Transcendence 4

Twenty: Wives for the Benjamites

The remaining six hundred men who had fled from the battle and hid in the desert at the rock of Rimmon were all that was left of the tribe of Benjamin. 

Because of the war, and the huge amounts of lives lost, and the sinful nature of the Benjamites the eleven other tribes of Israel had taken an oath at Mizpah that not one of them would give his daughter in marriage to any of the remailing Benjamite men. It was agreed upon that anyone who did give them a daughter would be cursed. Sin was sin and they wasn't going to put up with it, in fact God had told them not to.

Yet, their hearts ached! An entire tribe was cut off from the Israelites, a huge piece of their family. They missed their brothers! The people of the other tribes began to grieve for the lost tribe. They were very sad that the Lord had made a gap in the tribes of Israel. The weeping came when the remaining eleven were gathered at Bethel before God and there was a very obvious hole where men from the missing tribe should have been. (This meeting was mandatory. The entire Israelite group had taken an oath to assemble before the Lord at Mizpah, and anyone who did not attend was to be put to death.) They grieved for their brothers the Benjamites. They asked, "Why has this happened to Israel? Why should an entire tribe be missing from among us?"

Early the next day they built an altar and presented burnt offerings and fellowship offerings to the Lord. They contemplated their predicament and said, "Today one tribe is cut off from Israel. There are six hundred remaining men of that tribe but how can we provide wives for them who are left since we have taken an oath not to give them any of our daughters in marriage?" 

When studying it through they asked one another a very obvious question. Who among them had failed to assemble before the Lord that day? In talking it over they discovered that no one from Jabesh Gilead had come to the camp for the assembly. ( This wasn't an entire tribe, but one of the towns within a tribe. An oath was very important and when someone, or a group of people didn't take it seriously there could be deathly consequences. This group of people had carelessly avoided the mandatory meeting, sending the message that they didn't care about the oath. Their absence gave the rest of the Israelites a way to solve their problem about the Benjamites.) In agreement the assembly sent twelve thousand fighting men with instructions to go to Jabesh Gilead and put to the sword those living there, including the women and children. They were told to kill every male and every woman who is not a virgin.

During that battle the Israelite army found four hundred young women who had never slept with a man and they took them to the camp at Shiloh in Canaan. There they sent the remaining Benjamites at the rock of Rimmon a peace offer. So the Benjamite men returned to their land and were given the virgin women of Jabesh Gilead who had been spared. The problem had been solved other than the fact that there were not enough women for all of the men.

This presented another problem for the Israelites, they wanted to rebuild the Benjamite tribe but needed to figure out where other women would come from since they had all taken the same oath not to give their own daughters to them.

That is when they remembered a festival that went on annually in Shiloh, to the north of Bethel.

They instructed the Benjamites saying, "Go and hide in the vineyards and watch. When the girls of Shiloh come out to join in the dancing, rush from the vineyards and each of you seize a wife from the girls of Shiloh and take her back with you to the land of Benjamin. When the people of Shiloh's fathers or brothers complain to us, we will explain to them the situation and ask for their help in providing wives for you. If they claim you have sinned against them we will say you are innocent since you did not give your daughters to them." (In this situation the Benjamites were intermarrying with neighboring daughters but the sin wasn't on those neighbors since they didn't take any of Benjamite women for their sons.)

The Benjamites did as they were instructed. While the girls were dancing each man caught one and carried her off to be his wife. Then they returned to their inheritance of the promised land given to them by God, and they began to rebuild the towns and settled in them. 

(Life Question: How does building a tribe with kidnapped women constitute as a godly option? It seemed in that day leaders and elders of Israel did what they wanted regardless of whether or not it was bad or good.  However in that time, women were considered possessions. Their value was only as good as their ability to reproduce. This would never fly in today's world, regardless, God is in control and when He wants a tribe to be rebuilt, He will bless the mess used to make it happen.  God saw something good coming from the women of Shiloh marrying the men of Benjamin. Simple as that.)