Exegetical and Hermeneutical Commentary of Judges 20:1
Then all the children of Israel went out, and the congregation was gathered together as one man, from Dan even to Beer-sheba, with the land of Gilead, unto the LORD in Mizpeh.
1. the congregation was assembled ] The two words at once stamp the character of source B; cf. in the Priestly Code Lev 8:4, Num 16:42; Num 20:2, Jos 18:1; Jos 22:12. The congregation Jdg 21:10; Jdg 21:13; Jdg 21:16 (Hebr. ‘dhah, LXX synagg) is regularly used by P, and by writers under the influence of P, to describe Israel as a religious community (e.g. Exo 12:3, Num 1:2, Jos 22:16 etc., 1Ki 8:5; 1Ki 12:20). Less characteristic, but frequently found in the Priestly narrative, is the assembly Jdg 20:2, Jdg 21:5; Jdg 21:8 (Hebr. hl, LXX usually ecclesia, sometimes synagg), to denote the people as an organized whole (e.g. Deu 31:30, Lev 16:17, Num 16:3, Ezr 10:12; Ezr 10:14 etc.), or as assembled for some special purpose, an invasion, or instruction, or worship.
as one man ] Cf. Jdg 20:8 ; Jdg 20:11; 1Sa 11:7, Ezr 3:1. The ancient stories in Judges give a different picture; a corporate national life was not attained till a later age.
from Dan even to Beer-sheba ] i.e. from North to South of Israel’s territory; cf. Jdg 18:7 n. and 2Sa 3:10; 2Sa 24:2, contrast 1Ch 21:2 etc. To include Israel on the E. of Jordan, with the land of Gilead is added (cf. Jdg 21:8).
Mizpah ] may be identified with the hill Neb Samwl, 4 m. N.W. of Jerusalem, 2935 ft. above the sea, and about 3 m. from Tell el-Fl (Gibeah), in the centre of the Benjamite district. A holy place occupied the summit (1Sa 7:5 ff; 1Sa 10:17-24), probably from very early times. See further Jer 40:6 ff.; 1Ma 3:46 . While the narrative A speaks of Mizpah as the meeting-place of the Israelites ( Jdg 20:3, Jdg 21:1), B refers to Beth-el ( Jdg 20:18 ; Jdg 20:26, Jdg 21:2).
Fuente: The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges
The congregation is the technical term for the whole community of the Israelite people. Its occurrence here is an indication of the early date of these transactions.
From Dan to Beer-sheba – We cannot safely infer from this expression that the settlement of Dan, recorded in Judg. 18 had taken place at this time. It only proves that in the writers time, from Dan to Beer-sheba was a proverbial expression for all Israel (compare the marginal reference).
With the land of Gilead – Meaning all the trans-Jordanic tribes; mentioned particularly, both to show that the whole congregation of the children of Israel, in its widest meaning, took part in the council, and also because of Jabesh-Gilead Jdg 21:8, Jdg 21:10.
Unto the Lord in Mizpeh – The phrase unto the Lord, implies the presence of the tabernacle (Jdg 11:11 note). Mizpeh in Benjamin Jos 18:26, from its connection with Bethel and Ramah, is probably meant here. It is the same as that which appears as a place of national assembly in 1Sa 7:5; 1Sa 10:17; 2Ki 25:23-25. It must have been near Shiloh and Gibeah, and in the north of Benjamin. The Benjamites were duly summoned with the other tribes; so that their absence was contumacious Jdg 20:3.
Fuente: Albert Barnes’ Notes on the Bible
Jdg 20:1-48
The men of Israel turned again upon the children of BenJamin.
From justice to wild revenge
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. Womanhood must have been stirred to the fiercest indignation, and manhood was bound to follow. 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. There could be no blessing on the tribes if they allowed the doers or condoners of this thing to go unpunished. 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. 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. 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 the better have not only the openly vile, but all who are tainted, all who are weak in soul, loose in habit, secretly sympathetie with the vile, arrayed against them. 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. 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. 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. 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. 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. (R. A. Watson, M. A.)
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Fuente: Biblical Illustrator Edited by Joseph S. Exell
CHAPTER XX
The heads of the eleven tribes come before the Lord in Mizpeh,
and examine the Levite relative to the murder of his wife, who
gives a simple narrative of the whole affair, 1-7.
They unanimously resolve to avenge the wrong, and make provision
for a campaign against the Benjamites, 8-11.
They desire the Benjamites to deliver up the murderers; they
refuse, and prepare for battle, having assembled an army of
twenty-six thousand seven hundred men, 12-16.
The rest of the Israelites amount to four hundred thousand, who,
taking counsel of God, agree to send the tribe of Judah against
the Benjamites, 17, 18.
They attack the Benjamites, and are routed with the loss of
twenty-two thousand men, 19-21.
They renew the battle next day, and are discomfited with the
loss of eighteen thousand men, 22-25.
They weep, fast, and pray, and offer sacrifices; and again
inquire of the Lord, who promises to deliver Benjamin into
their hands, 26-28.
They concert plans, attack the Benjamites, and rout them,
killing twenty-five thousand one hundred men, and destroy the
city of Gibeah, 29-37.
A recapitulation of the different actions in which they were
killed, 38-46.
Six hundred men escape to the rock Rimmon, 47.
The Israelites destroy all the cities of the Benjamites, 48.
NOTES ON CHAP. XX
Verse 1. Unto the Lord in Mizpeh.] This city was situated on the confines of Judah and Benjamin, and is sometimes attributed to the one, sometimes to the other. It seems that there was a place here in which the Lord was consulted, as well as at Shiloh; in 1Mac 3:46, we read, In Maspha was the place where they prayed aforetime in Israel. These two passages cast light on each other.
Some think that Shiloh is meant, because the ark was there; but the phrase before the Lord may signify no more than meeting in the name of God to consult him, and make prayer and supplication. Wherever God’s people are, there is God himself; and it ever was true, that wherever two or three were assembled in his name, he was in the midst of them.
Fuente: Adam Clarke’s Commentary and Critical Notes on the Bible
All the children of Israel, i.e. a great number, and especially the rulers of all the tribes, except Benjamin, Jdg 20:3,12.
Went out, from their several habitations.
As one man, i.e. with one consent.
From Dan even to Beer-sheba; Dan was the northern border of the land, near Lebanon; and Beer-sheba the southern border, Gen 21:33. Compare 1Ki 4:25.
The land of Gilead, beyond Jordan, where Reuben, Gad, and half Manasseh were.
Unto the Lord; as to the Lords tribunal; for God was not only present in the place where the ark and tabernacle was, but also in the assemblies of the gods, or judges, Psa 82:1, and in all the places where Gods name is recorded, Exo 20:24, and where two or three are met together in his name, Mat 18:20, for his service, and to seek for counsel and mercy from him: compare Jdg 11:11.
In Mizpeh; a place in the borders of Judah and Benjamin, and therefore ascribed to both of them, Jos 15:38; 18:26. This they chose, as a place most fit and proper in many respects. First, As a place they used to meet in upon solemn occasions: see Jdg 10:17; 11:11; 1Sa 7:5,16; 10:17. Secondly, For its convenient situation for all the tribes within and without Jordan. Thirdly, As being near the place where the fact was done, that it might be more thoroughly examined; and not far from Shiloh, where the tabernacle was, whither they might go or send, if need were.
Fuente: English Annotations on the Holy Bible by Matthew Poole
1, 2. all . . . the congregation wasgathered as one manIn consequence of the immense sensation thehorrid tragedy of Gibeah had produced, a national assembly wasconvened, at which “the chief of all the people” from allparts of the land, including the eastern tribes, appeared asdelegates.
Mizpehthe place ofconvention (for there were other Mizpehs), was in a town situated onthe confines of Judah and Benjamin (Jos 15:38;Jos 18:26). Assemblies werefrequently held there afterwards (1Sa 7:11;1Sa 10:17); and it was but a shortdistance from Shiloh. The phrase, “unto the Lord,” may betaken in its usual sense, as denoting consultation of the oracle.This circumstance, together with the convention being called “theassembly of the people of God,” seems to indicate, that amid theexcited passions of the nation, those present felt the profoundgravity of the occasion and adopted the best means of maintaining abecoming deportment.
Fuente: Jamieson, Fausset and Brown’s Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible
Then all the children of Israel went out,…. Of their tribes, cities, habitations, not every individual of them, but some of the chief of them, with a select company with them:
and the congregation was gathered together as one man; with as much unanimity and ease met together in one place, at the same time, as if only one man had been pitched upon and deputed for that purpose:
from Dan even to Beersheba, from the city Dan, lately built, which was in the most northern parts of the land of Canaan, to Beersheba, a city in the most southern part, which included all the tribes in the land of Canaan, who all, excepting Benjamin, assembled:
with the land of Gilead; which lay on the other side Jordan, inhabited by the two tribes of Reuben and Dan, and the half tribe of Manasseh, who also came on this occasion:
unto the Lord in Mizpeh; a city which lay upon the borders of Judah and Benjamin, and is therefore assigned to them both, Jos 15:38 for this was not Mizpeh in the land of Gilead, but a city near to Shiloh; and, according to Fuller b, eight miles from Gibeah, and so was a convenient place to meet at: it is not to be thought the tribes met here, by a secret impulse upon their minds, but by a summons of some principal persons in one of the tribes, very probably in the tribe of Ephraim, where the Levite dwelt, and in which was the tabernacle of the Lord, and of which the last supreme magistrate was, namely, Joshua; and all having notice of the occasion of it, met very readily; and because they assembled in the name and fear of God, and it was in the cause of God, and as a solemn assembly, a judicial one, in which God was usually present, they are said to be gathered unto him, and the rather, as they sought for direction and counsel from him in the affair before them.
b Pisah-Sight, B. 2. c. 12. p. 259.
Fuente: John Gill’s Exposition of the Entire Bible
War with Benjamin on the Part of All the Other Tribes. – The expectation of the Levite was fulfilled. The congregation of Israel assembled at Mizpeh to pass sentence upon Gibeah, and formed the resolution that they would not rest till the crime was punished as it deserved (Jdg 20:1-10). But when the Benjaminites refused to deliver up the offenders in Gibeah, and prepared to offer resistance, the other tribes began to make war upon Gibeah and Benjamin (Jdg 20:11-19), but were twice defeated by the Benjaminites with very great loss (Jdg 20:20-28). At length, however, they succeeded by an act of stratagem in taking Gibeah and burning it to the ground, and completely routing the Benjaminites, and also in putting to death all the men and cattle that they found in the other towns of this tribe, and laying the towns in ashes, whereby the whole of the tribe of Benjamin was annihilated, with the exception of a very small remnant (vv. 29-48).
Jdg 20:1-2 Decree of the Congregation concerning Gibeah. – Jdg 20:1, Jdg 20:2. All the Israelites went out (rose up from their dwelling-places) to assemble together as a congregation like one man; all the tribes from Dan, the northern boundary of the land (i.e., Dan-laish, Jdg 18:29), to Beersheba, the most southerly town of Canaan (see at Gen 21:31), and the land of Gilead, i.e., the inhabitants of the land to the east of the Jordan, “ to Jehovah at Mizpeh ” in Benjamin, i.e., the present Nebi-samwil, in the neighbourhood of Kirjath-jearim, on the western border of the tribe of Benjamin (see at Jos 18:26). It by no means follows with certainty from the expression “to Jehovah,” that there was a sanctuary at Mizpeh, or that the ark of the covenant was taken thither, but simply that the meeting took place in the sight of Jehovah, or that the congregation assembled together to hold a judicial court, which they held in the name of Jehovah, analogous to the expression el – Elohim in Exo 21:6; Exo 22:7. It was not essential to a judicial proceeding that the ark should be present. At this assembly the pinnoth (the corner-pillars) of the whole nation presented themselves, i.e., the heads and fathers as the supports of the congregation or of the sate organism (vid., 1Sa 14:38; Isa 19:13), even of all the tribes of Israel four hundred thousand men on foot, drawing the sword, i.e., armed foot soldiers ready for battle.
Jdg 20:3 “ The Benjaminites heard that the children of Israel (the rest of the Israelites, the eleven tribes) had come up to Mizpeh; ” but they themselves were not found there. This follows from the fact that nothing is said about the Benjaminites coming, and still more clearly from Jdg 20:13, where it is stated that the assembled tribes sent men to the Benjaminites, after holding their deliberations and forming their resolutions, to call them to account for the crime that had been committed in the midst of them. Consequently the question with which the whole affair was opened, “ Say, how did this wicked deed take place? ” is not to be regarded as addressed to the two parties, the inhabitants of Gibeah of the Benjaminites and the Levite ( Bertheau), but as a summons to all who were assembled to relate what any one knew respecting the occurrence.
Jdg 20:4-7 Then the Levite, the husband of the murdered woman, described the whole affair. , the owners or citizens of Gibeah (see at Jdg 9:2). “ Me they intended to kill: ” the Levite draws this conclusion from what had happened to his wife; the men of Gibeah had not expressed any such intention in Jdg 19:22. “ All the country ( lit. field) of the inheritance of Israel, ” i.e., all the land of the Israelites. is applied to the vice of lewdness, as in Lev 18:17, which was to be punished with death. , “ give yourselves ( as dat. comm.) word and counsel here, ” i.e., make up your minds and pass sentence (vid., 2Sa 16:20). , here, where you are all assembled together.
Jdg 20:8-10 Then all the people rose up as one man, saying, “ We will not any of us go into his tent, neither will we any of us return to his house, ” sc., till this crime is punished. The sentence follows in Jdg 20:9: “ This is the thing that we will do, ” i.e., this is the way in which we will treat Gibeah: “ against it by lot ” (sc., we will act). The Syriac gives the sense correctly – We will cast lots upon it; but the lxx quite erroneously supply (we will go up); and in accordance with this, many expositors connect the words with Jdg 20:10 in the following sense: “We will choose one man out of every ten by lot, to supply the army with the necessary provision during the expedition.” This is quite a mistake, because in this way a subordinate point, which only comes into consideration in connection with the execution of the sentence, would be made the chief point, and the sentence itself would not be given at all. The words “ against it by lot ” contain the resolution that was formed concerning the sinful town, and have all the enigmatical brevity of judicial sentences, and are to be explained from the course laid down in the Mosaic law with regard to the Canaanites, who were to be exterminated, and their land divided by lot among the Israelites. Consequently the meaning is simply this: “Let us proceed with the lot against Gibeah,” i.e., let us deal with it as with the towns of the Canaanites, conquer it, lay it in ashes, and distribute its territory by lot. In Jdg 20:10 a subordinate circumstance is mentioned, which was necessary to enable them to carry out the resolution that had been made. As the assembled congregation had determined to keep together for the purpose of carrying on war (Jdg 20:8), it was absolutely necessary that resources should be provided for those who were actively engaged in the war. For this purpose they chose one man in every ten “ to fetch provision for the people, ” , “ that they might do on their coming to Gibeah of Benjamin according to all the folly which had been done in Israel, ” i.e., might punish the wickedness in Gibeah as it deserved.
Jdg 20:11 Thus the men of Israel assembled together against Gibeah, united as one man. , lit. as comrades, simply serves to strengthen the expression “as one man.” With this remark, which indicates briefly the carrying out of the resolution that was adopted, the account of the meeting of the congregation is brought to a close; but the actual progress of the affair is really anticipated, inasmuch as what is related in Jdg 20:12-21 preceded the expedition in order of time.
Fuente: Keil & Delitzsch Commentary on the Old Testament
| The Combination Against Gibeah. | B. C. 1410. |
1 Then all the children of Israel went out, and the congregation was gathered together as one man, from Dan even to Beer-sheba, with the land of Gilead, unto the LORD in Mizpeh. 2 And the chief of all the people, even of all the tribes of Israel, presented themselves in the assembly of the people of God, four hundred thousand footmen that drew sword. 3 (Now the children of Benjamin heard that the children of Israel were gone up to Mizpeh.) Then said the children of Israel, Tell us, how was this wickedness? 4 And the Levite, the husband of the woman that was slain, answered and said, I came into Gibeah that belongeth to Benjamin, I and my concubine, to lodge. 5 And the men of Gibeah rose against me, and beset the house round about upon me by night, and thought to have slain me: and my concubine have they forced, that she is dead. 6 And I took my concubine, and cut her in pieces, and sent her throughout all the country of the inheritance of Israel: for they have committed lewdness and folly in Israel. 7 Behold, ye are all children of Israel; give here your advice and counsel. 8 And all the people arose as one man, saying, We will not any of us go to his tent, neither will we any of us turn into his house. 9 But now this shall be the thing which we will do to Gibeah; we will go up by lot against it; 10 And we will take ten men of a hundred throughout all the tribes of Israel, and a hundred of a thousand, and a thousand out of ten thousand, to fetch victual for the people, that they may do, when they come to Gibeah of Benjamin, according to all the folly that they have wrought in Israel. 11 So all the men of Israel were gathered against the city, knit together as one man.
Here is, I. A general meeting of all the congregation of Israel to examine the matter concerning the Levite’s concubine, and to consider what was to be done upon it, Jdg 20:1; Jdg 20:2. It does not appear that they were summoned by the authority of any one common head, but they came together by the consent and agreement, as it were, of one common heart, fired with a holy zeal for the honour of God and Israel. 1. The place of their meeting was Mizpeh; they gathered together unto the Lord there, for Mizpeh was so very near to Shiloh that their encampment might very well be supposed to reach from Mizpeh to Shiloh. Shiloh was a small town, and therefore, when there was a general meeting of the people to represent themselves before God, they chose Mizpeh for their head-quarters, which was the next adjoining city of note, perhaps because they were not willing to give that trouble to Shiloh which so great an assembly would occasion, it being the resident of the priests that attended the tabernacle. 2. The persons that met were all Israel, from Dan (the city very lately so called, ch. xviii. 29) in the north to Beersheba in the south, with the land of Gilead (that is, the tribes on the other side Jordan), all as one man, so unanimous were they in their concern for the public good. Here was an assembly of the people of God, not a convocation of the Levites and priests, though a Levite was the person principally concerned in the cause, but an assembly of the people, to whom the Levite referred himself with an Appello populum–I appeal to the people. The people of God were 400,000 footmen that drew the sword, that is, were armed and disciplined, and fit for service, and some of them perhaps such as had known the wars of Canaan, ch. iii. 1. In this assembly of all Israel, the chief (or corners) of the people (for rulers are the corner-stones of the people, that keep all together) presented themselves as the representatives of the rest. They rendered themselves at their respective posts, at the head of the thousands and hundreds, the fifties and tens, over which they presided; for so much order and government, we may suppose, at least, they had among them, though they had no general or commander-in-chief. So that here was, (1.) A general congress of the states for counsel. The chief of the people presented themselves, to lead and direct in this affair. (2.) A general rendezvous of the militia for action, all that drew sword and were men of war (v. 17), not hirelings nor pressed men, but the best freeholders, that went at their own charge. Israel were above 600,000 when they came into Canaan, and we have reason to think they were at this time much increased, rather than diminished; but then all between twenty and sixty were military men, now we may suppose more than the one half exempted from bearing arms to cultivate the land; so that these were as the trained bands. The militia of the two tribes and a half were 40,000 (Josh. iv. 13), but the tribes were many more.
II. Notice given to the tribe of Benjamin of this meeting (v. 3): They heard that the children of Israel had gone up to Mizpeh. Probably they had a legal summons sent them to appear with their brethren, that the cause might be fairly debated, before any resolutions were taken up upon it, and so the mischiefs that followed would have been happily prevented; but the notice they had of this meeting rather hardened and exasperated them than awakened them to think of the things that belonged to their peace and honour.
III. A solemn examination of the crime charged upon the men of Gibeah. A very horrid representation of it had been made by the report of the messengers that were sent to call them together, but it was fit it should be more closely enquired into, because such things are often made worse than really they were; a committee therefore was appointed to examine the witnesses (upon oath, no doubt) and to report the matter. It is only the testimony of the Levite himself that is here recorded, but it is probable his servant, and the old man, were examined, and gave in their testimony, for that more than one were examined appears by the original (v. 3), which is, Tell you us; and the law was that none should be put to death, much less so many, upon the testimony of one witness only. The Levite gives a particular account of the matter: that he came into Gibeah only as a traveller to lodge there, not giving the least shadow of suspicion that he designed them any ill turn (v. 4), and that the men of Gibeah, even those that were of substance among them, that should have been a protection to the stranger within their gates, riotously set upon the house where he lodged, and thought to slay him; he could not, for shame relate the demand which they, without shame, made, ch. xix. 22. They declared their sin as Sodom, even the sin of Sodom, but his modesty would not suffer him to repeat it; it was sufficient to say they would have slain him, for he would rather have been slain than have submitted to their villany; and, if they had got him into their hands, they would have abused him to death, witness what they had done to his concubine: They have forced her that she is dead, v. 5. And, to excite in his countrymen an indignation at this wickedness, he had sent pieces of the mangled body to all the tribes, which had fetched them together to bear their testimony against the lewdness and folly committed in Israel, v. 6. All lewdness is folly, but especially lewdness in Israel. For those to defile their own bodies who have the honourable seal of the covenant in their flesh, for those to defy the divine vengeance to whom it is so clearly revealed from heaven–Nabal is their name, and folly is with them. He concludes his declaration with an appeal to the judgment of the court (v. 7): You are all children of Israel, and therefore you know law and judgment, Esth. i. 13. “You are a holy people to God, and have a dread of every thing which will dishonour God and defile the land; you are of the same community, members of the same body, and therefore likely to feel from the distempers of it; you are children of Israel, that ought to take particular care of the Levites, God’s tribe, among you, and therefore give your advice and counsel what is to be done.”
IV. The resolution they came to hereupon, which was that, being now together, they would not disperse till they had seen vengeance taken upon this wicked city, which was the reproach and scandal of their nation. Observe, 1. Their zeal against the lewdness that was committed. They would not return to their houses, how much soever their families and their affairs at home wanted them, till they had vindicated the honour of God and Israel, and recovered with their swords, if it could not be had otherwise, that satisfaction for the crime which the justice of the nation called for, v. 8. By this they showed themselves children of Israel indeed, that they preferred the public interest before their private concerns. 2. Their prudence in sending out a considerable body of their forces to fetch provisions for the rest, Jdg 20:9; Jdg 20:10. One of ten, and he chosen by lot, 40,000 in all, must go to their respective countries, whence they came, to fetch bread and other necessaries for the subsistence of this great army; for when they came from home they took with them provisions only for a journey to Mizpeh, not for an encampment (which might prove long) before Gibeah. This was to prevent their scattering to forage for themselves, for, if they had done this, it would have been hard to get them all together again, especially all in so good a mind. Note, When there appears in people a pious zeal for any good work it is best to strike while the iron is hot, for such zeal is apt to cool quickly if the prosecution of the work be delayed. Let it never be said that we left that good work to be done to-morrow which we could as well have done to-day. 3. Their unanimity in these counsels, and the execution of them. The resolution was voted, Nemine contradicente–Without a dissenting voice (v. 8); it was one and all; and, when it was put in execution, they were knit together as one man, v. 11. This was their glory and strength, that the several tribes had no separate interests when the common good was concerned.
Fuente: Matthew Henry’s Whole Bible Commentary
Judges – Chapter 20
Israel Gathers Against Benjamin, vs. 1-11
The incident precipitated by the story of the Levite’s concubine occurred early in the period of the judges, after the time when both Joshua and Eleazar had died. Phinehas had become high priest in his father’s stead (see verse 28). There may have not been a judge over the people at the time, for none is mentioned, indicating Israel’s lack of Godgiven leadership. It must have been near the time of Othniel’s judgeship (Jdg 3:5-11), probably preceding it.
Every area of Israel was represented among those who gathered to seek vengeance for the Levite, including those from Gilead on the east of Jordan, to the number of four hundred thousand men able to fight. The gathering point was Mizpeh. There are six places of this name mentioned in the Bible. This is most likely the one which was located in the tribe of Benjamin, between Bethel and Ramah. The Benjamites were not sympathetic to the Levite’s cause, though they were aware of the gathering of the other tribes.
Once they had gathered, the men of Israel inquired of the Levite what great wickedness had caused him to dismember his concubine and send her remains throughout the country to arouse the people. Though his story to the assemblage was true in the main, the Levite presented a story which certainly concealed his own impropriety. He told nothing of why his concubine had run away, or of his drunken partying, or of his forcing his concubine into the lecherous arms of the mob to save himself, though he did refer to the conduct of the men of Gibeah as “lewdness and folly.” He then called on the people as “men of Israel,” implying their full capability to speak on the matter, to give counsel and advice as to what should be done, (Jas 1:5).
It is well to call to attention here that no one had consulted the Lord’s will, either privately, through a prophet, or through the high priest. It is certainly apparent that they felt they knew exactly what needed to be done and agreed to muster every tenth person in all the tribes to provide food for the rest while they rose in a body, “knit together as one man,” to demand justice of Benjamin.
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
THE CRY FOR VENGEANCE
(Jdg. 20:1-48.)
HOMILETICS
1. This cry was universal (Jdg. 20:1).
From Dan to Beershebah, with Gilead. There was not a dissentient voice.
2. They were in earnest (Jdg. 20:2). Such numbers.
3. Their desire for accurate information (Jdg. 20:3-7).
4. The vengeance must be summary (Jdg. 20:8 etc.).
5. They were united in their purpose (Jdg. 20:11).
6. A whole tribe takes part with the wicked city (Jdg. 20:13-14).
7. The men of zeal act in a spirit of presumption and self confidence, and are defeated (Jdg. 20:18-25).
The first step was wrong. They took the matter into their own hands, and decided for themselves to punish Benjamin. And then having settled that, they only asked God, Who shall go up first? Thus to put God out of His right place, and decide for themselves without Him was a very grave error. And He is jealous of the glory which is due to His great name. Even on the second day their first step was to set the battle on array against Benjamin, and then they come, as a second step, to ask the question: Shall we go up at all? Which means, shall we do that which already we have decided to do? God will not be mocked, so He again left them to themselves. But on the third day they were full of penitence, humiliation, and reverence, and left themselves entirely in His hands. At once they gained their point (Jdg. 20:26-28.)
8. The temporary success of the wicked, no proof of the Divine favour. Jdg. 20:34-35.
The Benjamites being twice successful in pitched battles, thought they were to be successful all through, and that God was not frowning on their conduct. So is it with many. These things thou hast done, and I kept silence, etc. (Ecc. 8:11). Yet suddenly destruction cometh; as fishes are caught in the net, or birds in the snare.
9. When the hour of the wicked comes there is no helper. Jdg. 20:40-45.
Here was more than a mere chastisement. It was almost an annihilation of a tribe in Israel. It was the day of the Lord, for men convicted of great crimes, and now their sins came into remembrance. The men of Gibeah were swept away with the besom of destruction, and all the wicked in that sinning land were cut down as the grass, and withered as the green herbs. The sword before, the fire behind, and the hosts of 11 tribes all around them, there was no escape. All perished, except a very small remant, who took refuge in one of Natures strong fastnesses. An awful beacon to warn generations to come!
Fuente: The Preacher’s Complete Homiletical Commentary Edited by Joseph S. Exell
The War Against the Benjamites Jdg. 20:1-14
Then all the children of Israel went out, and the congregation was gathered together as one man, from Dan even to Beer-sheba, with the land of Gilead unto the Lord in Mizpeh.
2 And the chief of all the people, even of all the tribes of Israel, presented themselves in the assembly of the people of God, four hundred thousand footmen that drew sword.
3 (Now the children of Benjamin heard that the children of Israel were gone up to Mizpeh.) Then said the children of Israel, Tell us, how was this wickedness?
4 And the Levite, the husband of the woman that was slain, answered and said, I came into Gibeah that belongeth to Benjamin, I and my concubine, to lodge.
5 And the men of Gibeah rose against me, and beset the house round about upon me by night, and thought to have slain me: and my concubine have they forced, that she is dead.
6 And I took my concubine, and cut her in pieces, and sent her throughout all the country of the inheritance of Israel: for they have committed lewdness and folly in Israel.
7 Behold, ye are all children of Israel; give here your advice and counsel.
8 And all the people arose as one man, saying, We will not any of us go to his tent, neither will we any of us turn into his house.
9 But now this shall be the thing which we will do to Gibeah; we will go up by lot against it;
10 And we will take ten men of a hundred throughout all the tribes of Israel and a hundred of a thousand, and a thousand out of ten thousand, to fetch victual for the people, that they may do, when they come to Gibeah of Benjamin, according to all the folly that they have wrought in Israel.
11 So all the men of Israel were gathered against the city, knit together as one man.
12 And the tribes of Israel sent men through all the tribe of Benjamin, saying, What wickedness is this that is done among you?
13 Now therefore deliver us the men, the children of Belial, which are in Gibeah, that we may put them to death, and put away evil from Israel. But the children of Benjamin would not hearken to the voice of their brethren the children of Israel:
14 But the children of Benjamin gathered themselves together out of the cities unto Gibeah, to go out to battle against the children of Israel.
1.
Where was Mizpeh? Jdg. 20:1
Mizpeh is known as Neby Samuel, not far from Ramah, and is visible from Jerusalem. It is a poor village seated on an elevated ridge. Gibeah would be plainly visible from Mizpeh, as it was the first high hill east of Mizpeh. As the men of Gibeah looked directly westward, they would see Mizpeh as the highest hill directly west of their situation. Thus the armies of Israel were in plain site of the men of Benjamin as they gathered to defend the men of Gibeah.
2.
Did all of Israels army come out to battle? Jdg. 20:2
When the men of war were counted in Numbers, chapter one, there were 603,550 men twenty years of age and older. As they paused before crossing Jordan into Canaan, they were counted again. At that time Israels men of war totaled 601,730 (Numbers 26). On many occasions it was necessary for some of the men eligible for battle to stay behind to care for the women, children, flocks and fields. This must have been the case in this instance, since 400,000 would hardly be all of the men old enough to go to war.
3.
Did the Levite give a true account of the crime at Gibeah? Jdg. 20:4-5
As the men of Israel came together to avenge the crime committed in Gibeah, they asked how the wickedness occurred, The Levite, the husband of the woman who was slain, told them how, when he came to Gibeah to find lodging, the men of Gibeah rose against him besetting the house round about by night. He also said that they intended to slay him. In the account of the events recorded in chapter 19, no mention is made of their intention of killing him; but their evil treatment of him might have resulted in this tragic end for the Levite. They did kill his concubine. All the other details fit, and the evidence was properly presented to the men of Israel for their judgment.
4.
Why did Israel decide to go against the men of Benjamin by lot? Jdg. 20:9
The men of Israel outnumbered the men of Benjamin many times. In the mustering of the troops there are 400,000 men of war listed in Israel. Only 26,000 armed men were found in Benjamin. The men of Israel must have felt it was unnecessary for all of the soldiers to go into this battle. Furthermore, they wanted the leading of the Lord and asked for Him to indicate which one of the tribes should take the lead in the battle.
5.
Why were so many needed to prepare victuals? Jdg. 20:10
Forty thousand men were assigned to the task of providing the necessary provisions for the rest of the fighting men. Such an arrangement is not at all uncommon. When David went to battle against the Amalekites, he took only two-thirds of his men into the actual battle. The rest of them were weary and were left behind to guard the baggage (1Sa. 30:10). On one occasion Moses called for only 1,000 men from each of the tribes of Israel to go to war (Num. 31:4). In hardly any situation would people be able to sustain an army in the field unless there were those who were assigned to the task of seeing that they had the necessary supplies. It would probably take a tenth of the able-bodied men to keep the rest of the men in fighting shape.
6.
Why would the men of Benjamin not surrender the men of Gibeah? Jdg. 20:13
They let their love of their tribesmen overpower their sense of right and justice. Repeated mention is made of the men of Benjamin coming out of the cities (Jdg. 20:14-15). Some Bible students have gathered from this that the men of Benjamin were rulers who had settled in towns and subdued the Canaanites who settled as dependents in the villages. Still others believe that the Benjaminites formed military brotherhoods living unmarried in the towns. Those who take this position believe this accounts for the abominable crime to which the inhabitants were addicted. It is further held that the Benjaminites then defended these sinful unmarried brotherhoods of military men. Such inferences are extremely uncertain, but at any rate the men of Benjamin seemed fiercely determined to protect the criminals in Gibeah.
7.
From what cities did the men of Gibeah gather? Jdg. 20:14
When territory was assigned to the men of Benjamin, their land included such villages and cities as Luz, Ataroth-Addar, Beth-Horon the Upper and Beth-Horon the Lower, Kiriath-jearim, and Jebus or Jerusalem. Still others were Jericho, Beth-Hoglah, Emak-Keziz, Beth-Arbah, Zemarim, Geba, Gibeon, Ramah, Beeroth, Mizpeh, Chepirah, Mozah, Rekem, Irpeel, Gibeath and Gibeah. In fact, twenty-six different cities are listed in Joshua, chapter 18.
Fuente: College Press Bible Study Textbook Series
(1) The congregation was gathered together.This phrase is one which was familiar to the Israelites in the desert. It disappears after the days of Solomon (1Ki. 12:20).
From Dan even to Beer-sheba.This expression would be like from John o Groats house to Lands End for England and Scotland (1Sa. 3:18; 1Sa. 17:11, &c.). Unless it be added by an anachronism, because it had become familiar when the Book of Judges was written, we should certainly infer from it that, early as were these events, they were subsequent to the migratory raid of the tribe of Dan to Laish.
With the land of Gilead.The Trans-Jordanic tribes obeyed the summons, with the exception of the town of Jabesh-Gilead.
Unto the Lord.See Note on Jdg. 11:11. There is not, however, the same difficulty in supposing that the ark and Urim was taken to this Mizpeh, for we see in Jdg. 20:27 that it was taken to Bethel.
In Mizpeh.See Note on Jdg. 11:11. This Mizpeh is not the same as the one there mentioned, but is probably the bold hill and watch-tower now known as Neby Samwil, and called Mountjoie by the Crusaders, from which the traveller gains his first glimpse of Jerusalem. In the Hebrew the name has the article, the watch-tower. It was the scene of great gatherings of the tribes in the days of Samuel (1Sa. 7:2; 1Sa. 10:17) and of Solomon (2Ch. 1:3, probably), and even after the captivity (2Ki. 25:23).
Fuente: Ellicott’s Commentary for English Readers (Old and New Testaments)
THE COUNCIL AT MIZPEH, Jdg 20:1-11.
1. From Dan even to Beer-sheba The common formula to designate the entire country, from its northern to its southern boundary. Compare 1Sa 3:20; 2Sa 3:10 ; 2Sa 17:11; 2Sa 24:2; 2Sa 24:15 ; 1Ki 4:25. In the later books the formula is reversed: 1Ch 21:2; 2Ch 30:5. On Dan, see at Jdg 18:7; Jdg 18:29; on Beer-sheba, Gen 21:31.
Land of Gilead The country east of the Jordan. See on Jdg 10:8; Jdg 10:17.
Unto the Lord The meaning is, that the assembly was held as in the sight of the Lord. The tribes came together in the name of the Lord, and bound themselves by solemn oaths and execrations to destroy Benjamin. Compare Jdg 21:15; see note on Jdg 11:11.
In Mizpeh Not the Mizpeh in the land of Gilead, where the eastern tribes assembled in the time of Jephthah to prepare for war against Ammon, (Jdg 10:17,) but the Mizpeh of Benjamin, which is mentioned in Jos 18:25-26, in connexion with Gibeon and Ramah, and which was probably identical with the modern Neby Samwil, a little northwest of Jerusalem. See note on 1Sa 7:5. This was an appropriate place for the council. Commanding a wide prospect, it was a central place for all the tribes, and was in the territory of Benjamin, near the spot where the offence took place, so that all proper witnesses to the case might be near at hand.
Fuente: Whedon’s Commentary on the Old and New Testaments
Chapter 20. The Response.
In this chapter the Levite’s appeal to the tribal confederacy of Israel is answered. The case is heard and the children of Benjamin are commanded to deliver the wrongdoers for punishment in accordance with the law and the covenant. Their refusal to do so is a breach of covenant which the others see as bringing God’s wrath on themselves unless they do something about it. Thus they seek to put pressure on them to do so.
When this also is rejected they go in to do it themselves. In order, in their view, to avoid the wrath of God, the tribal confederacy seek to enforce their decree. This results in a tribal war which is evidence of a serious breach of covenant on behalf of ‘Benjamin’, and eventually, after two setbacks, they defeat the children of Benjamin with God’s backing, and exact the vengeance which tradition required, the near extermination of Benjamin.
Jdg 20:1
‘ Then all the children of Israel went out, and the congregation was assembled as one man, from Dan even to Beersheba, along with the land of Gilead, to Yahweh at Mizpah.’
After messengers had been sent between the tribes the whole of Israel gathered at Mizpah. This may have resulted from a call from the central sanctuary at Bethel, or possibly on the initiative of the leaders of the tribe of Ephraim where the Levite lived.
“All.” This probably means that all the tribes were represented, apart from Benjamin, rather than that literally all the people came. This view is confirmed in Jdg 20:3.
“From Dan to Beersheba”, a rough description of the land possessed west of Jordan, a description regularly used in the Old Testament. Dan was the furthest north of the towns of Israel, and Beersheba the furthest south. ‘Along with the land of Gilead’. Those east of Jordan were also included in the call up, ‘Gilead’ being used in its widest sense as representing the whole. All Israel were involved. The Levite had achieved his purpose. He had shocked them into action and united the tribes.
“The congregation.” A technical term for the people of God seen as one before God, regularly found in the Pentateuch.
“As one man.” The tribal confederation were gathered in unity, which was not always true of them, and all were agreed that the matter should be dealt with.
“To Yahweh.” This was a recognition that they had gathered to see to the implementing of the covenant of Yahweh, which He had made with them and to which He demanded obedience as their Overlord. It was seen as matter for the whole confederation. They were gathered before God.
“At Mizpah.” Meaning ‘a place of watching’. It was a town of Benjamin, eleven kilometres (seven miles) north of Jerusalem, to the left of the main road, and in the neighbourhood of Gibeah and Ramah (1Ki 15:22). It would be a regular gathering place for Israel under Samuel ( 1Sa 7:5 ; 1Sa 7:16; 1Sa 10:17), presumably because of its suitability. It was one of the three places where he sat to judge the people (1Sa 7:16).
Fuente: Commentary Series on the Bible by Peter Pett
Jdg 20:8 And all the people arose as one man, saying, We will not any of us go to his tent, neither will we any of us turn into his house.
Jdg 20:8
Jdg 20:18 And the children of Israel arose, and went up to the house of God, and asked counsel of God, and said, Which of us shall go up first to the battle against the children of Benjamin? And the LORD said, Judah shall go up first.
Jdg 20:18
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 .”
Jdg 20:18 “and asked counsel of God” – Comments – In order to be successful, one must seek God’s counsel to know exactly how he desired to deal with them. In a business, a manager will not make any major decisions for the company without consulting the directors for advice and direction. If he did, the company would fail.
Jdg 20:18 “And the LORD said, Judah shall go up first” – Comments – Strong says the name Judah ( ) (H3063) means, “celebrated.” He says this name is derived from the primitive root ( ) (H3034), which literally means, “to hold out the hand,” thus “praise” (Gen 29:35). Jacob prophesied that Judah was to be the leader over his brethren and victor over his enemies (Gen 49:8). Thus, it was Judah that God choose to lead the children of Israel through the wilderness and into battles.
Gen 29:35, “And she conceived again, and bare a son: and she said, Now will I praise the LORD: therefore she called his name Judah; and left bearing.”
Gen 49:8, “Judah, thou art he whom thy brethren shall praise: thy hand shall be in the neck of thine enemies; thy father’s children shall bow down before thee.”
Num 2:9, “All that were numbered in the camp of Judah were an hundred thousand and fourscore thousand and six thousand and four hundred, throughout their armies. These shall first set forth.”
Jdg 20:22 And the people the men of Israel encouraged themselves, and set their battle again in array in the place where they put themselves in array the first day.
Jdg 20:22
Jdg 20:22, “And the people the men of Israel encouraged themselves, and set their battle again in array in the place where they put themselves in array the first day.”
The Philistines were able to encourage themselves and win the battle. See:
1Sa 4:7-9, “And the Philistines were afraid, for they said, God is come into the camp. And they said, Woe unto us! for there hath not been such a thing heretofore. Woe unto us! who shall deliver us out of the hand of these mighty Gods? these are the Gods that smote the Egyptians with all the plagues in the wilderness. Be strong, and quit yourselves like men , O ye Philistines, that ye be not servants unto the Hebrews, as they have been to you: quit yourselves like men, and fight.”
Note that there was another time when David encouraged himself in the Lord.
1Sa 30:6, “And David was greatly distressed; for the people spake of stoning him, because the soul of all the people was grieved, every man for his sons and for his daughters: but David encouraged himself in the LORD his God .”
King David told his son Solomon to be strong like a man should be.
1Ki 2:2, ”I go the way of all the earth: be thou strong therefore, and shew thyself a man;”
God told Job to gird up his loins like a man and interact with Him in dialogue.
Job 38:3, “Gird up now thy loins like a man; for I will demand of thee, and answer thou me.”
Paul exhorted the Corinthians to be strong like a man as they pursued a lifestyle of sanctification within their church members.
1Co 16:13, “Watch ye, stand fast in the faith, quit you like men, be strong.”
Jdg 20:26 Then all the children of Israel, and all the people, went up, and came unto the house of God, and wept, and sat there before the LORD, and fasted that day until even, and offered burnt offerings and peace offerings before the LORD.
Jdg 20:26
Jdg 20:28 And Phinehas, the son of Eleazar, the son of Aaron, stood before it in those days,) saying, Shall I yet again go out to battle against the children of Benjamin my brother, or shall I cease? And the LORD said, Go up; for to morrow I will deliver them into thine hand.
Jdg 20:28
Jdg 20:28 “And the LORD said, Go up; for to morrow I will deliver them into thine hand” – Comments – They learned that it is not by might, nor power, 400,00 men (Jdg 20:17) against 33,000 (Jdg 20:15), but by God’s Spirit (Zec 4:6, 1 Cor 20:15).
Zec 4:6, “Then he answered and spake unto me, saying, This is the word of the LORD unto Zerubbabel, saying, Not by might, nor by power, but by my spirit, saith the LORD of hosts.”
2Ch 20:15, “And he said, Hearken ye, all Judah, and ye inhabitants of Jerusalem, and thou king Jehoshaphat, Thus saith the LORD unto you, Be not afraid nor dismayed by reason of this great multitude; for the battle is not yours, but God’s .”
Fuente: Everett’s Study Notes on the Holy Scriptures
The Benjamites Refuse to Deliver up the Guilty
v. 1. Then all the children of Israel went out, v. 2. And the chief of all the people, even of all the tribes of Israel, presented themselves in the assembly of the people of God, v. 3. (Now, the children of Benjamin heard that the children of Israel were gone up to Mizpeh. ) v. 4. And the Levite, the husband of the woman that was slain, v. 5. And the men of Gibeah, v. 6. And I took my concubine, and cut her in pieces, and sent her throughout all the country of the inheritance of Israel; for they have committed lewdness, v. 7. Behold, ye are all children of Israel, v. 8. And all the people arose as one man, v. 9. But now, this shall be the thing which we will do to Gibeah: we will go up by lot against it, v. 10. and we will take ten men of an hundred throughout all the tribes of Israel and an hundred of a thousand and a thousand out of ten thousand, v. 11. So all the men of Israel were gathered against the city, knit together, v. 12. And the tribes of Israel sent men through all the tribe, v. 13. Now, therefore, deliver us the men, the children of Belial, which are in Gibeah, that we may put them to death, and put away evil from Israel.
Fuente: The Popular Commentary on the Bible by Kretzmann
EXPOSITION
Jdg 20:1
Went out, i.e. from their several homes to the place of meeting. The congregation. The technical term (not, however, found in Samuel and Kings, except in 1Ki 12:20) for the whole Israelitish people (Exo 12:3; Exo 16:1, Exo 16:2, Exo 16:9; Le Exo 4:15; Jos 18:1, etc.). From Dan to Beersheba. Dan, or Laish (Jdg 18:29), being the northernmost point, and Beersheba (now Bir-es-saba, the springs so called) in the south of Judah the southernmost. It cannot be inferred with certainty from this expression that the Danite occupation of Laish had taken place at this time, though it may have done so, because we do not know when this narrative was written, and the phrase is only used as a proverbial expression familiar in the writer’s time. The land of Gilead. In its widest sense, meaning the whole of trans-Jordanic Israel (see Jdg 10:8; Jdg 11:1, etc.). Mizpeh, or, as it is always written in Hebrew, ham-Mizpeh, with the article (see Jdg 21:1). The Mizpeh here mentioned is not the same as the Mizpeh of Jdg 10:17; Jdg 11:11, Jdg 11:29, Jdg 11:34, which was in Gilead, but was situated in the tribe of Benjamin (Jos 18:26). That it was a national place of meeting in the time of Samuel is clear from 1Sa 7:5-12, and we learn from 1Sa 7:16 of that same chapter that it was one of the places to which Samuel went on circuit. We find it a place of national meeting also in 1Sa 10:17, and even so late as 2Ki 25:23, and in the time of the Maccabees (1 Macc. 3:46). Its vicinity to Shiloh, where the tabernacle was, was probably one reason why it was made a centre to the whole congregation (see especially 1Sa 10:17, 1Sa 10:22, 1Sa 10:25). Its exact site is not known with certainty, but it is thought to be that of Nebi Samuil, from which Jerusalem is seen at about two hours’ distance to the south-east. Unto the Lord, i.e. in the presence of the tabernacle, which was doubtless brought there, on so solemn an occasion, from Shiloh.
Jdg 20:2
The chief. The word here used means the corner-stones of a building. Hence it is applied to the chief men, who, as it were, bind and keep together the whole people. Their presence at this great meeting is mentioned to show that it was a regularly constituted assembly of all Israel. The same phrase occurs 1Sa 14:38, and Isa 19:13 (the stay of the tribes, A.V.). The numbers (400,000) are of course those of the whole congregation. The assembly of the people of God. So, Num 16:3; Num 20:4, Israel is called the congregation of the Lord; and Neh 13:1, the congregation of God. Not dissimilar was the first great council of the Church, consisting of the Church ( ) i.e. the assembly of disciples) and the apostles and elders (who were the cornerstones, the lapides angulares, thereof). See Act 15:4, Act 15:6, Act 15:12. Four hundred thousand. See Act 15:17. The enumeration in the wilderness gave 603,550 (Num 2:32; Num 11:21), and at the second numbering 601,730 (Num 26:51). In 1Sa 11:8 a general assembly of the whole people, summoned by sending a piece of the flesh of a yoke of oxen “throughout all the coasts of Israel,” amounted to 330,000. David’s numbering gave of Israel 800,000, and of Judah 500,000, in all 1,300,000; but these were not assembled together, but numbered at their own homes. Jehoshaphat’s men of war amounted to 1,160,000 according to 2Ch 17:14-18. In the time of Amaziah there were of Judah alone 300,000 men able to go forth to war (2Ch 24:6).
Jdg 20:3
The children of Benjamin heard, etc. This seems to be mentioned to show that the absence of the Benjamites from the national council was not from ignorance, but from contumacy. Tell as, etc. This was addressed to all whom it might concern. The Levite answered.
Jdg 20:5
And thought to have slain me. This was so far true that it is likely he was in fear of his life; but he doubtless shaped his narrative so as to conceal his own cowardice in the transaction. We have a similar example of an unfaithful narration of facts in the letter of Claudius Lysias to Felix (Act 23:27). The men of Gibeah. The masters, as in Jdg 9:2, meaning the citizens.
Jdg 20:7
Ye are all children of Israel. He appeals to them as men bound to wipe away the shame and disgrace of their common country. He speaks with force and dignity under the sense of a grievous wrong and a crushing sorrow.
Jdg 20:8
The peoplewith the emphatic meaning of the whole people of Israel, the assembly of the people of God, as in Jdg 20:2. As one man. There was but one resolve, and one sentiment, and one expression of opinion, in that vast multitude. Not one would go home till due punishment had been inflicted upon Gibeah of Benjamin. To his tent, i.e. home, as in Jdg 19:9.
Jdg 20:9
We will go up by lot against it. The words we will go up are not in the Hebrew, but are supplied by the Septuagint, who very likely found in their Hebrew copy the word na’aleh, we will go up, which has since (perchance) fallen out of the Hebrew text from its resemblance to the following word ‘aleha against it. The sense will then be, Not one of us will shrink from the dangers of the war; but we will cast lots who shall go up against Gibeah, and who shall be employed in collecting victuals for the army, 40,000 having to be told off for the latter service. And exactly in the same spirit (if indeed the answer was not actually given by lot) they inquired of the Lord who should go up first (in Jdg 20:18), and, we may presume also, who should follow in the subsequent attacks, though this is omitted for brevity. Others, however, think the words against it by lot are purposely abrupt, and that the meaning is that Israel would deal with Gibeah as they had done with the Canaanites, viz; destroy their city, and divide its territory by lot among the other tribes, after the analogy of Jos 18:8-10. But this interpretation is not borne out by what actually happened, nor is the phrase a likely one to have been used.
Jdg 20:12
Tribe of Benjamin. The Hebrew has tribes, meaning probably families, as the word is used Num 4:18. Vice versa, family is used for tribe, Jdg 17:7; Jdg 18:11. What wickedness, etc. The message was perhaps toe sharp and peremptory to be successful. It roused the pride and tribal independence of the Benjamites to resist. We must suppose the message to have preceded in point of time the hostile gathering recorded in Jdg 18:11. It was probably sent before the council broke up (see above, Jdg 7:25; Jdg 8:4, and note).
Jdg 20:13
Children of Belial. See Jdg 19:22, note. There seems to be a reference hero to Deu 13:12-15.
Jdg 20:14
But the children of Benjamin. It should be And the children, etc. It is not dependent upon the preceding verse, but begins a new head of the narrative. From the cities, i.e. the different cities of the tribe of Benjamin, enumerated in Jos 18:21-28, twenty-six in number.
Jdg 20:15
Twenty and six thousand. The numbers of Benjamin in the wilderness were at the first numbering 35,400, and at the second 45,600 (Num 1:36; Num 2:23; Num 26:41). It is impossible to account with certainty for the falling off in the numbers by so many as near 20,000; but perhaps many were slain in the wars of Canaan, and the unsettled times were unfavourable to early marriages. For the whole of Israel there was, as appeared by Jdg 20:2, note, a falling off of nearly 200,000 men, or, to speak exactly, of 175,030. Which were numbered. There is some obscurity in this latter clause; but, in spite of the accents being opposed to it, the A.V. seems certainly right. The rendering acording to the accents, “they (the Benjamites) were numbered, besides the inhabitants of Gibeah, seven hundred chosen men,” makes no sense, and does not explain who the 700 were. The population of Gibeah would be about 5 x 700, i.e. 3500, according to this statement.
Jdg 20:16
Seven hundred men left-handed. It is curious that the tribe of Benjamin, which means son of the right hand, should have this peculiar institution of a corps of left-handed men. Ehud the Benjamite was a man left-handed (Jdg 3:15; see also 1Ch 12:2). The Roman name Scaexola means left-handed. For the use of the sling see 1Sa 17:40, 1Sa 17:49. Diodorus Siculus (quoted by Rosenmuller) mentions the remarkable skill of the inhabitants of the Balearic Islands in the use of the sling, adding, in terms very similar to those of the text, that they seldom miss their aim.
Jdg 20:17
A repetition of the statement in Jdg 20:2.
HOMILETICS
Jdg 20:1-17
Temper.
It is impossible to suppose that the whole tribe of Benjamin really sympathised with the foul deed of the men of Gibeah, or could have felt otherwise than that such a deed deserved the severest punishment that could be inflicted. We must seek the cause, therefore, of their desperate resistance to the just decree of the nation in some other motive than that of consent to their brethren’s “lewdness and folly.” Nor is such motive far to seek. We find it in that unreasonable movement of human pride and selfishness which we commonly call temper; a movement which sets up a man’s own dignity, self-importance, self-will, self-esteem, above the laws of God, above righteousness, justice, truth, and the law of kindness, and yet so blinds him, that in vindication of his own dignity he does the most foolish and degrading actions, lowering himself where he sought to raise himself, making himself ridiculous where he thought to be an object of superior respect. Let us analyse the case of the Benjamites. Had the men of Gibeah belonged to the tribe of Ephraim or Judah, they would no doubt have been forward to join in their punishment. Their natural perceptions of right and wrong, their right feelings of the dishonour done to the whole congregation of Israel, the congregation of God, and of the profanation of the holy name of Jehovah, would have led them to wipe out the stain by the punishment of the offenders. But because the offenders were Benja-mites, immediately all these right feelings were stifled, and in their stead the one selfish feeling that Benjamin would be dishonoured among the tribes, and that they themselves would be degraded in their fellow-tribesmen’s shame, was allowed to prevail. Their pride was wounded and their temper was up. Possibly they had not been properly consulted in the first instance; possibly the message sent to them was too peremptory and haughty; possibly the other tribes, in their just indignation, had scarcely treated them with the deference due to brethren; and if so, this was fresh fuel added to the flame of temper. But the result was that they were incapable of right feeling or of right judgment; that they were blind to what duty and self-interest alike required of them; and that, under the guidance of temper and stubborn pride, they rushed on to their own destruction, braving the wrath of a body nearly sixteen times as powerful as themselves, and withal tarnishing their own reputation by identifying themselves with the basest villainy. We see exactly the same results of temper on a smaller scale every day around us. Men will not do the right thing, or the just thing, or the wise thing, not because they are wicked and unjust and destitute of good sense under ordinary circumstances, but because their tempers are up. Their false pride blinds and enslaves them. They see a personal humiliation in the way of acting rightly; their resentment against individuals for insult or wrong done to them stiffens their necks and hardens their will. If doing right will please them, or promote their interests, they had rather do wrong. They will not do anything they ask, or submit to any of their demands, however just they may be in themselves. And as for their own interests, and even their own good name, they are ready to sacrifice them at the imperious bidding of temper. Much of human unhappiness is caused by temper, which is as injurious to the peace of those who yield to its dictates as to those who are exposed to its outbreaks. It ought not to exist, certainly not to have dominion, in any Christian breast. Fellowship with the cross of Christ is the great help in subduing human pride. As real humility grows, as the mind which was in Christ Jesus is more perfectly formed within, as the old man is crucified with Christ, and the desire to do the perfect will of God displaces more and more the self-will, and the glory of God becomes more entirely the aim sought, in lieu of self-glorification, the dominion of temper becomes enfeebled, till, like a flickering flame, it goes out, and is still before the rising power of the Holy Spirit of God.
HOMILIES BY A.F. MUIR
Jdg 20:1
National atonement.
There are times when a nation is stirred to its depths. Its consciousness is then a religious one. A solemn unity of sentiment pervades it, and prevails over all lesser differences. It is then ready and effective as the servant of the Lord. Observe
I. THE UNIFYING INFLUENCES.
1. A common detestation of the crime.
2. A common danger.
3. The Spirit of Jehovah.
II. THE MEASURE DETERMINED ON. By the council of the nation.
1. Immediate punishment of the criminals.
2. Failing their delivery, the punishment of those who protected them and condoned their wickedness.M.
HOMILIES BY W.F. ADENEY
Jdg 20:11
Union.
I. THE NATURE OF UNION.
1. This implies conjunction. The individuality of the parts is not destroyed when these are united. Each of the separate stones retains its shape after it is built into the common structure, and the union is formed by cementing all close together. So union amongst men does not destroy the personality and character of each man, but, instead of acting separately, men in union act in common.
2. This implies harmony. Conjunction without harmony brings not union, but confusion, and the nearer the conjunction, the fiercer is the internal conflict. Thus civil war is more cruel than war with a foreign nation, family feuds more bitter than quarrels with strangers. Harmony implies diversity, but agreement, as the several stones in a building, though each may be different in shape and size from others, fit in together, and fit the better because they are not all alike.
3. This implies the subordination of the individual to the whole. So far there may be a partial suppression of individuality; but in the end this develops a higher individuality. The several organs of the body are made not to exercise their functions for their own sakes, but for the good of the whole body. Yet this differentiation of parts allows of the more full development of each organ, and so leads to a more complete individuality in its form and character. When men are working under a social system, each is able to contribute his part to the good of the whole by a more free exercise of his own special talents than would be possible in a condition of isolation.
II. THE ADVANTAGES OF UNION.
1. Union increases strength. There is not only the gross force resulting from the addition of the units of force; there is a multiplication of strength, an economy of power. The nation can do as a whole what all its citizens could not do if acting separately. The Church can accomplish work for Christ which private Christians would fail to do.
2. Union promotes peace. When men are knit together as one they forget their private differences. Though we cannot attain the peace of uniformity, we should aim at securing the peace of harmony.
3. Union favours growth and development. Israel suffered from her disintegration. Her national unification was requisite for any solid advance of civilisation. This development of harmonised and organised union distinguishes civilised nations from savage tribes. As the Church learns to think more of common Christian charity than of narrow sectarian differences, she will advance in likeness to the mind of Christ and in the enjoyment of the graces and blessings of the gospel.
III. THE GROUNDS OF UNION. Men need some cause to draw them togethersome common ground of union.
1. This may be found in a great wrong to be removed. A fearful crime stirred the hearts of all Israel. In presence of this the tribes forgot their minor grievances. Should not the great sin of the world be a call to Christians to sink their ceaseless quarrels in one united effort to destroy it with the power of Christ’s truth?
2. This may be found in the attack of a common enemy. When the invader is on our coast, Tories and Radicals fight side by side, moved by a common instinct of patriotism. When the truth of Christianity is assailed by infidelity and her life by worldliness and vice, should we not all rally round the standard of our one Captain for a united crusade against the power of our common enemy the devil?
3. This may be found in a good cause of universally recognised merit. Fidelity to truth, love to mankind, devotion to Christ should unite all Christians.A.
Fuente: The Complete Pulpit Commentary
CHAP. XX.
The eleven tribes demand from the Benjamites, that the authors of the cruelty against the Levite’s concubine be delivered up: they are conquered in two battles, but in a third overcome the Benjamites, of whom five and twenty thousand fall that day: six hundred of them fly to the rock Rimmon, and abide there four months.
Before Christ 1426.
Jdg 20:1. In Mizpeh Mizpeh was very conveniently situated for a meeting of all the people, as it stood on the confines of Judah and Benjamin, and was very near to Shiloh; so that they could easily consult the Divine Oracle on any occasion. Hence Josephus tells us, that this congregation met at Shiloh. The phrase, unto the Lord, does not imply that the ark was there, God being present in an especial manner where all his people assembled. See 2Sa 5:3. The word rendered chief in the next verse, signifies corners, alluding to the corner-stone, which is the strength and support of a building. Hence Christ is called in Scripture the chief corner-stone. See Lowman on Civ. Gov. of the Hebrews, chap. 9: Jdg 10:14 :
Fuente: Commentary on the Holy Bible by Thomas Coke
The tribes of Israel, convened at Mizpah, resolve to punish the outrage committed at Gibeah. They call on the tribe of Benjamin to deliver up the guilty, but are met with a refusal
Jdg 20:1-13
1Then all the children [sons] of Israel went out, and the congregation was gathered together as one man, from Dan even to Beer-sheba, with [and] the land of Gilead, unto the Lord [Jehovah] in Mizpeh [Mizpah]. 2And the chief [chiefs] of all the people, even of all the tribes of Israel, presented themselves in the assembly of the people of God, [which assembly numbered] four hundred thousand footmen that drew sword.20 3(Now the children [sons] of Benjamin heard that the children [sons] of Israel were gone up to Mizpeh). Then said the children [sons] of Israel, 4Tell us, how was [happened] this wickedness? And [the man,] the Levite, the husband of the woman that was slain, answered and said, I came into [unto] Gibeah that belongeth to Benjamin, I and my concubine, to lodge. 5And the men [lords] of Gibeah rose against me, and beset the house round about upon me by night, and thought to have slain me: and my concubine have they forced [humbled], that she is dead [that she died]. 6And I took my concubine, and cut her in pieces, and sent her throughout all the country of the inheritance of Israel: for they have 7committed lewdness and folly in Israel. Behold, ye are all children [sons] of Israel; give here your advice and counsel. 8And all the people arose as one man, saying, We will not any of us go to his tent, neither will we any of us turn into his house: 9But now this shall be the thing which we will do to Gibeah: we will go up by lot against it;21 10And we will take ten men of an hundred throughout all the tribes of Israel, and an hundred of a thousand, and a thousand out of ten thousand, to fetch victual for the people, that they may do, when they come to Gibeah of Benjamin, according to all the folly that they have wrought in Israel.22 11So all the men of Israel were gathered against the city, knit together as one man. 12And the tribes of Israel sent men through [into] all the tribe [tribes] of Benjamin, saying, What wickedness is this that is [was] done among you? 13Now therefore deliver us the men, the children of Belial [worthless fellows], which are in Gibeah, that we may put them to death, and put away evil from Israel. But the children [sons] of Benjamin would not hearken to the voice of their brethren the children [sons] of Israel.
TEXTUAL AND GRAMMATICAL
[1 Jdg 20:2.Dr. Cassel renders this verse as follows: And the heads of the whole people, out of all the tribes of Israel, formed themselves into a Congregation of the People of God, which [sc. people] furnished four hundred thousand men (namely) footmen, practiced with the sword. The E. V. is better; only, to make it unequivocally clear, it needs some such interpolation as we have suggested in the text.Tr.]
[2 Jdg 20:9.Dr. Cassel translates: And now in the matter which we do against Gibeah, (proceed we) against it according to the lot. This does not differ essentially from the E. V., but is noted here as explaining what the author means by saying that the words which we do against Gibeah are parenthetical (see below). Bertheau and Keil explain: This is the thing we will do against Gibeah: against it with the lot! The words , says Keil, contain the resolution taken with reference to the sinful city, and are characterized by the enigmatical brevity of judicial sentences, and are to be explained by the proceedings prescribed by the Mosaic law against the Canaanites. The Canaanites were to be destroyed, and their land was then to be divided among the Israelites by lot. Accordingly, to proceed with the lot against Gibeah, is to proceed with it as with the cities of the Canaanites, to conquer and burn it, and to divide its territory by lot. One argument advanced in favor of this (the view of the Peshito: we will cast the lot over it!) and against the current view (that of the LXX.), that the latter leaves the judgment itself unexpressed, and passes at once to a subordinate point which has reference only to the execution of the judgment, has no great force. For is not the judgment sufficiently expressed in , against it!? The other, however, that according to Jdg 20:10, as ordinarily understood, the lot decides, not who shall go against Gibeah, but who shall act as purveyors for the army, it is difficult to meet, except by rendering Jdg 20:10 as Dr. Cassel does. Compare the next note.Tr.]
[3 Jdg 20:10.Dr. Cassels rendering is as follows: (Jdg 20:9 b) proceed we against it according to the lot; (Jdg 20:10 : and take ten men of a hundred out of all the tribes of Israel, and a hundred of a thousand, and a thousand of ten thousand, to take to themselves provisions for the host, and when they come to Gibeah of Benjamin to do according to all the abomination which it wrought in Israel (i.e., to inflict just retribution). The only difficulty in this rendering is the expression to take provisions for the host (lit. people), which strikes one as an unnatural way of saying, to take provisions for themselves. But this difficulty is less serious than that which arises if we adopt the common rendering, and explain (as we must do in that case) Jdg 20:9 as Bertheau and Keil do (cf. preceding note). For the fact that before proceeding to extremities, demand is made for the surrender of the guilty, is incompatible with a prior determination to cast the lot over Gibeah, to say nothing of the fact that such a confiscation of territory belonging to Benjamin, as this is supposed to imply, would have been in glaring conflict with one of the most important laws of the nation, that which rendered land an inalienable possession, first in the family, then in the tribe. On the other hand, it certainly seems as if 40,000 men must have been deemed sufficient to meet the 26,700 of Benjamin (Jdg 20:15); and the statement of Jdg 20:17, where the 400,000 of Israel are set over against the 26,700 of Benjamin, may be explained by supposing that the narrator, being about to relate the terrible losses on the national side in the first two engagements, wishes to remind the reader of the reserved strength from which the beaten army could draw reinforcements.Tr.]
EXEGETICAL AND DOCTRINAL
Jdg 20:1-2. And the chiefs of all the people formed themselves into a congregation of the People of God. The consciousness of an organic community is as yet fully alive in Israel. All the tribes were horrified at the crime in Benjamin. The necessity of conferring together is felt everywhere, from the north to the south. The natural representatives of the people (cf. on Jdg 1:1) hasten to Mizpah, to Jehovah, that is to say, at the invitation of the high-priest in the name of Jehovah, against whose holy law the crime was directed. For it may be assumed that whenever a popular movement, which has Jehovah for its centre, is spoken of, while no human personage as that of a Judge, is named, the priesthood was still the leading spiritual power. An , congregation, assembled itself, ; or rather, was convoked, for is the Greek , old Latin calare (i.e. curia calabra). It was formed of the heads23 of the people who constituted themselves a Congregation of the People of God.24 (, from = , constituere). It is not by way of tautology that the narrator says: the whole people, all the tribes; for the fact is to be made prominent that, except Benjamin, not one tribe was wanting. The addition: four hundred thousand men, explains why only the heads constitute the congregation, namely, because the People of God, as a whole, was too numerous. The number is mentioned with reference to Jdg 20:10. Israel is still the warlike people which took possession of Canaan. The number of its sword-practiced warriors is the measure of its greatness. Those who assemble themselves here about Jehovah, are the heads of a community of warriors (ecclesia militans.)
Jdg 20:3. And the sons of Benjamin heard that an assembly of the tribes took place in Mizpah. This Mizpah is probably the same as that which in Samuels time also was the national gathering place (1Sa 7:5), and which is regarded as represented by the Neby Samwl of the present day,25 in the western part of the Benjamite territory. The Levite, the narrator informed us, divided his unhappy concubine into twelve parts, and sent them throughout all Israel. We must agree, therefore, with the Jewish expositors, who maintain that he sent a part to Benjamin also. It must likewise be assumed that Benjamin was invited to the council at Mizpah, both on account of the sense of national community which characterized the period, and because the assembly was summoned at a place within the borders of Benjamin. The tribe already manifested its partisan feeling in favor of Gibeah, when it heard, indeed, of what was going on, but neither sent representatives to the assembly, nor gave any token whatever of indignation at the deed, or of desire to exculpate itself.
Jdg 20:4-7. And the man, the Levite, made answer. When the assembly proceeded to investigate the facts, the accuser only appeared; the accused were wanting. The speech of the Levite is remarkable in more respects than one. Of the aged Ephraimite who took him into his house, he makes no mention; for in order to a right judgment of the matter it is not necessary to consider whose guest he was, but that his right to hospitality has been violated. Hence he says, they rose against me (); and, they surrounded the house, , on my account. The men in Gibeah had no designs against his host: he alone was the object of their attack. Nor does he speak of individuals in Gibeah, but of the lords of Gibeah, as if the whole city were guilty; which inasmuch as it had not prevented the excess, was indeed true. His accusation, they thought to murder me, is not literally in accordance with their intentions, because he is ashamed to speak of the matter by its right name. Moreover, the crime intended was worse than death, and submission to it punishable with disgrace and death. But he does not say that he himself delivered his concubine up into their hands, that they might treat her according to their lusts, instead of himself. And finally, he does not represent the violent deed as directed against an individual, but tells the assembled tribes that he cut the woman in pieces, and sent her throughout the whole country, because, as we already remarked above, it was a crime against all Israel. Behold, all of you are sons of Israel. Without delay, he desires, that here and now, they consult, and that they separate not before they have formed a resolve. He fears lest otherwise the impression of the moment might wear off, and the crime be left unpunished.
Jdg 20:8 ff.. And all the people arose. The people comprehend this, and unanimously proceed to action. Not one tribe shall be entrusted with the execution of the common resolve, but all shall take part in it, in order that the labor and odium may not fall on any one exclusively. The words , Jdg 20:9, are to be regarded as parenthetical. The sense is that the executive army is to be selected out of the tribes, not by votes, but according to the lot. It is thought that the tenth part of Israel, or forty thousand men, will suffice; for these, who belong to all Israel, since they were raised out of the whole, provisions and equipments are to be supplied. This is looked to, in order that Israel may need no sustenance from Benjamin, while desolating its territory in war. The words remind us of Jdg 7:8, where we have , and make it probable that there also should be read.
The expression, Jdg 20:11, and all the men of Israel were gathered together as one man , is to be understood of the army, which, forty thousand men strong, was gathered from all Israel as if no tribe distinctions existed. It was precisely in this perfect national unity and unanimity, that Israel sought its right to take the step it had in view. From the consciousness of this national character of the army, proceeded the effort to induce Benjamin to surrender the guilty, before the final resort to extreme measures. In the statement that they sent into all the tribes of Benjamin, the expression, tribes of Benjamin, forming as it were an antithesis to the tribes of Israel, is peculiar. Properly speaking, there could not be tribes within a tribe; but since Benjamin formed an opposition camp, his families might be so named.
Footnotes:
[20][Jdg 20:2.Dr. Cassel renders this verse as follows: And the heads of the whole people, out of all the tribes of Israel, formed themselves into a Congregation of the People of God, which [sc. people] furnished four hundred thousand men (namely) footmen, practiced with the sword. The E. V. is better; only, to make it unequivocally clear, it needs some such interpolation as we have suggested in the text.Tr.]
[21][Jdg 20:9.Dr. Cassel translates: And now in the matter which we do against Gibeah, (proceed we) against it according to the lot. This does not differ essentially from the E. V., but is noted here as explaining what the author means by saying that the words which we do against Gibeah are parenthetical (see below). Bertheau and Keil explain: This is the thing we will do against Gibeah: against it with the lot! The words , says Keil, contain the resolution taken with reference to the sinful city, and are characterized by the enigmatical brevity of judicial sentences, and are to be explained by the proceedings prescribed by the Mosaic law against the Canaanites. The Canaanites were to be destroyed, and their land was then to be divided among the Israelites by lot. Accordingly, to proceed with the lot against Gibeah, is to proceed with it as with the cities of the Canaanites, to conquer and burn it, and to divide its territory by lot. One argument advanced in favor of this (the view of the Peshito: we will cast the lot over it!) and against the current view (that of the LXX.), that the latter leaves the judgment itself unexpressed, and passes at once to a subordinate point which has reference only to the execution of the judgment, has no great force. For is not the judgment sufficiently expressed in , against it!? The other, however, that according to Jdg 20:10, as ordinarily understood, the lot decides, not who shall go against Gibeah, but who shall act as purveyors for the army, it is difficult to meet, except by rendering Jdg 20:10 as Dr. Cassel does. Compare the next note.Tr.]
[22][Jdg 20:10.Dr. Cassels rendering is as follows: (Jdg 20:9 b) proceed we against it according to the lot; (Jdg 20:10 : and take ten men of a hundred out of all the tribes of Israel, and a hundred of a thousand, and a thousand of ten thousand, to take to themselves provisions for the host, and when they come to Gibeah of Benjamin to do according to all the abomination which it wrought in Israel (i.e., to inflict just retribution). The only difficulty in this rendering is the expression to take provisions for the host (lit. people), which strikes one as an unnatural way of saying, to take provisions for themselves. But this difficulty is less serious than that which arises if we adopt the common rendering, and explain (as we must do in that case) Jdg 20:9 as Bertheau and Keil do (cf. preceding note). For the fact that before proceeding to extremities, demand is made for the surrender of the guilty, is incompatible with a prior determination to cast the lot over Gibeah, to say nothing of the fact that such a confiscation of territory belonging to Benjamin, as this is supposed to imply, would have been in glaring conflict with one of the most important laws of the nation, that which rendered land an inalienable possession, first in the family, then in the tribe. On the other hand, it certainly seems as if 40,000 men must have been deemed sufficient to meet the 26,700 of Benjamin (Jdg 20:15); and the statement of Jdg 20:17, where the 400,000 of Israel are set over against the 26,700 of Benjamin, may be explained by supposing that the narrator, being about to relate the terrible losses on the national side in the first two engagements, wishes to remind the reader of the reserved strength from which the beaten army could draw reinforcements.Tr.]
[23] , the pinnacle, or highest point of a building, and thence transferred to the heads of the people, summi. The word is philologically identical with the Latin pinna as saput propugnaculi.
[24]The regular designation, for which modern nations have substituted the less spiritual and noble terms parliament, meeting, chamber, house. [How could they otherwise, seeing they are not theocracies?Tr.]
[25][So Dr. Robinson, B. R. i. 460. Dean Stanley (Sin. and Pal. p. 212), claims Nebi-Samuel for the high place of Gibeon, and transfers Mizpah to Scopus (p. 222). The difficulty arising from the fact that in either case the assembly was held within the territorial limits of Benjamin, who nevertheless only heard of it, is met by Mr. Grove (Smiths Bible Dict., s. v. Mizpah) by the apparently no less difficult supposition that the Mizpah of the present passage is to be located beyond the Jordan.Tr.]
Fuente: A Commentary on the Holy Scriptures, Critical, Doctrinal, and Homiletical by Lange
CONTENTS
The history in this chapter, like the two or three preceding, is full of distress, though the subject varies. From private calamities we are now introduced to the relation of public: and from an house, or family, the evil is extended to the Nation. Now we hear of the wars on account of sin. The story of the Levites’ wrongs is heard in the several tribes of Israel; they form a resolution to avenge them on the Benjamites: matters soon come to an issue: and a dreadful slaughter in consequence thereof is related in this chapter.
Fuente: Hawker’s Poor Man’s Commentary (Old and New Testaments)
The readiness of all Israel to assemble upon the complaint of the Levite, seems to say; the Lord had yet a seed to serve him. And no doubt, in the worst of times, this is, and must be the case. There is a sweet promise, to this effect, Isa 59:21 . Mizpeh, was not far from Shiloh; so that it became a well appointed place, for the collecting Israel together from Dan, the most northern city; and Beersheba, the most southern of all the provinces.
Fuente: Hawker’s Poor Man’s Commentary (Old and New Testaments)
Jdg 20:48
‘Humanity, or mercy, is certainly not the strong point of Achaian Greeks. With them not only no sacredness, but little value, attached to human life; and the loss of it stirs no sympathy unless it be associated with beauty, valour, patriotism, or other esteemed characteristics. Yet here, again, the forms of evil are less extreme. We do not find, even in the stern, relentless vengeance of Odysseus on his enemies, or in the passionate wish of Achilles that nature would permit what it forbade, namely, to devour his hated foe, a form of cruelty and brutality so savage as is recorded in the case of the Levite with his wife and concubine at Gibeah, and of the war which followed it.
W. E. Gladstone.
Fuente: Expositor’s Dictionary of Text by Robertson
Jdg 19
1. And it came to pass in those days [not long after Joshua’s death, and before Othniel was judge], when there was no king in Israel, that there was a certain Levite sojourning on the side of mount Ephraim, who took to him a concubine [such relations were not legally forbidden] out of Beth-lehem-judah.
2. And his concubine [wife or concubine, a wife with inferior rights] played the whore against him, and went away from him [ Pro 30:21 ], unto her father’s house to Beth-lehem-judah, and was there four whole months [literally, days four months; or, one year and four months].
3. And her husband arose, and went after her, to speak friendly [to speak to her heart] unto her, and to bring her again, having his servant with him and a couple of asses [one was meant to convey his wife]: and she brought him into her father’s house: and when the father of the damsel saw him, he rejoiced to meet him.
4. And his father-in-law [so the relationship was recognised], the damsel’s father, retained him [with hospitable and affectionate intentions]; and he abode with him three days: so they did eat and drink, and lodged there [“in token of hearty reconciliation”].
5. And it came to pass on the fourth day, when they arose early in the morning [to avoid the burning heat], that he rose up to depart [“It is good hearing when the Levite maketh haste home. An honest man’s heart is where his calling is “]. And the damsel’s father said unto his son-in-law, Comfort thine heart [literally, prop up thine heart] with a morsel of bread, and afterward go your way.
6. And they sat down, and did eat and drink both of them together: for the damsel’s father had said unto the man, Be content, I pray thee, and tarry all night, and let thine heart be merry.
7. And when the man rose up to depart, his father-in-law urged him [to test his good intentions towards a faithless woman]: therefore he lodged there again.
8. And he arose early in the morning on the fifth day to depart: and the damsel’s father said, Comfort thine heart, I pray thee. And they tarried [lingered] until afternoon, and they did eat both of them.
9. And when the man rose up to depart, he, and his concubine, and his servant, his father-in-law, the damsel’s father, said unto him, Behold, now the day draweth toward evening [literally, is weak or has slackened to evening], I pray you tarry all night: behold, the day groweth to an end [literally, it is the bending or declining of the day], lodge here, that thine heart may be merry; and to-morrow get you early on your way, that thou mayst go home [to thy tent].
10. But the man would not tarry that night, but he rose up and departed, and came over against Jebus [so called in the clays of David], which is Jerusalem; and there were with him two asses saddled; his concubine also was with him.
11. And when they were by Jebus, the day was far spent [he had been detained too long by hospitality]; and the servant said unto his master, Come, I pray thee, and let us turn in into this city of the Jebusites [which they would reach about five o’clock], and lodge in it.
12. And his master said unto him, We will not turn aside hither into the city of a stranger [think of Jerusalem being so described!], that is not of the children of Israel: we will pass over to Gibeah [the Gibeah of Saul, the birthplace of the first king of Israel].
13. And he said unto his servant, Come, and let us draw near to one of these places to lodge all night, in Gibeah, or in Ramah [two miles beyond Gibeah].
14. And they passed on and went their way; and the sun went down upon them when they were by Gibeah [which determined them to stay], which belongeth to Benjamin [there were many other Gibeahs in Palestine].
15. And they turned aside thither, to go in and to lodge in Gibeah [Poneropolis, or city of the Evil One]; and when he went in [through the city gate], he sat him down in a street [open place, or square] of the city: for there was no man that took them into his house to lodging [Deut. x. 9] [They would have gone on to Ramah, two miles farther north, had the daylight held out. Sunset in that latitude is almost immediately followed by darkness].
16. And, behold, there came an old man from his work out of the field at even [an old man; an old man working; an old man working out of doors], which was also of mount Ephraim [a fellow countryman of the Levite]; and he sojourned in Gibeah: but the men of the place were Benjamites.
17. And when he had lifted up his eyes, he saw a wayfaring man in the street of the city: and the old man said, Whither goest thou? and whence comest thou?
18. And he said unto him, We are passing from Beth-lehem-judah toward the side of mount Ephraim [the depths of the hill country of mount Ephraim]; from thence am I: and I went to Beth-lehem-Judah, but I am now going to the house of the Lord [or, I am a Levite engaged in the service of the Tabernacle at Shiloh]; and there is no man that receiveth me to house [Hesiod reckons this as supreme wickedness].
19. Yet there is both straw and provender [any grain fit for food of cattle] for our asses; and there is bread and wine also for me and for thy handmaid, and for the young man which is with thy servants: there is no want of any thing.
20. And the old man said, Peace be with thee [not merely a greeting, but an assurance of help]; howsoever let all thy wants lie upon me; only lodge not in the street [ Gen 19:2 ].
21. So he brought him into his house, and gave provender unto the asses [it was the custom of the East to attend first to the wants of the animals]: and they washed their feet, and did eat and drink.
22. Now as they were making their hearts merry, behold, the men of the city, certain sons of Belial [sons of worthlessness], beset the house round about, and beat at the door, and spake to the master of the house, the old man, saying, Bring forth the man that came into thine house, that we may know him [ Hos 9:9 ].
23. And the man, the master of the house, went out unto them, and said unto them, Nay, my brethren, nay, I pray you, do not so wickedly; seeing that this man is come into mine house [an appeal to the sacred rights of hospitality], do not this folly.
24. Behold, here is my daughter, a maiden [see from what depths the world has risen], and his concubine; them I will bring out now, and humble ye them, and do with them what seemeth good unto you: but unto this man do not so vile a thing.
25. But the men would not hearken to him: so the man took his concubine, and brought her forth unto them; and they knew her, and abused her all the night until the morning: and when the day began to spring, they let her go.
26. Then came the woman in the dawning of the day, and fell down at the door of the man’s house where her lord was, till it was light.
27. And her lord rose up in the morning, and opened the doors of the house, and went out to go his way: and, behold, the woman his concubine was fallen down at the door of the house, and her hands were upon the threshold [as if in one last appeal of agony and despair].
28. And he said unto her, Up, and let us be going. But none answered. Then the man took her up upon an ass, and the man rose up, and gat him unto his place.
29. And when he was come into his house, he took a knife, and laid hold on his concubine, and divided her, together with her bones, into twelve pieces, and sent her into all the coast of Israel [that he might rouse a spirit of vengeance].
30. 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 [and so soon after the death of Joshua]: consider of it, take advice, and speak your minds.
[The nineteenth chapter would be intolerable but for the twentieth; the two must be read together. When men remark upon the awful depravity of the one they should remember the awful vengeance of the other.].
Fuente: The People’s Bible by Joseph Parker
Jdg 20
1. Then all the children of Israel went out, and the congregation [the whole community of Israel] was gathered together as one man [a phrase which disappears after the days of Solomon], from Dan even to Beersheba [from one extremity to another, a proverbial expression for all Israel], with the land of Gilead [the transjordanic tribes], unto the Lord in Mizpeh [not the one mentioned in Jdg 11:11 ].
2. And the chief [literally, the corner-stones] of all the people, even of all the tribes of Israel, presented themselves in the assembly of the people of God, four hundred thousand [so the number had been diminished by one third] footmen that drew sword [the Israelites were forbidden to use either chariot or cavalry].
3. (Now the children of Benjamin heard that the children of Israel were gone up to Mizpeh.) Then said the children of Israel, Tell us, how was this wickedness?
4. And the Levite, the husband of the woman that was slain, answered and said, I came into Gibeah, that belongeth to Benjamin, I and my concubine, to lodge.
5. And the men [lords or masters] of Gibeah rose against me [“The Levite colours the story in a way most favourable to himself”], and beset the house round about upon me by night, and thought to have slain me: and my concubine have they forced, that she is dead.
6. And I took my concubine, and cut her in pieces, and sent her throughout all the country of the inheritance of Israel: for they have committed lewdness and folly in Israel.
7. Behold, ye are all children of Israel: give here your advice and counsel.
8. And all the people rose as one man [ 1Sa 11:7 ], saying, We will not any of us go to his tent [the transjordanic tribes were principally graziers], neither will we any of us turn into his house.
9. But now this shall be the thing which we will do to Gibeah; we will go up by lot against it [“The shape of the ground probably made it impossible for the whole force to operate at once”]:
10. And we will take ten men of an hundred throughout all the tribes of Israel, and an hundred of a thousand, and a thousand out of ten thousand, to fetch victual for the people, that they may do, when they come to Gibeah of Benjamin, according to all the folly that they have wrought in Israel.
11. So all the men of Israel were gathered against the city, knit together as one man [fellows of one college or club].
12. And the tribes of Israel sent men through all the tribe of Benjamin, saying, What wickedness is this that is done among you [even Benjamin had a chance of self-defence]?
13. Now therefore deliver us the men, the children of Belial, which are in Gibeah, that we may put them to death, and put away evil from Israel. [The verb implies extermination, such as the burning out of diseased flesh.] But the children of Benjamin would not hearken to the voice of their brethren the children of Israel [an evil solidarity]:
14. But [and] the children of Benjamin gathered themselves together out of the cities unto Gibeah, to go out to battle against the children of Israel:
15. And the children of Benjamin were numbered at that time out of the cities twenty and six thousand men [diminished by about a third since the census] that drew sword, beside the inhabitants of Gibeah, which numbered seven hundred chosen men.
16. Among all this people there were seven hundred chosen men [these words are omitted by the LXX. and the Vulgate] left-handed [not an accidental defect, but an acquired art]; every one could sling stones at an hair breadth, and not miss [Cyrus valued his four hundred slingers].
17. And the men of Israel, beside Benjamin, were numbered four hundred thousand men that drew sword: all these were men of war.
18. And the children of Israel arose, and went up to the house of God [Bethel], and asked counsel of God [by the Urim and Thummim], and said, Which of us shall go up first to the battle against the children of Benjamin? And the Lord said, Judah shall go up first.
19. And the children of Israel rose up in the morning, and encamped against Gibeah.
20. And the men of Israel went out to battle against Benjamin; and the men of Israel put themselves in array to fight against them at Gibeah.
21. And the children of Benjamin came forth out of Gibeah [the whole tribe adopted the bad deed, an evil esprit de corps ], and destroyed down to the ground of the Israelites that day twenty and two thousand men.
22. And the people, the men of Israel, encouraged themselves, and set their battle again in array in the place where they put themselves in array the first day.
23. (And the children of Israel went up and wept before the Lord until even, and asked counsel of the Lord, saying, Shall I go up again to battle against the children of Benjamin my brother? [“showing a sort of compunction”] and the Lord said, Go up against him.)
24. And the children of Israel came near against the children of Benjamin the second day.
25. And Benjamin went forth against them out of Gibeah the second day, and destroyed down to the ground of the children of Israel again eighteen thousand men; all these drew the sword.
26. Then all the children of Israel, and all the people, went up, and came unto the house of God, and wept [“The two battles must have caused an almost universal bereavement”], and sat there before the Lord, and fasted that day until even, and offered burnt-offerings and peace-offerings before the Lord.
27. And the children of Israel enquired of the Lord, (for the ark of the covenant of God was there in those days;
28. And Phinehas [the noble and heroic grandson of Aaron], the son of Eleazar, the son of Aaron, stood before it in those days,) saying, Shall I yet again go out to battle against the children of Benjamin my brother, or shall I cease? And the Lord said, Go up; for to-morrow [the first promise of success] I will deliver them into thine hand.
29. And Israel set liers in wait round about Gibeah [“acting with more humility, caution, and wisdom”].
30. And the children of Israel went up against the children of Benjamin on the third day, and put themselves in array against Gibeah, as at other times.
31. And the children of Benjamin went out against the people, and were drawn away from the city; and they began to smite of the people, and kill [the wounded or beaten of the people], as at other times, in the highways, of which one goeth up to the house of God [Bethel], and the other to Gibeah in the field [probably Geba, Jos 21:17 ], about thirty men of Israel.
32. And the children of Benjamin said, They are smitten down before us, as at the first. But the children of Israel said, Let us flee, and draw them from the city unto the highways.
33. And all the men of Israel rose up out of their place, and put themselves in array at Baal-tamar [Lord of the palm]: and the liers in wait of Israel came forth out of their places, even out of the meadows [a word which occurs nowhere else] of Gibeah.
34. And there came against Gibeah ten thousand chosen men out of all Israel, and the battle was sore [Benjamin was attacked both in front and rear]: but [and] they knew not that evil was near them [that the hour of ruin had come],
35. And the Lord smote Benjamin before Israel: and the children of Israel destroyed of the Benjamites that clay twenty and five thousand and an hundred men: all these drew the sword.
36. So the children of Benjamin saw that they [the Israelites] were smitten: for the men of Israel gave place to the Benjamites, because they trusted unto the liers in wait which they had set beside Gibeah.
37. And the liers in wait hasted, and rushed [set upon; see Jdg 9:33 ] upon Gibeah; and the liers in wait drew themselves along, and smote all the city with the edge of the sword [an expression which denotes extermination].
38. Now there was an appointed sign between the men of Israel and the liers in wait, that they should make a great flame with smoke rise up out of the city 39. And when the men of Israel retired in the battle, Benjamin began to smite and kill of the men of Israel about thirty persons: for they said, Surely they are smitten down before us, as in the first battle.
40. But when the flame began to arise up out of the city with a pillar of smoke, the Benjamites looked behind them, and, behold, the flame of the city ascended up to heaven.
41. And when the men of Israel turned again, the men of Benjamin were amazed: for they saw that evil was come upon them.
42. Therefore they turned their backs before the men of Israel unto the way of the wilderness; but the battle overtook them; and them which came out of the cities [Benjamites] they destroyed in the midst of them [that is, in their own cities].
43. Thus they inclosed the Benjamites round about, and chased them, and trode them down with ease over against Gibeah toward the sunrising. [“The language and construction of this verse is poetical; it seems to be an extract from a song, and to describe, in the language of poetry, the same event which the preceding verse described in that of prose.”]
44. And there fell of Benjamin eighteen thousand men; all these were men of valour.
45. And they turned and fled toward the wilderness unto the rock of Rimmon [the rock of the pomegranate]; and they gleaned of them in the highways five thousand men; and pursued hard after them unto Gidom [mentioned nowhere else], and slew two thousand men of them.
46. So that all which fell that day of Benjamin were twenty and five thousand men that drew the sword; all these were men of valour.
47. But six hundred men [compare 1Sa 14:2 ] turned and fled to the wilderness unto the rock Rimmon, and abode in the rock Rimmon four months.
48. And the men of Israel turned again upon the children of Benjamin, and smote them with the edge of the sword, as well the men of every city, as the beast, and all that came to hand: also they set on fire all the cities that they came to.
“Having utterly destroyed the Benjamite army, except the six hundred men who were shut up in Rimmon, the Israelites returned through the Benjamite country and put to death all the remaining inhabitants, destroyed the cattle and burnt the cities” ( The Speaker’s Commentary ). Keeping the whole tragedy vividly in mind, we shall the more profitably enter upon the study of the following subject.
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 20:1 Then all the children of Israel went out, and the congregation was gathered together as one man, from Dan even to Beersheba, with the land of Gilead, unto the LORD in Mizpeh.
Ver. 1. Unto the Lord in Mizpeh. ] Where was, they say, an oratory or synagogue; 1Ma 3:46 and that here was the first beginning of synagogues, which were as chapels of ease to the tabernacle or temple. That meet at Mizpeh, 1Sa 7:5 is very famous. Hither they resorted, as being in the heart of the country, when any great business concerning the public was to be transacted. See 1Sa 10:17 Jer 40:7-8 .
Fuente: John Trapp’s Complete Commentary (Old and New Testaments)
Then. These chapters (20, 21), hy Figure of speech Hysterologia, describe events which took place soon after Joshua’s death. See notes on Jdg 18:1 with Jdg 19:1.
children = sons.
as one man. All this excitement, unanimity, and bloodshed about an injury done to a woman; no sense of the evil of idolatry and sin against God, recorded in Jdg 19.
Fuente: Companion Bible Notes, Appendices and Graphics
Chapter 20
Now it had what he hoped it would have. It had a shock effect upon the tribes. They were horrified to get part of a torso, a leg, an arm, a head and they gathered together and this man told them the evil that was done by the Benjamites, by those from the tribe of Benjamin, the city of Gibeah. He told them the horrible evil that had befallen him while he was there. And the people of Israel were incensed against the Ephraimites, I mean against the Benjamites. And so they decided to go against them in battle and they gathered an army of four hundred thousand plus.
And they inquired of the Lord, and they said, Who shall go up first? And the LORD said, The tribe of Judah ( Jdg 20:18 ).
So the tribe of Judah went up against Gibeah but the men of Benjamin were tough. They had seven hundred fellows who could throw a stone with a sling and never miss from a hundred yards. They could come within a hair’s breadth of their target and a hundred yards with a sling, seven hundred of them, skillful, tough.
The tribe of Judah went up against Gibeah. The men of the Benjamites came out. Of course, the Benjamites, when they said they gave the personal agendum they said, “Turn over these lewd fellows who have done this thing. We’re gonna kill them.”
And the Benjamites would not turn them over. They said, “You come and get them.” And so they were more or less challenged for the fight. And so the men of Judah, Israel, were defeated by the men of Benjamin who killed twenty-two thousand that day in the battle. So the men of Israel came and they encouraged themselves. They set in battle again as they did the first day.
(And the children of Israel went up and wept before the LORD until evening, and they asked counsel of the LORD, saying, Shall we go up again to battle against the children of Benjamin my brother? And the LORD said, Go up against him.) Now the children of Israel came near against the children of Benjamin the second day. And the men of Benjamin came forth against them out of Gibeah the second day, destroyed down to the ground eighteen thousand men; and again they retreated ( Jdg 20:23-25 ).
And now they fasted and prayed and cried unto the Lord. Now, I must confess at this point I have confusion. Why would God send them into a battle, say, “Go into battle” in which they are gonna get defeated? I don’t know and that confuses me. But the first two days they went in, they got whipped and though God had said go, even said the tribe that was to go first, I don’t understand that. You say, “Oh well, that’s horrible you don’t understand.” Well, perhaps so. But I don’t know everything and God said, “My ways are not your ways, saith the Lord. My ways are beyond your finding out.”
Even as a woman this morning asked me after the service, she said, “Why would God choose Samson if in His foreknowledge He knew he was gonna fail?” That’s a good question. I don’t know. However, as I say, there are a lot of things I don’t know about God and I’m sort of glad I don’t know because that causes me to respect God. I know He’s smarter than I am. Now if I knew everything God knew I’d be as smart as God and how could I respect him? Not only that, it gives me a chance to exercise faith, which I don’t like, but I’m forced at times to exercise it. You see, to believe what I don’t know is faith. To believe what I do know is reason, intellect.
Now I know a lot of things and I believe them because my intellect tells me, “Well, that’s right.” I can balance in my intellect. I can rationalize it.” So I say, “Well, I believe that Jesus is the Son of God,” great deal. There’s plenty of historic proof for that. “I believe Jesus rose from the dead,” big deal, there’s plenty of historic truth for that and proof. If you can prove anything in history you can prove that Jesus rose from the dead, if history has any value for proof of past events. If you want to prove that Hannibal crossed the Alps, you can prove that Jesus rose from the dead just as much as you can prove that he crossed the Alps or that Washington crossed the Delaware. So big deal, I believe Jesus rose from the dead. I can prove it historically. It is the things that I can’t prove that I have to just believe by faith that God honors. I say that I believe Jesus is the Son of God, great. The devils believe that too. What does that make me? Nothing.
But when you come to those areas of faith or belief where there is not the proof and I have to just believe in faith that this indeed did happen. That he died, yes, that’s a historical fact but that He died for my sins, that’s something I accept by faith. That God laid upon Him my sins when He died, I accept that by faith. That He rose, that’s a historic fact, but in His resurrection He provided justification for me, that’s faith. That’s what makes me saved, is believing what I don’t understand. I don’t understand how or why He would die for me. I don’t understand how I can be justified by His resurrection but I believe it because the Bible declares it.
And thus, there are many things in my Christian experience that I believe though I can’t rationalize them. And the things especially when a person says to me, “Why did God?” Someone the other day started out their question says, “Why did God” I said “That’s all the further you need to go. I don’t know.” I don’t know the whys of God. “My ways are not your ways saith the Lord, my ways are beyond your finding out.”( Isa 55:8 ) And thus, when I cannot reason or intellectualize some of the things I then, by faith, if God said it I believe it, by faith, not by reason. I take a step higher than reason and I step into that realm of faith believing it because God said it and God, who cannot lie, has declared His truth and I believe it though I can’t rationalize it or understand it in my mind.
So why did God say, “Yep, go” and then allow them to get defeated? I don’t know but it’s there, I believe it.
The third day, they fasted, they prayed, they waited upon God, “Shall we go again?”
“Yes, go again.”
Now this time they changed their strategy a bit. They had some guys sort of hide around the city and when the men of Benjamin then came out they retreated, drew them on out further from the city. Then these men came in the city, set a big fire and the men of Benjamin turned around, saw there city was on fire and, you know, the fight was gone out of them and they killed twenty thousand of them in the field. Some of them tried to flee, they grabbed them, killed three thousand in another place, killed a couple thousand in another and pretty much wiped out the men from the tribe of Benjamin. In fact, there were six hundred men who escaped the slaughter but the rest of them were wiped out. “
Fuente: Through the Bible Commentary
The action of the Levite served its purpose. The nation was stirred momentarily to its center. A great moral passion flamed out. Underneath all the degeneracy was a true stratum of religious conviction, which in the presence of the iniquity of the men of Gibeah sprang to life and action.
It is very remarkable how in the case of nations backsliding from religious ideals this is ever true. In the midst of most sordid and debased times, in the presence of some more than usually violent manifestation of evil, the slumbering convictions of the past will flame into new sensitiveness and demand recognition.
In response to the ghastly and bloody appeal of the Levite we see the tribes of Israel gathered together before God seeking to know how to act.
The low level of morality which had manifested itself in so powerful a form could be dealt with by general suffering. The men who were in the wrong were brutally defiant and refused to hand over the sinners. Moreover, they were strong enough at the first to defeat the army of Israel, and once again its hosts are seen in lamentation, waiting before God.
After this, they again went forward, this time to victory and the sore punishment of the sinning people and of those who had condoned their sin.
Fuente: An Exposition on the Whole Bible
CHAPTER 20 The Horrible War
1. The Levites story (Jdg 20:1-7)
2. The uprising (Jdg 20:8-11)
3. The slaying of the Israelites (Jdg 20:12-25)
4. Benjamin exterminated except six hundred men (Jdg 20:26-48)
This and the concluding chapter bring before us the awful harvest of what had been sown. For whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap (Gal 6:7). They had sown the wind and now reaped the whirlwind. Violence and lawlessness result in the slaying of 40,000 Israelites and 23,000 of the tribe of Benjamin. Nearly the entire tribe was wiped out. From Dan to Beersheba into the land of Gilead they gathered at Mizpeh to hear the story of the Levite. Benjamin refused to give up the wicked men and instead of humbling themselves, acknowledging the dreadful guilt and bringing the guilty ones to judgment, they gathered themselves together to fight their own brethren. Their company was small in comparison with the mighty host of Israel. The divine counsel was that Judah should go up first to battle with Benjamin. What a contrast with the beginning of the book! There they were to fight against the common foe; here against their own brethren.
But to be fit to be used of God to deal with evil involves much more than readiness to be His instrument. They are too ready, as we see in the result. Their wrath is too prompt, too implacable, too unsparing. Theirs is the reckless haste of vengeance, and not the solemn discrimination of divine judgment. They remember not their own sins, bring no sin offering to God, no tears of penitence. They build on their numbers; no doubt on the justice of their cause, also, but in self-righteousness and without self-suspicion. Thus they go up to smite, and they are smitten heavily, disastrously. Benjamin, the wrong-doer, is wholly victorious.
Here too are the lessons for Gods people in judging what is evil amongst them. Then the children of Israel went to Bethel (House of God) and with prayer and fasting waited on the Lord and brought the offerings. Then the Lord gave them the assurance of victory. Benjamin is smitten, their women and children are wiped out. Only six hundred men escaped to the rock of Rimmon. All their cities were burned.
To even greater scenes of violence, bloodshed and desolution this poor world, which has rejected God and His beloved Son, is hastening on.
Fuente: Gaebelein’s Annotated Bible (Commentary)
Then all: Jdg 20:2, Jdg 20:8, Jdg 20:11, Jdg 21:5, Deu 13:12-18, Jos 22:12
as one man: 1Sa 11:7, 1Sa 11:8, 2Sa 19:14, Ezr 3:1, Neh 8:1
from Dan: Jdg 18:29, 1Sa 3:20, 2Sa 3:10, 2Sa 24:2, 1Ch 21:2, 2Ch 30:5
with the: Num 32:1, Num 32:40, Jos 17:1, 2Sa 2:9
unto the: Jdg 20:18, Jdg 20:26, Jdg 11:11
in Mizpeh: Jdg 10:17, Jdg 11:11, Jos 15:38, Jos 18:26, 1Sa 7:5, 1Sa 7:6, 1Sa 10:17, 2Ki 25:23, It does not appear that the Israelites on this occasion, were summoned by the authority of any one common head, but they came together by the consent and agreement, as it were, of one common heart, fired with a holy zeal for the honour of God and Israel. The place of their meeting was Mizpeh; they gathered together unto the Lord there; for Mizpeh was so very near to Shiloh, that their encampment might very well be supposed to reach from Mizpeh to Shiloh. Shiloh was a small town, and therefore, when there was a general meeting of the people to present themselves before God, they chose Mizpeh for their head quarters, which was the next adjoining city of note; perhaps, because they were not willing to give that trouble to Shiloh, which so great an assembly would occasion; it being the residence of the priests that attended the tabernacle.
Reciprocal: Gen 14:14 – Dan Gen 21:31 – Beersheba Gen 22:19 – to Beersheba Gen 26:23 – Beersheba Jos 11:3 – land Jdg 21:1 – had sworn 2Sa 17:11 – all Israel 1Ki 4:25 – from Dan 1Ki 12:29 – Dan 2Ki 23:8 – Beersheba 2Ch 16:4 – Dan 2Ch 19:4 – Beersheba Neh 3:15 – Mizpah Neh 11:27 – General Jer 4:15 – a voice Jer 8:16 – was heard Jer 40:6 – Mizpah Hos 9:9 – Gibeah
Fuente: The Treasury of Scripture Knowledge
The Levite took her body back home and used the knife he used to slaughter animals to cut the body into twelve pieces to send to all the tribes of Israel. He invited all the tribes to consider the terrible crime committed and say how it should be punished. The congregation gathered at Mizpah, which Keil says is on the western border of the tribe of Benjamin, to review the incident and decide what to do. With the Lord as their witness, it was decided to go up against Gibeah, lay it to ashes and distribute the land by lot. One man out of every ten was selected to go out and obtain provisions for the army ( Jdg 20:1-11 ).
Fuente: Gary Hampton Commentary on Selected Books
Jdg 20:1. All the children of Israel went out Namely, the principal persons out of their respective cities, who were appointed to represent the rest. As one man That is, with one consent. Dan, &c. Dan was the northern border of the land, near Lebanon; and Beer-sheba the southern border. Gilead Beyond Jordan, where Reuben, Gad, and half Manasseh were. To the Lord As to the Lords tribunal; for God was not only present in the place where the ark and tabernacle were, but also in the assemblies of the gods, or judges, (Psa 82:1,) and in all places where Gods name is recorded, (Exo 20:24,) and where two or three are met together in his name. Mizpeh A place on the borders of Judah and Benjamin. This they chose, as a place they used to meet in upon solemn occasions, for its convenient situation for all the tribes within and without Jordan; and as being near the place where the fact was done, that it might be more thoroughly examined; and not far from Shiloh, where the tabernacle was, whither they might go or send.
Fuente: Joseph Bensons Commentary on the Old and New Testaments
Jdg 20:11. All the men of Israel were knit together. Why had they not assembled against Micah and his chapel of gods? Then this and other evils might have been prevented. This was a just and necessary war, but the hand was not clean that handled the sword.
Jdg 20:13. Deliver usthe children of Belial that we may put them to death. By the refusal of this just demand, every Benjamite made the crime his own, and paid the forfeiture of his life.
Jdg 20:16. Seven hundred chosen men, left-handed. The Hebrew and Chaldaic read, qui sola sinistra utebantra, who used the left hand only. Herodotus and Strabo have the like remark on some captains. The besieged used their slings against the besiegers with effect.
Jdg 20:21-25. In all 22,000 men, and 18,000 men. Thus 40,000 fell, for they gave no quarter to the wounded: and why should God fight for them, while they had penates or houshold gods at home? Too confident in their numbers, they went to battle without consulting the Lord.
Jdg 20:28. I will deliver them. After weeping, searching their own hearts, offering sacrifices, and seeking counsel of the Lord, they succeeded.
Jdg 20:33. Baal-tamar. Chaldaic, the plains of Jericho.
Jdg 20:47. The rock Rimmon, fifteen miles from Jerusalem. Jerome, in his epitaph on St. Paul, has noticed that the apostles ancestor was among these six hundred men.
REFLECTIONS.
The sight of mangled limbs, and limbs of their own flesh, had addressed the Israelites with an eloquence beyond the power of language. The nation instantly assembled in arms, having but one sentiment, but one design, either to bring the delinquents to justice, or involve all Benjamin in one common destruction. This tribe was indeed their brother according to the flesh, but they would not know any man as a brother, who was become unworthy of the human name. The sword was unsheathed, and they resolved that it should never return to its scabbard, till Israel was purged of so foul a crime. In like manner when Rome was stained with impurity and blood, by the bacchanalian orgies, they nobly wiped away the blot, and refused to know any relative initiated into those mysteries. What shall we say then of modern, yea of christian Europe! The crime of Gibeah has been repeated in seaports; but where is the zeal of indignant Israel, or of insulted Rome? In a case of this nature we blush to say, that the christian zeal falls short of jewish and of pagan lustre. So our crimes accumulate till heaven is obliged at last to avenge its own quarrel.
The Israelites, while assembled for counsel and war, are not wanting to demand of Gibeah the delinquents. But mark the evasions of guilt. The elders in Gibeah, having by connivance partook of the crime, instead of compliance, send to all the cities of their tribe, and draw them into a fatal league by such deceitful pleas as wickedness is never wanting to urge. They would plead, no doubt, that the tribes were assembled in Mizpeh, not so much for the punishment of vice, which abounded in all cities, as against the liberties and independence of all Benjamin.
The Israelites however were not only unsuccessful in their embassy of expostulation, but awfully so in the first and second battle. And why so? Had the Lord no regard to a people armed in the cause; and for the support of his law? The fact is, Israel was all sinful; and one wicked man will not be converted by another. The Israelites had a common covenant, it is true; and therefore it was their duty to arm against their obstinate brother; but they ought to have armed long ago against the idols of Dan. Their cause was good, but in their hot zeal, they never dreamed of consulting the Lord, the first duty of a nation in trouble, till they had actually encamped against their brother. Then the Lord said, go; yes go, as you have begun, and be a scourge one to the other. Learn hence, that Gods work must always be done in his counsel, and in his way; otherwise our efforts will be attended with weakness and want of success.
We learn farther, that temporary success, and success of the most distinguished kind, is not a proof of the goodness of a cause. Benjamin by his first victory would be highly elated; but the second would probably confirm his confidence that heaven had fully declared in his favour; yet no man should draw conclusions from imperfect views of providence. God has very frequently blessed designs to accomplish by the wicked, for the safety of his church; and while he accomplishes those designs, he makes them an instructive scourge one to another. Israel, unable to make head against his stubborn brother, either by counsel or by arms, was highly commendable for persevering in so good a cause: and in the issue he took the right method to succeed. He wept before the Lord, he offered burnt-offerings for his sin, and peace-offerings for his mercies. He consulted the Lord before he dared to take a further step, and received the positive promise of victory. Proceeding now by counsel, he laid an ambuscade for the city, and opposed his exulting foe by ten thousand valiant men. Ah, Benjamin, thy day was now come! Thy triumph was short. Why didst thou protect the wicked? Why wast thou not the first to say, after the example of thy fathers, that the wicked shall not live to reproach thy name? Gen 31:32; Gen 44:9. Then life and glory had attended thy valour, and thy fame had been lasting as the heavens and the earth.
From this sad history, this most instructive case, which cost Israel nearly seventy thousand men, let young people learn to shun the society of the wicked. Little did many a youth, who ought to have been in his fathers house, think that the farce of crime would end in so dreadful a tragedy. And as most wicked men, in the hour of temptation, run beyond the imaginary limits prescribed to folly, no one can be safe for a moment in their company. Destruction and misery are in their way, and the way of peace they have not known. Therefore come out from among them, and be ye separate, that ye may be the sons and daughters of the Lord Almighty.
By the three attacks of the Hebrews against this sore crime, let us be encouraged to return to the charge against all inordinate desires of the flesh; for he who fights with prayers and tears shall surely conquer his exulting foe.
Fuente: Sutcliffe’s Commentary on the Old and New Testaments
Judges 20. The Outrage Avenged.The congregation (LXX Synagg) is a post-exilic term. The words as one man suggest a unity of action such as was not secured till long after the time of the Judges. The assembly of the people of God was a phrase often heard in the second Temple, but not in the days of the Judges.
Jdg 20:2. Contrast the army mustered against Sisera, 40,000 men strong (Jdg 5:8).
Jdg 20:10. Each of the three clauses means precisely the same thing.
Jdg 20:15. The figures are in some confusion, the size of the Benjamite force being indicated three times, and each time differently (15, 35, 4447).
Jdg 20:16. According to the VSS, Jdg 20:16 a should be omitted (note the repetition of 700 chosen men); and every one means each of the 26,000 men who were all left-handed. The skill of the Benjamites as archers and slingers is alluded to in 2Ch 12:2 f.
Jdg 20:23 should evidently stand before Jdg 20:22-27 f. The words in brackets were added by an editor or scribe who counted it improper to offer sacrifice except where the Ark was housed, and who therefore inferred that Bethel, instead of Shiloh, possessed the sacra for a time. History gives no hint of this arrangement.
Jdg 20:30-48. The account of the third days fighting is extremely confused. In Jdg 20:35 the battle is over; in Jdg 20:36 b it begins again.
Jdg 20:33. Baal-tamar is unknown. For Maareh-geba read (with LXX) the West of Gibeah.
Jdg 20:37. The ruse practised is very like that employed by Joshua against Ai (Jos 8:14 f).
Jdg 20:40. The last words may be translated, And, behold, the holocaust of the city went up to heaven. The smoking and blazing city are imaged as a sacrifice. Heaven has been offered many such holocausts of barbarian vengeance.
Jdg 20:43. Text corrupt. Moore suggests they cut Benjamin to pieces from Nohah as far as opposite Geba, eastward.
Jdg 20:45. The rock Rimmon is now Rammn, 3 m. E. of Bethel.
Jdg 20:48. Benjamin is made a herem, as if it were a heathen tribe devoted in war.
Fuente: Peake’s Commentary on the Bible
20:1 Then all the children of Israel went out, and the congregation was gathered together as {a} one man, from Dan even to Beersheba, with the land of Gilead, unto the {b} LORD in Mizpeh.
(a) That is, all with one consent.
(b) To ask counsel.
Fuente: Geneva Bible Notes
2. The civil war in Israel ch. 20
This chapter continues the story begun in chapter 19. The emphasis in chapter 19 was on moral degeneracy and that of chapter 20 is Israel’s political disorganization. One man’s sin in chapter 19 resulted in over 65,000 deaths in chapter 20 (cf. Joshua 7).
Fuente: Expository Notes of Dr. Constable (Old and New Testaments)
Preparations to besiege Gibeah 20:1-11
The phrase "from Dan to Beersheba" (Jdg 20:1) became a common expression during Israel’s united monarchy and indicated the whole of Israel. Gilead refers to the part of Israel east of the Jordan River. The Mizpah referred to here (Jdg 20:1) was the one in Benjamin just five miles north of Gibeah, not Mizpah of Gilead. Three times in this pericope the writer used the phrase "as one man" (Jdg 20:1; Jdg 20:8; Jdg 20:11). This is one of the rare instances of Israelite solidarity during the Judges Period. Here they unanimously chose a plan that lacked divine initiative. At other times they did not cooperate to fulfill the revealed will of God (cf. Jdg 5:15-17; Jdg 8:1-3; Jdg 12:1-6; Jdg 15:11).
By casting lots to see how they should proceed against Benjamin (Jdg 20:9), the tribes were dealing with Benjamin as they had dealt with the Canaanite towns they had attacked. God did not tell them to deal with their fellow Israelites this way (cf. Deu 13:12-18). They were now battling their brethren as they had engaged their enemies (Jdg 20:18; cf. Lev 19:18).
"Some comment must be made regarding the large numbers in this chapter. The discussion centers around the translation of the Hebrew word eleph. This word often is translated thousand but can also mean a family, clan, or military unit of fighting men (such as a squad of ten to twenty soldiers). The twenty-six, twenty-two, eighteen, ten, should not be thought of as so many thousand men but as so many units of men, each unit consisting of somewhere in the neighborhood of ten to twenty fighting men each. (A unit of ten is mentioned specifically in Jdg 20:10.) This interpretation does not detract from the authority of the Scriptures in any way. It simply attempts to understand what the Bible actually says. Certainly it places the other numbers in the chapter in a reasonable context." [Note: Monson, p. 119. See also The New Bible Dictionary, 1962 ed., s.v. "Number," by R. A. H. Gunner.]
I see no reason to reject the traditional translation of eleph as "thousand" in this context (cf. Num 26:41). [Note: So also Wolf, p. 494; et al.]
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.