Transcendence 4

Ninteen: Mob Rape Leads to War

Desperately seeing answers to the Levite's message the Israelites called a meeting and gathered together in Mizpah. The leaders of all the people of the tribes of Israel took their places in the assembly of the people of God. There were four hundred thousand soldiers armed with swords. They wanted to hear the story directly from the Levite who had sent out his dead concubine's body parts. Everyone was asking the same question, "Tell us exactly how this awful thing happened."

The Levite told them the entire story about how he went up to Gibeah to spend the night before traveling on and the Benjamite offered them his home. That night the men of Gibeah came intending to kill him, but instead they raped and abused his concubine and she died. He explained that he then cut her up and sent one part to each of the regions of Israel because when this  lewd and disgraceful act was committed in a sense they were all responsible for on of their own people, the tribe of Benjamin, had become vile.

The people made a decision as a group. They planned to take ten men from every hundred from all the tribes of Israel, and a hundred from every hundred and a thousand from every thousand to get provisions for the army. Then they would go to war against the tribe of Benjamin and give them exactly what they deserve for all the vileness they had done.

First, the tribes sent out men throughout the tribe of Benjamin shouting, "Surrender those wicked men of Gibeah so that we many put them to death and purge the evil from Israel."

The Benjamites would not listen. Instead they gathered together their own army of men and went up to Gibeah to fight against the other Israelites. Among Benjamin's army were twenty-six thousand swordsmen form their towns in addition to seven hundred chosen men from Gibeah. Those chosen men were left-handed and could sling a stone at a hair and not miss.

On the other side, among the other tribes of Israel were four hundred thousand swordsmen, all of whom were strong fighting men. These men went up to Bethel and inquired of God about who should go first to fight the Benjamites - their brothers.

The Lord replied, "The tribe of Judah should go first."

The next morning the opposing Israelites took up position against the Benjamites in Gibeah. That day the Benjamites cut down twenty-two thousand Israelites on the battlefield. It was a devastating loss! Even still the men of Israel encouraged each other and again took up their stations. They went up and wept before the Lord until evening and inquired of the Lord, "Shall we go up again to battle against the Benjamites, our brothers?"

The Lord answered, "Go up against them."

The Israelites drew beyond Gibeah the second day. Again the Benjamites were stronger and smarter. They cut down another eighteen thousand of their Israelite brothers.

Again the Israelites went up to the Lord weeping. They fasted that day until evening and presented burnt offerings and fellowship offerings to the Lord. (In those days the Ark of the Covenant of the God was there with Phinehas, son of Eleazar, grandson of Aaron. He was ministering before it.) They asked again, "Shall we go up against our brother Benjamin or not?"

The Lord responded, "Go, for tomorrow I will give them into your hands."

The opposing Israelite clans set an ambush around Gibeah. They went up against the Benjamites on the third day and took up positions. The Benjamites came out and begin to inflict causalities on the Israelites as before, so that about thirty men fell in the open field and on the roads. While the Benjamites were feeling victorious and claiming defeat, the Israelites were making their move and retreating , drawing them away from the city to the roads.

There in the roads ten thousand of Israel's finest men made a frontal attack on Gibeah. The fighting was so heavy that the Benjamites did not realize how near disaster was. The Lord defeated Benjamin before Israel and on that day the Israelites struck down 25,100 Benjamites. The Benjamites recognized they were being defeated. 

While that fight was going on other Israelite men dashed into the city, spread out and put the whole city to the sword. The men of Israel had arranged with the ambush that they would send up a great cloud of smoke form the city and then the men near the road would see the signal and would turn in the battle. When the Benjamites saw the cloud of smoke coming from their city they fled because they realized that disaster had come upon them. They headed in the direction of the desert, but could not escape. The men of Israel came out of the towns and cut them down. They surrounded them, closed in and easily overran them. Eighteen thousand more Benjamites fell. Then at the rock of Rimmon the Israelites cut down five thousand more near the roads. They kept pressing after them and struck down two thousand more. 

About six hundred men from the tribe of Benjamin escaped the battle at the rock of Rimmon. They stayed there and hid out for four months. Meanwhile the opposing men of Israel went back to the towns of the Benjamites and put them all to the sword including animals and everything else they found. They set fire to all the towns they came across, destroying everything.

(Life question: Family feuds start with one quarrel or disagreement, or sin. When the entire rest of the family gang up on the one the end result can cut that person out of the family or exclude them. When this happens there is never a true win in the battle. How do you handle it when disagreements or quarrels aren't resolved? Is there someone in your life who has been cut off or isolated from everyone else because of a disagreement or wrong doing? This is not God's will. He wants us to resolve issues.  In the case of the Benjamites, one whole clan had been cut off from God's chosen people, from the sons of Israel. Benjamin was the youngest son of Jacob (Israel) and Rachael, and though this civil war took place generations later, God did not want the Benjamin clan wiped out. What He did want though was for sin to be wiped out.)