did not come, and now that you are trying this stale trick upon others I will put an end to you, at least to a considerable extent, and that day he choked the passages of the Jordan with the carcases of forty-two thousand Ephraimites. So there are two kinds of lacking–a lacking that excites pity and emotion and compassion, and a lacking that excites indignation. Find opportunities. Be on the alert for chances. Watch; thou knowest not when the enemy may come, or the Lord. Be faithful. Remember that Christianity is a battlefield as well as a contemplation and doctrine. Is the whole fighting strength of the Church on the field? Are any enjoying delights of civilisation who ought to be taking part in the war?
III. Now, we are looking at it as a discipline, but we may look at it next and finally as an encouragement. Some are no longer in the battle, yet they are not lacking in the sense of the text. They are not here–they are here. Even the mighty David waxed faint. He was but seventy when he died. When I say but seventy do I not speak carelessly? What a seventy! When he tottered under his weakness in one of his closing battles he nearly fell. In one of his closing battles there was a Philistine who had a sword and was pressing the king most heavily, and it was going badly with King David. The Philistine was hard upon him; hard upon him who slew the lion and the bear and the giant of Gath; hard upon him who made Jerusalem rich with the golden shields of Hadad; and the royal captains rushed to falling David and got around him and said, Thou shalt go out with us no more to the battle, that they quench not the light of Israel, and they stood up as iron might stand, and to the foe they said, God save the king, and to David they said–they whispered–You shall not go with us any more to the battle, that they quench not the light of Israel. Henceforth he was to be lacking, yet not lacking. My dear old septuagenarian or octogenarian, or whatever your age may be, no more to the battle. We would not say that to the enemy; but you shall go out to no more wars; you shall still be with us; you shall pray for us and help us in the Council Chamber, and give us the benefit of your rich experience; but no more to the battle. No, my old friends, we still have you, you are with us as reminiscences, examples, memories, inspirations. I look round my table, says one and says another; my boys are not with me as they used to be. I miss them. They used to go with me to the village chapel, but they are lacking now. O Lord God of Israel, why is my son lacking? He is taken up with a language I do not understand. I was trained very simply, believingly, in the great redeeming truths of the gospel, but he talks to me now in a language I cannot understand, and he no more sings the old hymns and goes to the dear old house of prayer. Lacking! Have you brought no word for me this morning? Yes, I have a word for you. He may return. He is going through a very difficult process now; you know your son is a very prosperous man, and prosperity takes a good deal of chastening in order to remain pious. But he may return. I will tell you how he may return. He will have a little child, and she will be the delight of his heart, and when she is about five or six she will sicken, and in the deep dark night she will say to him, Father, give me one long, long kiss, and she will pass away; and he will look round for some of his books. They will have nothing to say to him, and he will alight upon an old, old book, and he will read, And Jesus called unto Him a little child; and he will read, Suffer little children to come unto Me; and in secret and in darkness he will drop on his knees at the bedside, and angels will say, Behold he prayeth. Adversity will do what prosperity cannot do. Loss will be gain. So he may return. (J. Parker, D. D.)
Every man did that which was right in his own eyes.–
Confusion and misery through want of orders
A visitor was once standing at a friends door. He knocked, and knocked; but there was nobody to open. Perhaps no one was at home? Oh, yes; there was a noise within, which plainly showed that more than one or two or three were there. Again he knocked, and waited; then at last a servant came. She was very sorry, but she had been with the children who were all quarrelling. This, then, explained the noise. Sounds of crying and anger were now heard from a room upstairs, while a little fellow ran forward to welcome the visitor. Why, whats the matter? Oh, sir, father and mother are both out, and it is so miserable! How so? Why, we are all left to do as we like; there is nobody to manage us! This was strange, was it not? Doing as they liked seemed to bring nothing but disorder and misery until father came home again! Now, I do not know whether those parents were wise and careful or not, or whether they could have done better with their family than to leave it so. But I know that at one time the people of God, dwelling in the promised land, were left by Him very much as those children were left. This was perhaps partly a punishment for their wilfulness and sin. They had thought they could manage for themselves very well, and now God let them try. Then there was wisdom and kindness, too, in thus showing them that they needed the care and power of a wiser, mightier One than they. (S. G. Green, D. D.)
Fuente: Biblical Illustrator Edited by Joseph S. Exell
CHAPTER XXI
The Israelites mourn because of the desolation of Benjamin, and
consult the Lord, 1-4.
They inquire who of Israel had not come to this war, as they had
vowed that those who would not make this a common cause should
be put to death, 5, 6.
They consult how they shall procure wives for the six hundred
men who had fled to the rock Rimmon, 7.
Finding that the men of Jabesh-gilead had not come to the war,
they send twelve thousand men against them, smite them, and
bring off four hundred virgins, which they give for wives to
those who had taken refuge in Rimmon, 8-14.
To provide for the two hundred which remained, they propose to
carry off two hundred virgins of the daughters of Shiloh, who
might come to the annual feast of the Lord, held at that place,
15-22.
They take this counsel, and each carries away a virgin from the
feast, 23-25.
NOTES ON CHAP. XXI
Verse 1. Now the men of Israel had sworn] Of this oath we had not heard before; but it appears they had commenced this war with a determination to destroy the Benjamites utterly, and that if any of them escaped the sword no man should be permitted to give him his daughter to wife. By these means the remnant of the tribe must soon have been annihilated.
Fuente: Adam Clarke’s Commentary and Critical Notes on the Bible
The men of Israel had sworn; in the beginning of this war, after the whole tribe had espoused the quarrel of the men of Gibeah, Jdg 21:13,14. They do not (as some suppose) here swear the utter extirpation of the tribe, which fell out beyond their expectation, Jdg 21:3,6, but only not to give their daughters to those men who should survive; justly esteeming them for their barbarous villany to be as bad as the worst of heathens, with whom they were forbidden to marry. In this case the Benjamites might have married among themselves, if any of their men and women were left alive.
Fuente: English Annotations on the Holy Bible by Matthew Poole
Now the men of Israel had sworn in Mizpeh,…. Where they were there convened, before the war began; after they had heard the account the Levite gave of the affair, which brought them thither; and after they had sent messengers to Benjamin to deliver up the men of Gibeah, that had committed the wickedness; and after they perceived that Benjamin did not hearken to their demand, but prepared to make war with them; then, as they resolved on the destruction of Gibeah, and of all the cities that sent out men against them, even all the inhabitants of them, men, women, and children, entered into an oath, that they would use those men that remained as Heathens, and not intermarry with them, as follows:
saying, there shall not any of us give his daughter unto Benjamin to wife; seeing those that used the wife of the Levite in such a base manner, and those that protected and defended them, deserved to have no wives.
Fuente: John Gill’s Exposition of the Entire Bible
The proposal to find wives for the six hundred Benjaminites who remained was exposed to this difficulty, that the congregation had sworn at Mizpeh (as is supplemented in Jdg 21:1 to the account in Jdg 20:1-9) that no one should give his daughter to a Benjaminite as a wife.
Jdg 21:2-4 After the termination of the war, the people, i.e., the people who had assembled together for the war (see Jdg 21:9), went again to Bethel (see at Jdg 20:18, Jdg 20:26), to weep there for a day before God at the serious loss which the war had brought upon the congregation. Then they uttered this lamentation: “ Why, O Lord God of Israel, is this come to pass in Israel, that a tribe is missing to-day from Israel? ” This lamentation involved the wish that God might show them the way to avert the threatened destruction of the missing tribe, and build up the six hundred who remained. To give a practical expression to this wish, they built an altar the next morning, and offered burnt-offerings and supplicatory offerings upon it (see at Jdg 20:26), knowing as they did that their proposal would not succeed without reconciliation to the Lord, and a return to the fellowship of His grace. There is something apparently strange in the erection of an altar at Bethel, since sacrifices had already been offered there during the war itself (Jdg 20:26), and this could not have taken place without an altar. Why it was erected again, or another one built, is a question which cannot be answered with any certainty. It is possible, however, that the first was not large enough for the number of sacrifices that had to be offered now.
Jdg 21:5-8 The congregation then resolved upon a plan, through the execution of which a number of virgins were secured for the Benjaminites. They determined that they would carry out the great oath, which had been uttered when the national assembly was called against such as did not appear, upon that one of the tribes of Israel which had not come to the meeting of the congregation at Mizpeh. The deliberations upon this point were opened (Jdg 21:5) with the question, “ Who is he who did not come up to the meeting of all the tribes of Israel, to Jehovah? ” In explanation of this question, it is observed at Jdg 21:5, “ For the great oath was uttered upon him that came not up to Jehovah to Mizpeh: he shall be put to death. ” We learn from this supplementary remark, that when important meetings of the congregation were called, all the members were bound by an oath to appear. The meeting at Mizpeh is the one mentioned in Jdg 20:1. The “great oath” consisted in the threat of death in the case of any that were disobedient. To this explanation of the question in Jdg 20:5, the further explanation is added in Jdg 21:6, Jdg 21:7, that the Israelites felt compassion for Benjamin, and wished to avert its entire destruction by procuring wives for such as remained. The word in Jdg 21:6 is attached to the explanatory clause in Jdg 21:5, and is to be rendered as a pluperfect: “ And the children of Israel had shown themselves compassionate towards their brother Benjamin, and said, A tribe is cut off from Israel to-day; what shall we do to them, to those that remain with regard to wives, as we have sworn? ” etc. (compare Jdg 21:1). The two thoughts, – (1) the oath that those who had not come to Mizpeh should be punished with death ( Jdg 21:5), and (2) anxiety for the preservation of this tribe which sprang from compassion towards Benjamin, and was shown in their endeavour to provide such as remained with wives, without violating the oath that none of them would give them their own daughters as wives, – formed the two factors which determined the course to be adopted by the congregation. After the statement of these two circumstances, the question of Jdg 21:5, “ Who is the one (only one) of the tribes of Israel which, ” etc., is resumed and answered: “ Behold, there came no one into the camp from Jabesh in Gilead, into the assembly. ” is used in Jdg 21:8, Jdg 21:5, in a more general sense, as denoting not merely the tribes as such, but the several subdivisions of the tribes.
Jdg 21:9 In order, however, to confirm the correctness of this answer, which might possibly have been founded upon a superficial and erroneous observation, the whole of the (assembled) people were mustered, and not one of the inhabitants of Jabesh was found there (in the national assembly at Bethel). The situation of Jabesh in Gilead has not yet been ascertained. This town was closely besieged by the Ammonite Nahash, and was relieved by Saul (1Sa 11:1.), on which account the inhabitants afterwards showed themselves grateful to Saul (1Sa 31:8.). Josephus calls Jabesh the metropolis of Gilead (Ant. vi. 5, 1). According to the Onom. ( s. v. Jabis), it was six Roman miles from Pella, upon the top of a mountain towards Gerasa. Robinson (Bibl. Res. p. 320) supposes it to be the ruins of ed Deir in the Wady Jabes.
Jdg 21:10-12 To punish this unlawful conduct, the congregation sent 12,000 brave fighting men against Jabesh, with orders to smite the inhabitants of the town with the edge of the sword, together with their wives, and children, but also with the more precise instructions (Jdg 21:11), “to ban all the men, and women who had known the lying with man” (i.e., to slay them as exposed to death, which implied, on the other hand, that virgins who had not lain with any man should be spared). The fighting men found 400 such virgins in Jabesh, and brought them to the camp at Shiloh in the land of Canaan. (Jdg 21:12) refers to the virgins, the masculine being used as the more common genus in the place of the feminine. Shiloh, with the additional clause “in the land of Canaan,” which was occasioned by the antithesis Jabesh in Gilead, as in Jos 21:2; Jos 22:9, was the usual meeting-place of the congregation, on account of its being the seat of the tabernacle. The representatives of the congregation had moved thither, after the deliberations concerning Jabesh, which were still connected with the war against Benjamin, were concluded.
Jdg 21:13-14 The congregation then sent to call the Benjaminites, who had taken refuge upon the rock Rimmon, and gave them as wives, when they returned (sc., into their own possessions), the 400 virgins of Jabesh who had been preserved alive. “ But so they sufficed them not ” ( , so, i.e., in their existing number, 400: Bertheau). In this remark there is an allusion to what follows.
Fuente: Keil & Delitzsch Commentary on the Old Testament
| Lamentation for the Benjamites; Wives Provided for the Benjamites. | B. C. 1409. |
1 Now the men of Israel had sworn in Mizpeh, saying, There shall not any of us give his daughter unto Benjamin to wife. 2 And the people came to the house of God, and abode there till even before God, and lifted up their voices, and wept sore; 3 And said, O LORD God of Israel, why is this come to pass in Israel, that there should be to day one tribe lacking in Israel? 4 And it came to pass on the morrow, that the people rose early, and built there an altar, and offered burnt offerings and peace offerings. 5 And the children of Israel said, Who is there among all the tribes of Israel that came not up with the congregation unto the LORD? For they had made a great oath concerning him that came not up to the LORD to Mizpeh, saying, He shall surely be put to death. 6 And the children of Israel repented them for Benjamin their brother, and said, There is one tribe cut off from Israel this day. 7 How shall we do for wives for them that remain, seeing we have sworn by the LORD that we will not give them of our daughters to wives? 8 And they said, What one is there of the tribes of Israel that came not up to Mizpeh to the LORD? And, behold, there came none to the camp from Jabesh-gilead to the assembly. 9 For the people were numbered, and, behold, there were none of the inhabitants of Jabesh-gilead there. 10 And the congregation sent thither twelve thousand men of the valiantest, and commanded them, saying, Go and smite the inhabitants of Jabesh-gilead with the edge of the sword, with the women and the children. 11 And this is the thing that ye shall do, Ye shall utterly destroy every male, and every woman that hath lain by man. 12 And they found among the inhabitants of Jabesh-gilead four hundred young virgins, that had known no man by lying with any male: and they brought them unto the camp to Shiloh, which is in the land of Canaan. 13 And the whole congregation sent some to speak to the children of Benjamin that were in the rock Rimmon, and to call peaceably unto them. 14 And Benjamin came again at that time; and they gave them wives which they had saved alive of the women of Jabesh-gilead: and yet so they sufficed them not. 15 And the people repented them for Benjamin, because that the LORD had made a breach in the tribes of Israel.
We may observe in these verses,
I. The ardent zeal which the Israelites had expressed against the wickedness of the men of Gibeah, as it was countenanced by the tribe of Benjamin. Occasion is here given to mention two instances of their zeal on this occasion, which we did not meet with before:– 1. While the general convention of the states was gathering together, and was waiting for a full house before they would proceed, they bound themselves with the great execration, which they called the Cherum, utterly to destroy all those cities that should not send in their representatives and their quota of men upon this occasion, or had sentenced those to that curse who should thus refuse (v. 5); for they would look upon such refusers as having no indignation at the crime committed, no concern for the securing of the nation from God’s judgments by the administration of justice, nor any regard to the authority of a common consent, by which they were summoned to meet. 2. When they had met and heard the cause they made another solemn oath that none of all the thousands of Israel then present, nor any of those whom they represented (not intending to bind their posterity), should, if they could help it, marry a daughter to a Benjamite, v. 1. This was made an article of the war, not with any design to extirpate the tribe, but because in general they would treat those who were then actors and abettors of this villany in all respects as they treated the devoted nations of Canaan, whom they were not only obliged to destroy, but with whom they were forbidden to marry; and because, in particular, they judged those unworthy to match with a daughter of Israel that had been so very barbarous and abusive to one of the tender sex, than which nothing could be done more base and villainous, nor a more certain indication given of a mind perfectly lost to all honour and virtue. We may suppose that the Levite’s sending the mangled pieces of his wife’s body to the several tribes helped very much to inspire them with all this fury, and much more than a bare narrative of the fact, though ever so well attested, would have done, so much does the eye affect the heart.
II. The deep concern which the Israelites did express for the destruction of the tribe of Benjamin when it was accomplished. Observe,
1. The tide of their anger at Benjamin’s crime did not run so high and so strong before but the tide of their grief for Benjamin’s destruction ran as high and as strong after: They repented for Benjamin their brother,Jdg 21:6; Jdg 21:15. They did not repent of their zeal against the sin; there is a holy indignation against sin, the fruit of godly sorrow, which is to salvation, not to be repented of,2Co 7:10; 2Co 7:11. But they repented of the sad consequences of what they had done, that they had carried the matter further than was either just or necessary. It would have been enough to destroy all they found in arms; they needed not to have cut off the husbandmen and shepherds, the women and children. Note, (1.) There may be over-doing in well-doing. Great care must be taken in the government of our zeal, lest that which seemed supernatural in its causes prove unnatural in its effects. That is no good divinity which swallows up humanity. Many a war is ill ended which was well begun. (2.) Even necessary justice is to be done with compassion. God does not punish with delight, nor should men. (3.) Strong passions make work for repentance. What we say and do in a heat our calmer thoughts commonly wish undone again. (4.) In a civil war (according to the usage of the Romans) no victories ought to be celebrated with triumphs, because, which soever side gets, the community loses, as here there is a tribe cut off from Israel. What the better is the body for one member’s crushing another? Now,
2. How did they express their concern? (1.) By their grief for the breach that was made. They came to the house of God, for thither they brought all their doubts, all their counsels, all their cares, and all their sorrows. There was to be heard on this occasion, not the voice of joy and praise, but only that of lamentation, and mourning, and woe: They lifted up their voices and wept sore (v. 2), not so much for the 40,000 whom they had lost (these would not be so much missed out of eleven tribes), but for the entire destruction of one whole tribe; for this was the complaint they poured out before God (v. 3): There is one tribe lacking. God had taken care of every tribe; their number twelve was that which they were known by; every tribe had his station appointed in the camp, and his stone in the high priest’s breast-plate; every tribe had his blessing both from Jacob and Moses; and it would be an intolerable reproach to them if they should drop any out of this illustrious jury, and lose one out of twelve, especially Benjamin, the youngest, who was particularly dear to Jacob their common ancestor, and whom all the rest ought to have been in a particular manner tender of. Benjamin is not; what then will become of Jacob? Benjamin is become a Benoni, the son of the right hand a son of sorrow! In this trouble they built an altar, not in competition, but in communion with the appointed altar at the door of the tabernacle, which was not large enough to contain all the sacrifices they designed; for they offered burnt offerings and peace offerings, to give thanks for their victory, yet to atone for their own folly in the pursuit of it, and to implore the divine favour in their present strait. Every thing that grieves us should bring us to God. (2.) By their amicable treaty with the poor distressed refugees that were hidden in the rock Rimmon, to whom they sent an act of indemnity, assuring them, upon the public faith, that they would now no longer treat them as enemies, but receive them as brethren, v. 13. The falling out of friends should thus be the renewing of friendship. Even those that have sinned, if at length they repent, must be forgiven and comforted, 2 Cor. ii. 7. (3.) By the care they took to provide wives for them, that their tribe might be built up again, and the ruins of it repaired. Had the men of Israel sought themselves, they would have been secretly pleased with the extinguishing of the families of Benjamin, because then the land allotted to them would escheat to the rest of the tribes, ob defectum sanguinis–for want of heirs, and be easily seized for want of occupants; but those have not the spirit of Israelites who aim to raise themselves upon the ruins of their neighbours. They were so far from any design of this kind that all heads were at work to find out ways and means for the rebuilding of this tribe. All the women and children of Benjamin were slain: they had sworn not to marry their daughters to any of them; it was against the divine law that they should match with the Canaanites; to oblige them to that would be, in effect, to bid them go and serve other gods. What must they do then for wives for them? While the poor distressed Benjamites that were hidden in the rock feared their brethren were contriving to ruin them, they were at the same time upon a project to prefer them; and it was this:– [1.] There was a piece of necessary justice to be done upon the city of Jabesh-Gilead, which belonged to the tribe of Gad, on the other side Jordan. It was found upon looking over the muster-roll (which was taken, ch. xx. 2) that none appeared from that city upon the general summons (Jdg 21:8; Jdg 21:9), and it was then resolved, before it appeared who were absent, that whatever city of Israel should be guilty of such a contempt of the public authority and interest that city should be an anathema; Jabesh-Gilead lies under that severe sentence, which might by no means be dispensed with. Those that had spared the Canaanites in many places, who were devoted to destruction by the divine command, could not find in their hearts to spare their brethren that were devoted by their own curse. Why did they not now send men to root the Jebusites out of Jerusalem, to avoid whom the poor Levite had been forced to go to Gibeah? Jdg 19:11; Jdg 19:12. Men are commonly more zealous to support their own authority than God’s. A detachment is therefore sent of 12,000 men, to execute the sentence upon Jabesh-Gilead. Having found that when the whole body of the army went against Gibeah the people were thought too many for God to deliver them into their hands, on this expedition they sent but a few, v. 10. Their commission is to put all to the sword, men, women, and children (v. 11), according to that law (Lev. xxvii. 29), Whatsoever is devoted of men, by those that have power to do it, shall surely be put to death. [2.] An expedient is hence formed for providing the Benjamites with wives. When Moses sent the same number of men to avenge the Lord on Midian, the same orders were given as here, that all married women should be slain with their husbands, as one with them, but that the virgins should be saved alive, Jdg 31:17; Jdg 31:18. That precedent was sufficient to support the distinction here made between a wife and a virgin, Jdg 21:11; Jdg 21:12. 400 virgins that were marriageable were found in Jabesh-Gilead, and these were married to so many of the surviving Benjamites, v. 14. Their fathers were not present when the vow was made not to marry with Benjamites, so that they were not under any colour of obligation by it: and besides, being a prey taken in war, they were at the disposal of the conquerors. Perhaps the alliance now contracted between Benjamin and Jabesh-Gilead made Saul, who was a Benjamite, the more concerned for that place (1 Sam. xi. 4), though then inhabited by new families.
Fuente: Matthew Henry’s Whole Bible Commentary
Judges – Chapter 21
Belated Repentance, vs. 1-7
How often deeds done in vengeful wrath return to one in irreparable regret! So it was with Israel when they came to themselves to realize that they had all but exterminated the tribe of Benjamin, not under the leadership of God, but of their own fleshly zeal. The whole affair, from the runaway concubine to the slaughter of the last Benjamite soldier, there had been too little seeking after the Lord’s counsel, (Gal 6:7). The two terrible slaughters of the Israelites by the Benjamites, in which 40,000 men had been killed, was surely the Lord’s judgment on disobedient and careless people. Then when they had finally sought the Lord in bitter tears, and with burnt and peace offerings, and had been assured of final victory over Benjamin they issued forth to the battle intent on vengeance.
In their anger they had sworn to a man never to allow his daughter to marry a Benjamite man. Though six hundred of the Benjamite men survived, sheltered in the rock of Rimmon, they dared not break their foolish oath to allow their daughters to marry a Benjamite and save the tribe from extinction. They returned to the house of God for another day of mourning over the situation, which was now beyond changing, (cf; Esau, Heb 12:17). They asked a pertinent question of God, “Why is it come to pass that a tribe is missing in Israel?” Why, indeed? The answer was, Sin; not merely the sin of the Levite, or of the men of Belial in Gibeah. Sin in the tribe of Benjamin allowed the street gang to exist contrary to the law (Lev 18:22; De 23:17). This implied that the tribe was guilty concerning all the law. Carelessness in the other tribes allowed the Levite, who was supposed to represent the law of God and to interpret and judge concerning it in their cities, to live loosely and immorally. It made them see nothing wrong in what he had done with his concubine and to uphold him in it. So it follows that all the law of God was lightly esteemed in Israel, so the Lord had judged all.
Yet they still will not seek the right answer. They had made another foolish oath, that whoever did not answer the call to fight in behalf of the Levite should be put to death. So they began to investigate this oath for a way whereby they could secure wives for the Benjamite survivors. They were sorry that they had allowed their wrath to do to Benjamin what they had, but never do they seem to have asked the Lord to tell them what to do for the remnant. They go right back to their own decisions when they might have considered whether the Lord wished them to respect their hasty and seemingly foolish oath.
Fuente: Garner-Howes Baptist Commentary
THE BOOK OF JUDGES
Judges 1-21.
THE Book of Judges continues the Book of Joshua. There are some Books of the Bible, the proper location of which require careful study, but Judges follows Joshua in chronological order. The Book opens almost identically with the Book of Joshua. In the latter the reading is, Now after the death of Moses the servant of the Lord it came to pass that the Lord spake unto Joshua. In the Book of Judges, Now after the death of Joshua it came to pass, that the Children of Israel asked thd Lord, saying Who shall go up for us against the Canaanites first, to fight against them? And the Lord said, Judah shall go up. God always has His man chosen and His ministry mapped out. We may worry about our successors and wonder whether we shall be worthily followed, but as a matter of fact that is a question beyond us and does not belong to us. It is not given to man to choose prophets, apostles, evangelists, pastors and teachers. That prerogative belongs to the ascended Lord, and He is not derelict in His duty nor indifferent to the interests of Israel. Before one falls, He chooses another. The breach in time that bothers men is not a breach to Him at all. It is only an hour given to the people for the expression of bereavement. It is only a day in which to calm the public mind and call out public sympathy and centralize and cement public interest.
Men may choose their co-laborers as Judah chose Simeon; leaders may pick out their captains as Moses did, and as did Joshua; but God makes the first choice, and when men leave that choice to Him, He never makes a mistake.
Whenever a captain of the hosts of the Lord is unworthily succeeded, misguided men have forgotten God and made the choice on the basis of their own judgment.
People sometimes complain of some indifferent or false preacher, We cant see why God sent us such a pastor. He didnt! You called him yourself. You didnt sufficiently consult God. You didnt keep your ears open to the still, small voice. You didnt wait on bended knees until He said, Behold your leader; follow him!
When God appoints Judah, he also delivers the Canaanites and the Perizzites into his hands. Adoni-bezek, the brutal, will be humbled by him; the capital city will fall before him; the southland will succumb, also the north and the east and the west, and the mountains will capitulate before the Lord of Hosts.
But the Book of Judges doesnt present a series of victories. There is no Book in the Bible that so clearly typifies the successes and reverses, the ups and downs, the victories and defeats of the church, as the history of Israel here illustrates. It naturally divides itself under The Seven Apostasies, The Successive Judges, and The Civil War.
THE SEVEN APOSTASIES
The first chapter is not finished before failure finds expression. Of Judah it was said he could not drive out the inhabitants of the valley because they had chariots of iron (Jdg 1:19). Of the children of Benjamin it was said, They did not drive out the Jebusites that inhabited Jerusalem (Jdg 1:21). Of Manasseh it was said, They did not drive out the inhabitants of Beth-Shean and her towns, nor Taanach and her towns, nor the inhabitants of Dor and her towns, nor the inhabitants of Ibleam and her towns, nor the inhabitants of Megiddo and her towns: but the Canaanites would dwell in that land (Jdg 1:27). Neither did Ephraim drive out the Canaanites that dwelt in Gezer, (Jdg 1:29); neither did Zebulun drive out the inhabitants of Kitron (Jdg 1:30), nor the inhabitants of Mahalol. Neither did Asher (Jdg 1:31) drive out the inhabitants of Acho nor of Zidon; neither did Naphthali drive out the inhabitants of Beth-Shemesh (Jdg 1:33), and this failure to clear the field results in an aggressive attack before the first chapter finishes, and the Amorites force the children of Dan into the mountain (Jdg 1:34).
If one study these seven apostasies that follow one another in rapid succession, he will be impressed by two or three truths. They resulted from the failure to execute the command of the Lord. The command of the Lord to Joshua was that he should expel the people from before him and drive them from out of his sight, and possess their land (Jos 23:5). He was not to leave any among them nor to make mention of any of their gods (Jos 23:7). He was promised that one of his men should chase a thousand. He was even told that if any were left and marriage was made with them that they should know for a certainty that the Lord God would no more drive out any of these nations from before them; that they should be snares and traps and scourges and thorns, until Israel perished from off the good land that God had given them (Jos 23:13). How strangely the conduct of Israel, once in the land, comports with this counsel given them before they entered it; and there is a typology in all of this.
The Christian life has its enemiessocial enemies, domestic enemies, national enemies! Ones companionship will determine ones conduct; ones marriage relation will eventuate religiously or irreligiously. The character of ones nation is more or less influential upon life.
The ordinance of baptism, the initial rite into the church, looks to an absolute separation from the world, and is expressed by the Apostle Paul as a death unto sin, the clear intent being that no evil customs are to be kept, nor companions retained, nor entangling alliances maintained. The word now is as the word then, Come out from among them, and be ye separate (2Co 6:17).
They imperiled their souls by this forbidden social intercourse. It is very difficult to live with a people and not become like them. It is very difficult to dwell side by side with nations and not intermarry. Intermarriage between believers and unbelievers is almost certain to drag down the life of the former to the level of the latter. False worship, like other forms of sin, has its subtle appeal; and human nature being what it is, false gods rise easily to exalted place in corrupted affections.
If there is one thing God tried to do for ancient Israel, and one thing God tries to do for the new Israel, the Church, it was, and is, to get His people to disfellowship the world.
There are men who think God is a Moloch because He so severely punished Israels compromises. They cant forget that when Joshua went over Jordan and Israel lay encamped on the skirts of the mountains of Moab, her people visited a high place near the camp whereon a festival of Midian, idolatrous, licentious in the extreme, was in process, and they went after this putrid paganism and polluted their own souls with the idolatrous orgy. Then it was that Moses, speaking for the Lord, said, Take all the heads of the people, and hang them up before the Lord against the sun, and while that hideous row of dead ones was still before their eyes, the plague fell on the camp and 24,000 of the transgressors perished! But severe as it was, Israel soon forgot, showing that it was not too severe, and raising the question as to whether it was severe enough to impress the truth concerning idolatry and all its infamous effects.
Solomon is commonly reputed to have been the wisest of men, and yet it was his love alliances with the strange women of Moab, Ammon, Zidon and the Hittites, these very people, that brought the Lords anger against him and compelled God to charge him with having turned from the Lord God of Israel and in consequence of which God said, I will surely rend the kingdom from thee, and will give it to thy servant (1Ki 11:11).
Again and again the kingdom has been lost after the same manner. The present peril of the church is at this point, and by its alliance with the world, the kingdom of our Lord is delayed, and Satan, the prince of this world, remains in power, and instead of 24,000 people perishing in judgment, tens of thousands and millions of people perish through this compromise, and swallowed up in sin, rush into hell.
But to follow the text further is to find their restoration to Gods favor rested with genuine repentance. There are recorded in Judges seven apostasies; they largely result from one sin. There are seven judgments, increasing in severity, revealing Gods determined purpose to correct and save; and there are seven recoveries, each of them in turn the result of repentance. God never looks upon a penitent man, a penitent people, a penitent church, a penitent nation, without compassion and without turning from His purposes of judgment. When the publican went up into the temple to pray, his was a leprous soul, but when he smote upon his breast and cried, God be merciful to me a sinner, his was the instant experience of mercy. When at Pentecost, 2500 sincere souls fell at the feet of Peter and the other Apostles, and cried, Men and brethren, what shall we do, the response was, Repent and be baptized every one of you in the Name of Jesus Christ for the remission of sins; and the promise was, Ye shall receive the gift of the Holy Ghost.
When David, who was a child of God, guilty of murder and adultery combined, poured out his soul as expressed in the Fifty-first Psalm, God heard that prayer, pardoned those iniquities, restored him to the Divine favor, and showered him with proofs of the Divine love.
When Nineveh went down in humility, a city of 600,000 souls, every one of whom from Sardana-palus, the king on the throne, to the humblest peasant within the walls, proving his repentance by sitting in sackcloth and ashes, God turned at once from the evil He had thought to do unto them and He did it not, and Nineveh was saved.
The simple truth is, God has no pleasure in the death of the wicked. He never punishes from preference, but only for our profit; and, even then, like a father, He suffers more deeply than the children upon whom His strokes of judgment fall.
What a contrast to that statement of Scripture, I have no pleasure in the death of the wicked, is that other sentence, Precious in the sight of the Lord is the death of His saints. The reason is not far to seek. In the first case it is death indeed; death fearful, death eternal. In the second case, death is a birth, a release from the flesh that held to a larger, richer, fuller life. In that God takes pleasure.
There is then for the sinner no royal road to the recovery of Gods favor. It is the thorny path of repentance instead. It is through Bochim, the Vale of Tears; but it were just as well that the prodigal, returning home, should not travel by a flowery path. He will be the less tempted to go away again if his back-coming is with agony, and home itself will seem the more sweet when reached if there his weary feet find rest for the first time, and from their bleeding soles the thorns are picked; if there his nakedness is clothed, his hunger is fed and his sense of guilt is kissed away. Oh, the grace of God to wicked men the moment repentance makes possible their forgiveness!
The court in Minneapolis yesterday illustrated this very point. When a young man, who had been wayward indeed, who had turned highway-robber, saw his error, sobbed his way to Christ and voluntarily appeared in court and asked to have sentence passed, newspapers expressed surprise that the heart of the judge should have been so strangely moved, and that the sentence the law absolutely required to be passed upon him, should have been, by the judge, suspended, and the young man returned to his home and wife and babe. But our Judge, even God, is so compassionate that such conduct on His part excites no surprise. It is His custom! Were it not so, every soul of us would stand under sentence of death. The law which is just and holy and good has passed that sentence already, and it is by the grace of God we have our reprieve. Seven apostasies? Yes! Seven judgments? Yes! But seven salvations! Set that down to the honor and glory of our God! It is by grace we are saved!
THE SUCCESSIVE JUDGES
Evidently God has no special regard for some of our modern superstitions, for in this period of conquest He deliberately chooses thirteen judges and sets them over Israel in turn, beginning with Othniel, the son of Kenaz, and nephew of Caleb, and concluding with Samson, the son of Manoah.
They represented varied stations of Israelitish society. A careful review of their personal history brings a fresh illustration of the fact that God is no respector of persons; and it also illustrates the New Testament statement that Not many wise men after the flesh, not many mighty, not many noble, are called. With few exceptions these judges had not been heard of until their appointment rendered necessary some slight personal history. That is the Divine method until this hour. How seldom the children of the great are themselves great. How often, when God needs a ruler in society, He seeks a log cabin and chooses an angular ladAbe Lincoln. The difference between the inspired Scriptures and yesterdays newspaper is in the circumstance that the Scriptures tell the truth about men and leave God to do the gilding and impart the glory, instead of trying to establish the same through some noble family tree. There is a story to the effect that a young artist, working under his master in the production of a memorial window that represented the greatest and best that art ever knew, picked up, at the close of the day, the fragments of glass flung aside, and finally wrought from them a window more glorious still. Whether this is historically correct or not, we know what God has done with the refuse of society again and again. Truly
God hath chosen the foolish things of the world to confound the wise; and God hath chosen the weak things of the world to confound the things which are mighty;
And base things of the world, and things which are despised, hath God chosen, yea, and things which are not, to bring to nought things that are:
That no flesh should glory in His presence * * * * He that glorieth, let him glory in the Lord (1Co 1:27-29; 1Co 1:31).
Out of these un-named ones some were made to be immortalGideon, Jephthae, Samson, Deborah.
Gideon, the son of Joash, became such because he dared to trust God. The average Captain of hosts wants men increased that the probabilities of victory may grow proportionately. At the word of the Lord Gideon has his hundreds of thousands and tens of thousands reduced to a handful. What are three hundred men against the multitude that compassed him about? And what are pitchers, with lights in them, against swords and spears and stones; and yet his faith failed not! He believed that, God with him, no man could be against him. When Paul comes to write his Epistle to the Hebrews and devotes a long chapter of forty verses to a list of names made forever notable through faith, Gideon and Barak and Samson and Jephthaethese all appear, and they are put there properly, reason confirming revelation. Barak had faced the hundreds of iron chariots of the enemy, and yet at the word of the Lord, had dared to brave and battle them. Samson, with no better equipment than the jaw-bone of an ass, had slain his heaps. Jephthae, when he had made a vow to the Lord, though it cost him that which was dearer than life, would keep it. Such characters are safe in history. Whatever changes may come over the face of the world, however notable may eventually be names; whatever changes may occur in the conceptions of men as to what makes for immortality, those who believe in God will abide, and childrens children will call their names blessed. Gideon will forever stand for a combination of faith and courage. Barak will forever represent the man who, at the word of the Lord, will go against great odds. Jephthae will forever be an encouragement to men who, having sincerely made vows, will solemnly keep the same; and Samson will forever represent, not his prowess, but the strength of the Lord, which, though it may express itself in the person of a man, knows no limitations so long as that man remains loyal to his vows, and the spirit of the Lord rests upon him.
Before passing from this study, however, permit me to call your attention to the fact that there was made a political exception in the matter of sex. We supposed that the putting of woman into mans place is altogether a modern invention. Not so; it is not only a fact in English language but in human history, that all rules have their exceptions. Gods rule for prophets is men, and yet the daughters of Philip were prophetesses. Gods rule for kings is men, and yet one of the greatest of rulers was Queen Victoria. Gods rule for judges is men, and yet Deborah was long since made an exception. Let it be understood that the exception to the rule is not intended to supplant the rule. The domestic circle is Gods choice for womankind, and her wisdom, tact and energy are not only needed there, but find there their finest employment. And yet there are times when through the indifference of men, or through their deadness to the exigencies of the day, God can do nothing else than raise up a Deborah, speak to a Joan of Arc, put on the throne a Victoria.
I noticed in a paper recently a discussion as to whether women prominent in politics proved good mothers, and one minister at least insisted that they did. We doubt it! The text speaks of Deborah as a mother in Israel, but we find no mention of her children. Our judgment is that had there been born to her a dozen of her own Israel might never have known her leadership. The unmarried woman, or the barren wife, may have time and opportunity for social and political concern; but the mother of children commonly finds her home sphere sufficient for all talents, and an opportunity to reach society, cleanse politics, aid the church, help the world, as large an office as ever came to man. However, let it be understood that all our fixed customs, all our standard opinions, give place when God speaks. If it is His will that a woman judge, then she is best fitted for that office; if He exalts her to lead armies, then victory will perch upon her banners; if He calls her to the place of power on the throne, then ruling wisdom is with her.
In the language of the Apostle Paul, And what shall I say more, for the time would fail me to tell of Gideon and of Samson and of Barak and of Jepkthae. They are all great characters and worthy extended discussion. It would equally fail me to rehearse the confusion, civil and religious, that follows from the seventeenth chapter of this Book to the end, but in chapters nineteen to twenty-one there is recorded an incident that cannot in justice to an outline study, be overlooked, for it results in
THE CIVIL WAR
Tracing that war to its source, we find it was the fruit of the adoption of false religions. We have already seen some of the evil effects of this intermingling with heathen faiths, but we need not expect an end of such effects so long as the compromise obtains. There is no peace in compromise; no peace with your enemies. A compromise is never satisfactory to either side. Heathen men do not want half of their polytheism combined with half of your monotheism. They are not content to give up a portion of their idolatry and take in its place praises to the one and only God. The folly of this thing was shown when a few years since the leaders of the International Sunday School Association attempted to temporarily affiliate Christianity with Buddhism. The native Christians in Japan, in proportion to their sincere belief in the Bible arid in Christ, rejected the suggestion as an insult to their new faith, and the followers of Buddha and the devotees of Shintoism would not be content with Christian conduct unless the Emperor was made an object of worship and Christian knees bowed before him. It must be said, to the shame of certain Sunday School leaders, that they advocated that policy and prostrated themselves in the presence of His Majesty to the utter disgust of their more uncompromising fellows. The consequence was, no Convention of the International Association has been so unsatisfactory and produced such poor spiritual results as Tokios.
Confusion is always the consequence of compromise, and discontent is the fruit of it, and fights and battles and wars are the common issue.
Idolatry is deadly; graven images cannot be harmonized with the true God. The first and second commandments cannot be ignored and the remainder of the Decalog kept. It is God or nothing! It is the Bible or nothing! It is the faith once delivered or infidelity!
The perfidy of Benjamin brought on the battle. We have already seen that men grow like those with whom they intimately associate. This behavior on the part of the Benjamites is just what you would have expected. The best of men still have to battle with the bad streak that belongs to the flesh incident to the fall; and, when by evil associations that streak is strengthened, no man can tell what may eventually occur. Had this conduct been recorded against the heathen, it would not have amazed us at all. We speedily forget that as between men there is no essential difference. Circumstances and Divine aidthese make a difference that is apparent indeed; but it is not so much because one is better than the other, but rather because one has been better situated, less tempted, more often strengthened; or else because he has found God and stands not in himself but in a Saviour.
Pick up your paper tomorrow morning and there will be a record of deeds as dark as could be recorded against the natives of Africa, or those of East India or China, Siberia or the South Sea Islands. The conduct of these men toward the concubine was little worse than that of one of our own citizens in a land of civilization and Christianity, who lately snatched a twelve-year-old girl and kept her for days as his captive, and when at last she eluded him, it was only to wander back to her home, despoiled and demented. Do you wonder that God is no respecter of persons? Do you wonder that the Bible teaches there is no difference? Do you doubt it is all of grace?
The issues of that war proved the presence and power of God. There are men who doubt if God is ever in battle; but history reveals the fact that few battles take place without His presence. The field of conflict is commonly the place of judgment, and justice is seldom or never omitted. We may be amazed to see Israel defeated twice, and over 40,000 of her people fall, when as a matter of fact she went up animated by the purpose of executing vengeance against an awful sin. Some would imagine that God would go with them and not a man would fall, and so He might have done had Israel, including Judah and all loyal tribes, been themselves guiltless. But such was not the truth! They had sins that demanded judgment as surely as Benjamins sin, and God would not show Himself partial to either side, but mete out judgment according to their deserts. That is why 40,000 of the Israelites had to fall. They were facing then their own faithlessness. They were paying the price of their own perfidy. They were getting unto themselves proofs that their fellowship with the heathen and their adoption of heathen customs was not acceptable with God.
Many people could not understand why England and France and Belgium and Canada and Australia and America should have lost so heavily in the late war, 19141918, believing as we did believe that their cause was absolutely just. Why should God have permitted them to so suffer in its defense? Millions upon millions of them dying, enormous wealth destroyed, women widowed, children orphaned, lands sacked, cities burned, cathedrals ruined, sanctuaries desecrated. The world around, there went up a universal cry, Why? And yet the answer is not far to seek. England was not guiltless; France was not guiltless; Belgium was not guiltless.
Poor Belgium! All the world has turned to her with pity and we are still planning aid for the Belgians and to preach to them and their children the Gospel of grace, and this we should do; but God had not forgotten that just a few years ago Belgium was blackening her soul by her conduct in the Belgian Congo. Natives by the score and hundreds were beaten brutally, their hands cut off because they did not carry to the Belgian king as much rubber and ivory as Belgian avarice demanded. American slavery, in its darkest hour, never knew anything akin to the oppression and persecution to which Belgium subjected the blacks in the Congo. Significant, indeed, is the circumstance that when the Germans came into Belgium, many Belgian hands were cut off; hapless and helpless children were found in this mangled state. Frightful as it was, it must have reminded Belgian authorities of their sins in Africa and of the certainty and exactitude of final judgment.
We have an illustration of this truth in the Book of Judges. When Judah went up against the Canaanites and the Lord delivered them into his hands, they slew in Bezek 10,000 men. They found Adoni-Bezek, the king, and fought against him, and caught him and cut off his thumbs and great toes. We cry Horror! and wonder that Gods own people could so behave; but, complete the sentence, and you begin to see justice, And Adoni-bezek said, Threescore and ten kings, having their thumbs and their great toes cut off, gathered their meat under my table. As I have done, so God hath requited me (Jdg 1:7).
Think of England in her infamous opium traffic, forcing it upon natives at the mouths of guns, enriching her own exchecquer at the cost of thousands and tens of thousands of hapless natives of East India and China!
Think of France, with her infidelity, having denied God, desecrated His sabbath, rejected His Son and given themselves over to absinthe and sensuality!
Think of the United States with her infamous liquor traffic, shipping barrels upon barrels to black men and yellow men, and cursing the whole world to fill her own coffers.
Tell me whether judgment was due the nations, and whether they had to see their sin in the lurid light of Belgian and French battlefields; but do not overlook the fact that when the war finally ends, Benjamin, the worst offender, the greater sinner, goes down in the greatest judgment, and one day Benjamins soldiers are almost wiped from the earth! Out of 26,700, 25,000 and more perish. Tell us now whether judgment falls where judgment belongs!
Take the late war. Again and again Germany was triumphant, but when the Allies had suffered sufficiently and had learned to lean not to themselves but upon the Lord; when, like Israel, they turned from hope in self and trusted in God, then God bared His arm in their behalf and Germany went down in defeat, a defeat that made their come-back impossible; a defeat that fastened upon them the tribute of years; a defeat that proved to them that, great as might have been the sins of the allied nations, greater still, in the sight of God, was their own sin; for final judgment is just judgment.
God is not only in history; God has to do with the making of history. If men without a king behave every one as is right in his own eyes, the King of all kings, the Lord of all lords, will do that which will eventually seem right in the eyes of all angels and of all good men. That is GOD!
Fuente: The Bible of the Expositor and the Evangelist by Riley
A GREAT CALAMITY PREVENTED
(Jdg. 21:1-25.)
HOMILETICS
1. Zeal is always right in denouncing sin.
It would have showed a lamentable lack of the reverence due to the God of Israel, if such a hideous revelation of evil as that which was discovered at Gibeah, had not met with a loud and emphatic protest on the part of His covenant people. The Church at Ephesus was commended because they could not bear them that were evil. In the present case, tolerance to Benjamin would have been treason to Jehovaha principle too often forgotten. Paul at Athens (Jud. 1:3; Num. 25:7-12). Want of zeal against sin condemned (1Sa. 3:13; Rev. 2:14-15; Rev. 2:20).
2. The evils of rash oath-making (Jdg. 21:1). Compare with rash vowingsee pp. 455, 457, 464.
In their calm moments the men of Israel found that their zeal was not according to knowledge, for they practically shut themselves up to exterminate the tribe of Benjamin. Hence a backwave of great sorrow (Jdg. 21:2-3). There may be over-doing in well-doing. That is not good divinity which swallows up humanity.Henry.
3. It is a promising sign when people bring their difficulties to God to have them settled (Jdg. 21:2-3).
It was doubtless, He who suggested to them the question in Jdg. 21:5, the answer to which led to a solution of the dilemma that now stood before them. The number 12 was something sacred in the estimation of an Israelite. It was mixed up with the promises of God, and with the whole history of the sacred people.
4. Great rigour characterised the expedients of Old Testament times. (Jdg. 21:10-12.)
There was blood-shedding in the punishment of the sins of Gibeah. Not only on one town did the sword of justice fall, but from Dan to Beersheba all the tribes of Israel were gathered in vast numbers on the field of battle. In three great battles did the blood flow till 65,000 men had fallen, and one whole tribe, the children of the youngest brother, was left in desolation before the deadly strokes of the children of the elder brothers. And now more blood must flow, because of the excess of blood which has already been shed. The men of Jabesh-Gilead must die with their wives and children, in order that the young women may be got for wives to the sons of Benjamin that are yet spared. We might almost say with Jeremiah (Jer. 9:1-2), But why were not the virgins in Benjamin itself not spared? This whole history is a specimen of the spirit that characterised the days, when as yet the true atonement had not been made, and God had not yet become the God of peace.
5. The great evils which flow from men taking the vindication of Gods honour into their own hands.
The instinct of every true man of God would sayLet God Himself speak in this matter, and say what should be done. Man is not fit to judge for the great Jehovah. This was the great error of the Israelites in this tragedy. They decided first what the course should be, and then asked God to sanction it. And what a mess they did make of it! They well nigh extinguished the name of their brother Benjamin, and when they discovered that deplorable mistake, how much rough soldering work did they go through to put matters right! Of this, the manner in which they tried to find wives for the few men that were left of the desolate tribe is a melancholy illustration! There is no safety but in ever asking counsel at the mouth of the Lord. In all thy ways acknowledge Him, and He will direct thy paths.
Fuente: The Preacher’s Complete Homiletical Commentary Edited by Joseph S. Exell
Mourning for Benjamin Jdg. 21:1-7
Now the men of Israel had sworn in Mizpeh, saying, There shall not any of us give his daughter unto Benjamin to wife.
2 And the people came to the house of God, and abode there till even before God, and lifted up their voices, and wept sore;
3 And said, O Lord God of Israel, why is this come to pass in Israel, that there should be today one tribe lacking in Israel?
4 And it came to pass on the morrow, that the people rose early, and built there an altar, and offered burnt offerings and peace offerings.
5 And the children of Israel said, Who is there among all the tribes of Israel that came not up with the congregation unto the Lord? For they had made a great oath concerning him that came not up to the Lord to Mizpeh, saying, He shall surely be put to death,
6 And the children of Israel repented them for Benjamin their brother, and said, There is one tribe cut off from Israel this day.
7 How shall we do for wives for them that remain, seeing we have sworn by the Lord that we will not give them of our daughters to wives?
1.
Why had Israel made the oath? Jdg. 21:1
The other men of Israel did not want to associate with the wicked men in Benjamin. This verse gives additional information about the oath which the children of Israel took as they gathered in Mizpeh. This conference is described in chapter twenty, verses one and nine, of the book of Judges. While they were there asking the Levite how the crime was committed, they made a decision to go up to fight against Gibeah. At the same time they took this oath which is recorded in chapter twenty-one, verse one. Specifically, they had decided not to give any of their daughters to any of the men of Gibeah as their wives. They did not want to see their children brought into a society which was as corrupt as the community in this city of Benjamin.
2.
Why did the people assemble at Bethel? Jdg. 21:2 (ASV)
Bethel was a holy place not too far from the scene of the battle. Bethel was just east of the road which ran from Gibeah to Shechem. It was much closer than Shiloh, where the Tabernacle was. At Bethel, Jacob had received the revelation from the Lord telling him that his descendants would inherit the land of Canaan. Here he took the stone which he had used for his pillow and made it to be a pillar on which he poured oil. Here he took a vow saying that he would serve God (Gen. 28:12-20). Jacob and his family returned to Bethel when they came from Haran, Labans home, to settle again in Canaan. Again Jacob worshiped at Bethel (Gen. 37:9-15). As the most readily accessible holy place, Bethel was chosen as a place for the assembly of the children of Israel. Bethel is house of God in the King James Version.
3.
Why had they made such a rash oath? Jdg. 21:5
They had vowed that they would kill anyone who did not go up to Mizpeh. The tide turned and another danger arose. A crowd roused to anger is hard to control The tribes were right in deciding to punish the criminals at Gibeah, but they went too far when they made such strong vows. On numerous occasions different tribes had not rallied to support the judge who was trying to deliver the people of Israel from their oppressors. Although these judges chided those who were faint hearted, they did not always take such drastic actions against those who did not cooperate with them. Similar action was necessary in the days of Gideon and Jephthah, but even in these instances the emotions of the people were not out of control to a large extent. Such was surely the case with the children of Israel in this instance.
4.
Why was there a question about wives? Jdg. 21:7
They did not intend to wipe out the tribe. Having once tasted of vengeance, the children of Israel did not cease in their slaughter until Benjamin was almost exterminated, The slaughter extended not only to the fighting men, but to women and children. The six hundred who fled to the rock fort of Rimmon appear to be the only survivors of the tribe, Justice overshot its mark and while eradicating one evil created another. Even those who had most fiercely used their swords looked at the result with horror and amazement for almost an entire tribe was lacking in Israel. If wives were not found for the six hundred men who were left, the tribe would eventually be lost completely.
Fuente: College Press Bible Study Textbook Series
(1) Had sworn.The circumstance has not been mentioned in the account of the proceedings at Mizpeh. It is clear from the sequel (Jdg. 21:18) that the oath was not only an oath but a vow under a curse, as in Act. 23:14.
Fuente: Ellicott’s Commentary for English Readers (Old and New Testaments)
THE REMNANT OF BENJAMIN PRESERVED, Jdg 21:1-25.
1. Israel had sworn This fact, not recorded before, shows up the impetuous zeal and fury with which Israel had been inspired, and during the whole conflict feelings of personal revenge held too much sway on both sides.
Not give his daughter unto Benjamin They meant to treat Benjamin as one of the heathen nations among whom they were forbidden to marry. Deu 7:3.
Fuente: Whedon’s Commentary on the Old and New Testaments
Chapter 21. Preservation of the Remnant of Benjamin.
Jdg 21:1
‘ Now the men of Israel had sworn in Mizpah, saying, ‘There shall not any of us give his daughter to Benjamin to wife.’
This interesting snippet reminds us that a serious covenant had been made at Mizpah once action had been determined. Any who did not respond to the call to arms would be put to death. Any who married their daughter to a Benjaminite would be punished, probably again by death. Death was very much on their minds.
In the circumstances this latter provision about marriage was sensible. Benjamin had become sexually depraved through their contact with the Canaanites and they did not want their daughters to be caught up in such a situation (compare Deu 7:3-4). But in the present situation they regretted it. On the other hand it was part of their oath of allegiance to the tribal confederacy so that they had to observe it.
Fuente: Commentary Series on the Bible by Peter Pett
Jdg 21:2 And the people came to the house of God, and abode there till even before God, and lifted up their voices, and wept sore;
Jdg 21:2
Jdg 18:31, “And they set them up Micah’s graven image, which he made, all the time that the house of God was in Shiloh .”
Fuente: Everett’s Study Notes on the Holy Scriptures
The Expedition Against Jabesh-Gilead
v. 1. Now the men of Israel had sworn in Mizpeh, v. 2. And the people, v. 3. and said, O Lord God of Israel, why is this come to pass in Israel, that there should be today one tribe lacking in Israel? v. 4. And it came to pass on the morrow that the people rose early, and built there an altar, v. 5. And the children of Israel said, v. 6. And the children of Israel v. 7. How shall we do for wives for them that remain, v. 8. And they said, What one is there of the tribes of Israel that come not up to Mizpeh to the Lord? And, behold, v. 9. For the people were numbered, v. 10. And the congregation sent thither twelve thousand men of the valiantest, v. 11. And this is the thing that ye shall do, Ye shall utterly destroy every male, and every woman that hath lain by man, v. 12. And they, v. 13. And the whole congregation sent some, v. 14. And Benjamin came again at that time,
Fuente: The Popular Commentary on the Bible by Kretzmann
CHAP. XXI.
The people bewail the desolation of Benjamin: they send to Jabesh-gilead, and destroy the inhabitants, except four hundred virgins, who are married to so many of the remaining Benjamites; the rest of whom afterwards carry off two hundred virgins from Shiloh, and marry them.
Before Christ 1426.
Fuente: Commentary on the Holy Bible by Thomas Coke
Israel bewails the desolation of Benjamin, and takes measures to preserve the tribe from extinction. Twelve thousand men are sent to punish Jabesh-Gilead for not joining in the war against Benjamin, and to take their daughters for wives for the remaining Benjamites.
Jdg 21:1-14.
1Now the men of Israel had sworn in Mizpeh [Mizpah], saying, There shall not any of us give his daughter unto Benjamin to wife. 2And the people came to the house of God [Beth-el], and abode [sat] there till even before God, and lifted up their voices, and wept sore; 3And said, O Lord [Jehovah,] God of Israel, why is this come to pass in Israel, that there should be to-day one tribe lacking in Israel? 4And it came to pass on the morrow, that the people rose early, and built there an altar, and offered burnt-offerings, and peace-offerings. 5And the children [sons] of Israel said, Who is there among all the tribes of Israel that came not up with [in] the congregation unto the Lord [Jehovah]? For they had made a great oath concerning him that came not up to the Lord [Jehovah] to Mizpeh, saying, He shall surely be put to death. 6And the children [sons] of Israel repented them for Benjamin their brother, and said, There is one tribe cut off from Israel this day. 7How shall we do for wives for them that remain, seeing we have sworn by the Lord [Jehovah], that we will not give them of our daughters to wives? 8And they said, What one is there of the tribes of Israel that came not up to Mizpeh to the Lord [Jehovah]? and behold, there came none to the camp from Jabesh-gilead to the assembly. 9For the people were numbered [mustered], and behold there were none of the inhabitants of Jabesh-gilead there. 10And the congregation sent thither twelve thousand men of the valiantest, and commanded them, saying, Go and smite the inhabitants of Jabesh-gilead with the edge of the sword, with the women and the 11children. And this is the thing that ye shall do, Ye shall utterly destroy every male, and every woman that hath lain by man. 12And they found among the inhabitants of Jabesh-gilead four hundred young [women,] virgins [,] that had known no man by lying with any male: and they brought them unto the camp to Shiloh, which is in the land of Canaan. 13And the whole congregation sent some to speak to the children [sons] of Benjamin that were in the rock Rimmon, and to call peaceably unto them [and offered (lit. called) peace to them]. 14And Benjamin came again [returned] at that time; and they gave them wives [the women] which they had saved alive of the women of Jabesh-gilead: and yet so they sufficed them not [but they found not for them so many].1
TEXTUAL AND GRAMMATICAL
[1 Jdg 21:14. . Here, as in Exo 10:14, means tot; and, in general, it answers to tantus, ***, tot, where so we add the appropriate adjective.
EXEGETICAL AND DOCTRINAL
Jdg 21:1-4. Now the men of Israel had sworn in Mizpah. Our author now informs us, by way of supplementing the preceding narrative, of two oaths taken by the congregation at the beginning of the war. All Israel promised, man by man (hence the expression ), that they would not give their daughters as wives to any men of Benjamin. They abrogated the connubium (the right of intermarriage) with the tribe. They determined to treat Benjamin as a heathen people, or as heathen nations, in the absence of special treaties (), were accustomed to look upon each other. There were instances of heathen tribes who did not at all intermix. Such cases were found among Germanic tribes also, until Christianity had fully conquered them. It was the church that brought East-Goths and West-Goths, Anglo-Saxons and Britons, Franks and Romans, to look upon each other as tribes of one Israel. Very great, therefore, must have been the indignation of the collective Israel, when they thus, as it were, cast Benjamin out of their marriage covenant. The Romans once (335 b. c.) punished certain rebellious Latin tribes by depriving them of the privileges of connubia, commercia, et concilia (Liv. viii. 14). The Latins were subject tribes: Benjamin, a brother-tribe with equal rights. It might be thought that such a resolve was of itself sufficient to punish Benjamin for its immorality. But is it not probable that in that case, the tribe, through its stubbornness, would have sunk altogether into heathenism? It must be admitted, however, that double punishment was too severe. For it was to punish the guilty, not to destroy a tribe, that Israel had taken the field. This they now perceivebut too lateafter their passionate exasperation has subsided. They now sit before the altar of God in Bethel, weeping over the calamity that has taken place. The consequences of their unmeasured severity are now perceived. To what purpose this utter destruction by the sword of everything that pertained to the brother tribe? When Benjamin took to flight, would it not have sufficed then once more to demand of him the surrender of the guilty? Would he still have resisted, when, helpless, he sought the wilderness for refuge? To what purpose the slaughter of the flying? the indiscriminate use of sword and fagot in the cities? Israel has cause for weeping; for it feels the horrors of civil war. Humanity and kindness are frightened away when brethren war with brethren. The worst and most detestable crimes are committed against nations by themselves, under the influence of foolish self-deception, when they fall victims to internal strife. The exasperation of the feelings puts moral causes entirely out of sight. Leaders, says Tacitus, are then less valued than soldiers (Hist. ii. 29, Judges 6 : civilibus bellis plus militibus, quam ducibus licere). Israel may bewail itself before God, but it cannot accuse its leaders. The Urim and Thummim approved the punishment of Benjamin, but not the oaths and cruelty with which it was accompanied. However, if Israel in this war furnishes an illustrative instance of the results to which defiant obstinacy (on the side of Benjamin), and fanatical, self-exasperating zeal (on the side of the ten tribes), may lead, it is also instructive to note that it knows that such doings must be repented of. It builds an altar, and, as before the war, brings burnt-offerings and peace-offerings, the first expressive of penitence for the past, the other of vows for the future.
Jdg 21:5 ff.. For they had made a great oath concerning whoever came not up to Jehovah to Mizpah, saying, He shall surely be put to death. Israel here also again clearly shows in its history, what every man may observe in his own experience: that repentance and vows, with reference to past precipitate sin, have scarcely been expressed, before the same thing is done again, and frequently with the same blind zeal which was just before lamented. At that time, when indignation at the outrage in Gibeah filled all hearts, an oath was also taken that every city in Israel that did not send its messengers to the national assembly, consequently took no part in the general proceeding against Benjamin, which was the cause of God, should be devoted to destruction. Such a city was considered to make itself, to a certain extent, an ally of Benjamin, and to be not sufficiently disturbed by the outrageous misdeed, to give assurance that it did not half approve of it. Amid the terrible events of the war, it had been neglected to ascertain whether all cities had sent messengers; it is only now, when the question how to help Benjamin up again without violating the oath, is considered, that the absence of messengers from Jabesh-Gilead is brought to light. And what is it proposed to do? To deal with that city as they have just lamented to have dealt with Benjamin. In order to restore broken Benjamin, another and in any view far less guilty city is now to be crushed. The reconciliation of breaches made by wrath is to be made by means of wrath. The people lament that they have sworn an untimely oath, and instead of penitently seeking to be absolved from it before God, undertake to make it good by executing another, equally hard and severe, and that after Jehovah has smitten the rebellious (Jdg 20:35), and peace has been restored. Jabesh-Gilead was a valiant city, full of men of courage, as all Gileadites were. According to Eusebius, it lay six miles from Pella. Robinson searched for its site along the Wady which still bears the name Ybis, and thought it probably that now occupied by some ruins, and called ed-Deir (Bibl. Res. iii. 319). The city must have been one of importance in Gilead. This is indicated by the fact that the Ammonite king Nahash selects it as his point of attack (1 Samuel 11). In the history of Jephthah its name does not occur. When king Saul hears of the danger threatened the city by Nahash, he cuts a yoke of oxen into pieces, which he sends throughout all Israel with a summons to march to the relief of Jabesh-Gilead, and obtains a splendid victory. These historical notices suggest some noteworthy connections. Against Jabesh the Israelites now undertake the execution of a severe vow, in order to assist Benjamin. At a later date, Saul of Benjamin collects Israel around him, in order to deliver Jabesh. Jabesh does not come when summoned against Benjamin, by the pieces of the slain woman. Under Saul, Benjamin summons the whole people for Jabesh, by the pieces of a sacrificial animal.
Israel sends 12,000 valiant warriors against Jabesh-Gileada duly proportioned number, if 40,000 proceeded against Benjamin. The commander of these troops is instructed to destroy everything in Jabesh, except the virgin women, who are to be brought away, in order to be given to Benjamin. It may be assumed, however, that these instructions are to be so taken as that the army was to compel Jabesh to deliver up its virgin daughters as an expiation for its guilt, under threat of being proceeded with, in case of refusal, according to its proper deserts.2 For it is not stated that the destruction was carried out; and, on the other hand, under Saul, Jabesh is again, to all appearances, the chief city of Gilead. The four hundred virgins are then, so to speak, the expiatory sacrifice for the guilty in Gilead. As such, and because the Gileadites were forced to surrender them, they could be given to Benjamin, notwithstanding the oath, which contemplated a voluntary giving. The words in Jdg 21:14, which they had saved alive of the women of Jabesh-Gilead, do not imply that the others were actually killed, but indicate that these were those who in any event were to be permitted to live for the sake of Benjamin, and who by their lifenot as frequently among the heathen, by their deathhelped to preserve the existence both of the Gileadites, from whom they were taken, and of the Benjamites, to whom they were given.3 Inasmuch as they were preserved alive when it was possible to kill them, they were no longer considered to be such as ought not be given to Benjamin. How instructive is all this! Israel will not break its oath, but evades it after all! If Gilead had deserved death, then its virgin women could not be allowed to live. If these may be saved alive, why should the children die? The Gileadites may not give their daughters voluntarily, but do not the Israelites give them for them? The surrender of these maidens is indeed a violent solution of the dilemma in which Israel finds itself, but the solution is only formal, not natural. The Greeks also, in cases of oaths thoughtlessly made, whose performance was maliciously insisted on, had recourse to formal exegesis, which avoided the real execution (cf. Herod. iv. 154; Ngelsbach, Nachhom. Theol., p. 244). For the sake of kindness to Benjamin, Israel here thought itself justified in adopting a similar course; for in order not to weaken the sanctity of oaths, they evaded that which they had sworn by a formal compliance. They soon found occasion to repeat the process; for the four hundred Gileaditish maidens were not sufficient.
Footnotes:
[1]Jdg 21:14. . Here, as in Exo 10:14, means tot; and, in general, it answers to tantus, ***, tot, where so we add the appropriate adjective.
[2]The Athenian Ionians, according to Herodotus (i. 146), stole Carian women for themselves, and killed their fathers. Hence, he says, the Milesian custom which did not permit women to eat with their husbands, or to call them by their names.
[3][Unfortunately, this exegesis has not a particle of support in the text. To use a favorite phrase of the Germans on such occasions, it is entirely aus der Luft gegriffen.Tr.]
Fuente: A Commentary on the Holy Scriptures, Critical, Doctrinal, and Homiletical by Lange
CONTENTS
This Chapter, which concludes the book of the Judges, gives the general conclusion also, of sin and its punishment in the sorrow and anguish of spirit it induceth. We have in it, the account of all God’s people mourning, concerning the ruin of Benjamin. They take counsel, how to repair the breach, made by it, in one of the tribes: and from the daughters of Jabesh-gilead, and Shiloh, give them wives, to build up their inheritance.
Jdg 21:1
There was no notice taken of this before, but it is very properly introduced here, for it serves to explain the distress of Israel, respecting the building up again of the tribe of Benjamin.
Fuente: Hawker’s Poor Man’s Commentary (Old and New Testaments)
Jdg 21:3
If there were no fault in their severity, it needed no excuse: and if there were a fault, it will admit of no excuse: yet, as if they meant to shift off the sin, they expostulate with God, ‘O Lord God of Israel, why is this come to pass this day!’ God gave them no command of this rigour; yea he twice crost them in the execution; and now, in that which they entreated of God with tears, they challenge Him. It is a dangerous injustice to lay the burden of our sins upon Him, which tempteth no man, nor can be tempted with evil; while we so remove one sin, we double it.
Bishop Hall.
The Missing One
Jdg 21:3
This inquiry represents the spirit of the whole Bible.
I. Look at this text as a sentiment, a discipline, as an encouragement. Is not this the human aspect of the solicitude of God’s heart? In this respect as well as in others is man made after the image and likeness of God. There is what may be called a distinct unity of emotion call it pity, solicitude, compassion, or by any other equal term running through the whole Bible. From the first God loved man with atoning and redeeming love. Marvellous and instructive as is the development of the Bible history, in all the infinite tumult God looks after the sinner, the wanderer, with longing love.
II. But, from another point of view, how different the text. This high feeling has also a disciplinary aspect, and therefore there is a whole field of complete and ardent loyalty. When Deborah sang her triumphant song she disclosed the sterner aspect of this case. She mentioned the absentees by name, and consigned them to the withering immortalities of oblivion. ‘Reuben remained among the sheepfolds’ when he ought to have answered the call of the trumpet. Why was he lacking in that day? He was pre-occupied; he sent promises, but he remained at home among the flocks.
III. Some are no longer in the battle, yet today are not lacking in the sense of the text. They are not here they are here. Even the mighty David waxed faint. He was but seventy when he died.
Joseph Parker.
Jdg 21:21
Speaking, in Time and Tide, of the ancient religious use of dance and song, as in this passage, where the feast of the vintage is marked by thanksgiving, Ruskin contrasts it with a Swiss scene of vulgar riot which he once witnessed in the autumn of 1863, when the Zurich peasantry abandoned themselves to ‘two ceremonies only. During the day, the servants of the farms, where the grapes had been gathered, collected in knots about the vineyards, and slowly fired horse-pistols, from morning to evening. At night they got drunk, and staggered up and down the hill paths, uttering, at short intervals, yells and shrieks, differing only from the howling of wild animals by a certain intended and insolent discordance, only attainable by the malignity of debased human creatures…. Note this, respecting what I have told you, that in the very centre of Europe, in a country which is visited for their chief pleasure by the most refined and thoughtful persons among Christian nations a country made by God’s hand the most beautiful in the temperate regions of the earth, and inhabited by a race once capable of the sternest patriotism and simplest purity of life, your modern religion, in the very stronghold of it, has reduced the song and dance of ancient virginal thanksgiving to the howlings and staggerings of men betraying, in intoxication, a nature sunk more than halfway towards the beasts.’
Jdg 21:25
‘From a combination of causes,’ says Mr. Froude in his Annals of an English Abbey, ‘we are now passing into a sea where our charts fail us, and the stars have ceased to shine. The tongue of the prudent speaks stammeringly. The fool clamours that he is as wise as the sage, and the sage shrinks from saying that it is not so. Authority is mute. One man, we are told, is as good as another: each by Divine charter may think as he pleases, and carve his actions after his own liking. Institutions crumble; creeds resolve themselves into words; forms of government disintegrate, and there is no longer any word of command…. Civilized mankind are broken into two hundred million units, each thinking and doing what is good in his own eyes.
‘Experience of the past forbids the belief that anarchy will continue for ever.’
Reference. XXI. 26. H. Hensley Henson, Light and Heaven, p. 87.
Fuente: Expositor’s Dictionary of Text by Robertson
One Tribe Lacking
Jdg 21:3
THE spirit of this inquiry is the spirit of the whole Bible. It is, indeed, not so much an inquiry as a wail, a burst of sorrow, a very agony of kinship and disunion. The three-fold repetition of “Israel” indicates supreme distress. Israel was meant to be a unity a constitution not only complete but inviolable foursquare, without break or flaw, vital at every point a noble integrity! And now Benjamin is threatened with extinction: Benjamin is not in the house of God. From the beginning, Benjamin was but a little tribe, the least of all in Israel, numbering at first from thirty to forty thousand fighting men. Over an extremely difficult and delicate question Benjamin came into conflict with the rest of Israel, and after an almost superhuman resistance was overborne, all but extirpated indeed, only some six hundred men being left, and they hiding themselves in the rock Rimmon the impregnable Rock of the Pomegranate some four months, thinking of the eighteen thousand men of valour who had been “trodden down with ease over against Gibeah toward the sunrising.” But there was a time of heart-breaking in Israel. In the battlefield men thought only of victory, but they went up unto what is called in the text “the house of God.” That is the right point of observation. Until you have looked at your fellow creatures from the house of God, from the altar, from the cross, you have never looked at them. Israel was now in the house of God, and began to reckon, to say, Who is here? Who is not here? Then they sighed, and shed tears, as only strong men can shed them, and in their tears they said, “O Lord God of Israel, why is this come to pass in Israel, that there should be to day one tribe lacking in Israel?” Thus men come to their better selves; heat dies away, vengeance halts in its desperate pursuit, all deepest and truest instincts come to the support of reason, natural affection stands by the side of justice, and great questions are quieted by great answers.
Does not the text exhibit the human aspect of the solicitude of God’s own heart? In this respect, as well as in other ways, is not man made a little lower than God? In all such emotion there are suggestions infinite in scope and tenderness suggestions of unity, family completeness, absolute unselfishness, redemption, forgiveness, reconstruction, everlasting joy! There is of course a sentiment which is without value, but this must not blind us to the fact that there is also an emotion without which we cannot sound the depths of God’s own love. When we feel most truly, we often see most clearly. “Where art thou?” was the inquiry of God when Adam did not come towards him in the fearless joy of innocence. “Where is thy brother?” was the divine inquiry when Cain was found in criminal loneliness. Rather than Israel should be lost Moses would be blotted out of God’s book. Christ came to seek and to save the lost And Paul that marvellous compound of Moses and Christ honouring the majesty of the law, yet feeling its weakness in the presence of sin did he not tremble under the same emotion? The answer will be found in the most doctrinal and logical, yet the most profoundly emotional of all his Epistles. In the Epistle to the Romans not only is one tribe threatened with extinction, but all Israel seems to be lost. The writer cannot rest, therefore. He has “great heaviness and continual sorrow in his heart.” It is not enough for him that the forces of the Gentiles are moving towards the Cross, that from Midian, and Ephah, and Sheba men are arising to show forth the praises of the Lord; nor is it enough that the flocks of Kedar and the rams of Nebaioth shall be acceptable sacrifices: all this is good, beautiful, and an exceeding delight, but but Israel is, not in the number of those who rejoice, Israel is hard of heart, and remembering this Paul says, “I could wish that myself were anathema from Christ for my brethren, my kinsmen according to the flesh.” “My heart’s desire and prayer to God for Israel is, that they might be saved.” It was a sublime emotion. But who is the speaker? Take his own account of himself “Of the stock of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin” the very tribe which in the text is lacking! Thus history rolls round in amplified and ennobled repetition. In the Book of Judges all Israel mourned that Benjamin was lacking, and in the Epistle to the Romans, Benjamin, in the person of its most illustrious descendant, laments that all Israel is away far off in the wilderness of unbelief he an alien who ought to have been a prince in the house of God.
Nor does the evidence of the presence of this emotion in the Bible end here. In the Apocalypse there is One “faithful and true Witness, the beginning of the creation of God,” and he says, “Behold, I stand at the door, and knock: if any man hear my voice, and open the door, I will come in;” the same who said, “O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, which killest the prophets, and stonest them that are sent unto thee, how often would I have gathered thy children together, as a hen doth gather her brood under her wings, and ye would not!” the same who went after the lost sheep of the house of Israel; the same who said, “Preach the Gospel to every creature,” for good news must evermore do good.
There is, then, what may be called a distinct unity of emotion, call it pity, solicitude, compassion, or by any equal term, throughout the whole Bible. The Bible varies a good deal in historical and even in moral colour, but it never varies in pity, and love, and mercy. From the first, God loved man, even with atoning and redeeming love. Marvellous, truly and instructively, is the development of Biblical history. It changes page by page now barbarous, now gentle, here an altar, there a commandment, yonder a ritual, and afar off an experience full of confusion, and riot, and tragedy: but in all the infinite tumult God looks after the wanderer with longing love, pursues him, pleads with him, says “Turn ye, turn ye, why will ye die?” importunes him: “Cries, How shall I give thee up? Lets the lifted thunder drop.” Even divine righteousness varies its aspects without varying its nature; in some sense it measures its demands by human weakness: now it is an order for a place or a time; then it is a series of initial and suggestive commandments; then it is an accommodation to hardness of heart, never losing a ray of its eternal glory, it yet creates an atmosphere suited to the vision of the beholder; but love, pity, mercy, care for the absent, wonder about the one lacking tribe, this begins the book, ends the book stirs the book like the throb of an infinite heart.
The love of God, the mercy, the pity, the compassion of God is not a revelation of the New Testament only, it is the revelation of the whole Bible. In Eden there was a Promised Seed; in the wilderness there was a mercy-seat; in Genesis there is a covenant; in Malachi there is a book of remembrance; in Exodus the Lord keeps mercy for thousands, and forgives iniquity, and transgression, and sin; in Numbers “the Lord is longsuffering and of great mercy, forgiving iniquity and transgression;” in Judges “the Lord was grieved for the misery of Israel;” in Samuel he recalled the avenging angel; in Chronicles (a book of annals) he says, if his people will seek his face and turn from their wicked ways, he will hear them from heaven, and will forgive their sin, and heal their land; the Psalms are songs of forgiveness; Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Ezekiel are books glowing with the love of God; and Daniel says, “To the Lord our God belong mercies and forgiveness, though we have rebelled against him;” in Hosea, God heals the backsliding of his people, and loves them freely; even Joel that burning furnace says that God is gracious and merciful; Jonah, in solemn anger, says he knew that God was “a gracious God and merciful, slow to anger, and of great kindness;” and all the minor prophets praise the tenderness of God. So we find that this pity, compassion, mercy by whatever name we call the emotion is present from the beginning to the end of the Old Testament. Paul was the most Old Testament writer in all the New Testament. When he speaks of God being rich in mercy, good, forbearing, longsuffering, Paul is in very deed a Hebrew of the Hebrews, of the tribe of Benjamin. When the Jews at Jerusalem heard that Paul spake unto them in the Hebrew tongue they kept the more silence. We ought to do the same; for we have understood that Paul was the Apostle of the Gentiles, that his place was far off among the heathen, that special grace was given unto him that he should preach among the Gentiles the unsearchable riches of Christ, and at the very time he was preaching in Syria and Cilicia he was unknown by face unto the Churches of Judea which were in Christ. Yet this man, consecrated to preach in Gentile tongues, spake in the Hebrew tongue. Why? He missed his own people. He thought that the mother-tongue might fetch some of them. His heart was ill at ease. But was not the Hebrew tongue doubly dear to Paul? Surely. For when he, as Saul, was fallen to the earth as he went to Damascus, he heard a voice speaking to him “in the Hebrew tongue, saying,… I am Jesus.” So it was the mother-tongue of his Christian life. It suited the great gospel better than any other language: what other could speak with such unction of “blood”? Any other tongue would make it vulgar a measurable thing: but in the Hebrew it was lifted up into symbolism and grandeur. “Sacrifice,” “redemption,” “propitiation,” “pardon,” why, how could he speak in any other than the Hebrew tongue? Thus the Apostle of the Gentiles is also the Apostle of the Jews: the foreign missionary is the home missionary, and the home missionary is the foreign missionary, for it was the whole world that God thought of when he freely delivered up his Son for us all. Paul knew nothing of an Israel reduced to eleven tribes; speaking to Agrippa, he said, with a wonderfully suppressed pathos, “Our twelve tribes”; Paul knew nothing of a broken household, he knew only of the whole family in heaven and on earth: Paul knew nothing of an exclusive gospel; when he witnessed he witnessed “both to small and great.” And James a mind without poetry, a church without a spire wrote his letter to the full number of the tribes, “The twelve tribes,” said he still twelve, though “scattered abroad.”
Is it possible for a tribe to be “lacking” for ever? To become extinct? To lose its election and be damned? Where, for example, is the tribe of Dan? It disappears from the record in 1 Chronicles, and it is not counted in the Apocalypse. Were its few faithful members amalgamated with some other tribe, say this very tribe of Benjamin? Yet even in the Apocalypse, the number of the tribes is twelve. God’s promise shall stand sure and steadfast, and his supper chamber shall be filled with guests! We may be unfaithful, and may lose our place, but the Blessed One who died for us shall see of the travail of his soul and be satisfied!
From another point of view we shall see that this yearning over the lacking tribe was no mere sentiment. This high feeling had also a disciplinary aspect, and was, therefore, a whole feeling a complete and ardent loyalty. When Deborah sang her triumphal song she disclosed the second and sterner aspect of this emotion. She knew who was lacking from the war against Jabin King of Hazor, and did not scruple to mention by name the guilty absentees. Why should there have been, said that mother heart, one tribe lacking on that day of war? Reuben remained among the sheepfolds, and listened to the bleatings of the flocks, when he ought to have answered the call of the battle horn and repulsed the chariots of Sisera; and Deborah named him: “For the divisions of Reuben there were great thoughts of heart; for the divisions of Reuben there were great searchings of heart.” Why was he lacking that day? He sent promises, but remained at home. He was busy amongst the flocks when he ought to have been suffering with the army! Oh, these prior engagements! these other occupations! these domestic excuses! They went for nothing in the tempest of Deborah’s enthusiasm, and they ought to stand for nothing in our consuming zeal for the honour of our Lord and the dominion of his cross. Nor was Reuben the only absentee. Gilead abode beyond Jordan, Dan was concealed in ships, and Asher are we not ashamed to say it? peeped in cowardly curiosity from behind the creeks, and wondered how the war was going on. Yet the battle was won. No credit to the absentees. Where men failed women succeeded: whilst “Zebulun and Naphtali jeoparded their lives unto the death in the high places of the field,” Deborah and Jael made their names great in Israel. You may keep away from the war, but the battle will end in victory.
There is another variety of the principle of the text which cannot be wisely overlooked. There is a lacking or absence which affects great indignation because it has not been observed. Men stand back for a space that they may see whether they will be missed. Others come in after the victory and demand to know why they were not allowed to share in the fight! Let history be our proof. We stand or fall by facts in an argument like this. When Gideon overthrew the Midianites, and held in one hand the head of Prince Oreb, and in the other the head of Prince Zeeb, the Ephraimites chided him sharply because they had not been sent fur. This was a trick of Ephraim a trick he dearly paid for when he tried it upon Jephthah. “Wherefore,” said Ephraim to Jephthah, “passedst thou over to fight against the children of Ammon, and didst not call us to go with thee?” Jephthah told them why. He reminded them that once he did send for them and they did not come, and now that they began to chide him the Spirit of the Lord and of true judgment burned in him, and that day he choked the passages of the Jordan with forty-two thousand Ephraimites. Ephraim was a coward. Ephraim is a branded name. For ever will it be said of him, “Ephraim being armed and carrying bows turned back in the day of battle.” Ephraim was famous for archery. Ephraim might have done wonders with bow and arrow, but he turned back, and then blamed others because he was not sent for! Is it so with any who may smile at Ephraim’s cowardice? Are there not those who would have done wonderful things if they had known of the opportunity? They knew not when Christ was an hungered, or athirst, or naked, or sick, or in prison, or they would have given unto him: they say so, but “These shall go away into everlasting punishment.”
So the text taken in all its aspects is no mere sentiment. In presence of some gaps in the line of Israel the tears of the text become sparks of fire, because of the treachery of some and the cowardice of others. We have forgotten that Christianity is a battle as well as a gospel. Is the whole fighting strength of the Church under discipline? Are any skulking at home? Are any enjoying the delights of civilisation who ought to be in the wilderness of heathenism; nay, come closer still; are any sitting in luxury and idleness who ought to be in some department of Christian service say in the Sunday-school, in the diaconate, in districts inhabited by poverty and ignorance? Why should there be this day one tribe lacking in Christian Israel? There is a tremendous foe. We are all needed. There is room for all for wealth, for genius, for learning, for love, for age, for youth. Come! Surrender yourselves to Christ! Be soldiers of the Cross!
But here a word of consolation may be fitly given. Some are no longer in the hot battle, yet they must not be thought of as absent or lacking from the household of God. Even the mighty David “waxed faint.” He was but seventy when he died. Yet when we say “but seventy” do we not speak carelessly? What a seventy! what years they were! When he tottered under his weakness, in one of the closing battles, he nearly fell. A Philistine, Ishbibenob by name, had a new sword, and he was heavy upon the king, for the king was no longer what he used to be. The Philistine pressed hard upon him upon him who slew the lion and the bear and the giant of Gath upon him who made Jerusalem rich with the golden shields of Hadadezer. But he was getting old; he was but poor at last in the stroke of the sword; then came his loyal captains and said, so sweetly, with heart-breaking pathos, “Thou shalt go no more out with us to battle, that thou quench not the light of Israel.” David had fought enough; the shades of eventide were gathering around him; he had been a great warrior, but it was time he retired from the field. May not this also be the experience of many? After a long fight they stand aside, but, blessed be God, they are not “lacking.” They have retired from the pastorate, from the public office, from the battlefield generally, but we do not mourn over them as Deborah mourned over Reuben and Gilead and Dan and Asher. They are not willingly absent. The old feeling again stirs in them. They sometimes think they could go back and fight just as well and as successfully as ever, and could preach just as richly and effectively and reverently as they ever did. They are not in the battlefield, but they are not lacking from the hosts of God; the light of their example abides, and their remembered service is a perpetual and gracious inspiration.
The text is full of tender feeling, showing itself in anxiety about the absent, though the absent one was both insignificant and ill-behaved. This anxiety is, we know, the very spirit of the whole Bible. It is the Spirit of Christ. It is the explanation of the cross. Remembering all this, we venture to say that this feeling this feeling of profound and anxious emotion alone can sustain constantly and worthily all Christian and missionary service. When we lose this sacred feeling we lose our inspiration. When we cease to care for others, to long for the absent, to yearn over the poor and the out-of-the-way, our Christianity can live no longer. All Christian funds will languish when Christian feeling dies. Let us speak to ourselves plainly upon this matter. Many professing Christians are learned, controversial, orthodox in words, and idolaters of propriety: but where is the feeling which cannot rest until the lacking tribe is brought back? The preacher may do more by his tears than by mere dry reasoning. Only love, like God’s, like Christ’s, can persist in unselfish service observe, persist, keep on, press forward, forgive injuries, forget neglects, begin again, stand at the door and knock, never give up, keep the door ajar for the prodigal, set a candle in the window for the wanderer, only love can do these miracles: the mother can watch longer than the doctor: the shepherd will endure better than the hireling: pity will spare where law will destroy. What is it that is troubled on every side yet not distressed, perplexed yet not in despair, persecuted but not forsaken, cast down but not destroyed? What is it? It is the faith that works by love! Why continue in the ministry and prove it in much patience, in afflictions, in distress, in stripes, in imprisonments, in tumults, in labours, in fastings why? “The love of Christ constraineth us.” That is the eternal motive, or the motive which alone can endure to eternity. Macaulay has well reminded us of Lord Bacon’s just observation that mere negation, mere epicurean infidelity, has never disturbed the peace of the world. “It furnishes,” says he, “no motive for action. It has no missionaries, no crusaders, no martyrs.” When Christian institutions lose their feeling they become but useless and costly machines.
But, it may be urged, the feeling of the text was a feeling expressive of kinship, a family feeling, an esprit de corps . What argument can be built upon a domestic or tribal instinct? The question is out of place. Happily the answer is ready. The Christian conception of human nature is that it is one. “God hath made of one blood all nations of men to dwell on the face of the earth.” The question of Malachi, “Have we not all one Father? hath not God created us?” we answer in the words of Christ “Our Father which art in heaven.” There are supreme moments in human experience; they cannot be long-continued, but what a memory they leave behind! moments when we realise the unity of the human race, saying, “There is no difference between the Jew and the Greek: for the same Lord over all is rich unto all that call upon him.” Man is one: for God is one. A traveller in his book on tropical South Africa tells us of a tribe called the Damaras, who have no knowledge of arithmetic, enumeration, or numbers, as we understand them. He gives many amusing instances illustrative of this lack of what may be called numerical knowledge. But amidst all he says, “how does the herdsman know when an ox is missing, when he looks upon the herd under the shadows of evening? He knows not because the number is less, but because of a face which he misses.” Oh, that shepherdly look! The man says, “There is one lacking.” Then the face is painted before the eye of his imagination. We are not numbers in an hostelry; we are not figures in an arithmetical series; we are faces, lives, souls, spirits, sons of God. What wonder if sometimes even in heaven the question should be asked, Why is there one face missing? Why is David’s place empty?
We now reach the final and most pathetic point, namely, that there may be some who are saying in their hearts, not being able to say it aloud because of grief, Why is my child lacking from the Church? Why is my son not by my side at holy Sacrament? Why has my firstborn left his old father’s faith and gone away? Oh, why? Be encouraged. He may return. He may come back today or to-morrow. Never give up your prayer. It is very hard to pray again after praying for years, and to mention a name that never seems to get into heaven; and the poor old heart gives way and says, “I cannot pray any longer about this: I am killed by the prodigal’s very name: I will cease.” Never! Hold on! After the next prayer there may be a sign in heaven very small, but still a sign and a beginning. Sorrow may bring back the wanderer. God’s veiled angel called Affliction may some night knock at the door and say, “I have brought back that which was lost.” Great commercial distress may do it; an utter annihilation of the young man’s foolish ambitions may do it. God hath many ministers. His chariots are twenty thousand, and who shall say in which he will go forth, in the morning, at midday, or in the evening? Hope on then. One more prayer the greatest, the best, the fullest of heart almost an atonement, going nigh to the shedding of sacrificial blood. Do not despair. It may be that even yet you shall have the joy of completeness:
Fuente: The People’s Bible by Joseph Parker
XXI
MICAH AND THE DANITES, OUTRAGE OF THE MEN OF GIBEAH, AND THE NATIONAL WAR AGAINST BENJAMIN
Judges 17-21
What can you say of this whole section?
Ans. (1) It, like the book of Ruth, is an appendix to the book of Judges without regard to time order as to preceding events.
(2) While there are four distinct episodes, namely (a) the case of Micah, (b) the Danite migration, (c) the outrage at Gibeah, (d) the war of the other tribes against Benjamin, yet they go in pairs; the story of Micah is merged into the Danite migration and the outrage of Gibeah results in the war against Benjamin.
2. Show how one expression characterizes all four of the episodes and would serve for a text illustrated by each of the four stories in historical order.
Ans. The text is, “In those days there was no king in Israel: every man did that which was right in his own eyes.” First episode, Jdg 17:6 ; second episode, Jdg 18:1 ; third episode, Jdg 19:1 ; fourth episode, Jdg 21:25 .
3. What the bearing of this text on a late date of the composition of the book?
Ans. If the reference be to an earthly king, as usually supposed, it would only indicate that the book was compiled from tribal and national documents and edited by Samuel after the establishment of the monarchy, which theory is supported by many identical passages in parts of Joshua, Judges, and I Samuel. But if the reference be to Jehovah as King, then it proves nothing as to later authorship.
4. What the probability of its reference to Jehovah as King?
Ans. (1) The whole book is written to show a series of rejections of the theocracy that they might follow their own bent, some one way and some another (Jdg 2:11 ).
(2) Every one of the four instances of its use is introduced in a connection to emphasize a forsaking of Jehovah as a King, plainly marking insubordination against his royal authority. Its first use immediately follows and expounds Micah’s establishing an independent “house of gods” with an independent ephod and images and priesthood, Jdg 17:5-6 . Its second use introduces the rebellion of Dan in leaving the lot assigned to him by Jehovah and setting up at Laish a rival house of worship with images and independent priesthood, Jdg 18:1 . Its third use introduces a story of wickedness against Jehovah equaling the sin of Sodom and Gomorrah, Jdg 19:1 ; Jdg 19:22-26 . Its fourth use does not occur in Jdg 20:1-18 , Judges 26-28, where the people seek Jehovah for counsel, but is reserved as a comment on the irreligious dancing of Shiloh’s daughters and the crafty expedient of supplying wives to the male remnants of Benjamin without appeal to Jehovah Jdg 21:16-25 .
(3) This series of the rejections of Jehovah as King culminated in demanding an earthly king, 1Sa 8:1-7 .
(4) When they did get an earthly king there was no tendency to check them in doing what was right in their own eyes, instead of in Jehovah’s eyes, but only increased it. See case of Solomon, 1Ki 11:1-4 ; Jeroboam, 1Ki 12:26-33 ; Ahab, 1Ki 16:30-34 , and many others. Hence there would be no relevancy in saying, “every man did that which was right in his own sight,” because there was no earthly king in Israel. The “doing what was right in his own sight” does not apply to everything but is limited in its four contextual uses to sins of rebellion against Jehovah’s kingly authority, and what earthly kings promoted rather than checked.
5. But is not late authorship clearly established by the declaration that Dan’s rival house of worship was continued by Jonathan and his sons as priests “until the day of the captivity of the land”?
Ans. It entirely depends upon what captivity is meant. It could not mean the Babylonian captivity of Judah, for long before that event the ten tribes, including Dan, had been led into captivity so perpetual they are called the lost tribes. It could not mean the captivity of the ten tribes by Sennacherib, for long before that event Jeroboam, the founder of the northern kingdom, had established at Dan a different worship. It could not have persisted during the times of David and Solomon when all recognized the central place of worship at Jerusalem. It could not have referred to any date beyond the period of the judges, because the duration of this rival Danite worship is limited in the very verse following the time the house of God was at Shiloh, Jdg 18:31 . So that “the captivity” referred to must have been the Philistian captivity in the days of Elithe judge, when the ark was captured, 1Sa 4:3-18 , and quite to the point the Hebrew text of 1Sa 4:21-22 , replaces the phrase “captivity of the land” by “captivity of the glory of the Lord.”
6. What the first episode?
Ans. The sin of Micah in establishing in his family a “house of gods,” with image worship and an independent priesthood.
7. State the case in detail to show Jehovah was not recognized as King in Israel.
Ans. (1) A son stole 1,100 shekels of silver from his mother, violating Jehovah’s Fifth and Eighth Commandments, afterwards confessing and restoring.
(2) The mother (a) usurped Jehovah’s prerogative in cursing the unknown thief; (b) she either lied in saying she had “wholly dedicated it to Jehovah” or) like Ananias and Sapphira, robbed God in keeping back more than four-fifths; (c) she violated the Second Commandment in making images for worship; (d) the son established in his family a rival house to Shiloh; (e) he first violated the law of the priesthood by setting apart his own sons as priests; (f) he substituted a stray Levite, out of a job, and not of the house of Aaron.
8. What the second episode?
Ana. The Danites, through cowardice failing to capture from strong enemies the land allotted them by Jehovah, sent out spies to find good land where the inhabitants were weak and peaceful. The spies on their way discover Micah’s private “house of God” and inquire of its false priest rather than of Jehovah at Shiloh, whether they will prosper in their intent. The subservient priest assures them it will come out all right. They come to a part of the territory allotted to another tribe and find a quiet, unwarlike community remote from the capital and power of their nation. The spies return with a glowing report of the good land, the helplessness of the inhabitants, and the little prospect of interference from their nation. An army is dispatched forthwith, which on the way over bids Micah for his recreant priest who, preferring to represent a tribe rather than a family, not only breaks his contract by slipping away, but helps to steal all Micah’s gods and paraphernalia of worship. Then the bereft Micah follows with his piteous remonstrance: “Ye have taken away my gods which I have made, and the priest, and gone away, and what have I more! And then mock me by saying, What aileth thee?” The grim response of the Danites reminds me of the ungrateful wolf’s reply to the crane in Aesop’s fable: “Count it reward enough that you have safely withdrawn your neck from a wolf’s throat.” So Micah returned empty-handed to reflect on the rewards of hospitality, the sanctity of contracts, the wisdom of investing good shekels in the manufacture of gods, and the ingratitude of God’s people in forsaking their Maker. But the imperturbable Danites, like Gallio, caring for none of these things, went marching on, and like a stealthy band of Comanches, swooped down upon the unsuspecting community, blotted it off the map and set up their rival to the house of God in Shiloh and went into tribal idolatry.
9. How does the incident prove ancestor Jacob a prophet?
Ans. “Dan shall be a serpent in the way, an adder in the path, that biteth the horse’s heels so that his rider falleth backward.”
10. Wherein did the Mormons show their appreciation of the prophecy and its fulfilment?
Ans. By naming their terrible secret organization which perpetrated the Mountain Meadows Massacre, “the Danites.”
11. Who was this shabby, subservient Levite and how did later Jews seek to hide his identity?
Ans. His name was Jonathan, a grandson of Moses. See Standard Revision of Jdg 18:30 , and compare with common version “Manasseh” instead of Moses. The Jews in the Targum and Septuagint changed Moses to Manasseh, unwilling to tarnish the name of the great ancestor. But Manasseh had no son named Gershom while Moses did, as the genealogies show. It is not unusual for even sons of great men, much less grandsons, to degenerate and “peter out.”
12. What prophecy of Moses is also fulfilled in the incident ?
Ans. “And of Dan he said, Dan is a lion’s whelp, that leapeth forth from Bashan.” And it was from the mountains of Bashan that this “cub lion” leaped upon the hapless village of Laish in the valley below.
13. Why is the tribe of Dan omitted in the catalogue of tribes in Rev 7:4-8 ?
Ans. Probably because Dan migrated to Laish and there set up a rival worship.
13a. What event introduces the episode of the Benjaminites?
Ans. The horrible outrage perpetrated by the men of Gibeah, a city of Benjamin, Jdg 19 .
14. What do you gather from the first of this story?
Ans. (1) That the relation between a man and his concubine was a legal one counted here as marriage.
(2) It was the woman who sinned and the man who forgave.
(3) The instant reconciliation when he went after her and the insistent hospitality and welcome of the father-in-law.
(4) The Levite’s loyalty to Israel in refusing to lodge in the city of the Jebusites when by a little more travel he could reach a city of his own nation.
(5) The inhospitality of the men of Gibeah who would have suffered one of their nation to remain in the street all night, contrasted with the generous welcome to strangers extended by the sojourning Ephraimite.
15. What the moral condition of the city as disclosed by the horrible outrage?
Ans. It was as Sodom in the days of Lot. Compare Gen 19:1-11 , with Jdg 19:22-27 .
16. The Common Version and the Vulgate (Latin) make a certain Hebrew word of Jdg 19:22 , and other Old Testament passages, a proper name, as, “certain sons of Belial,” which the Canterbury Revision renders “certain base fellows” which is right?
Ans. The author is much inclined to favor the Common Version here and in 1Sa 2:12 . It is true that the Hebrew word etymologically means “base, reckless, lawless.” And it is also true that the Hebrew idiom “son of,” “daughter of,” “man of” does not imply a person when associated with “Belial.” Yet the atrocious and unnatural crime against Jehovah here and in some other cases implies a devilish origin. Particularly is this true when associated with idolatrous worship. It is certainly so interpreted in the New Testament, 1Co 10:27 ; 1Co 10:20-22 , and 2Co 6:15-18 . It was on account of these awful associations, being a part and practice of the religious worship of the Canaanite gods, as later of Greek and Roman gods, that idolatry was made a capital offense under the theocracy. When Milton, therefore, in Paradise Lost, makes Belial a person, a demon, it is not a case of poetic personification, but is the expression of a profound philosophical truth as well as scriptural truth in both Testaments. The ghastly, beastly, obscene, and loathsome debaucheries of heathen worship would never have been counted religion except under the promptings of the devil.
17. What steps did the wronged and horrified Levite take to make this local crime a national affair?
Ans. He divided the murdered woman’s body into twelve parts and sent one part to each tribe with the story of the wrong.
18. What impression was made by this horrible method of accusation?
Ans. “And it was so that all that saw it said, There was no such deed done nor seen from the day that the children of Israel came up out of the land of Egypt unto this day. Consider it, take counsel and speak,” Jdg 19:30 .
19. Was he justified in making it a national affair?
Ans. Yes, otherwise the whole nation would have perished. Compare the judgment on Sodom and Gomorrah. Compare the solemn declarations of Jehovah that on account of such abominations the measure of the iniquity of the Canaanites was so full that that very “land was ready to spew them out of its mouth.” Read carefully the solemn charge to the nation in Deu 13:12-18 , and the awful judgment of God on Eli because he merely admonished but did not restrain his sons for so corrupting Jehovah’s worship, 1Sa 2:12 ; 1Sa 2:17 ; 1Sa 2:22-25 ; 1Sa 3:11-14 .
20. What the result of the Levite’s ghastly method of accusation?
Ans. The whole nation was at once aroused. The public conscience was quickened and they assembled before the Lord at Mizpah to learn and do his will, and they strictly followed the direction of his oracle. Four hundred thousand warriors assembled as executors of God’s judgment.
21. Show how this was no mob action stirred by an impulse of sudden passion.
Ans. (1) They assembled under all the forms of law.
(2) They carefully examined the simple testimony of the Levite (Jdg 20:4-9 ), its very simplicity constituting its power.
(3) They deliberated gravely.
(4) They submitted every step proposed to God’s oracle.
(5) They sent messengers through all the tribe of Benjamin, giving notification of the crime, and giving opportunity for the tribe to clear itself by surrendering the criminals to justice according to the law of Jehovah.
22. What awful comment on the moral condition of Benjamin?
Ans. The whole tribe deliberately sided with the adulterous murderers and determined to protect them.
23. How was Israel taught the awful solemnity of acting as executors of Jehovah’s will?
Ans. They were humiliated by two disastrous defeats, losing 40,000 men in two battles, 14,000 more than Benjamin’s whole army. After each defeat they carried the case again to the Lord, with fastings, weeping, and sacrifices, which indicated their consciousness of their own sins.
24. What the result of the third battle?
Ans. The tribe of Benjamin was almost blotted out. They were surrounded, driven hither and thither with relentless pursuit and desperate battle. First 18,000, then 5,000, then 2,000, i.e., 25,000 out of Benjamin’s veterans perished on the battlefield and still Israel pursued, devoting to sweeping destruction city after city, men, women, children and cattle, until only 600 fugitives remained, who sheltered in the rocks of the wilderness four months.
25. What evidence that Israel fought not with malice against Benjamin?
Ans. (1) Their weeping cry before Jehovah: “Shall I go up again to battle against the children of Benjamin, my brother?” (2) After the victory they come again before the Lord in tears: “O Lord God of Israel, why is this come to pass that there should be today one tribe lacking in Israel?” (Jdg 21:3 ). There is no exultation. They mourn more over fallen Benjamin than over the thousands of their own dead. As this was a national assembly to accomplish a purgation by which alone the nation could be saved, what oaths had been sworn before Jehovah?
Ans. (1) That no man of the eleven tribes should give his daughter as a wife to a man of Benjamin.
(2) That whosoever would not come up before the Lord in the crusade for national salvation should be put to death.
27. What was their dilemma in view of the first oath and how were they preserved from it by the second oath?
Ans. By the first oath the 600 fugitives were barred from marriage and the tribe would have utterly perished, but by investigation they found that the city of Jabesh-Gilead had refused to obey the national oath and in virtue of the second oath was doomed. A detachment of 12,000 men smote it to destruction, reserving 400 virgins to be the wives of the two-thirds of the 600.
28. What expedient was adopted to provide wives for the remaining two hundred?
Ans. In Jdg 21:19-23 , the expedient is set forth by which, without technical violation of the oath, the 200 managed, at the suggestion of the elders, to capture a wife apiece from the dancing daughters of Shiloh.
29. What legend of early Rome is something similar?
Ans. The Romans captured the Sabine women at a festival. See Roman History , by Myers, pp. 58-59.
30. How is it alluded to in Scott’s lvanhoe?
Ans. DeBracy plots to carry off Rowena. Fitzurse said, “What on earth dost thou purpose by this absurd disguise at a moment so urgent?”
DeBracy replied: “To get me a wife after the manner of the tribe of Benjamin.”
31. Why is one left-handed called a Benjaminite?
Ans. Because the men of the tribe of Benjamin were left-handed.
32. What prophecy by Jacob fits the Benjaminites of this story?
Ans. “Benjamin is wolf that raveneth: In the morning he shall devour the prey. And at even he shall divide the spoil.” Gen 49:27 .
33. Who was the high priest through whom Jehovah makes known his will in the story of Benjamin, and what proof does the fact afford that the two stories of Dan and Benjamin occurred in the early period of the judges?
Ans. Phinehas was high priest (Jdg 20:28 ) who is referred to in Num 25:7 and Jos 22:13 ; Jos 22:30 . These last passages refer to an early period of the judges.
Fuente: B.H. Carroll’s An Interpretation of the English Bible
Jdg 21:1 Now the men of Israel had sworn in Mizpeh, saying, There shall not any of us give his daughter unto Benjamin to wife.
Ver. 1. Now the men of Israel had sworn. ] Rashly and uncharitably, out of rage rather than right zeal The fiery spirited man hath mettle in him, but base and reprobate, that never received the image and impress of God’s Spirit. Men must swear in judgment; Jer 4:2 and as Minerva is said to put a golden bridle upon Pegasus, that he should not fly too fast, in like sort our Minerva, that is, our Christian discretion, must put a golden bridle on our earnest zeal, lest it make us follow too fast.
Fuente: John Trapp’s Complete Commentary (Old and New Testaments)
had sworn: i.e. before the fighting of Jdg 20.
Fuente: Companion Bible Notes, Appendices and Graphics
Chapter 21
Now, these men [in chapter twenty-one, had made an oath] they had sworn in Mizpeh, saying, There shall not any of us give his daughter unto Benjamin for a wife ( Jdg 21:1 ).
These Benjamites do these things; none of us will allow them to marry our daughters. It was a vow that they made. Now, let me say that most vows, like this one, are stupid. Most of the vows that are given in the Bible are stupid. This is a stupid vow. Saul made a stupid vow when he saw Jonathan wiping out the Philistines with his armorbearer he said, “Cursed be the man who eats anything today until Saul be avenged of all of his enemies.” Stupid vow because later on in the day as they were chasing the Philistines the guys were so hungry and they were getting faint and weak because they didn’t have any food, they were running out of energy and they really could have slaughtered a lot more of the Philistines that day, had a total victory.
But the stupid vow of Saul which really had no sense behind it, “Cursed be any man who eats anything until Saul” sort of exalting of himself. And of course Jonathan his son didn’t hear his old man say that. He was busy fighting the Philistines and running through the forest. He saw this honeycomb and he put his spear out and you know reached through and licking on his spear as he’s chasing the Philistines and the honey, the quick energy, he was revived you know and had all that energy and really got after them and was able to go and then later on his old man said, “Someone broke my vow today. Who was it?”
No one would rat on him and so he says, “Divide in two companies. All of you and my son Jonathan will cast lots. The lots fell on Saul and his son and he said, “Jonathan what have done?”
“Hey dad, I didn’t know what you said. I’m going through the forest and I saw the honeycomb and I put my spear in it and ate it and I was revived. Hey dad, it was sort of foolish for you to say that. Look how faint the guys are. We could’ve wiped out the Philistines totally today if the guys had strength but they ran out of energy.”
Saul said, “Put him to death.” Oh, that stupid guy. No wonder, well he admitted himself at the end of his life he said, “Hey I played the fool.” That’s no understatement.
Jephthah made a stupid vow. We studied that last week; remember? “The first thing that comes out of my house I’ll sacrifice it as a burnt offering unto the Lord.”
The Bible says quite a bit about keeping your mouth shut. When you go into the temple of the mount or when you go into the temple of the Lord, you know, put a lock on your mouth lest you sin with your mouth. I don’t think it’s a proverb but it ought to be. It is better to keep your mouth shut and let people think you’re a fool then to open it and dispel all doubts. The problem we get into with our mouth.
Now here was a foolish vow. They wiped out the Benjamites, only six hundred guys left. The rest of the Benjamites are wiped out and now they think, “Oh, we’re not gonna have a tribe of Benjamin. The tribe of Benjamin’s gonna get wiped out. Oh that’s horrible. Oh, we can’t do that. What should we do?”
“Well is there any city that didn’t send anybody?”
Someone says, “I didn’t see anybody come from Jabeshgilead.” So they checked that.
“Anybody here from Jabeshgilead?” Nobody there from Jabeshgilead.
“All right. Then let’s go to Jabeshgilead and we kill everybody except the virgins and we’ll bring them back and let them marry these guys, in that they didn’t enter into the vow, you see.” No one from Jabeshgilead was there to enter into the vow, so horrible. You know it’s covering one stupidity with a greater. But you know, you get into these kinds of things where you begin to follow one sin with another. You do one and then it leads to another, another, another. You get further and further down the line. It’s tragic.
And so what they did was horrible. They went to Jabeshgilead and they wiped out the city, killed all of the married women, killed all of the men. And they got the virgins and brought them back but there still wasn’t enough, there’s still some guys that weren’t married. “What are we gonna do?”
Well, Shiloh was the religious center at that particular time and they would have the feast in Shiloh. And during the feast the young virgins would come out and do some traditional folk dances.
And so they said to the men of Benjamin who still didn’t have wives, “Now, during this feast when the young virgins come out you guys hide in the bushes and you watch and see if you know, cute gal that you like. Grab her and take off with her.” Sort of a reverse of Sadie Hawkins kind of a day. And when the men from Shiloh come to us and say, “Hey, they’ve kidnapped our daughters” we’ll say, “Ah, that’s all right. Just let it go, you know, and we’ll protect you in it.” So that year when they had the feast and the young virgins from Shiloh came out and were doing their little ritual traditional dances, these Benjamites were hiding and they each find them a gal that they liked the looks of and they grabbed them and took off with them. And thus, the tribe of Benjamin was spared and did not, you know, they weren’t deleted as a tribe in Israel.
But again, no condoning of the scripture. In fact, the condemning of it in the scripture; it was wrong, it was stupid but that’s just the way things were going because they had lost their conscienceness of God as king. And so it gives you just a little insight into the civil and religious confusion that existed during the time of the Judges.
And again the chapter ends as this section began.
In those days there was no king in Israel: every man did that which was right in his own eyes ( Jdg 21:25 ).
But I’ll tell you, when people do that which is right in their own eyes, quite often it is very, very wrong. Because of the mentality and the moral level of many people you can’t just let people live as they want, they will revert to an animal state. How important that we submit our lives to God as king.
Next week the beautiful little book of Ruth. Shall we stand?
Let’s turn back to Numbers six. For a long time I’ve been wanting us to learn this chorus that Crystal taught us tonight as a sort of a departing kind of a chorus. I think it’s beautiful, you know, as a sort of a conclusion to the service and departing from one another to pronounce this blessing of God upon each other and I don’t know if Crystal’s still here but if she is she can probably help me. I don’t think I know this chorus but I think I can start it if you can finish it. Ah, all right Crystal. I’ll sing the after part. No, tell you what. Let the men sing the first “Lord Bless you” and let the women echo it, “and keep you” the women echo it and then we all sing together those other parts. So men, join with me. Women, join with Crystal and then we’ll all sing those parts together. “
Fuente: Through the Bible Commentary
Uninstructed zeal, even in the cause of righteousness, often goes beyond its proper limits. The terrible carnage continued until not above six hundred men of the tribe of Benjamin were left. Another of those sudden revulsions which characterize the action of inflamed peoples is seen as Israel was suddenly filled with pity for the tribe so nearly exterminated. This pity, then, operated in ways that were wholly unrighteous. Wives were provided for the men of Benjamin by unjustified slaughter at Jabesh-gilead and by the vilest iniquity at Shiloh.
It is impossible to read this appendix to the Book of Judges, and especially the closing part of it, without being impressed with how sad is the condition of any people who act without some definitely fixed principle. Passion moves to purpose only as it is governed by principle. If it lacks that, it will march at one moment in heroic determination to establish high ideals and purity of life, and then almost immediately will burn and express itself in brutality and all manner of evil.
The writer of this book more than once drew attention to the fact that at that time there was no king in Israel. Undoubtedly he meant by this to trace the lawlessness to the lack of government. The truth was that Israel had lost its immediate relation to its one and only King.
Fuente: An Exposition on the Whole Bible
CHAPTER 21 The Repentance About Benjamin
1. Sorrow of the people and Jabesh-Gilead smitten (Jdg 21:1-15)
2. The restoration of Benjamin (Jdg 21:16-25)
A tribe of the nation was almost entirely exterminated. Then the oath they had made not to give their daughters to wife to the Benjamites left assured the complete extinction of the tribe. The dreadful work they had done dawned suddenly upon them and weeping before Jehovah they said, Why is this come to pass in Israel that there should be today one tribe lacking in Israel? The answer surely was, it came to pass on account of their departure from God and their sins. Thus people ask when they behold the scenes of bloodshed and war, as we see in our times, why is this? and are even ready to blame God, instead of thinking of sin and its curse. Then once more they acted themselves and committed another deed of violence. Jabesh-Gilead is destroyed; only four hundred virgins are saved. These were given to the Benjamites. But what hypocrisy they showed in having a feast of Jehovah and commanding the Benjamites to steal the daughters of Shiloh! Failure and decline is written in this book. Gods faithfulness towards His people whom He loves is not less prominent.
This is Israel, the people of God: infirm and wavering where good is to be accomplished; quick and decisive where patience and forbearance would become them; tolerant of what is only of themselves; scrupulously keeping an insane oath, yet managing to evade it by a jesuitry that deceives no one. Such is the people of God, and such is Christendom today; and such it has been. Let us search our hearts as we read the record,–not given as a record without purpose in it. How solemn is the repetition at the end of what has been the text of these closing chapters: In those days there was no king in Israel: every man did what was right in his own eyes (Numerical Bible).
Fuente: Gaebelein’s Annotated Bible (Commentary)
had sworn: Jdg 20:1, Jdg 20:8, Jdg 20:10, Jer 4:2
There: Jdg 21:5, Jdg 11:30, Jdg 11:31, 1Sa 14:24, 1Sa 14:28, 1Sa 14:29, Ecc 5:2, Mar 6:23, Act 23:12, Rom 10:2
his daughter: Exo 34:12-16, Deu 7:2, Deu 7:3
Reciprocal: Jdg 11:35 – I cannot Jdg 21:7 – sworn Jdg 21:18 – sworn Jdg 21:22 – give unto Jer 40:6 – Mizpah Mat 14:9 – the oath’s
Fuente: The Treasury of Scripture Knowledge
The other 11 tribes had sworn, perhaps rashly, they would not give their daughters to the men of Benjamin.
With the war now ended, they went up to the house of God and wept. They were concerned that a tribe was now missing from the 12. The next morning, they offered sacrifices to God and inquired of one another to determine who had not come up to the assembly at Mizpah. Jabesh in Gilead had not come up, Song of Solomon 12,000 fighting men went against that city and struck it with the sword, sparing only female virgins. The four hundred who were found were given to the remaining men of Benjamin (21:1-13).
Fuente: Gary Hampton Commentary on Selected Books
Jdg 21:1. The men of Israel had sworn in Mizpeh When they first assembled there in the beginning of this war, after the whole tribe had espoused the quarrel of the men of Gibeah. Saying They do not here swear the utter extirpation of the tribe, which fell out beyond their expectation, but only not to give their daughters to those men who should survive; justly esteeming them for their villany to be as bad as heathen, with whom they were forbidden to marry.
Fuente: Joseph Bensons Commentary on the Old and New Testaments
Jdg 21:4. Built there an altar, in Mizpeh. This altar had long existed. Exo 38:1. Altars were erected in many places: Samuel, David, and Elijah officiated at those altars. Yea, more; the Lords anger was appeased at those altars, and fire descended from heaven to denote the acceptance of the sacrifices. The altar at the sanctuary was for the regular oblations, but was never designed to supersede the extraordinary occasions of the nation.
Jdg 21:8. None from Jabesh-gilead. The tribes would keep their oath against citizens or delinquents in war, but not their oath with the Lord against idolaters! The inhabitants being Josephs descendants, would not arm against the favourite brother of their father.
Jdg 21:12. Four hundred virgins, known by their ornaments and dress. The Lacedemonians were remarkable for distinguishing all orders of persons by dress; and this custom still prevails in the east, though with numerous variations.
Jdg 21:19. Behold, there is a feast to the Lord in Shiloh. The feast of tabernacles, when the people rejoiced with sacred songs. Those elders were so very religious that they would not break their oath; they only gave advice how it might be violated with impunity.
REFLECTIONS.
In the preseding chapter we have seen the sad effects of wickedness, contumacy, and civil war. The tribe of Benjamin, which filled fourteen cities and villages, contained a population of nearly two hundred thousand persons, besides Jabesh-gilead, and the forty thousand of Israel who fell. Surely, when in arms, brothers are the worst of foes. Benjamin had no pity on Israel in his days of victory; and Israel in return had no pity on Benjamin. How impetuous are human passions when excited by the ardour of battle, and by the sight of blood. To give quarter to a vanquished foe was not the law of war in that age, and would to God it had been only that age. Real courage is never divested of humanity: to vanquish and to spare are indications of a great and generous soul. During the battle, the crime was equal on both sides. When the vanquished fly, retaining their arms, they are pursued with slaughter. But those who cast away their arms, and on their knees beg for life, it is cruelty, nay, it is murder, to give them the stroke of death. The man who does this is not a hero, and he must expect a similar visitation in return.
We see farther, that the stronger passions of man turn as the tide. Israel had carried his vengeance on his brother far beyond his first intentions. Now he weeps for his brother; but tears are unable to restore him to life. Strong passions, excess of punishment, and rash oaths, are sure to be followed with humiliating reflections. Let us ever hold the reins of passion by reason; for strong passions when directed by wisdom may be attended with honour, not with shame.
We see also the great regard which the ancients paid to an oath of the Lord. Whether right or wrong, rash or prudent, they considered it as inviolable; and that no man, no nation would be safe, if an oath were left to the decisions of interest. It is an adage, that rash vows are better broken than kept: it would be better however for every man, before he breaks an oath, to consult the safety of his conscience. What we should principally learn from the errors of Israel is, to vow with prudence, and to perform with fidelity.
The smiting of any city or tribe which came not up to war, it would seem, was another breach of the oath Israel had made in Shiloh. And alas, Jabesh- gilead, of the tribe of Joseph, would not arm against his brother Benjamin. This was a breach of the national covenant, and very often acted upon. But as so much blood had been spilt, it would have been better to have said, sufficient to the day is the evil thereof.
Israel, impressed with sorrow for the loss of one tribe, next proceeds to provide wives for the six hundred of their brethren who had escaped the common carnage. The four hundred virgins of Jabesh were disposed of in fair marriage, and without scruple; and to husbands who had now large tracts of land. But the two hundred remaining men, were directed by the elders to catch virgins in the dance at a festival in Shiloh, while they were singing and playing sacred songs in their approach to the house of God. This was a singular step, but an act of necessity, by no means to be imitated in future life. There were many things lamentable in it. It forced the womens affections, it deprived the parents of their right in the disposal of their daughters, and it estranged them to a distance, where they could not console their parents in old age. But withal it was done by the advice of the magistrates, and it did the captives no wrong in point of landed property; otherwise it had been an action worthy of death. The rape of the Sabine women under Romulus, differs widely from this case. They were allured to a festival by a stratagem; and the elders of their country being totally ignorant of the crime, they armed to avenge their wrongs.
Fuente: Sutcliffe’s Commentary on the Old and New Testaments
Judes 21. Benjamin Saved from Extinction.Two versions of this story have been editorially combined. The second is evidently the older. It was stated that the children of Israel came together as one man (Jdg 20:1; Jdg 20:11), but it now appears that Jabesh-gilead, the city that was so loyal to Saul the Benjamite (1Sa 11:1 f; 1Sa 31:11 f., 2Sa 2:5 f; 2Sa 21:12 f.), did not send a single man to fight against Benjamin. For this sin, all the inhabitants are devoted, except the maidens, who are given, willing or unwilling, to the Benjamite remnant. The second version (Jdg 21:16-24) is quite independent of the first, and entirely different in spirit. It is unquestionably very ancient, and the glimpse which it gives of an autumn feast of Yahweh at Shiloh, when young maidens performed choral dances in the vineyards, is full of interest. The Benjamite marriage by capture strongly resembles the famous rape of the Sabine women (Livy, i. 9).
Jdg 21:22. Text uncertain. For complain unto us read strive with you (LXX). With an emended text Jdg 21:22 b may run, Be gracious to them, for if ye had given them (your daughters) unto them, you would surely now be guilty. The rest of the verse, Because . . . battle, is an editorial attempt to join the early Shiloh story to the late Jabesh-gilead one.
Fuente: Peake’s Commentary on the Bible
21:1 Now the men of Israel had {a} sworn in Mizpeh, saying, There shall not any of us give his daughter unto Benjamin to wife.
(a) This was a rash oath, and not from judgment: for they later broke it, showing secretly the means to marry certain of their daughters.
Fuente: Geneva Bible Notes
3. The preservation of Benjamin ch. 21
In chapter 20 Israel tried desperately to destroy the tribe of Benjamin. In Gen 42:36 Jacob feared that Joseph’s brothers would do something that would result in Benjamin’s death. What he feared then almost happened now. In chapter 21 Israel tried just as hard to deliver this tribe from the extinction that her own excessive vengeance threatened to accomplish. The anarchy of God’s people complicated the problems that her apostasy had initiated. The moral degeneracy of chapter 19 proceeded from political disorganization in chapter 20 to social disintegration in chapter 21.
"Interpreting biblical narrative can be like trying to figure out someone who has a dry sense of humor. The person may give no visible indication that he intends humor, so that you have to divine it as best you can. Judges 21 is noncommittal like that. The writer reports but hardly critiques, so that we are left asking how we are to take the story." [Note: Davis, Such a . . ., pp. 224-25.]
The way to determine the rightness or wrongness of Israel’s actions is to compare them with God’s revealed will in the Mosaic Law.
Fuente: Expository Notes of Dr. Constable (Old and New Testaments)
The plight of the Benjamites 21:1-4
The "wife oath" that the Israelites had taken at Mizpah (Jdg 20:8-11) may have had some connection with God’s commands concerning Israel’s treatment of the Canaanites (Deu 7:1-3). Israel was to destroy these enemies utterly and not intermarry with them. However, this was how Israel was to deal with Canaanites, not her own brethren. Obviously the remaining Benjamites needed wives and children to perpetuate the tribe.
"That they justify their attempt at compassion with reference to solemn oaths (see Jdg 21:1; Jdg 21:5) is not much of a defense, given the poor history of oaths in the book of Judges (see Jdg 11:29-40)." [Note: McCann, p. 136.]
The civil war had left only 600 Benjamite warriors alive (Jdg 20:47). The population of this endangered tribe was so small now that it could easily have become extinct. Returning to Bethel and the ark, the victorious Israelites reflected on the situation they had created (Jdg 21:2). The thrill of victory turned to the agony of defeat as they realized the consequences of their actions. The dilemma that their "wife oath" (Jdg 21:1) and their sorrow (Jdg 21:2) posed is the subject of this chapter. How could they resolve these two things?
The Israelites’ initial reaction was to ask God to explain the situation (Jdg 21:3). The reason for it was their failure to seek and follow God’s will earlier (cf. Jdg 20:8-11). Here we see no mourning for sin, no self-humbling because of national transgression, and no return to the Lord. The Lord did not respond to them because they acted in self-will (Jdg 21:10).
Then the Israelites sought the Lord more seriously (Jdg 21:4). It seems strange that they built an altar at Bethel since they had recently offered sacrifices on the one before the tabernacle there (Jdg 20:26). Perhaps they rebuilt or enlarged the altar at Bethel, or they may have built another one.
Fuente: Expository Notes of Dr. Constable (Old and New Testaments)
; Jdg 20:1-48; Jdg 21:1-25
FROM JUSTICE TO WILD REVENGE
Jdg 19:1-30; Jdg 20:1-48; Jdg 21:1-25
THESE last chapters describe a general and vehement outburst of moral indignation throughout Israel, recorded for various reasons. A vile thing is done in one of the towns of Benjamin and the fact is published in all the tribes. The doers of it are defended by their clan and fearful punishment is wrought upon them, not without suffering to the entire people. Like the incidents narrated in the chapters immediately preceding, these must have occurred at an early stage in the period of the judges, and they afford another illustration of the peril of imperfect government, the need for a vigorous administration of justice over the land. The crime and the volcanic vengeance belong to a time when there was “no king in Israel” and, despite occasional appeals to the oracle, “every man did that which was right in his own eyes.” In this we have one clue to the purpose of the history.
The crime of Gibeah brought under our notice here connects itself with that of Sodom and represents a phase of immorality which, indigenous to Canaan, mixed its putrid current with Hebrew life. There are traces of the same horrible impurity in the Judah of Rehoboam and Asa; and in the story of Josiahs reign we are horrified to read of “houses of Sodomites that were in the house of the Lord, where the women, wove hangings for the Asherah.” With such lurid historical light on the subject we can easily understand the revival of this warning lesson from the past of Israel and the fulness of detail with which the incidents are recorded. A crime originally that of the off-scourings of Gibeah became practically the sin of a whole tribe, and the war that ensued sets in a clear light the zeal for domestic purity which was a feature in every religious revival and, at length, in the life of the Hebrew people.
It may be asked how, while polygamy was practised among the Israelites, the sin of Gibeah could rouse such indignation and awaken the signal vengeance of the united tribes. The answer is to be found partly in the singular and dreadful device which the indignant husband used in making the deed known. The ghastly symbols of outrage told the tale in a way that was fitted to stir the blood of the whole country. Everywhere the hideous thing was made vivid and a sense of utmost atrocity was kindled as the dissevered members were borne from town to town. It is easy to see that womanhood must have been stirred to the fieriest indignation, and manhood was bound to follow. What woman could be safe in Gibeah where such things were done? And was Gibeah to go unpunished? If so, every Hebrew city might become the haunt of miscreants. Further there is the fact that the woman so foully murdered, though a concubine, was the concubine of a Levite. The measure of sacredness with which the Levites were invested gave to this crime, frightful enough in any view, the colour of sacrilege. How degenerate were the people of Gibeah when a servant of the altar could be treated with such foul indignity and driven to so extraordinary an appeal for justice? There could be no blessing on the tribes if they allowed the doers or condoners of this thing to go unpunished. Every Levite throughout the land must have taken up the cry. From Bethel and other sanctuaries the call for vengeance would spread and echo till the nation was roused. Thus, in part at least, we can explain the vehemence of feeling which drew together the whole fighting force of the tribes.
The doubt will yet remain whether there could have been so much purity of life or respect for purity as to sustain the public indignation. Some may say, Is there not here a sufficient reason for questioning the veracity of the narrative? First, however, let it be remembered that often where morals are far from reaching the level of pure monogamic life distinctions between right and wrong are sharply drawn. Acquaintance with phases of modern life that are most painful to the mind sensitively pure reveals a fixed code which none may infringe without bringing upon themselves reprobation, perhaps more vehement than in a higher social grade visits the breach of a higher law. It is the fact that concubinage has its unwritten acknowledgment and protecting customs. There is marriage that is only a name; there is concubinage that gives the woman more rights than one who is married. Against the immorality and the gross evils of cohabitation is to be set this unwritten law. And arguing from popular feeling in our great cities we reach the conclusion that in ancient Israel where concubinage prevailed there was a wide and keen feeling as to the rights of concubines and the necessity of upholding them. Many women must have been in this relation, below those who could count themselves legally married, and all the more that the concubine occupied a place inferior to that of the lawful wife would popular opinion take up her cause and demand the punishment of those who did her wrong.
And here we are led to a point which demands clear statement and recognition. It has been too readily supposed that polygamy is always a result of moral decline and indicates a low state of domestic purity. It may, in truth, be a rude step of progress. Has it been sufficiently noted that in those countries in which the name of the mother, not of the father, descended to the children the reason may be found in universal or almost universal unchastity? In Egypt at one time the law gave to women, especially to mothers, peculiar rights; but to praise Egyptian civilisation for this reason and hold up its treatment of women as an example to the nineteenth century is an extraordinary venture. The Israelites, however lax, were doubtless in advance of the society of Thebes. Among the Canaanites the moral degradation of women, whatever freedom may have gone with it, was so terrible that the Hebrew with his two or three wives and concubines but with a morality otherwise severe, must have represented a new and holier social order as well as a new and holier religion. It is therefore not incredible, but appears simply in accordance with the instincts and customs proper to the Hebrew people, that the sin of Gibeah should provoke overwhelming indignation. There is no pretence of purity, no hypocritical anger. The feeling is sound and real. Perhaps in no other matter of a moral kind would there have been such intense and unanimous exasperation. A point of justice or of belief would not have so moved the tribes. The better self of Israel appears, asserting its claim and power. And the miscreants of Gibeah representing the lower self, verily an unclean spirit, are detested and denounced on every hand.
The time was that of fresh feeling, unwarped by those customs which in the guise of civilisation and refinement afterwards corrupted the nation. And we may see the prophetic or hortatory use of the narrative for an after age in which doings as vile as those at Gibeah were sanctioned by the court and protected even by religious leaders. It would be hoped by the sacred historian that this tale of the fierce indignation of the tribes might rouse afresh the same moral feeling. He would fain stir a careless people and their priests by the exhibition of this tumultuous vengeance. Nor can we say that the necessity for the impressive lesson has ceased. In the heart of our large cities vices as vile as those of Gibeah are heard muttering in the nightfall, life as abandoned lurks and festers, creating a social gangrene.
Recognise, then, in these chapters a truth for all time boldly drawn out-the great truth as to moral reform and national purity. Law will not cure moral evils; a statute book the purest and noblest will not save. Those who by the impulse of the Spirit gathered the various traditions of Israels life knew well that on a living conscience in men everything depended, and they at least indicate the further truth which many of ourselves have not grasped, that the early and rude workings of conscience, producing stormy and terrible results, are a necessary stage of development. As there must be energy before there can be noble energy, so there must be moral vigour, it may be rude, violent, ignorant, a stream rushing out of barbarian hills, sweeping with most appalling vehemence, before there can be spiritual life patient, calm, and holy. Law is a product, not a cause; it is not the code we make that will perserve us but the God-given conscience that informs the code and ever goes before it a pillar of fire, at times flashing vivid lightning. Even Christian law cannot save a people if it be merely a series of injunctions. Nothing will do but the mind of Christ in every man and woman continually inspiring and directing life. The reformer who thinks that a statute or regulation will end some sin or evil custom is in sad error. Say the decree he contends for is enacted; but have the consciences of those against whom it is made been quickened? If not, the law merely expresses a popular mood, and the life of the whole community will not be permanently raised in tone.
The church finds here a perpetual mission of influence. Her doctrine is but half her message. From the doctrine as from an eternal fount must go life-giving moral heat in every range, and the Spirit is ever with her to make the world like a fire. Her duty is wide as righteousness, great as mans destiny; it is never ended, for each generation comes in a new hour with new needs. The church, say some, is finishing its work; it is doomed to be one of the broken moulds of life. But the church that is the instructor of conscience and kindles the flame of righteousness has a mission to the ages. We are far yet from that day of the Lord when all the people shall be prophets; and until then how can the world live without the church? It would be a body without a soul.
Conscience the oracle of life, conscience working badly rather than held in chains of mere rule without spontaneity and inspiration, moral energy widespread, personal, and keen, however rude-here is one of the notes of the sacred writer; and another note, no less distinct, is the assertion of moral intolerance. It has not occurred to this prophetic annalist that endurance of evil has any curative power. He is a Hebrew, full of indignation against the vile and false, and he demands a heat of moral force in his people. Foul things are done at the court and even in the temple; there is a depraving indifference to purity, a loose notion (very similar to the idea of our day), that all the sides of life should have free play and that the heathen had much to teach Israel. The whole of the narrative before us is infused with a righteous protest against evil, a holy plea for intolerance of sin. Will men refuse instruction and persist in making themselves one with bestiality and outrage? Then judgment must deal with them on the ground they have chosen to occupy, and until they repent the conscience of the race must repudiate them together with their sin. Along with a keenly burning conscience there goes this necessity of moral intolerance. Charity is good, but not always in place; and brotherhood itself demands at times strong uncompromising judgment of the evildoer. How else among men of weak wills and wavering hearts can righteousness vindicate and enforce itself as the eternal reality of life? Compassion is strong only when it is linked to unfaltering declarations; mercy is divine only when it turns a front of mail to wickedness and flashes lightning at proud wrong, Any other kind of charity is but a new offence-the sinner pardoning sin.
Now the people of Gibeah were not all vile. The wretches whose crime called for judgment were but the rabble of the town. And we can see that the tribes when they gathered in indignation were made serious by the thought that the righteous might be punished with the wicked. We are told that they went up to the sanctuary and asked counsel of the Lord whether they should attack the convicted city. There was a full muster of the fighting men, their blood at fever heat, yet they would not advance without an oracle. It was an appeal to heavenly justice and demands notice as a striking feature of the whole terrible series of events. For an hour there is silence in the camp till a higher voice shall speak.
But what is the issue? The oracle decrees an immediate attack on Gibeah in the face of all Benjamin, which has shown the temper of heathenism by refusing to give up the criminals. Once and again there is trial of battle which ends in defeat of the allied tribes. The wrong triumphs; the people have to return humbled and weeping to the Sacred Presence and sit fasting and disconsolate before the Lord.
Not without the suffering of the entire community is a great evil to be purged from a land. It is easy to execute a murderer, to imprison a felon. But the spirit of the murderer, of the felon, is widely diffused, and that has to be cast out. In the great moral struggle year after year the better have not only the openly vile but all who are tainted, all who are weak in soul, loose in habit, secretly sympathetic with the vile, arrayed against them. There is a sacrifice of the good before the evil are overcome. In vicarious suffering many must pay the penalty of crimes not their own ere the wide-reaching wickedness can be seen in its demonic power and struck down as the cruel enemy of the people.
When an assault is made on some vile custom the sardonic laugh is heard of those who find their profit and their pleasure in it. They feel their power. They know the wide sympathy with them spread secretly through the land. Once and again the feeble attempt of the good is repelled. With sad hearts, with impoverished means, those who led the crusade retire baffled and weary. Has their method been unintelligent? There very possibly lies the cause of its failure. Or, perhaps, it has been, though nominally inspired by an oracle, all too human, weak through human pride. Not till they gain with new and deeper devotion to the glory of God, with more humility and faith, a clearer view of the battleground and a better ordering of the war shall defeat be changed into victory. And may it not be that the assault on moral evils of our day, in which multitudes are professedly engaged, in which also many have spent substance and life, shall fail till there is a true humiliation of the armies of God before Him, a new consecration to higher and more spiritual ends? Human virtue has ever to be jealous of itself, the reformer may so easily become a Pharisee.
The tide turned and there came another danger, that which waits on ebullitions of popular feeling. A crowd roused to anger is hard to control, and the tribes having once tasted vengeance did not cease till Benjamin was almost exterminated. The slaughter extended not only to the fighting men, but to women and children. The six hundred who fled to the rock fort of Rimmon appear as the only survivors of the clan. Justice overshot its mark and for one evil made another. Those who had most fiercely used the sword viewed the result with horror and amazement, for a tribe was lacking in Israel. Nor was this the end of slaughter. Next for the sake of Benjamin the sword was drawn and the men of Jabesh-gilead were butchered. It has to be noticed that the oracle is not made responsible for this horrible process of evil. The people came of their own accord to the decision which annihilated Jabesh-gilead. But they gave it a pious colour; religion and cruelty went together, sacrifices to Jehovah and this frightful outbreak of demonism. It is one of the dark chapters of human history. For the sake of an oath and an idea death was dealt remorselessly. No voice suggested that the people of Jabesh may have been more cautious than the rest, not less faithful to the law of God. The others were resolved to appear to themselves to have been right in almost annihilating Benjamin; and the town which had not joined in the work of destruction must be punished.
The warning conveyed here is intensely keen. It is that men, made doubtful by the issue of their actions whether they have done wisely, may fly to the resolution to justify themselves and may do so even at the expense of justice; that a nation may pass from the right way to the wrong and then, having sunk to extraordinary baseness and malignity, may turn writhing and self-condemned to add cruelty to cruelty in the attempt to still the upbraidings of conscience. It is that men in the heat of passion which began with resentment against evil may strike at those who have not joined in their errors as well as those who truly deserve reprobation. We stand, nations and individuals, in constant danger of dreadful extremes, a kind of insanity hurrying us on when the blood is heated by strong emotion. Blindly attempting to do right we do evil, and again having done the evil, we blindly strive to remedy it by doing more. In times of moral darkness and chaotic social conditions, when men are guided by a few rude principles, things are done that afterwards appal themselves, and yet may become an example for future outbreaks. During the fury of their Revolution the French people, with some watchwords of the true ring as liberty, fraternity, turned hither and thither, now in terror, now panting after dimly seen justice or hope, and it was always from blood to blood. We understand the juncture in ancient Israel and realise the excitement and the rage of a self-jealous people, when we read the modern tales of surging ferocity in which men appear now hounding the shouting crowd to vengeance, then shuddering on the scaffold.
In private life the story has an application against wild and violent methods of self-vindication. Many a man, hurried on by a just anger against one who has done him wrong, sees to his horror after a sharp blow is struck that he has broken a life and thrown a brother bleeding to the dust. One wrong thing has been done perhaps more in haste than vileness of purpose, and retribution, hasty, ill-considered, leaves the moral question tenfold more confused. When all is reckoned we find it impossible to say where the right is, where the wrong.
Passing to the final expedient adopted by the chiefs of Israel to rectify their error-the rape of the women at Shiloh-we see only to how pitiful a pass moral blundering brings those who fall into it: other moral teaching there is none. We might at first be disposed to say that there was extraordinary want of reverence for religious order and engagements when the men of Benjamin were invited to make a sacred festival the occasion of taking what the other tribes had solemnly vowed not to give. But the festival at Shiloh must have been far more of a merry making than of a sacred assembly. It needs to be recognised that many gatherings even in honour of Jehovah were mainly, like those of Canaanite worship, for hilarity and feasting. There was probably no great incongruity between the occasion and the plot.
But the scenes certainly change in the course of this narrative with extraordinary swiftness. Fierce indignation is followed by pity, weeping for defeat by tears for too complete a victory. Horrible bloodshed wastes the cities and in a month there is dancing in the plain of Shiloh not ten miles from the field of battle. Chaotic indeed are the morality and the history; but it is the disorder of social life in its early stages, with the vehemence and tenderness, the ferocity and laughter of a nations youth. And, all along, the Book of Judges bears the stamp of veracity as a series of records because these very features are to be seen-this tumult, this undisciplined vehemence in feeling and act. Were we told here of decorous solemn progress at slow march, every army going forth with some stereotyped invocation of the Lord of Hosts, every leader a man of conventional piety supported by a blameless priesthood and orderly sacrifices, we should have had no evidence of truth. The traditions preserved here, whoever collected them, are singularly free from that idyllic colour which an imaginative writer would have endeavoured to give.
At the last, accordingly, the book we have been reading stands a real piece of history, proving itself over every kind of suspicion a true record of a people chosen and guided to a destiny greater than any other race of man has known. A people understanding its call and responding with eagerness at every point? Nay. The worm is in the heart of Israel as of every other nation, The carnal attracts, and malignant cries overbear the divine still voice; the air of Canaan breathes in every page, and we need to recollect that we are viewing the turbulent upper waters of the nation and the faith. But the working of God is plain; the divine thoughts we believed Israel to have in trust for the world are truly with it from the first, though darkened by altars of Baal and of Ashtoreth. The Word and Covenant of Jehovah are vital facts of the supernatural which surrounds that poor struggling erring Hebrew flock. Theocracy is a divine fact in a larger sense than has ever been attached to the word. Inspiration too is no dream, for the history is charged with intimations of the spiritual order. The light of the unrealised end flashes on spear and altar, and in the frequent roll of the storm the voice of the Eternal is heard declaring righteousness and truth. No story this to praise a dynasty or magnify a conquering nation or support a priesthood. Nothing so faithful, so true to heaven and to human nature could be done from that motive. We have here an imperishable chapter in the Book of God.