Catholic Commentary on Judges 21

"In those days Israel had no king; everyone did as they saw fit." (Judges 21:25)

Wives for the Benjamites

The tribes had sworn at Mizpah not to give their daughters to Benjamin. Now they grieve: one tribe of Israel is cut off. They discover that no one from Jabesh-gilead came to the assembly, and they kill the men and male children of that city, preserving 400 young women as wives for the surviving Benjamites. Still short, they permit the Benjamites to seize girls from the annual festival at Shiloh. The brutal expedients of the chapter are the product of a rash collective vow made in anger and the desperate attempt to repair its consequences without breaking the oath. The people who tried to punish Benjamin's lawlessness have created a new chain of violence and abduction.

Judges closes with the same refrain it began with in chapter 17: In those days Israel had no king; everyone did as they saw fit. The book that opened with the conquest ends with civil war, mass slaughter, abduction, and the near-extinction of a tribe. The theological argument of the whole book is in this refrain: the covenant community without the acknowledged rule of God descends without limit. The kingship that Israel will request in 1 Samuel is already being prepared by the chaos that its absence produces. The Catechism draws from Judges the permanent lesson that communities without acknowledged divine ordering dissolve into the violence of individual desire (CCC 1888).

Living the Word

Brothers and sisters, the book of Judges ends where it began: no king, everyone doing as they see fit. The solution is not a human king, as 1 Samuel will show, but the acknowledgment of God's kingship, which the human king was meant to represent and which only Christ fully embodies. Come, Lord Jesus, and be our King.

Prayer

Lord God, when there is no king your people do as they see fit and the result is catastrophe. Be our King. Rule in our hearts and communities. Do not leave us to ourselves. Through Christ our Lord. Amen.

21
Wives for the Benjamites
1 Now the men of Israel had sworn an oath at Mizpah, saying, “Not one of us will give his daughter in marriage to a Benjamite.”
 
2 So the people came to Bethel and sat there before God until evening, lifting up their voices and weeping bitterly. 3 “Why, O LORD God of Israel,” they cried out, “has this happened in Israel? Today in Israel one tribe is missing!”
 
4 The next day the people got up early, built an altar there, and presented burnt offerings and peace offerings. 5 The Israelites asked, “Who among all the tribes of Israel did not come to the assembly before the LORD?” For they had taken a solemn oath that anyone who failed to come up before the LORD at Mizpah would surely be put to death.
 
6 And the Israelites grieved for their brothers, the Benjamites, and said, “Today a tribe is cut off from Israel. 7 What should we do about wives for the survivors, since we have sworn by the LORD not to give them our daughters in marriage?”
 
8 So they asked, “Which one of the tribes of Israel failed to come up before the LORD at Mizpah?” And, in fact, no one from Jabesh-gilead had come to the camp for the assembly. 9 For when the people were counted, none of the residents of Jabesh-gilead were there.
 
10 So the congregation sent 12,000 of their most valiant men and commanded them: “Go and put to the sword those living in Jabesh-gilead, including women and children. 11 This is what you are to do: Devote to destruction * 21:11 Forms of the Hebrew cherem refer to the giving over of things or persons to the LORD, either by destroying them or by giving them as an offering. every male, as well as every female who has had relations with a man.”
 
12 So they found among the inhabitants of Jabesh-gilead four hundred young women who had not had relations with a man, and they brought them to the camp at Shiloh in the land of Canaan.
 
13 Then the whole congregation sent a message of peace to the Benjamites who were at the rock of Rimmon. 14 And at that time the Benjamites returned and were given the women who were spared from Jabesh-gilead. But there were not enough women for all of them.
 
15 The people grieved for Benjamin, because the LORD had made a void in the tribes of Israel.
 
16 Then the elders of the congregation said, “What should we do about wives for those who remain, since the women of Benjamin have been destroyed?” 17 They added, “There must be heirs for the survivors of Benjamin, so that a tribe of Israel will not be wiped out. 18 But we cannot give them our daughters as wives.”
 
For the Israelites had sworn, “Cursed is he who gives a wife to a Benjamite.”
 
19 “But look,” they said, “there is a yearly feast to the LORD in Shiloh, which is north of Bethel east of the road that goes up from Bethel to Shechem, and south of Lebonah.”
 
20 So they commanded the Benjamites: “Go, hide in the vineyards 21 and watch. When you see the daughters of Shiloh come out to perform their dances, each of you is to come out of the vineyards, catch for himself a wife from the daughters of Shiloh, and go to the land of Benjamin. 22 When their fathers or brothers come to us to complain, we will tell them, ‘Do us a favor by helping them, since we did not get wives for each of them in the war. Since you did not actually give them your daughters, you have no guilt.’ ”
 
23 The Benjamites did as instructed and carried away the number of women they needed from the dancers they caught. They went back to their own inheritance, rebuilt their cities, and settled in them. 24 And at that time, each of the Israelites returned from there to his own tribe and clan, each to his own inheritance.
 
25 In those days there was no king in Israel; everyone did what was right in his own eyes.

*21:11 21:11 Forms of the Hebrew cherem refer to the giving over of things or persons to the LORD, either by destroying them or by giving them as an offering.

Public Domain