GOD’S WORD FOR YOU
JUDGES 21:6-12
6 Now the Israelites had compassion on their brothers, the Benjamites. They said, “Today a tribe is cut off from Israel. 7 What should we do about wives for those who are left since we’ve sworn by the LORD that we will not give them any of our daughters as wives?” 8 They said, “What clan among the tribes of Israel did not come to the LORD at Mizpah? ” They found that no one from Jabesh Gilead had come to the camp for the assembly. 9 For when they counted the people, they found no one from Jabesh Gilead.
The people who lived in Jabesh Gilead across the Jordan were a clan from Manasseh, one of Joseph’s sons, and therefore with ties to Benjamin through their matriarch Rachel. Later on during the days of Saul, there would be an even stronger bond between Benjamin and the people of Jabesh Gilead, perhaps resulting from this incident. When Saul rescued Jabesh Gilead from the Ammonites (1 Samuel 11:1-15), his kingship (which had been questioned before) was confirmed.
Here, Israel was confused about what to do. They wanted to keep their oaths, but they didn’t like destroying a whole tribe. Now they were planning to rectify a mass killing by means of another mass killing. This was a whole nation that was leaderless, and a kind of mob superstition was taking over. Can we preserve Benjamin by annihilating Jabesh Gilead and giving away their virgins so that “we” don’t give “our” virgin daughters to Benjamin? The nation was making match-making choices for a tribe unilaterally without even consulting the tribe. Did they really think that six hundred soldiers could not find wives for themselves without involving the enter nation of Israel in a loophole?
10 The assembly sent twelve thousand fighting men there and ordered them: “Go and put the inhabitants of Jabesh Gilead to the sword, including women and children.” 11 “This is what you are to do: Kill every male, as well as every woman who is not a virgin.” 12 Among those living in Jabesh Gilead they found four hundred young virgins who had never slept with a man. They brought them to the camp at Shiloh in Canaan.
The attack went forward as planned. Once they had a plan and the whole weight of the nation of Israel got behind the plan, they could attack. Why hadn’t they done this when they attacked the Canaanites? One tribe sometimes asked another for help, but wouldn’t the Danites have fared better against Philistia if everyone had shown up instead of a couple of Danite brigades (18:1)?
Jabesh Gilead was massacred. The men, the married women, and the children were all killed. For the six hundred Danites, four hundred girls were found. The bloody thing was done.
Our seminary notes on this passage offer this judgment: “Bonds of justice are broken. Brotherly love is denied. Rape, murder, and devastation are upheld so that the form of an oath might be preserved. They people are loyal to outward form. Inner moral rectitude is gone. Surely under a king such things can’t possibly happen! Or can they?” (p. 246).
We need to remember that sin can send us into a spiral so fast that we lost track of where we are and what God’s plan and love mean in our lives. One sin does not correct another sin. Repentance is what God wants, a broken heart that turns to God for rescue. He might send disaster into our lives to get our attention (“I struck all the work of your hands with blight, mildew and hail, yet you did not turn to me, declares the LORD,” Haggai 2:17), but all we can do is turn ourselves to him. I can’t make somebody else repent or show their repentance, and I certainly should not commit a sin in order to coax or force somebody else into turning to Christ. The gospel is the tool we have, and the gospel is what God wants us to use, always.
In Christ,
Pastor Timothy Smith
Note: So what happens when somebody has a decades-old grudge against me, and I don’t remember exactly what I said? Let’s say there is an old, old argument between me and a friend. We were both angry once and parted ways. He remembers his version of things (he even kept a journal of it all), and I remember my version, and we were both upset—so should I say I’m sorry for something I might have said, or maybe not, and should I demand that he say he’s sorry, too? What I need to do is repent of my failures then, and of my sinful failures now, and if his grudge keeps him from ever speaking to me again, that’s too bad. But I shouldn’t be petty about it. I know that I am forgiven, and if he doesn’t think he needs to forgive or to be forgiven, that’s between him and God. But if we’re willing to set the past behind us and recognize that we can be friends today, then God is glorified and we have yet another picture of the way God’s forgiveness covers us all.
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Pastor Smith serves St. Paul’s Lutheran Church, New Ulm, Minnesota