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Judges 20: What the Passage Says

135 claims across 48 verses, in the order the chapter makes them.

Not a sermon outline. What Judges 20 says, and what its hard words meant. The reading of it is yours.

The Chapter in a Sentence

Israel gathers at Mizpeh, and the Levite tells the assembly what the men of Gibeah did to him and his concubine. Israel demands that Benjamin hand over the guilty men; Benjamin refuses and musters for war. Benjamin wins the first two days of fighting, killing forty thousand Israelites, but on the third day an ambush takes Gibeah and Israel destroys Benjamin's army. Israel then puts the towns of Benjamin to the sword and burns them, and six hundred Benjamite men escape to the rock of Rimmon.

Claim by Claim

  1. 20:1
    • All the children of Israel went out.
    • The congregation assembled as one man.
    • The congregation gathered from Dan to Beersheba, along with the land of Gilead.
    • The congregation assembled to the LORD at Mizpah.
  2. 20:2
    • The chiefs of all the people, of all the tribes of Israel, presented themselves in the assembly of the people of God.
    • There were four hundred thousand men on foot who drew the sword.
  3. 20:3
    • The children of Benjamin heard that the children of Israel had gone up to Mizpah.
    • The children of Israel said, Tell us, how did this wickedness happen?
  4. 20:4
    • The Levite, the husband of the woman who was murdered, answered.
    • The Levite said that he and his concubine came to Gibeah, which belongs to Benjamin, to spend the night.
  5. 20:5
    • The Levite said the men of Gibeah rose up against him.
    • The Levite said they surrounded the house against him by night.
    • The Levite said they intended to kill him.
    • The Levite said they abused his concubine.
    • The Levite said his concubine died.
  6. 20:6
    • The Levite said he took his concubine and cut her in pieces.
    • The Levite said he sent her throughout all the territory of the inheritance of Israel.
    • The Levite said the reason was that they had committed depravity and disgraceful folly in Israel.
  7. 20:7
    • The Levite said, You are all children of Israel.
    • The Levite told them to give their word and counsel there.
  8. 20:8
    • All the people arose as one man.
    • The people said none of them would go to his tent.
    • The people said none of them would turn aside to his house.
  9. 20:9
    • The people said this is what they would do to Gibeah: go up against it by lot.
  10. 20:10
    • The people said they would take ten men out of every hundred throughout all the tribes of Israel.
    • The people said they would take a hundred out of every thousand.
    • The people said they would take a thousand out of every ten thousand.
    • The people said these men were to fetch provisions for the people.
    • The people said this was so that when they came to Gibeah of Benjamin they could act according to all the disgraceful folly that had been done in Israel.
  11. 20:11
    • All the men of Israel were gathered against the city.
    • They were united as one man.
  12. 20:12
    • The tribes of Israel sent men through all the tribe of Benjamin.
    • They asked, What is this wickedness that has happened among you?
  13. 20:13
    • They demanded that Benjamin hand over the worthless men who are in Gibeah.
    • They said the purpose was to put those men to death.
    • They said the purpose was to purge evil from Israel.
    • The children of Benjamin refused to listen to the voice of their brothers the children of Israel.
  14. 20:14
    • The children of Benjamin gathered from their cities to Gibeah.
    • They gathered to go out to battle against the children of Israel.
  15. 20:15
    • The children of Benjamin were counted that day from the cities as twenty-six thousand men who drew the sword.
    • This count was apart from the inhabitants of Gibeah.
    • The inhabitants of Gibeah were counted as seven hundred chosen men.
  16. 20:16
    • Among all this people there were seven hundred chosen men.
    • These seven hundred were restricted in the right hand, that is, left-handed.
    • Every one of them could sling a stone at a hair and not miss.
  17. 20:17
    • The men of Israel, apart from Benjamin, were counted as four hundred thousand men who drew the sword.
    • All of these were men of war.
  18. 20:18
    • The children of Israel arose and went up to Bethel.
    • They inquired of God.
    • The children of Israel asked, Which of us shall go up first to the battle against the children of Benjamin?
    • The LORD said, Judah first.
  19. 20:19
    • The children of Israel rose up in the morning.
    • They encamped against Gibeah.
  20. 20:20
    • The men of Israel went out to battle against Benjamin.
    • The men of Israel drew up in battle array against them at Gibeah.
  21. 20:21
    • The children of Benjamin came out of Gibeah.
    • That day they struck down twenty-two thousand men of Israel to the ground.
  22. 20:22
    • The people, the men of Israel, strengthened themselves.
    • They again drew up in battle array in the place where they had arrayed themselves on the first day.
  23. 20:23
    • The children of Israel went up and wept before the LORD until evening.
    • They inquired of the LORD, asking whether they should again draw near to battle against the children of Benjamin their brother.
    • The LORD said, Go up against him.
  24. 20:24
    • The children of Israel came near against the children of Benjamin on the second day.
  25. 20:25
    • Benjamin went out against them from Gibeah on the second day.
    • They struck down another eighteen thousand men of the children of Israel to the ground.
    • All of these drew the sword.
  26. 20:26
    • All the children of Israel and all the people went up and came to Bethel.
    • They wept.
    • They sat there before the LORD.
    • They fasted that day until evening.
    • They offered burnt offerings and peace offerings before the LORD.
  27. 20:27
    • The children of Israel inquired of the LORD.
    • The ark of the covenant of God was there in those days.
  28. 20:28
    • Phinehas son of Eleazar, son of Aaron, stood before it in those days.
    • They asked whether they should again go out to battle against the children of Benjamin their brother, or stop.
    • The LORD said, Go up.
    • The LORD said that tomorrow he would deliver them into their hand.
  29. 20:29
    • Israel set men in ambush around Gibeah.
  30. 20:30
    • The children of Israel went up against the children of Benjamin on the third day.
    • They drew up in array against Gibeah as at the previous times.
  31. 20:31
    • The children of Benjamin went out against the people.
    • The children of Benjamin were drawn away from the city.
    • They began to strike down and kill some of the people as at the previous times.
    • The killing happened on the highways, one of which goes up to Bethel and the other to Gibeah, in the field.
    • About thirty men of Israel were killed.
  32. 20:32
    • The children of Benjamin said, They are struck down before us as at the first.
    • The children of Israel said, Let us flee and draw them away from the city to the highways.
  33. 20:33
    • All the men of Israel rose up out of their place.
    • They drew up in array at Baal-tamar.
    • The men of Israel lying in ambush burst out of their place.
    • They came from the open area near Gibeah.
  34. 20:34
    • Ten thousand chosen men out of all Israel came against Gibeah.
    • The battle was heavy.
    • The Benjamites did not know that disaster was touching them.
  35. 20:35
    • The LORD struck Benjamin before Israel.
    • The children of Israel destroyed of Benjamin that day twenty-five thousand one hundred men.
    • All of these drew the sword.
  36. 20:36
    • The children of Benjamin saw that they were defeated.
    • The men of Israel gave ground to Benjamin.
    • The men of Israel did this because they trusted in the ambush they had set against Gibeah.
  37. 20:37
    • The men in ambush hurried and rushed upon Gibeah.
    • The ambush spread out.
    • They struck all the city with the edge of the sword.
  38. 20:38
    • There was an appointed sign between the men of Israel and the men in ambush.
    • The sign was that they should make a great cloud of smoke rise up from the city.
  39. 20:39
    • The men of Israel turned back in the battle.
    • Benjamin began to strike and kill about thirty men of Israel.
    • Benjamin said, Surely they are struck down before us as in the first battle.
  40. 20:40
    • The cloud began to rise from the city as a pillar of smoke.
    • Benjamin looked behind them.
    • The whole city was going up in flame toward the sky.
  41. 20:41
    • The men of Israel turned back on them.
    • The men of Benjamin were terrified.
    • The men of Benjamin saw that disaster had come upon them.
  42. 20:42
    • They turned before the men of Israel toward the way of the wilderness.
    • The battle overtook them.
    • Those who came out of the cities destroyed them in their midst.
  43. 20:43
    • They surrounded the Benjamites.
    • They pursued them.
    • They trod them down at their resting place.
    • This happened as far as opposite Gibeah, toward the sunrise.
  44. 20:44
    • Eighteen thousand men of Benjamin fell.
    • All of these were men of valor.
  45. 20:45
    • They turned and fled toward the wilderness to the rock of Rimmon.
    • Israel gleaned five thousand men of them on the highways.
    • They pursued hard after them as far as Gidom.
    • They struck down two thousand men of them.
  46. 20:46
    • All who fell of Benjamin that day were twenty-five thousand men who drew the sword.
    • All of these were men of valor.
  47. 20:47
    • Six hundred men turned and fled to the wilderness to the rock of Rimmon.
    • They stayed at the rock of Rimmon four months.
  48. 20:48
    • The men of Israel turned back against the children of Benjamin.
    • They struck them with the edge of the sword.
    • They struck the men of every city, the cattle, and all that was found.
    • They set on fire all the cities they found.

Words Worth Explaining

Every language note in this chapter, gathered. These explain what a word meant, never what it means for the reader.

20:1
Dan was the northernmost Israelite settlement and Beersheba the southernmost, so "from Dan to Beersheba" was a stock phrase meaning the entire country; Gilead is named separately because it lay east of the Jordan, off that north–south line. Mizpeh (also spelled Mizpah) was a town inside Benjamin's own territory that served as a national meeting place; the name means "lookout point".
20:2
"Leaders" translates a Hebrew word literally meaning "corners", as in the cornerstones that carry a building. The word translated "thousand" can also mean a clan or a military unit of unspecified size, so totals like four hundred thousand may stand for a considerably smaller force than the figure suggests.
20:3
Benjamin was one of Israel's own twelve tribes. So this quarrel is between brothers, Israelites against Israelites.
20:4
A Levite was a member of the tribe of Levi, which received no territory of its own and supplied Israel's priests and sanctuary staff; Levites lived scattered in towns among the other tribes. A concubine was a legally recognized wife of secondary rank, the relationship was a real marriage, but she and any children had weaker claims than a chief wife and hers. Gibeah was a town of Benjamin a few miles north of the later site of Jerusalem.
20:5
The Levite is retelling the events of chapter 19. His version leaves out that he himself pushed the woman out of the door to the men outside.
20:6
Cutting up a body and sending the pieces round the country was a recognized form of summons: it demanded that every tribe answer, and carried an implied threat against anyone who ignored it. Saul issues the same kind of call with a butchered ox in 1 Samuel 11.
20:8
"Go back to his tent" was a set phrase for an army breaking up and every man going home; it does not mean these men lived in tents. The pairing with "go home" is the standard doubled form of the oath.
20:9
Casting lots meant drawing marked stones or sticks. The result was treated not as chance but as a decision handed down, and here it settles which units go into battle first.
20:10
Ancient armies had no supply corps. Soldiers carried their own food or lived off the land, so an army this size camping in one place needed men detailed to fetch provisions. Taking one man in ten for that job is a rough field organization, not a tax.
20:12
Each tribe was expected to punish its own wrongdoers. Israel is giving Benjamin the chance to deal with the guilty men itself.
20:13
"Worthless men" translates the Hebrew "sons of Belial". Belial is an ordinary noun meaning something like "worthlessness" or "ruin"; only much later writers turned it into the name of a demonic figure. "Clear this evil out of Israel" is a fixed legal formula from Israel's law: putting the offender to death was held to remove guilt that would otherwise attach to the whole community.
20:16
The Hebrew for "left-handed" reads literally "restricted in the right hand", the same expression used of Ehud in Judges 3. The tribal name Benjamin means "son of the right hand". A sling was a leather strap whirled to hurl a stone, an accurate long-range weapon in trained hands, not a toy. Whether these seven hundred slingers are the same men as the seven hundred of Gibeah in the previous verse or a separate group is not clear in the Hebrew, and ancient copies differ.
20:18
KJV's "house of God" is the place name Bethel, which means exactly that. "Asked God" means putting a yes/no or either/or question to a priest at a sanctuary, who obtained the answer by a prescribed procedure, see verses 27 and 28 for where and through whom.
20:23
The Hebrew tells this out of sequence: the weeping and the consultation happened during the night after the first defeat, before the redeployment described in verse 22. The KJV marks the flashback with brackets.
20:26
Fasting meant going without food through the daylight hours. A burnt offering was an animal burned whole on the altar; a peace (or fellowship) offering had only certain parts burned, the rest being eaten as a shared meal by the worshipers. Offered together they marked a formal appeal and a restored relationship.
20:27
The ark of the covenant was a gilded wooden chest holding the stone tablets of the law, understood as the place where God's presence met Israel. Saying where the ark was identifies Bethel as the central sanctuary in this period, and so explains where an answer could be obtained.
20:28
Phinehas was Aaron's grandson. That places these events only a generation or two after the exodus and the entry into Canaan, very early in the period of the judges, even though the story stands near the end of the book.
20:29
"Liers in wait" is old English for an ambush party, men hidden in position to attack from behind once the enemy has been drawn out.
20:31
"Highways" in the King James means main roads, the established routes between towns, not anything paved or modern. The two roads named are the ordinary landmarks of the area, the way you would describe where a fight happened.
20:33
Baaltamar means "lord of the palm tree", a place named for a landmark tree. The Hebrew describing where the hidden men emerged from is uncertain: it may mean the open ground west of Gibeah, or a meadow, or a bare stretch of ground near the town.
20:35
This verse states the outcome; verses 36 to 46 then go back and retell the same battle in detail. The two accounts do not quite square arithmetically, 25,100 here, against 18,000 plus 5,000 plus 2,000 in verses 44 and 45, totaled as 25,000 in verse 46.
20:38
There was no way to shout across a battlefield. A column of smoke was the fastest signal two parts of an army could share.
20:42
The King James wording is hard to follow here. The sense is that as the Benjamites fled, Israelites coming out of the surrounding towns cut them down, so they were caught between the pursuing army behind them and fresh attackers ahead.
20:43
The Hebrew of this line is obscure. The word rendered "easily" can also be read as "at their resting place" or as a place name, Menuhah, so translations differ over whether it describes the manner of the pursuit or names where it ended.
20:45
"Picked off" renders a harvesting word: gleaning is the gathering of stray grain left behind by the reapers, so the picture is of stragglers being collected one at a time.
20:46
Verse 35 gives the number as 25,100 and this verse says 25,000. Ancient writers often rounded a total off, the way we might say "about 25,000."
20:47
The rock of Rimmon was a crag or cliff, the name means "pomegranate", offering a defensible refuge. These six hundred are all that is left of the tribe, and chapter 21 takes up their situation.
20:48
Putting a town's people and livestock to the sword and burning it was the treatment Israel's law laid down for enemy cities, and for an Israelite town that had gone over to other gods (Deuteronomy 13). Here it is applied to the towns of a fellow tribe.

Read Judges 20