1And the men of Israel had vowed at Mizpah, saying, “No man of us will give his daughter as wife to Benjamin.” 2And the people came to Bethel and stayed there till evening before God, and they raised their voice and wept bitterly. 3And they said, “Why, O LORD God of Israel, has this come about in Israel, that today one tribe should be missing from Israel?” 4And it happened on the next day that the people rose early and built an altar there and offered up burnt offerings and well-being offerings. 5And the Israelites said, “Who has not come up in the assembly to the LORD from all the tribes of Israel?”—for great was the vow concerning whoever had not gone up to the LORD at Mizpah, saying, “He is doomed to die.” 6And the Israelites were regretful about Benjamin their brother, and they said, “Today one tribe has been cut off from Israel. 7What shall we do for wives for those who remain, as we have vowed to the LORD not to give our daughters to them as wives?” 8And they said, “Which is the one of the tribes of Israel that did not come up to the LORD at Mizpah?” And, look, not a man had come to the camp from Jabesh-Gilead to the assembly. 9And the troops were mustered, and, look, there was no man there from the inhabitants of Jabesh-Gilead. 10And the community sent there twelve thousand of the valiant men and charged them, saying, “Go and strike down the inhabitants of Jabesh-Gilead by the edge of the sword, and the women and the little ones. 11And this is the thing that you shall do: every male and every woman who has lain with a male you shall put under the ban.” 12And they found among the inhabitants of Jabesh-Gilead four hundred young virgin women who had not lain with a male, and they brought them to the camp at Shiloh, which is in the land of Canaan. 13And all the community sent and spoke to the Benjaminites who were at the Rock of Rimmon, and they declared peace with them. 14And Benjamin came back at that time, and they gave them the women that they had kept alive from the women of Jabesh-Gilead, but they did not find enough for them. 15And the people had become regretful concerning Benjamin, for the LORD had made a breach in the tribes of Israel. 16And the elders of the community said, “What shall we do for wives for those left, for the women of Benjamin have been destroyed?” 17And they said, “How will a remnant be left for Benjamin, that a tribe not be wiped out from Israel, 18and we cannot give them wives from our daughters, for the Israelites vowed, saying, ‘Cursed be he who gives a wife to Benjamin’?” 19And they said, “Look, there is a festival to the LORD every year in Shiloh, which is north of Bethel, east of the highway that goes up from Bethel to Shechem and south of Lebonah.” 20And they charged the Benjaminites, saying, “Go and lie in wait in the vineyards. 21And when you see that, look, the daughters of Shiloh come out to dance, you shall snatch each of you his wife from the daughters of Shiloh, and you shall go to the land of Benjamin. 22And should their fathers or their brothers come in dispute to us, we shall say to them, ‘We showed mercy to them, for no man of them took his wife in battle, for it was not you who gave to them. Now should you bear guilt?’” 23And thus the Benjaminites did, and they took wives according to their number from the dancing girls whom they stole away, and they returned to their estate and rebuilt the towns and dwelled within them. 24And the Israelites went off from there at that time each man to his tribe and to his clan, and they went out from there each man to his estate.
25In those days there was no king in Israel. Every man did what was right in his own eyes.
CHAPTER 21 NOTES
Click here to advance to the next section of the text.
1. the men of Israel had vowed at Mizpah. The Hebrew indicates a pluperfect because this solemn vow was taken before the beginning of the war with Benjamin.
3. Why . . . has this come about in Israel. Now, after the victory, the people are confronted with a dilemma because of their binding vow, for its consequence will be the elimination of one of the twelve tribes of Israel.
5. for great was the vow. This second vow, to destroy whoever held back from joining in the war against Benjamin, will be used to find a way out of the first vow.
6. cut off. The Hebrew uses a rather violent verb, nigdaʿ (literally, “hacked off”), instead of the usual nikhrat. Some scholars prefer to read nigraʿ, “is taken away,” which would be in keeping with “missing” in verse 3.
8. Jabesh-Gilead. This northern territory to the east of the Jordan was allied with Benjamin, as will be clear in the story of Saul in 1 Samuel. Many have inferred that the whole story of the civil war and of the place of Jabesh-Gilead in its aftermath is meant to discredit Benjamin, Saul’s tribe.
10. Go and strike down the inhabitants of Jabesh-Gilead. Jabesh-Gilead is to be put under the ban, all its population except for female virgins to be massacred. It is historically unlikely that the ḥerem was practiced by one set of Israelites on another, and as Amit points out, it would have been a singularly bad solution to the dilemma of Benjamin’s survival to achieve it by wiping out a whole group of Israelites, men, women, and children.
12. they brought them to the camp at Shiloh. The setting now shifts from Bethel to Shiloh, laying the ground for the opening chapters of the Book of Samuel, which are centered in Shiloh.
14. but they did not find enough for them. There are six hundred Benjaminites at the Rock of Rimmon, so the shortfall in brides is two hundred. But in all likelihood, the story of the delivery of the four hundred young women from Jabesh-Gilead and the story of the snatching of the dancing girls in the vineyards are two different versions of how the surviving Benjaminites got their brides that have been edited together, with the numerical deficiency introduced in the first story so that it can be made up in the second.
19. there is a festival to the LORD every year in Shiloh. The name and nature of the festival are unspecified. The fact that it is said to be in Shiloh might encourage the inference that it was a special local celebration at Shiloh. On the other hand, the Mishnah (Taʿanit 4:8) reports a practice on the fifteenth of Av and on Yom Kippur in which the nubile young women went out dancing in the vineyards in borrowed white garments to be chosen as wives by the young men of the community.
21. you shall snatch each of you his wife from the daughters of Shiloh. What is involved is a kind of abduction, not rape, or, if the report in the Mishnah is historically grounded, a collective mating ceremony. This odd tale of snatching brides during the celebration of a festival has parallels in Herodotus (where it is a festival honoring Artemis) and in Livy’s well-known story of the abduction of the Sabine women (where the festival is dedicated to Neptune). In any case, the Book of Judges, which begins in violence and is dominated by violence, ends here on an upbeat note with dancing girls and the taking of brides.
22. We showed mercy to them, for no man of them took his wife in battle. This whole speech is somewhat garbled (and the verb that means “show mercy” is conjugated in an untenable way in the Masoretic Text). The received text has “we took,” but three ancient versions read “they took.” The sense one can extract, without entirely rewriting the verse, is: The Benjaminites did not take these young women as war captives; we showed mercy to them and arranged for the taking of brides; you yourselves did not give the girls as brides, for the vow against doing that was incumbent on you. Now why should you oppose our proper procedure and incur guilt?
23. stole away. The Hebrew verb gazal, it should be said, generally indicates the illicit appropriation of someone else’s possessions.
25. In those days there was no king in Israel. Every man did what was right in his own eyes. This refrain is now inserted at the end as a kind of epilogue to the Book of Judges. The state of political anarchy has been especially manifest in the story of the concubine at Gibeah and the civil war it triggers, and perhaps in the war’s aftermath as well. The refrain sets the stage for the Book of Samuel, which will move in swift steps to the founding of the monarchy.