Judges Chapter 21

Wives for Benjamites

¹ The men of Israel had sworn at Mizpah that none of them would give his daughter in marriage to Benjamin. ² The people came to Bethel and sat till evening in front of God and cried bitterly. ³ “LORD God of Israel, why has this happened that a tribe should be missing from Israel?” ⁴ The people got up early the next day, built an altar, and offered burnt offerings and peace offerings. ⁵ They said, “Which tribe didn’t come up to the assembly to the LORD?” They’d taken an oath at Mizpah to put to death anyone that didn’t come up to the LORD. ⁶ They felt sorry for Benjamin, their fellow Jews, “A tribe has been eliminated from Israel today. ⁷ What are we going to do for wives for the ones that are left? We’ve sworn by the LORD not to give them our daughters for wives.”                                                                         Jud 21:1-7

⁸ They said, “What tribe didn’t come up?” ⁹ When the people mustered, not one person from Jabesh-gilead was there. ¹⁰ The community sent 12,000 of their bravest men, “Go strike the people in Jabesh-gilead with the sword, including women and children. ¹¹ Destroy every male and every woman that has been with a man.” ¹² They found 400 young virgins in Jabesh-gilead and brought them to the camp at Shiloh in Canaan.

¹³ Then the whole community sent word to Benjamin at the Rock of Rimmon to announce a truce. ¹⁴ Benjamin came back, and they gave them the women they’d saved from Jabesh-gilead, but they weren’t enough. ¹⁵ The people had mercy on Benjamin because the LORD had created a division in the tribes.                                                                                                          Jud 21:8-15

¹⁶ The elders of the community said,

“What are we going to do for the rest of them? The women from Benjamin had been destroyed. ¹⁷ There has to be an inheritance for the survivors so a tribe doesn’t disappear. ¹⁸ But we can’t give them our daughters for wives.”

The people had sworn, “Anybody that gives a wife to Benjamin is under a course.”

¹⁹ They said, “There’s the annual festival of the LORD at Shiloh, north of Bethel, east of the road from Bethel to Shechem and south of Lebonah.”

²⁰ They told the Benjamites,

“Lie in wait in the vineyards ²¹ and watch. If the young women of Shiloh come out to dance in the dances, each man come out of the vineyards, grab his wife, and go to Benjamin’s land. ²² When their fathers or brothers complain to us, we’ll say, ‘Grant them graciously to us because we didn’t take wives for them in battle. You didn’t give them wives; otherwise, you’d be guilty.’”

²³ The Benjamites did that and took their wives according to their number from the dancers they carried off. They went back to their inheritance, rebuilt the towns, and lived in them. ²⁴ Each man of Israel went to his tribe and family, to his inheritance.

²⁵ In those days there wasn’t a king in Israel. Everybody did what seemed right to them.

Jud 21:16-25

Version by Virgil Warren: christir.org