Judges 21: What the Passage Says

The Chapter in a Sentence

The men of Israel have sworn not to give their daughters to the tribe of Benjamin, and now they mourn that a tribe is close to being wiped out. Because Jabesh-gilead had not come to the assembly at Mizpah, Israel kills its people except four hundred unmarried young women, who are given to the surviving Benjamites. When that is still not enough wives, the elders tell the remaining men to hide in the vineyards at Shiloh and seize young women as they come out to dance. The book ends by repeating that there was no king in Israel and everyone did what was right in his own eyes.

Claim by Claim

1. 21:1
   • The men of Israel had sworn an oath at Mizpah.
   • Their oath was that not one of them would give his daughter to a Benjamite as a wife.
2. 21:2
   • The people came to Bethel.
   • The people sat there before God until evening.
   • The people lifted up their voices.
   • The people wept a great weeping.
3. 21:3
   • The people said, addressing the LORD, the God of Israel, asking why this had happened in Israel.
   • They said that today one tribe was missing from Israel.
4. 21:4
   • On the next day the people rose early.
   • The people built an altar there.
   • The people offered burnt offerings and peace offerings.
5. 21:5
   • The children of Israel asked who among all the tribes of Israel had not come up to the assembly before the LORD.
   • They had made a great oath concerning anyone who did not come up to the LORD at Mizpah.
   • The oath was that such a person should surely be put to death.
6. 21:6
   • The children of Israel were moved to grief over Benjamin their brother.
   • They said that one tribe was cut off from Israel that day.
7. 21:7
   • They asked what they should do about wives for the ones who remained.
   • They said they had sworn by the LORD not to give them any of their daughters as wives.
8. 21:8
   • They asked which one of the tribes of Israel had not come up to the LORD at Mizpah.
   • No man from Jabesh-gilead had come to the camp for the assembly.
9. 21:9
   • The people were mustered and counted.
   • None of the inhabitants of Jabesh-gilead were there.
10. 21:10
    • The congregation sent twelve thousand valiant men there.
    • The congregation commanded them to go and strike the inhabitants of Jabesh-gilead with the edge of the sword.
    • The command included the women and the little children.
11. 21:11
    • They were told this was the thing they should do.
    • They were to devote to destruction every male.
    • They were to devote to destruction every woman who had lain with a man.
12. 21:12
    • They found among the inhabitants of Jabesh-gilead four hundred young virgin women.
    • These women had not known a man by lying with a male.
    • They brought these women to the camp at Shiloh.
    • Shiloh is in the land of Canaan.
13. 21:13
    • The whole congregation sent word to the children of Benjamin who were at the rock of Rimmon.
    • They proclaimed peace to them.
14. 21:14
    • Benjamin returned at that time.
    • They gave the Benjamites the women whom they had kept alive from the women of Jabesh-gilead.
    • The women were not enough for them.
15. 21:15
    • The people were moved to grief over Benjamin.
    • The reason was that the LORD had made a breach in the tribes of Israel.
16. 21:16
    • The elders of the congregation asked what they should do about wives for those who remained.
    • They said the women had been destroyed out of Benjamin.
17. 21:17
    • They said there must be a possession for the survivors of Benjamin.
    • They said this was so that a tribe would not be wiped out of Israel.
18. 21:18
    • They said they could not give the Benjamites wives from their own daughters.
    • The children of Israel had sworn an oath.
    • The oath was that whoever gives a wife to Benjamin is cursed.
19. 21:19
    • They said there is a yearly feast of the LORD at Shiloh.
    • Shiloh is north of Bethel.
    • Shiloh is east of the highway that goes up from Bethel to Shechem.
    • Shiloh is south of Lebonah.
20. 21:20
    • They commanded the children of Benjamin.
    • The command was to go and lie in wait in the vineyards.
21. 21:21
    • They were to watch.
    • If the daughters of Shiloh came out to dance in the dances, they were to come out of the vineyards.
    • Each man was to seize a wife for himself from the daughters of Shiloh.
    • They were then to go to the land of Benjamin.
22. 21:22
    • They said that when the women's fathers or brothers came to them to complain, they would speak to them.
    • They would ask them to be gracious in the matter of these women.
    • The reason given is that they did not take each man his wife in the war.
    • They would say the fathers and brothers did not themselves give the women, and the sense of what follows is unclear: either that the fathers and brothers would therefore be guilty, or that they would therefore bear no guilt.
23. 21:23
    • The children of Benjamin did so.
    • They took wives according to their number from the dancing women whom they seized.
    • They went and returned to their inheritance.
    • They rebuilt the cities.
    • They lived in the cities.
24. 21:24
    • The children of Israel departed from there at that time.
    • Each man went to his tribe and to his family.
    • Each man went out from there to his inheritance.
25. 21:25
    • In those days there was no king in Israel.
    • Each man did what was right in his own eyes.

Words Worth Explaining

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

21:1

Mizpah was a town used as a national gathering place for the tribes. This oath was sworn there before the events of chapters 19–20, in which the other tribes went to war against the tribe of Benjamin and almost destroyed it; only six hundred Benjamite men survived, and they were still in hiding at the rock of Rimmon. This chapter picks up from there.

21:2

Where the plain rendering says "Bethel," the King James says "the house of God." That is not a building: the Hebrew place name Bethel literally means "house of God," and the King James translators turned the name into English here rather than leaving it as a name.

21:3

Israel counted itself as twelve tribes descended from twelve brothers. Losing one is not just a military disaster; it breaks the shape of the nation itself.

21:4

An altar was a raised stone platform on which animals and food were burned as gifts to God. In a burnt offering the whole animal was burned and nothing was eaten; in a peace (or fellowship) offering only part was burned and the rest was eaten by the worshipers as a shared meal, usually to mark a resolved dispute or a restored relationship.

21:5

This is a second, separate oath from the one in verse 1, also sworn at Mizpah: any clan that failed to show up for the muster would be executed. "Came not up" means failed to appear when the tribes were called out, not merely arrived late.

21:6

In 1611 English, "repented them for Benjamin" meant they were grieved and sorry about what had happened to Benjamin. It does not mean repentance from sin. The same wording appears in verse 15.

21:7

Only six hundred men of Benjamin were left alive. With no wives, they would have no children, and the whole tribe would disappear in one lifetime.

21:8

Jabesh-gilead was an Israelite town in Gilead, the territory east of the Jordan River. Being far from the assembly point, it had sent no one.

21:9

"The people were numbered" refers to a roll call of the assembled fighting men, clan by clan, which is how the absence was detected.

21:10

Twelve thousand armed men against one town, with orders that explicitly include the women and the children. The text does not soften this.

21:11

The Hebrew term behind "utterly destroy" describes putting a captured place under a ban: everything in it is handed over to God by being destroyed rather than taken as plunder. The unmarried young women are the deliberate exception here, because they are the point of the raid.

21:12

Shiloh was the town where Israel's tent-sanctuary stood at this period, making it the central place of worship. "In the land of Canaan" distinguishes it from territory east of the Jordan, such as Jabesh-gilead.

21:13

The rock of Rimmon was a crag or cliff where the six hundred surviving men of Benjamin had taken refuge and stayed for four months after the war (see 20:47).

21:14

The arithmetic is the problem: six hundred surviving Benjamite men and only four hundred women, leaving two hundred men without wives. That shortfall drives the rest of the chapter.

21:15

"Made a breach" uses the image of a gap smashed in a wall, a hole in the structure of the twelve tribes where Benjamin used to be.

21:16

The elders were the older men who led the people and made decisions.

21:17

Each tribe held a permanent allotted territory that passed from father to son. Without sons to inherit, Benjamin's land would be absorbed by its neighbors and the tribe would cease to exist as a unit, which is why heirs, not just survival, are the stated concern.

21:18

An oath sworn in the LORD's name, especially one framed as a self-curse ("cursed be he who..."), was regarded as binding and not something that could simply be canceled. Hence the search for a way around its exact wording rather than a decision to ignore it.

21:19

One of the yearly harvest festivals, held at the sanctuary town of Shiloh. The vineyards and the young women's dances point to a vintage celebration, at the time of the grape harvest. The unusually detailed directions suggest Shiloh was no longer a well-known place by the time this was written down.

21:20

A vineyard is a field of grapevines. The vines grew in rows tall enough for a man to crouch behind unseen.

21:21

Seizing a bride rather than negotiating with her father was a recognized, if irregular, way of obtaining a wife in the ancient world. Here it is a device: the men take the women themselves, so no father has "given" his daughter.

21:22

This is the loophole. The oath in verse 1 forbade fathers to give their daughters to Benjamites; if the women were taken by force, no father gave anything, so technically no one broke the oath and incurred its curse. The Hebrew of the middle of this verse is difficult and its exact sense is disputed; the plea is roughly that the Benjamites could not obtain wives in the war, so the fathers should let the matter stand.

21:23

Their towns needed rebuilding because Israel had burned them during the war in the previous chapter.

21:25

This sentence is a refrain that runs through the last chapters of Judges (also at 17:6, 18:1 and 19:1) and closes the book. "Right in his own eyes" means each person decided for himself what was right, with no central authority to answer to.