Judges Part 21

XXI. Judges 21. A. This concluding chapter sets forth the inventive conniving of eleven tribes to salvage the tribe of Benjamin from extinction and loss of inheritance in the land, which diminution was owing to rash, impertinent oaths and being “...righteous over much...” (ECC 7:16). 1. Benjamin had merited chastisement but not utter destruction (which would have violated the will of God for the inheritances of Canaan). 2. The rod of chastening should be a measured rod to correct, not destroy. PRO 23:13-14. 3. We see that oaths are solemn and to be kept, and that we should seek equitable solutions within oaths and law to dilemmas that oaths and law sometimes create. 4. It is complete submission to Christ that alone empowers and authorizes us to prosecute unlimited warfare against our enemy: sin. COL 3:5-9. B. vs. 1-7. 1. Recall that Israel had almost utterly slain Benjamin (man, woman, child): only 600 men survived and were holed up in the rock Rimmon. JDG 20:47-48. 2. Two solemn oaths which were not previously disclosed are here revealed: that they would not give any of their daughters in marriage to a Benjamite, and that those who had refused to answer the call to battle against Benjamin should surely be put to death. vs. 1, 5, 18. a. This piece-meal revelation of detail should remind us to build our faith or our arguments on the entire revelation of Scripture in which there is here a little, there a little (ISA 28:10), that we be not guilty of the logical error of inadequate sampling. b. It seems that their oath to not give their daughters in marriage to Benjamin presupposes that they either had not planned for or not anticipated the utter elimination of Benjamin. c. The terms of these two harsh oaths ended up working together in the formulation of a solution to their dilemma. There would later be no Paul of Benjamin had they not done something. PHIL 3:5. d. The heinous sin at Gibeah which was defended by Benjamin had prompted the eleven tribes to treat Benjamin as the devoted heathen nations of Canaan: utter destruction and no marriages to them. DEUT 7:1-3. (1) Christ alludes to this principle of deeming recalcitrant brethren as heathen. MAT 18:17. (2) Hence, we should not deem such a person worthy of church identity at the Lord’s Table any more than any unconverted unbeliever. (3) NOTE: a believing church member who loses his place in the church through sin may still be a believer but he no longer shares in the inheritance of the believers. His exclusion does not infallibly make him an unbeliever. He may still believe the truth of the very gospel that caught up with him and this is part of his punishment: belief without the inheritance that should be a believer’s. His portion/inheritance is with the unbelievers, per LUK 12:45-46. (4) Neither may we marry the religion of Jesus Christ with the doctrine and practices of heretics or heathen. GAL 2:21; 1CO 10:20-21. 3. Israel here repents of their overzealousness against Benjamin. a. They appeared before God in mournful pleading with sacrifices. vs. 2-4. b. The answer to their question in v. 3 seems obvious: “Because you rushed violently without considering the full implications of overzealous action against the people of God’s inheritance.” 4. They had made solemn oaths from which there was no turning back. The eleven tribes here were not historically far removed from the good example of Joshua concerning the Gibeonites whom Israel had sworn to not destroy. JOS 9:16-21. a. This is an important principle to guide us in life. PSA 15:1-4; ECC 5:4-6. b. God bound Himself by this principle to secure our High Priest. HEB 7:21. c. God Himself knew a workaround to His sworn curse on Jeconiah in order to still keep His promise to David concerning Messiah (JER 22:30 c/w ACT 2:30). Christ would not be born of the royal lineage from Solomon but from another of David’s sons, Nathan (LUK 3:31), and had the legal right to David’s throne through His stepfather, Joseph. MAT 1:6-16. 5. “The less consideration is used before the making of a vow, the more, commonly, there is need of afterwards for the keeping of it.” (Matthew Henry) C. vs. 8-15. 1. Since all those present at Mizpeh had sworn to not give their daughters to Benjamin, and since none from Jabesh-gilead had been present to consent to that oath, a plan was devised to harvest some virgin daughters of Jabesh-gilead when Israel threshed them in punishment. 2. 12,000 men were charged, “...Go and smite the inhabitants of Jabesh-gilead with the edge of the sword, with the women and the children” (v. 10) but that was qualified by v. 11. They had a precedent from Moses for such an exemption when the Midianites were destroyed. NUM 31:17-18. 3. Thus, all Israel which had sworn to not give their daughters to Benjamin had upheld their oath while yet providing some marrying stock to Benjamin. 4. But they only salvaged 400, which left them 200 short of the needed number. Thus, plan B was devised. D. vs. 16-24. 1. They capitalized on a yearly dance tradition of the (obviously unwed) daughters of Shiloh. Who can tell how many young women over the centuries got “carried away” at a dance where they were on display, albeit not always against their will? 2. The 200 Benjamites were to lie in wait and seize “...every man his wife...” (v. 21), “...according to their number...” (v. 23). a. One man, one woman: the original order of marriage that we are bound to honor. MAT 19:4-6. b. Mind that in all the account of sodomitic corruption and tolerance in Benjamin which begins in JDG 19, it seems there was still the normal union of marriage practiced since Israel was seeking to provide wives to the depleted tribe. c/w LUK 17:26-30. 3. They didn’t inform the family guardians of the daughters of this plan, assuming it best under the circumstances to seek forgiveness rather than permission. If they had advised the family guardians of the plan and gotten their consent, there would have been a breach of the oath to not “...give them wives of our daughters...” (v. 18). 4. A consolation for all the 600 daughters of Israel (and for the special consolation of the 200 and their family guardians) was that these daughters would be marrying into massive estates since all the inheritance of Benjamin had been originally for 45,600, and all was theirs by survivorship. NUM 26:41. E. Rather than break oath or law, or twist or manufacture law, they upheld the oaths and law. F. “In those days there was no king in Israel: every man did that which was right in his own eyes” (JDG 21:25).