Slaughtering the Benjamites II: merciless anarchy—Judges 20:29—21:25

(Continued from Part I, http://www.craigkeener.org/slaughtering-the-benjamites-i-benjamins-depravity-judges-191-2028/)
Judges goes on to narrate the Israelites’ unbridled vengeance against the Benjamites and the continuing, sinful consequences of their overkill. Because Benjamin refused to hand over those who gang-raped a woman to death, the other tribes of Israel make war on the Benjamites. Up till this point, the Benjamites, equipped with long-distance weapons, have been winning the battles. They have consistently repelled the larger forces arrayed against them. Now, however, Israel has a divine promise of victory from the Lord (Judg 20:28).

Total war against Benjamin

In Judges 20:29, 33, 36-38, the Israelite allies set an ambush against the Benjamites. They borrow this strategy most clearly from Joshua’s earlier destruction of the nearby hostile Canaanite town of Ai (Josh 8:2-21), applying this strategy against Benjamin. This time they succeed, putting the Benjamites to flight. Throughout history, cutting down retreating warriors from behind proves much easier than having to face their weapons. Thus in 20:45 the Israelite warriors “caught” and killed five thousand fleeing Benjamite warriors on the road; the verb for violent catching here appears only one other time in the Book of Judges, where the Benjamite rapists forced themselves on the Levite’s concubine (19:25).

To forestall future conflicts, the law earlier prescribed herem—the utter destruction of total war—against enemy Canaanites (Deut 7:2). Israel carried out little of this in the Book of Judges, yet the vengeful Israelites now get so carried away with their victory that they practice herem against Benjamites! The law did prescribe this fate for apostate cities that followed other gods (Deut 13:12-18). But what about for an entire tribe that simply came to the aid of such a city because of clan allegiances? Common as it was in antiquity to kill all males who might grow up to avenge their fathers, the law prohibited killing children for their fathers’ crimes (Deut 24:16). Further, wiping out women and children was herem, not normal punishment.

In the heat of the moment, many hardened warriors, some of whose compatriots have been killed, now slaughter everyone in sight. Only six hundred Benjamite men escape, taking refuge for the next four months (20:47). After these months pass, however, Israelite tempers cool (cf. 20:47). Now many of the Israelites, whose warriors had earlier slaughtered the Benjamites, lament that God has destroyed one of the tribes of Israel (21:3, 15)! (Blaming God for human acts of depravity is not a new invention.) Granted, God is sovereign, but again his involvement here is at a more distant remove, not a direct action. In this narrative, God has ultimately delivered the Benjamite warriors into the other Israelites’ hands (Judg 20:28, 35); but the narrator never says that he commands or approves of this mass slaughter.

Much of Israel, in fact, themselves regretted their actions, as the narrator twice mentions (21:6, 15, two of the only three uses of this term in Judges). Israel’s leaders now need a way to replenish the tribe of Benjamin, but the six hundred surviving Benjamite men cannot reproduce without women. Israel has slaughtered all the Benjamite women, as well as taken an impulsive oath before God not to let Benjamites intermarry with them (21:1).

Seizing more innocent women

The leaders, however, reach a solution that prevents them from breaking their oaths. Now they will execute herem against another Israelite town, Jabesh Gilead! Judges 21:11 is in fact one of only two uses of the Hebrew verb related to herem in the Book of Judges. (Later Saul, who fails to execute herem against Amalekites in 1 Sam 15:3-23, essentially executes it against God’s priests in 22:19!)

Again Israel keeps their word: they had promised to kill anyone who did not come to help them with the battle (21:5). These oaths were may not have been a good idea; they certainly cannot justify the wholesale action that now follows. The virgin daughters of Jabesh Gilead are now seized, just as the Levite’s concubine was seized. Meanwhile, wives and concubines are slaughtered—just as the Levite’s concubine was killed. (Probably Benjamites later repopulated their maternal ancestor’s town. Later Saul as a Benjamite has natural ties with Jabesh Gilead, evident in 1 Sam 11:5-9 and 31:11-12.)

Thus Israelites again slaughter their own people. The intensity of lethal and sexual violence here readily reminds us of the sorts of atrocities that some Islamic extremists have committed in the Middle East or northern Nigeria, or genocidal actions elsewhere. The spirit of violence in the world is not new, even if modern technologies have provided increasingly efficient means of killing.

The decimation of Jabesh Gilead, however, did not supply enough young women for the Benjamites: just four hundred young wives for six hundred men. (Given the average likely age of marriage, most of these women were probably sixteen or younger—perhaps many in their early teens.) So what did the Israelites do? They went and kidnapped some other Israelite girls. They chose a convenient location that did not require much travel—their host town, Shiloh, just a day’s march from devastated Gibeah (21:12). (They had earlier gathered at another centrally located site, Mizpah, fewer than five miles from Gibeah; Judg 20:1, 3; 21:1, 5, 8.) At some point (perhaps later) Shiloh became the place of the tabernacle (18:31).

So—at a feast for the Lord (Judg 21:19)—the Israelites invited the two hundred Benjamites who were still single to capture two hundred single young women from Shiloh. The Hebrew text of 21:20 suggests that they “ambushed” them, the same terminology used for the recent attack against the Benjamites (20:29, 33, 36-38). (An attentive reader of Judges in Hebrew might recall that, in this book, apart from that recent attack only the wicked “ambush” or “lie in wait”; Judg 9:25, 32, 34, 43; 16:2, 9, 12.)

Although the strategy of ambush made sense against the opposing army, here it is carried out against unarmed, young teenage girls; the law prohibited ambushing or lying in wait (the same Hebrew term) for a neighbor to harm them (Deut 19:11). Each one “catches” a wife for himself (Judg 21:21), a Hebrew term elsewhere applied to violence (Ps 10:9). The other Israelites explain to the girls’ fathers in Shiloh that since they did not give their daughters in marriage to the Benjamites, they have not violated Israel’s oath. How much would this consolation have reduced the horror for the families now rent apart?

The Israelite actions began as a quest for justice, a call for vengeance on behalf of an unnamed women who was mercilessly gang-raped to death. Yet the quest ended up as the slaughter of men, women and boys, along with the seizure of preadolescent girls and unmarried teenage women.

Everyone did what was right in their own eyes

Recounting the acts without inserting moral comment so far, the narrator lets the horror of the story strike with its own graphic force. Only the book’s concluding comment sheds light on its perspective: there was no king in Israel, and everyone did what they personally viewed as right (21:25). This horrible story is a story of moral anarchy, the kind of violent lawlessness we sometimes might associate with the old frontier in the western United States, war-torn Somalia, or other unstable regions. It could well be the story of unbridled human hearts anywhere that lacks means of civil restraint, where the strong are free to prey on those socially or physically weaker than themselves.

Why do the final chapters of Judges begin and end with a refrain about moral anarchy associated with lack of kingship (17:6; 19:1; 21:25)? Although in this book God periodically raises up judges, Israel as a whole has no stable government here, no provision for continuing moral leadership.

As the subsequent story of Israel in Samuel through Kings illustrates, however, a continuing government without obedience to God was ultimately no less liable to fail. The first part of that story elaborates Saul’s failure and David’s success, quickly followed by David’s failure and its consequences for his kingdom. Within a generation, we witness the fraying of the delicate tribal unity often achieved under David and particularly achieved in the early part of Solomon’s reign. When there was a king in Israel who did only what was right in his own eyes (or in the eyes of others not obeying God), the nation was also led astray.

It fell to prophets to repeatedly call God’s people back to his Word. True prophets (as opposed to the corrupted ones) provided a conscience for Israel, some moral leadership. But prophets can influence only those willing to heed them.

Ultimately neither judges nor kings could provide more than stopgap measures (though stopgaps are safer than anarchy). Through the prophets, God ultimate promised Israel a more permanent solution: the coming of his own kingdom, when he would reign through his appointed vizier, the promised descendant of David. Yet what would a kingdom of righteousness mean for a sinful people, the sort of people we encounter in Judges? Fortunately for us, the promised kingdom has already made its first entrance into more gently our world; the king came first not to avenge, but to offer justice and righteousness a different way. Jesus’ way was not to kill sinners but to transform them. As followers of Jesus, we must work for the peace and justice that our king requires, even in this world of incredible tragedy and pain, until he returns to consummate his promise of that new era.