EVERYONE DID WHAT WAS RIGHT IN HIS OWN EYES (Judges 21:1-25)
INTRODUCTION:
We come this morning to the final chapter of the book of Judges and as promised next week we will begin the book of Ruth and it will be like a breath of fresh air, it will be hard to believe that the history of Ruth took place during the time of the Judges. If you were hoping for a good ending to this book, you will be sorely disappointed. Beginning in chapter 17 the author began painting for us a picture of the religious and moral decay of the nation of Israel as they adopted more and more the ways of the Canaanites who were living among them because they had not destroyed them as God had commanded them. In chapters 17 and 18 we saw how idolatry was a way of life and the LORD, the God of Israel was looked upon as just one God among many that the people worshiped. We saw how a man set up his own little temple and hired a Levite to be his priest. Then we saw how the Danites offered the priest a better deal than he was getting from Micah, and that he could be a priest for a whole tribe instead of just one man and his family. The Levite took the man’s idols and went with the Danites and became their priest. Religious chaos. Then in chapters 19 and 20 we have seen the moral depravity that has come out of the idolatry with everyone doing what is right in his own eyes. The rape, abuse, murder, and dismemberment of a concubine draws the attention of all Israel so that they go up and attack Benjamin, kill everyone, and burn all their cities. At the end of our message last week only 600 Benjamite soldiers were left hiding at the Rock of Rimmon. In our chapter today the decision of what to do with these men will be decided. Let’s pray and then get into our passage of Scripture for today.
--PRAY--
SCRIPTURE:
Turn in your Bibles to Judges 21:1-25. Please, if you are able, stand in honor of the reading of God’s Word and follow along while I read.
Judges 21:1-25,
“Now the men of Israel had sworn in Mizpah, saying, ‘None of us shall give his daughter to Benjamin in marriage.’ So the people came to Bethel and sat there before God until evening, and lifted up their voices and wept bitterly. They said, ‘Why, O Lord, God of Israel, has this come about in Israel, so that one tribe should be missing today in Israel?’ It came about the next day that the people arose early and built an altar there and offered burnt offerings and peace offerings. Then the sons of Israel said, ‘Who is there among all the tribes of Israel who did not come up in the assembly to the Lord?’ For they had taken a great oath concerning him who did not come up to the Lord at Mizpah, saying, ‘He shall surely be put to death.’ And the sons of Israel were sorry for their brother Benjamin and said, ‘One tribe is cut off from Israel today. What shall we do for wives for those who are left, since we have sworn by the Lord not to give them any of our daughters in marriage?’ And they said, ‘What one is there of the tribes of Israel who did not come up to the Lord at Mizpah?’ And behold, no one had come to the camp from Jabesh-gilead to the assembly. For when the people were numbered, behold, not one of the inhabitants of Jabesh-gilead was there. And the congregation sent 12,000 of the valiant warriors there, and commanded them, saying, ‘Go and strike the inhabitants of Jabesh-gilead with the edge of the sword, with the women and the little ones. This is the thing that you shall do: you shall utterly destroy every man and every woman who has lain with a man.’ And they found among the inhabitants of Jabesh-gilead 400 young virgins who had not known a man by lying with him; and they brought them to the camp at Shiloh, which is in the land of Canaan. Then the whole congregation sent word and spoke to the sons of Benjamin who were at the rock of Rimmon, and proclaimed peace to them. Benjamin returned at that time, and they gave them the women whom they had kept alive from the women of Jabesh-gilead; yet they were not enough for them. And the people were sorry for Benjamin because the Lord had made a breach in the tribes of Israel. Then the elders of the congregation said, ‘What shall we do for wives for those who are left, since the women are destroyed out of Benjamin?’ They said, ‘There must be an inheritance for the survivors of Benjamin, so that a tribe will not be blotted out from Israel. But we cannot give them wives of our daughters.’ For the sons of Israel had sworn, saying, ‘Cursed is he who gives a wife to Benjamin.’ So they said, ‘Behold, there is a feast of the Lord from year to year in Shiloh, which is on the north side of Bethel, on the east side of the highway that goes up from Bethel to Shechem, and on the south side of Lebonah.’ And they commanded the sons of Benjamin, saying, ‘Go and lie in wait in the vineyards, and watch; and behold, if the daughters of Shiloh come out to take part in the dances, then you shall come out of the vineyards and each of you shall catch his wife from the daughters of Shiloh, and go to the land of Benjamin. It shall come about, when their fathers or their brothers come to complain to us, that we shall say to them, “Give them to us voluntarily, because we did not take for each man of Benjamin a wife in battle, nor did you give them to them, else you would now be guilty.”’ The sons of Benjamin did so, and took wives according to their number from those who danced, whom they carried away. And they went and returned to their inheritance and rebuilt the cities and lived in them. The sons of Israel departed from there at that time, every man to his tribe and family, and each one of them went out from there to his inheritance. In those days there was no king in Israel; everyone did what was right in his own eyes.” (Judges 21:1–25, NASB95)[1]
ACCUSING GOD (Judges 21:1-7)
This chapter opens by telling us of an oath that the men of Israel had taken when they had first gathered at Mizpah and heard the report from the Levite whose concubine had been murdered. They had sworn that not one of them would give a daughter to be the wife of a Benjamite. Now the frenzy of the battle with Benjamin was over and everyone was beginning to think a little more clearly. The son of Israel began to understand the magnitude of what they had done. They had almost wiped out the entire tribe of Benjamin, if those 600 had not escaped to hide in the caves of the Rock of Rimmon the tribe would no longer exist. This realization came after the fact and some weeks after the battle because we know from chapter 20 that the Benjamites hiding at the Rock of Rimmon stayed there for four months. Upon realizing that Benjamin was near extinction, they also remembered that they had taken an oath that they would not give their daughters in marriage to a Benjamite. With this realization they gathered again at Bethel to decide what to do.
Arriving at Bethel they sat before God or the ark of the covenant, which was there, until evening, and they wept before the LORD, they wept bitterly. And they said to the LORD, “Why, O Lord, God of Israel, has this come about in Israel, so that one tribe should be missing today in Israel?” (Judges 21:3, NASB95)[2] When I first read this I thought, “This is good, they are really sorry about what they have done, and they want to hear what God has to say about what has happened. Then I looked at this again and I realized that this was not what they were saying, they were not asking God what they should do, instead they were shifting the blame. They were not asking God for guidance but why God had allowed this to happen. This question that asks “Why?” is more like an accusation. God, why have you allowed this, or caused this to come about, that one of the tribes is missing in Israel today. Didn’t you send us into battle with Benjamin, didn’t you tell us to keep going? Isn’t that why we are in this terrible mess and one of the tribes of Israel is no longer with us? Now understand from the Israelite perspective this is a legitimate question, and even one that they could justify in their own minds. God had punished the Benjamites severely and had made all Israel suffer in the process. What happened in Gibeah was what was happening in all of Israel, this moral decay that we saw in Gibeah was not confined just to the tribe of Benjamin. The problem with this question is Israel’s failure or refusal to recognize their own responsibility for the particular situation they are in now. The real reason that Benjamin will be lost is because there are no wives for the remaining soldiers. First, because Israel slaughtered them all, not in the battle itself, but in the rampage of destruction that followed it, in which all the cities and towns of Benjamin and the people in them were destroyed. Second, because of their oath (which also was made without thinking about the outcome) that they would not give their daughters in marriage to Benjamin. It is the Israelites, not God, who are to blame, and an attempt to deny it or pass the blame off on God, will only make matters worse. Blaming God for trouble we have brought upon ourselves is an age-old strategy. It goes all the way back to the Garden of Eden when Adam said to God, “The woman whom You gave to be with me, she gave me from the tree, and I ate.” (Genesis 3:12, NASB95)[3] This strategy never works because God cannot be fooled. If healing is to happen in Israel, it must begin by the men of Israel taking responsibility for their own actions. God can see right through the implied blame-shifting that takes place here and is unmoved by their tears. God gives them no answer, and the silence is deafening.
MAKING OTHERS PAY (Judges 21:8-23)
With no word from God, the elders of Israel conclude it is up to them to make sure that the tribe of Benjamin continues and is not blotted out of Israel. They must get wives for the soldiers who are left that does not violate the oath they have all made. Then they remembered another oath that they had made at Mizpah, there was a lot of rash oaths made that day, unwarranted oaths. They had sworn that anyone who did not come to the assembly at Mizpah, to hear the Levite and to decide what to do about Gibeah, that person or persons should be put to death. Benjamin had not come, of course, and they had already been dealt with. But were there others, were there any families, clans, or cities in Israel that were not represented at Mizpah?
They made a review of who had attended the assembly and it was discovered that the city and the clan of Jabesh-Gilead was not represented at the assembly. The Israelites immediately sent a contingent of 12,000 soldiers to carry out the oath they had made, to serve justice on them. But in reality, this had nothing to do with justice, it was simply to solve the problem at hand in a way that looked legitimate in the eyes of the people. Again, the violence is extreme as they were ordered to slaughter everyone, including the women and children, unless they were young virgins, they were to be kept alive. The young virgins were kept alive and carried back to the base that had been set up at Shiloh. This had been carried out because as verse six says, the people were sorry for Benjamin, their brother which is why they did what they did. But the sad thing is the problem they were trying to solve, trying to save the tribe of Benjamin, they were the ones who had caused the problem. They were now making others pay for their own wrongdoing. The decision that seemed right in their own eyes was to victimize the people of Jabesh-Gilead, their actions were more about expediency and the need for wives for Benjamin, then it was about justice. Their sorrow for Benjamin is horribly distorted by the lack of any sound moral basis. What about sorrow for the young virgins who watched their families slaughtered in front of them and then were carried off to become wives of total strangers? And in spite of all this additional violence, it did not solve the problem they were trying to solve, only four hundred virgins were found in Jabesh-Gilead, two hundred short of the six hundred they needed. So, the chaos continued.
The son of Israel sent a delegation to the rock of Rimmon to make peace with the Benjamite soldiers who were holed up there. They came down and received the four hundred virgins for wives. The leaders of Israel continued to wrestle with what they should do to supply the men of Benjamin with 200 more wives. The leaders had to come up with a plan that did not violate their oath, but allowed the Benjamites to have an inheritance for their tribe, that they would not be blotted out of Israel.
Finally, they came up with a plan that would furnish the remaining 200 wives needed for Benjamin. They remembered that there was an annual “feast to the LORD” in Shiloh and part of the festivities of this feast included the “daughters of Shiloh” coming out to dance near the vineyards of the city. The leaders of Israel told the 200 Benjamites still needing wives to hide in the vineyard until the young women came out to dance and at the right moment rush out and seize one of the girls and carry them off to your tribal territory.
This is unbelievable, they have hit rock bottom if this is what seemed right in their own eyes. Everything is wrong here. The festival itself is not easy to identify, there were three great annual festivals that were to be celebrated as described in the Law of Moses, they were Passover, the Feast of Weeks, and the Feast of Tabernacles. None of these described in the Law included girls dancing. Most commentators think this may be a semi-pagan, corrupt version of the Feast of Tabernacles. This is another example of the moral decay of the nation, the people pay lip-service to the LORD, as they do what is right in their own eyes. Even worse, this is an assumed obligation to obey God and honor Him and they have turned it into an excuse for doing evil, as if slaughtering the people of Jabesh-Gilead was not enough, now they are abducting (stealing, kidnapping) the young women of Shiloh. The justification for both has been oaths sworn to the LORD in Mizpah. Here is a dishonoring of God’s name that is beyond belief. And on a purely human level, the most shocking aspect of what happens here in this final ploy to solve a problem caused by all the moral chaos is the making of women simply objects to be used and abused. What started with the rape of the concubine in Gibeah has led to the abduction (and effective rape) of four hundred virgins of Jabesh-Gilead, and ended in the seizure of two hundred more in Shiloh. To make matters worse, the leaders who came up with this solution to their problem, before it is even carried out, they have worked out a justification that will clear everyone involved of guilt. Listen to shat they say to the men of Benjamin who will be seizing the young women, “It shall come about, when their fathers or their brothers come to complain to us, that we shall say to them, ‘Give them to us voluntarily, because we did not take for each man of Benjamin a wife in battle, nor did you give them to them, else you would now be guilty.’ ” (Judges 21:22, NASB95)[4] So there it is, women are abducted, protest is stifled, and no one has done anything wrong because it has all been done out of compassion for Benjamin and in fulfillment of solemn oaths taken before the LORD at Mizpah. The truth is that Israel’s leaders have forced others to do what they themselves had sworn not to do, that is give their daughters as wives to Benjamin. They have solved the problem they set out to solve but in such a way that was right in their own eyes but not by any standard of truth or morality. They have created a society in which right is wrong and wrong is right and this has brought the nation into complete and utter moral chaos. There are only two and half more verses and Judges ends. Is this the way it ends? The nation in complete moral and spiritual darkness. Almost, but in the last few sentences we have a glimmer of hope.
FUTURE HOPE (Judges 21:23b-25)
In the closing verses we read that the people of Israel returned to their homes. The author puts it this way, “And they went and returned to their inheritance and rebuilt the cities and lived in them. The sons of Israel departed from there at that time, every man to his tribe and family, and each one of them went out from there to his inheritance. In those days there was no king in Israel; everyone did what was right in his own eyes.” (Judges 21:23b–25, NASB95)[5] These verses are amazing after all the chaos and the road to destruction that Israel has been on in these closing chapters, they are not wiped off the surface of the map, they are not blotted out, instead we read of return, rebuilding, living in towns, and community (tribes and families). There seems to be recovery and something almost approaching normality. What has happened? It is certainly not what Israel deserves, and it is certainly not something they have achieved. Their actions in these chapters have been flawed from the start, and even when they have tried to make things better, they have made them worse. The key to what is taking place here is in the word inheritance, “…and each one of them went out from there to his inheritance.” (Judges 21:24b, NASB95)[6]
“Inheritance” speaks of a connection with the past and the possibility of a future. More specifically in this setting it speaks of God, of God’s promises and His faithfulness to His wayward people. God’s promise to give Israel the land of Canaan as their inheritance moves right across the Pentateuch from Genesis to Deuteronomy and on into Joshua. After the successful military campaigns of Joshua, we read in Joshua 11:23, “So Joshua took the whole land, according to all that the Lord had spoken to Moses, and Joshua gave it for an inheritance to Israel according to their divisions by their tribes.” (Joshua 11:23a, NASB95)[7] The book of Joshua ends by saying, “Then Joshua dismissed the people, each to his inheritance.” (Joshua 24:28, NASB95)[8] The fact that after all that has happened, the book of Judges ends in the same way is nothing short of miraculous. What this tells us is that God has not abandoned His wayward people, and because this is true there is still hope. The promise of an inheritance still stands.
Even with the last verse, with its reminder of the problem that was almost Israel’s undoing, there is still a thread of hope, “In those days there was no king in Israel; everyone did what was right in his own eyes.” (Judges 21:25, NASB95)[9] These are the words of someone who looks back to the dark days that have now passed. Under God Israel did have a future. After the Levite and his concubine and the civil war of chapters 19-21 come Boaz and Ruth, Hannah and Samuel, Saul, David, and Solomon—and eventually One greater than Solomon who established a new covenant, a greater inheritance, and a hope of which Israel could only dream. Later writers could even look back to the period of the judges as a time when some had extraordinary faith (Hebrews 11:32-33). It’s hard to find anyone like that in these closing chapters of Judges, but they did exist; the book of Ruth will show us some.
CONCLUSION:
Before we finish this book completely let me make some concluding remarks on the history that we have just read in the last three chapters of Judges. First, the history of the Levite and his concubine shows us what happens in a society when “everyone does what is right in his own eyes.” This does not produce a community of glorious freedom, and certainly not one of love (just look at our own nation). Instead, we find a society that is chaotic and cruel in which everything that is the worst in human nature becomes the new normal, where the institutions that should give order and deliver justice fail, where everyone suffers.
Second, these chapters show that even a nation like Israel, with the history of God’s love, grace, and deliverance, and all the privileges of revelation, can become this kind of society if it abandons faithfulness to God’s Word. Benjamite Gibeah can become like any Canaanite city, and those who come into it looking for hospitality and nourishment can find themselves in a virtual Sodom. This should be a solemn warning to the church today, which is departing more and more from obedience to God’s Word, and it is accommodating itself more and more to the world around it. Our world has already become the kind of society that we see in the closing chapters of Judges.
Third, and this is the good news, these chapters show that the presence of chaos does not mean the absence of God. God is referred to frequently in the last two chapters. People assemble to Him, inquire of Him, weep before Him, offer sacrifices to Him, take oaths in His name, and attend an annual feast to Him in Shiloh. He is certainly present in their speech at times and sometimes in their actions. And sometimes they obey Him, even when it is costly to do so. The problem is not that they are not religious or not willing to take God seriously at certain moments and in certain situations, and He is certainly not absent. The problem is that He has been abandoned when it comes to moral authority, the peoples’ approach to everyday matters such as sex, marriage, hospitality, justice, the treatment of others, among other things was to do what seemed right in your own eyes. This is why there is the moral chaos and why all their institutions are breaking down. This is why our nation is in moral chaos and why all our institutions are breaking down. This is why common life ceased to be the wholesome, good thing God intended it to be and why society becomes chaotic and cruel. But God has been in the chaos! Twice in these chapters we have been shown what He has been doing. By withholding victory twice, He has made Israel suffer, because all of them have been guilty of doing what is right in their own eyes, not just the rapists in Gibeah. In other words, He disciplined His people without abandoning them. And in the closing verses of this book, we have seen the end result, the glimmer of hope of a future inheritance that only God could bring about.
So, when you are dismayed with the state of our nation, when you see churches caving to the world system in our own day, especially in their departure from the Word of God and the moral confusion that results, take heart, God is still present. The church has existed for more than 2000 years and will continue to do so, because it is God’s church, and He has not abandoned it and never will. The end that He will bring about in His perfect time will be glorious beyond our imaginings. We read about it in our Scripture reading this morning, listen again to the first four verses: “Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth; for the first heaven and the first earth passed away, and there is no longer any sea. And I saw the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, made ready as a bride adorned for her husband. And I heard a loud voice from the throne, saying, ‘Behold, the tabernacle of God is among men, and He will dwell among them, and they shall be His people, and God Himself will be among them, and He will wipe away every tear from their eyes; and there will no longer be any death; there will no longer be any mourning, or crying, or pain; the first things have passed away.’” (Revelation 21:1–4, NASB95)[10]
[1]New American Standard Bible: 1995 Update. La Habra, CA: The Lockman Foundation, 1995.
[2]New American Standard Bible: 1995 Update. La Habra, CA: The Lockman Foundation, 1995.
[3]New American Standard Bible: 1995 Update. La Habra, CA: The Lockman Foundation, 1995.
[4]New American Standard Bible: 1995 Update. La Habra, CA: The Lockman Foundation, 1995.
[5]New American Standard Bible: 1995 Update. La Habra, CA: The Lockman Foundation, 1995.
[6]New American Standard Bible: 1995 Update. La Habra, CA: The Lockman Foundation, 1995.
[7]New American Standard Bible: 1995 Update. La Habra, CA: The Lockman Foundation, 1995.
[8]New American Standard Bible: 1995 Update. La Habra, CA: The Lockman Foundation, 1995.
[9]New American Standard Bible: 1995 Update. La Habra, CA: The Lockman Foundation, 1995.
[10]New American Standard Bible: 1995 Update. La Habra, CA: The Lockman Foundation, 1995.