My solution vs God's solution
Throughout Judges we see the same line repeated:
“In those days, there was no king in Israel; everyone did what was right in their own eyes”.
In chapter 21, the book of Judges ends with this same line, serving as both the conclusion of the story of the conflict between Benjamin and the other tribes of Israel beginning in Judges 19.
Here, the violence between the tribes of Israel had abated, but now they had to deal with the fallout of this conflict. The Benjamites were defeated, but despite this victory, there was a deep sense of sorrow amongst the victors - for Israel had fought and killed their own kinsmen, and now they had even made an oath not to give their daughters to the Benjamites as wives. Had they gone too far exacting justice for the Levite and his concubine?
So very quickly, they wanted to resolve the situation for the Benjamites. Unfortunately, this came in the form of more violence, this time against the inhabitants of Jabesh Gilead. On the pretext of them not coming up to the congregation of the Lord in Mizpah, 12000 men were sent there and killed all except 400 young virgins, whom they told the Benjamites to take away as wives.
Reading up to this point, would we not think they were going too far yet again?
Yet this was not enough. There were not enough wives for the Benjamites to ensure their survival into the future. The elders of the congregation then cooked up another scheme. This time, the Benjamites would lie in wait for the daughters of Shiloh to come out and perform their dances, and they would abduct them. The elders would then convince the fathers and brothers of these women that this needed to be done for the sake of the Benjamites, and also to assure them they were not breaking the oath they had made at the beginning of the chapter.
What are we to make of this story? We can see that none of the parties involved seemed to care much about whether what they were doing was right in the sight of God - they just did what they thought was the best solution in their own eyes - only realising the graveness of their actions after that and seeking ways to solve those further consequences. And even at the conclusion of the matter, we as readers, only see a rather questionable conclusion to the whole saga.
So this story ends with similar tones to the others in Judges - Israel has no king, and did not consider God in their eyes, leading to chaos, violence and suffering. This story illustrates to us the kind of life that occurs when we deviate away from God’s words and principles - we end up living a life that feels ungrounded and in chaos. Do we really want to live that way?
Reflection questions:
In this story, what are some of the things that trouble you the most when you read it?
In what ways might we live our lives such that we ‘do what is right in our own eyes’ without giving consideration to God’s word?
