Destruction of Benjamin - Judges 20 & 21

The last two chapters of the book of Judges has a lot going on and are honestly just horrific. They deal with what happens after the concubine of the Levite is raped to death in Gibeah and he cuts up her body and sends it to the leadership of each tribe. After the leaders get their body piece and find out what happens, they decide that something needs to be done and calls the Levite to them and ask him what happens. He lies and says that the men of Gibeah were trying to kill him and they took his concubine and raped her to death. That’s not what happened, they wanted to rape the man so he GAVE his concubine to them to save himself. Interestingly, I think the tribal leaders would have probably been more upset if he had told the truth that they wanted to rape him because men like that get real upset over gay stuff. Anyway, the leaders all agree that this is abhorrent behavior and now something needs to be done about it.

It's important to remember that Gibeah, where this evil was committed, was a part of the tribe of Benjamin. They gathered a specific number of soldiers from each tribe and ended up with about 400,000 fighters. Interestingly, they show up to the leaders of Benjamin, expecting them to either handle the situation themselves or to join in with the massive army to destroy this little town. To their (and out) surprise, Benjamin opts to do neither and decides to fight against this army in order to protect Gibeah. So Benjamin gathers their army which numbers about 26,000 soldiers, plus they have about 700 men who are excellent at slings and could sling a 1 pound rock 90 miles per hour at their target and never miss.

The Israelite army goes to “up to the house of God,” which TB says probably meant the place where the wilderness tabernacle was, and asks which tribe should attack first and the answer was “Judah.” This makes it sound like God was giving his blessing on their plan and was fully supporting them. TB asks if this answer of “Judah” meant that God audibly spoke to the leaders and answered that it almost certainly meant that they were drawing lots with the Urim and Thummim and happened to draw Judah’s name out of the bag and that’s how it was decided, they just assumed that God was going to do whatever they wanted.

Judah leads the Israelite army into battle against Benjamin and Benjamin, even though they are smaller, are entrenched into their terrain and they slaughter 22,000 of the Israelite troops when they come to fight, mostly from the tribe of Judah. The main Israelite army is devastated, and it makes sense, they thought they had God’s blessing and then they are defeated soundly by a smaller force. Now they took a different approach, this time when approaching God, they wept and instead asked, “Shall I go up again to battle against the children of Benjamin my brother?” God answered them this time and said, “Go up against him.”

I’m confused by the timing because it says that second time they attack Benjamin they lose another 18,000 men, and they go again but this time they ask Phineas, the high priest, where the ark of the covenant is, they fast and pray beforehand, and offer sacrifices and ask God again, and he says “Go up; for to morrow I will deliver them into thine hand.” I don’t know what the purpose of the second defeat was, especially after God said for them to attack again, maybe it’s because sometimes God allows bad things to happen to us because we need to be put into a different spot spiritually so that we can learn and grow in the way that He needs us to. Maybe when God said, “go up against him” the first time, he didn’t mean, “do it because I’ll give you victory,” maybe he meant “do it because you won’t humble yourselves any other way in order to ask me correctly.” Maybe that happens to us sometimes, He lets horrible things happen because we won’t learn the right thing any other way. Maybe it was a way to prove their staying power as well, defeat the first two times and then showing them that they can humble themselves instead of just giving up.

Now that God has promised to deliver the enemy into their hands, they come up with a plan, the Israelites go up to Gibeah just like they had the first two times and Benjamin attacked them, assuming that they would beat them again like before. Israel retreats and 10,000 men that were hidden go into the city of Gibeah and burn it and kill everyone and the main armies that are fighting, Israel pursues and killed 25,000 Benjaminites and 600 men run and hide in the rocks in the wilderness.

Chapter 21 deals with the regret that the Israelites feel for allowing the tribe of Benjamin to be almost destroyed, having only 600 men remaining. I’m not exactly sure how there are only 600 men remaining, what happened to all the women and children? I’m tired and I don’t really care that much so I’m not going to work too hard for it, but suffice it to say that only 600 men remained of the tribe of Benjamin. Also as a note, after their victory all the tribal leaders of the Israelites made a vow that they would not their daughters to marry the man of Benjamin. But now that all their women were dead, the tribe was going to be extinct here shortly.

So the tribal leaders try to find a loophole that will allow the men of Benjamin to repopulate their tribe but also not with any of their own daughters, and they find one. When the war first started, they vowed that anyone who didn’t take part in the fighting would be killed, so they find out if there were any towns who didn’t send fighters to help, and they figured out that Gilead didn’t send any fighters. So to kill two birds with one stone, they decide they are going to destroy the town for not sending fighters and they are also going to kill everyone except for the virginal girls so they can send those girls to be “wives” to the single Benjaminte men so reproduce. There’s about 400 girls that fit that description so they kill everyone else in the town, take the girls and give them to the remaining Bejaminite men, and still have to come up with about 200 girls. So their solution to that is to just tell the Benjaminite men to kidnap the remainder of what they need and when the fathers of the kidnapped girls come to the tribal leaders about it, they’ll just tell them “do me a favor, let them have those girls.” I swear, this is absolutely insane. So that’s what happens, so much death and rape, like it’s insane, I’m sure that God was very unhappy with his people acting like that and it’s horrific.

The book of Judges ends with a pretty telling statement, “In those days there was no king in Israel: every man did that which was right in his own eyes.” And it just goes to show exactly what “right in our own eyes’ can look like when we don’t obey God. Tragic.