Thread by @JamesBejon

THREAD: Chs. 20-21. A not so civil civil war in Israel.

As usual, the aim isn’t to cover/summarise the whole text, but simply to pick out particular and sometimes overlooked points of interest.

Chs. 20 and 21 may not be quite as bleak as ch. 19, but they are every bit as messy:

In ch. 20, the Israelites attempt to address the damage done in ch. 19; that is to say, they seek to punish the men of Gibeah (for their treatment of a Levite’s concubine).

And, in ch. 21, the Israelites attempt to address the damage done in ch. 20, namely their near total destruction of the tribe of Benjamin.

The whole thing is a mess, and a v. bleak one at that.

It is also--like many other narratives in the book of Judges--replete with ironies,

many of which are v. unsavoury:

In ch. 19, the concubine who sinned against her husband with many men is sinned against *by* many men.

The host who sought to preserve his guest’s male dignity (at the cost of a female substitute) only covers himself and his guest in shame.

And the Levite who set out to ‘restore’ (השיב) his concubine ultimately cuts her up into twelve pieces.

The same kind of ironies continue on into chs. 20-21.

The Levite’s dismemberment of his concubine manages to accomplish what his better-known successors repeatedly try and yet fail to accomplish, namely the assembly of the body of Israel ‘as a single man’.

Soon afterwards, the Israelites send a tenth of their men away to get resources for their campaign against Benjamin (20.10), yet, when the battle begins, the Israelites lose a tenth of their men, which brings their campaign to a halt.

(Levites are entitled to ‘extract a tithe’ from Israel, but they do not normally do so in quite as dramatic/drastic a manner.)

And, in their efforts to punish the men of Gibeah for their mistreatment of a defenceless woman, the Israelites mistreat *hundreds* of women,

whom they deliberately deprive of any means of defence (21.22).

Perhaps the Israelites have the regulations of Deut. 22.28-29 in mind.

If so, their application of Mosaic law is highly misguided.

(The text of Deut. 22.28-29 is supposed to discourage the mistreatment of women, not to encourage it; furthermore, it describes its activities as ענה, which the same verb employed in ch. 19 to describe the Gibeonites’ activities.)

As such, the Israelites do not even manage to do ‘what is right in their own eyes’;

they instead do what they rightly condemned in the men of Gibeah.

Elements of poetic justice can also be identified in chs. 20-21.

The Benjaminites refuse to see ‘evil’ (רָעָה) in the men of Gibeah, and are rendered unable to see the ‘disaster’ (רָעָה) due to befall them in their battle against Israel (20.13, 34).

And just as the men of Gibeah ‘enter/harass’ (עלל) a concubine, so they and their kinsmen ‘pick them off’ (עלל) on the battlefield (19.25, 20.45).

On, then, to the specifics of our text.

Chs. 20 and 21 share a similar structure.

In both chs., the Israelites repeatedly attempts to accomplish a given task,

and, although in both cases they ultimately ‘succeed’, their success seems rather hollow by the time it arrives.

In ch. 20, the Israelites decide to destroy the men of Benjamin.

Twice they are defeated, but on their third attempt they ‘succeed’. Only 600 Benjaminites manage to escape.

Meanwhile, in ch. 21, the Israelites seek to save the men of Benjamin from extinction.

Their first attempt fails (since YHWH does not answer them: 21.3),

as does their second (since 200 Benjaminites are still left without any means to propagate their seed).

But third time round the Israelites succeed. 200 more wives are found, and Benjamin’s future is hence preserved.

What we are supposed to learn from these texts is not immediately obvious.

The first point we need to appreciate is their (deliberate) lack of clarity.

Ch. 19’s narrative is highly ambiguous in precisely the places where we would like it to be most explicit.

Who exactly hands the Levite’s concubine over to the men of Gibeah? The Levite himself or his host (19.24)?

And why, since the men of Gibeah have already declined the Levite’s concubine, do they ‘accept’ her as a substitute for the Levite (19.24b-25)?

And when exactly does the Levite’s concubine die? Before the Levite arises the next day? Or some time after he puts her on his donkey and returns to his home?

We do not know for sure.

The situation is made all the more hazy by the Levite’s account of events in ch. 20.

Did the men of Gibeah really plan to kill the Levite (20.5a)? Or does the Levite invent such a notion in order to explain his failure to intervene?

& why, when ch. 19’s narrative fails to mention the concubine’s death, does the Levite’s account make explicit mention of it?

Is the Levite’s claim another ‘invention’?

Might the concubine have still been alive and save-able?

And might the Levite’s horrific indifference to her plight have been the final nail in the coffin for her?

Again, we do not know for sure.

And our issues do not end there.

Chs. 19-20 are not only unclear in what they tell us; they also include deliberate indicators of their incompleteness.

Consider by analogy our text’s account of Israel’s final battle with the Benjaminites.

The Benjaminites muster together a total of 26,700 men (cp. 20.15).

26,000 of them are said to be swordsmen, while 700 (also?) wield slings.

The Israelites march against the Benjaminites, confident of victory, but they lose a tenth of their men on the first two days (20.18-28).

The text of 20.29-48 then provides us with two separate accounts of the events of day three and onwards: a summary account in 20.29-36a, and a more detailed account in 29.36b-48.

(29.36b-48 should probably be read in the pluperfect: ‘Now, earlier, the men of Israel had...’)

In the summary account, 25,100 men of Benjamin are said to fall ‘on that day’ (i.e., in a particular conflict measured over a particular period of time: 20.35),

while, in the more detailed account, 25,000 men are said to fall, which leaves 600 alive, who turn & flee (20.44-47),

and later, when the Israelites try to find wives for these men, they only manage to find 400 wives (21.12).

Why does our text contain so many numerical details?

Its central story would work perfectly well without them.

So, why does the word of God tell us how many people fall at particular points in time?

My suggestion (on which we will later expand) is as follows: to underline how incomplete our knowledge is, and how we often have to make decisions based on incomplete information.

Let me try to explain.

26,700 Benjaminites less 25,000 does not leave us with 600.

The battle of Gibeah must, therefore, have lasted for more than a day, and the balance of men must have been slain on subsequent days.

So far so good, one might say.

But the figures recorded in 20.29-48 have further things to teach us insofar as they resonate with those recorded at the start of ch. 17,

where a previously unmentioned sum of 1,100 shekels of silver is suddenly mentioned, at which pt:

a] a priest confesses to have stolen it,

b] the rightful owner of the 1,100 shekels hands 200 of them to a silversmith (to build an idol), &

c] the owner pledges to return the leftover 900 shekels to the priest, though never actually does so (as far as we know),

& the shekels are not mentioned again in the narrative.

As can be seen, these figures (in ch. 17) are strangely resonant with those of ch. 20.

Consider the totals involves in our most detailed (and most exhaustive) account of Gibeah’s battle.

26,700 Benjaminites less 25,000 *should* leave us with a total of 1,700 Benjaminites,

but we are actually (per 20.47) left with a total of 600.

As such, the text of 20.47 presents us with an unexpected figure of 1,100 midway through our narrative, just as the text of 17.2 does (much to the reader’s confusion).

Moreover, the 1,100 shekels are said to have been put under a kind of ‘curse’, just as the Benjaminites have been (17.2 cp. 21.18).

The figures involved in our summary account are different.

25,100 swordsmen are said to fall over a particular period of time

(a longer one, presumably, than the period referred to in our more detailed account),

which leaves us with 1,600 men, included among whom are 900 swordsmen,

but we are not told what happens to these men

since our summary account does not provide us with further details about them.

As such, our 900 unaccounted-for swordsmen resonate with the 900 unaccounted-for shekels in ch. 17,

which ch. 17 implicitly introduces to us and yet never again mentions.

The final point of resonance between chs. 17 and 20-21 involves ‘the daughters of Shiloh’.

Just as 200 shekels are allegedly associated with YHWH in some way (17.3) and yet ‘taken’ (לקח) and devoted to a different cause, so too are 200 of the daughters of Shiloh (17.4a, 21.23).

As can be seen, then, the text of chs. 17-21 is bookended with similar and similarly unexplained figures,

which it does in order to draw attention to the amount of information we lack about our text and the events it describes.

(That Scripture is sufficient means it tells us everything we *need* to know, not everything we might *like* to know.)

But why, one might wonder, would the text of Scripture want to highlight its incompleteness and/or its underdetermined nature?

First, because it is helpful for us to be made conscious of how little we know,

not only about the world in general, but even about the world of Scripture.

As humans located in a particular place and time,

even those of us who know as much as anyone about a given field of knowledge ultimately know very little,

which should cause us to cast ourself all the more earnestly on God to guide our decisions, exegesis, prayers, & everything else. (‘In *all* your ways acknowledge him...’)

Second, because these considerations are very relevant to the events of ch. 20.

At the outset of ch. 20, the Israelites are forced to make a decision based on incomplete information,

since the Levite’s account of events is at best incomplete and at worst deceptive.

The Israelites therefore need to exhibit patience and care, & to cast themselves on the wisdom and mercy of God.

But, sadly, they do none of these things.

Instead, they vow *not* to return to their homes or to sleep on the matter,

but immediately to go out to battle (20.8ff.),

which stands in stark contrast to, for instance, the decision taken by the elders in Ezra’s day, who could see how difficult their situation was and said,

‘Our task cannot be accomplished in one or two days, for we have transgressed greatly in this matter’,

at which point the elders returned to their homes and put a longer term strategy in place.

Meanwhile, the Israelites vow ‘to go up against Gibeah by lot’ (20.9).

As such, their alleged ‘inquiry of God’ (cf. 20.9) is a mere routine.

They have already decided what to do; the ‘inquiry’ is a ‘lottery’--a roll of an eleven-sided dice to determine who the unlucky tribe is.

(Note the contrast between 1.2, where YHWH guarantees Judah success, and our present text, where YHWH simply says ‘Judah first!’.)

The Israelites’ second inquiry is little better (20.23),

since the Israelites have already arrayed themselves for battle just as they did on the first day (20.22).

Their minds are already made up.

Only on the third day do the Israelites approach YHWH & actually seek his will,

hence they ask ‘Should I go our to battle, *or should I cease*?’,

at which point YHWH grants them victory.

For the first time in the book of Judges, the Israelites were in the right, and had the numerical ascendancy,

yet they still could not attain the victory without YHWH’s explicit help.

Ch. 20’s events teach us a simple but important lesson:

Sometimes in life we simply need to stop and down tools and wait on God.

We need to be prepared to undo decisions which we’ve already made,

and to approach the LORD our God with an open heart, a genuine desire to know his will, and a readiness to change,

all of which is far easier said than done.

A similar lesson emerges from ch. 21’s events.

In ch. 21, the Israelites dig themselves into a deeper and deeper hole

because of the misguided decisions and vows they have made in the past (which they cannot bring themselves to undo),

and because of their failure to consult YHWH and wait for YHWH to guide them.

YHWH’s silence in reply to their inquiry in 21.3-4 speaks volumes.

Yet, in response, the Israelites simply pursue their own solutions (21.5ff.), which of course are hugely unsatisfactory.

Indeed, the Israelites’ actions make little if any sense.

For a start, the situation in which they find themselves presupposes some very odd behaviour.

Where were all the Benjaminites’ wives?

Are we to assume they were slaughtered in 20.48’s activities?

It seems so.

Yet, if in ch. 20 the Israelites set out to slaughter the Benjaminites and their wives (and vowed not to give their daughters to them),

then why do they now want to spare Benjamin in ch. 21?

And why, if it was legitimate for the Israelites to spare 600 Benjaminites (20.47), could they not have spared 600 of the Benjaminites’ wives (20.48)?

And if the Israelites were right to (have made a vow to) devote Jabesh-Gilead to destruction (its wives and children included), then what made it acceptable to spare its virgins?

And if the Israelites were right to have withheld their own daughters from the Benjaminites,

then what made it acceptable to grant them the daughters of Jabesh-Gilead?

And if ‘the Shiloh solution’ was acceptable, then why didn’t the Israelites simply pursue it in the first place?

The ch. is for the most part a senseless pursuit of man’s own solutions to man’s problems.

As Christians, we know better than to act in such ways,

but I wonder whether anyone would notice if they looked at what we devote most and least time to in our life?

If Jesus felt an urgent need to seek God in prayer, then we should surely (seek to) feel that same urgency.