40 Minutes In The Old Testament - Judges 20:1-21:25 (Episode 219)

Episode Date: June 6, 2020

Chad and Daniel wrap up the book of Judges. Israel goes to war with the tribe of Benjamin after hearing what took place with the Levite and his concubine. Benjamin is wiped out except for 600 men and two bad solutions to the problem of those men not having wives are implemented. Judges is dark, but Ruth is coming. Have a listen! 1517 Podcast Network 1517 YouTube Donate

Welcome to another episode of 40 Minutes in the Old Testament. 40 Minutes in the Old Testament is a 1517 Podcast Network podcast. You can go to 1517.org slash podcast. Check out all the other podcasts that are living over there. There's a new podcast coming out. The trailer is up. That means you can go ahead and subscribe to it so you don't miss the first episode.

That podcast is called Outlaw God with Steve Paulson. So you can check out the trailer. Just search Outlaw God in whatever podcast app or whatever way you listen to podcasts, whether it's Spotify or iTunes or whatever, and click on Outlaw God. Subscribe to that. I don't think you're going to want to miss that one.

Chad, I'm already subscribed personally to that podcast. Looking forward to June 9th when the first one drops. I mean, I listen to a lot of podcasts, but I will definitely find a way to make room for that one. It's going to be good. Yeah, I'm looking forward to it. Balls and rocks. Yeah, man.

Yeah, so that's one not to miss. You got to at least give it a shot. So, yeah, subscribe to Outlaw God. And here in about a week from when we're recording this, the first episode of that will drop. So make sure to check that out. Chad, how are things going, man? Well, it's good. Personally, things are going fine. I think I mentioned last podcast that my

birthday was coming up, which has now passed us. It was a birthday weekend for me. I got a half century under my belt. It was great. I had my family. I had a lot of video greetings from from friends and uh phone calls from a lot of other people so it was it was a great great weekend of of celebration so it was it was good to do that well everything else was just spinning into chaos yeah reason i laughed is because well of course before we started the podcast we were talking about everything going on it's just yeah it's uh it it i think that you know covering the book of judges has kind of prepared us for all of the the crazy things that are happening out there yeah man just everything everything under the sun it's a it's a pretty wild time right now

but uh speaking the book of judges man we are we are at the end yeah we're good i mean we we have two chapters to cover don't get me wrong we're not like a few verses from the end we have chapter 20 and 21 but we are going to finish the book today uh if you've stuck with us through this whole thing you've uh been on quite a quite a trip yeah we've just just about every kind of dark aspect if humanity has been highlighted in one story or another it's just uh it's been a wild ride yeah at least it ends on a real high note yeah right yeah kidnapping some some versions for uh for the the men who are left from the massacre tribe of benjamin yeah it's a real real uh real highlight well i will say this though uh seriously that in many ways uh ruth is sort of the end of judges

At least they're typically grouped together because the story of Ruth occurs during the time of the judges. So that being said, we will. I mean, if you kind of count that as the end, we will end on a high note. We'll get to that next week. So stay tuned for Ruth. I've taught that book in its entirety a couple of times. So I've already done quite a bit of work on that and look forward to going back over the material again. It's just a great story to begin with, and there's just a whole lot of real rich theology there, too.

Yeah, yeah, great. Well, before then, we've got to get through these last two chapters of Judges, so we're at Judges 20, verse 1. Yeah, so you probably remember, I mean, I'm sure you remember if you listened to the last podcast, what the former story was about. This is one of those cases where something small can turn into something which is really, really big. The way this all started, kind of keep this in mind, beginning with chapter 19, the way this whole story started was with a relationship problem. There was a Levite, and as we talked about, whatever happened, there were some issues between him and his concubine. And that spark is what set ablaze, well, a fire that's going to sweep through the entirety of Israel by the time we're done. Started out with just the two of them, and then it involved a whole city, and then it's going to involve a tribe and the rest of the tribes.

So something very small is going to grow into something which is very large and very, very destructive. So we've already seen the gang rape and the murder and the dismemberment of the woman. That was in chapter 19. And we're going to pick it up here with chapter 20 and see what happens now. The way it ended was with people just aghast. They just were speechless at what had happened. So they're going to gather together and make a decision as to how they should proceed. so beginning with with verse one here it says that all the sons of israel from dan to beersheba

including the land of gilead came out and the congregation assembled as one man to the lord at mizpah so this is uh almost the entirety of the israelite tribes we're going to learn in just a minute that there's one tribe that's that's missing the tribe of benjamin because the place the city where this happened in Gibeah, belongs to the tribe of Benjamin. But everybody else is gathered together as one man at Mizpah. Now, there's a kind of a bitter irony here, because if you think back over the stories we've covered in the book of Judges, there have been a number of deliverers that God has raised up, everybody from Gideon to Samson to Deborah to Barak, and not one of them not a single one of them has been under their leadership able to unite all of

the tribes into a unity so never have the tribes come together as one man as it says in verse 1 and then again in verse 11 but what brings them together what finally unites them well it's a It's an anonymous Levite who, as we've already heard, is just a terrible human being. And that's going to be confirmed once more in just a minute. So this is Israel. Nothing has been able to unite them. And they have basically just given in to the Canaanite culture and religion around them. And now that all this has happened, they are going to unite.

But what they're going to unite around is basically this crusade of self-destruction. So anyway, they assemble, and you have the leaders there, and they take their stand. In verse 2, it says about 400,000 foot soldiers there. And then we're told in verse 3 that the sons of Benjamin, so the tribe of Benjamin, they knew that everyone had assembled. But of course, they themselves did not gather with them. And then we have this question posed at the end of verse 3. Tell us, how did this wickedness take place? now let me read the next three or four verses this is going to be the levite whom we encountered in

the previous chapter and says he's the husband of the woman who was murdered which is an interesting way to put this you may remember from last time at the end of the episode that we said it's a little bit ambiguous it could go either way did she die from the abuse that she suffered from the crowd, or was she still alive after that? And her husband, this Levite, killed her, murdered her before he cut her up. It's unclear. We can't say. It could go either way, but it says who was murdered. So this guy, he stands up, and this is his story. Now listen carefully to the way that he retells the story of what happened, bearing in mind what we know actually happened. He says, I came with my concubine to spend the night at Gibeah, which belongs to Benjamin.

But the men of Gibeah rose up against me and surrounded the house at night because of me. They intended to kill me. Instead, they ravished my concubine so that she died. And I took hold of my concubine and cut her in pieces and sent her throughout the land of Israel's inheritance. for they have committed a lewd and disgraceful act in israel behold all you sons of israel give your advice and counsel here isn't isn't it fascinating in a twisted sort of way just how in the retelling of this story uh this levite whom we already dislike just makes himself even more dislikable it's all about him i mean in his his retelling of what happened the narration is

all about all about him they rose up against me they surrounded the house and not because of me they intended to kill me and then rather than notice of course what he leaves out he said instead they ravished my concubine so that she died no mention of the fact that he's the one who shoved her out the door no mention of the fact that he treated her with just kind of cold calculation no mention to the fact that he is responsible in any way for what happened he pushes all of the blame onto under the tribe well onto the the town of gibia and then by implication to to the tribe of benjamin yeah which of course there's plenty of blame uh to go on the the town of gibia uh of course i mean we're not we're definitely not saying like hey it's all this

guy's fault those guys you know are are in this obviously the the ultimate blame lies with them but the issue here is he's making it sound like they were going to kill me and then they saw my concubine and changed their mind and decided to go go with that not that i threw her out the house uh as a deterrent yeah yeah yeah that's what really disgusts me about this uh i mean you do see the sinful nature on full display here yes of course the the men who did this or who perpetrated this horrible, horrible crime are sinful and evil. And every other word you can think of to describe this terrible act that they performed. Yes, they are guilty of all of that. But as you say, there's plenty of blame to go around. And so this guy is kind of holding himself

up as a victim, and as someone who's righteous, and who just happened to barely escape martyrdom, and instead they killed his concubine instead. So he is going to disappear from the story at this point. We will hear absolutely nothing else about this particular Levite, so who knows what happened to him. But we do know what happened as a result of his speech. It says, verse 8, that everybody rose up as one man saying, no one of us will go to his tent or return to his house, but now this is what we will do to Gibeah. So what they decide in the next couple of verses is they're going to attack, that's obvious, but they divide up the tribes. They take 10% of everyone, and they're going to more or less be the ones who provide all the necessary provisions to

those who go to wars. They take 10% of the men and say, okay, basically you're the guys going to be in charge of making sure that when we go to war and it might be a prolonged affair, they don't know that they're going to be the ones who supply food for the people. And they're going to, as it says in verse 10, they're going to punish them, punish the people of Gibeah for all the disgraceful acts that they've committed in Israel. And then once more in verse 11, it says that all of the men of Israel will gather against the city, united as one man. Yeah, so they basically do like a 10% draft because they do this by lot, right? So they're like, all right, 10% of us are going to go take care of this.

Yeah, 10% of us are going to, well, there's going to be a lot of warriors, but 10% of those are going to be the ones who make supply food provisions for the people. Yeah. So they're united. They're going to do this. and then it says verse 12 that they sent men throughout the entire tribe of benjamin saying what is this wickedness that has taken place among you now then deliver up the men the worthless fellows in gibeah literally that's the sons of baliol in gibeah i think that we've talked

about that before baliol is a word that over time came to be a synonym for the devil or satan at This time, it probably refers to people that I don't know what we might call them. Because Baaliel has connections with like the underworld. I was trying to think of an English equivalent. I mean, worthless fellows is fine, but you know, like hellish guys, something like that. Something connected with the underworld or death. Anyway, these are worthless guys, hellish men in Gibeah. Deliver them up to us that we may put them to death and remove this wickedness from Israel.

but the benjaminites would not listen to the voice of their brothers the sons of israel no surprise there so the tribe is gonna is gonna stick stick together in the next couple of verses we have the description of how many there were there's 26 000 men of benjamin who draw the sword and then you have the guys who were in gibeah 700 men then we have this odd description of some of them. Verse 16 says, out of all these people, that is out of all these people of the tribe of Benjamin, there were 700 choice men who were left-handed. Each one of them could sling a stone at a hare and not miss. This is the same word, if you remember back in the story of Ehud, the one who made the sword and stabbed Eglon in the belly with it, he was described as left-handed.

end of that episode i think i mentioned that it's a little bit it's we're not quite sure it might mean left-handed it probably means ambidextrous in fact in the greek translation that is they use the greek word for ambidextrous to do uh to translate that particular hebrew word either way they could use their left hand which was of course unusual then as it is now and not only that but they were extremely accurate they could they could sling a stone at a hair and not miss of course at this time we we associate slingshots you know with with kids and alleys picking up rocks and shooting them at birds which is what i did when i was a when i was a kid yeah i had a slingshot and i was pretty accurate but this is different this is uh this is not your typical kids slingshot

yeah i had one of those uh i had one of those arm rocket slingshots you know oh yeah yeah yeah arm rockets wrist rockets yeah yeah yeah well this time slingers were and of course this is kind of the background of david the david and goliath story too slingers at this time were were not guys who you know just happening pretty good with a slingshot this was a weapon this was there there were in almost every ancient army we have documentation of the fact that there were people who used bows so there were archers there were spearmen uh and there were slingers And these slingers were extremely accurate, extremely deadly, and an important part of the military force of the nations back then. So these guys were slingers.

That was their job. That was their military job. Now, interesting thing here. You probably heard that the word for sin in Greek or Hebrew means to miss the mark. I think most people have heard that at some point. well here's a good example of that when at the very end of verse 16 when it says they could sling a stone at a hair and not miss the verb that's used there is hata and hata is the word that in other circumstances it's translated as sin yeah so you're you're you're missing something

something is lacking you don't hit the mark that's what of course is being communicated here quite literally, they would sling a stone and not hatah and not miss. And so that gets transferred over theologically to the realm of either doing evil or refraining from doing good. So you don't live up, you don't match the mark that's been set for you by God. So if you've ever wondered, hey, where's a good example of that biblical definition of sin is missing the mark? Well, here it is right here in verse 16. Okay, moving on. We have a description of basically three battles, and we'll go through these rather quickly because there's just not a whole lot of need to focus on the details. What's going to happen is there's going to be two failed attempts for the taking of the

city of Benjamin, and then there's going to be one, the third one is a successful attack on the city. So what happens is they first of all inquire of the Lord who should go up first in this battle against the tribe of Benjamin, and Judah is decided, which makes sense for a couple of reasons. Judah for quite a while now has been the leading tribe of the Israelites, and the concubine was from the city of Bethlehem, which belongs to the tribe of Judah. So it kind of makes sense that the tribe of Judah would be the first to lead the rest of the Israelites in battle. So they go out in verses 19 to 21 at their first attempt to take the city of Gibeah, and they are just beat back. It says that 22,000 men of Israel died. Interestingly, in these first two battles, there's no mention of any loss of life from the tribe of Benjamin. I'm not saying, and I don't think the scriptures are saying, that no one on their side died.

But the focus is entirely upon Israelite casualties And not upon any casualties From the tribe of Benjamin Which says to me that The guys from the tribe of Benjamin Were really, really good Soldiers because they are vastly Outnumbered at this point

Maybe they had better fortifications Yeah, you're talking about 400,000 is what it says For the men of Israel Versus 26,000 uh from benjamin plus 700 you know gibbonites guys um they they must have a stronghold otherwise you just like roll in there with full i mean if it's just a town you just roll in there with

400 000 and just end it yeah right but yeah something else must have been going maybe fortifications maybe these guys who were ambidextrous with their with their slingshots for just mowing down people left and right whatever happened they were uh they were definitely holding their ground and and winning uh both both these battles and you can you can you can see the the drop in morale on part of the israelites because they they go to uh inquire of the lord and they're weeping before the lord until evening and they're wanting to to find out you know for sure does God want us to draw near for battle against them? So they do this two days in a row, and they lose a whole lot of men. Verse 26 picks up with the third battle. It says that

everybody came to Bethel, and they wept, so they're lamenting, they're fasting, they're offering burnt offerings and peace offerings. It says that the ark of the covenant of God was there in those days. And we have a really, really strange detail added here in verse 28. It says, Phineas, the son of Eleazar, Aaron's son, stood before the ark to minister in those days. Now, I haven't mentioned this before because I wanted to save it to this point. It's an odd comment because this happens at the end of the book of Judges. But if it happened when Phineas, who is the son of Eleazar, who is the son of Aaron, so this is the grandson of Aaron, if this happened when Phinehas was serving as a priest, then chronologically, this happened

way early in the period of the Judges. It occurs at the end of the book of Judges, but chronologically, it would have been much earlier in the time of the Judges. And that tells you that the Canaanization that we've talked about that was occurring in Israel, where Israel becomes more and more Canaanite in their ways happened not after a long period of time, but pretty early on. So that's why this particular historical referent is significant. And it's interesting that they put it here, because in a lot of ways,

Samson would have been a better ending to the book of Judges. It would have made, narratively, it might have read better if they had stuck this somewhere else. yeah yeah i i wonder if they well of course they saved these two stories at the end uh the one we we we covered first with the the levite who was employed by the guy who had the household idols and then this story because these are different than the stories of the book of judges but yeah chronologically it would have fit you know well before any of these and yeah it would have been it would be kind of nice actually to end with samson yeah but but this is the way this

You could have ended with this sort of statement and Samson killed more in his death than in his life, and it could have been just a nice little bow on it. Yeah. Yeah, so not all the biblical books end on positive notes. That is one thing I've noticed. The end of Isaiah, their worm does not die, their fire is not quenched. Yeah, sometimes biblical books don't always end in this little positive, positive note. Okay, we'll pick it up with the story. So I'll just summarize what happens from verse 29 through the end of the chapter.

So they finally wise up to the fact after these first two battles have been lost that they need a different strategy. So they rely on a strategy that we've actually covered before. And this was not unusual in ancient warfare. If you have a city that's difficult to take, then, of course, there's different ways that you can go about trying to conquer. You can lay siege. You can use, as they began to do later on, use various catapults to hurl anything from huge spears to stones to things on fire into the city. You could tunnel under it. You could try and go over it with ladders. You've seen all this reenacted in various kinds of movies. But you could also try and lure the men of the city out to a battle, set an ambush, and then cut them off, take their city while most of the warriors are out fighting in the field.

We saw that happen in the city of Ai. You remember that right after Jericho was conquered, then Ai defeated them, and then they set an ambush, and they were able to defeat the city of Ai. They're going to use the same battle plan here. So they set an ambush. And then when the tribe of Benjamin goes out to battle against them, they are initially successful. And so they think, oh, this is going to be just like the first two battles. We're going to win this one as well. And so they're lured farther and farther out away from the city. Well, while the soldiers are lured away from Gibeah, then the guys who were sitting in ambush, they attack the city, they take the city, they set it on fire, and as soon as they set it on fire, that's the signal that the rest of the Israelites are looking for. Because when they see that, they've been running from the tribe of Benjamin, from those soldiers. When they see the smoke, they turn back. And when they turn back, then the tribe of Benjamin looks behind them, sees the smoke that's rising from Gibeah, and realizes that they've lost, that there's no hope for them.

So they begin to just scatter. And the rest of the chapter describes how they're just chased here, they're chased there, they're just mown down. and it says they couldn't get away from the battle. The verb that's used there is the verb for stick to, to cleave. It's like the battle stuck to them. There's no way that they could extricate themselves from the conflict. And so more and more of them are taken out in the battle until you have just a few who are left.

In fact, when you get to the end of the chapter, it gives us a number. It says there are 600 men. so out of all these tens of thousands of soldiers from the tribe of benjamin only 600 are able to escape from the battle and they flee to it's called the rock of ramon ramon in hebrew is the word for pomegranate archaeologists think they've figured out where this is at there's a there's a large cave-like structure that's full of all sorts of other small caves inside it and supposedly i looked for an image online i couldn't find one but supposedly it has a sort of a look of a pomegranate thus the name but anyway that's probably where most of the the

commentaries that i've read that's they they highlight that as this place this rock of ramona this pomegranate rock that's where they went to so they were hiding out 600 guys are all that's left we're not talking about from the city of of gibia we're talking about from the entire tribe of Benjamin. That was it. And it goes on to say that the Israelites just went around destroying all the cities of Benjamin. They just torched every city of Benjamin that they found. They killed women. They killed children. They just wiped out the tribe. So that at least the impression that's given to us is that all that's left of the tribe of Benjamin are these 600 guys who are taking refuge in this pomegranate rock trying to hold things together and and survive the onslaught

it's i mean it's a pretty bizarre thing when you you have this concubine who was killed they decide that this is unacceptable which of course it is and there's their solution is and and you know we've seen we've seen how god deals with with wickedness within within a people i mean he'll go and wipe the whole thing out when he decides to deal with it and it seems like that is somewhat what's happening here right they're like we just got to level this whole place i mean obviously obviously this this this place is so corrupt it's so wicked because of this thing that we just have to decimate the entire thing they're not like well maybe we can reform it uh that's not that is not the motivation here they're not going to reform it they're just going to wipe out

and it's just like not the way that we think of things now uh then they would just assume the evil has spread to everyone it's the the culture of the city is bad and horrible so we just gotta get we gotta root it out yeah this is sort of a it's their own version of the harem right that we've seen earlier that kind of sacred decree of complete annihilation or destruction when you when you put something under harem you put it under a ban basically so this is what they're doing now the what strikes me most i guess about this story about especially chapter 20 is you have the israelites they're finally coming together as a unified force they're finally doing something about evil they're finally seeking even though it's a i think it's pretty twisted form of

justice, they're trying to engage in that. They're trying to punish the evildoers. So they're doing this, and they're doing this to their own people. They're doing this to their fellow tribesmen. All the while, throughout the book of Judges, what have we seen over and over again? That they don't actually fulfill what God told them to do against the Canaanites, right? They lived among the Canaanites. They intermarried with the Canaanites. They worshiped the Canaanite gods. It's like they were fine with that true evil, with that idolatry. And here, when it comes time for them to actually finally do something decisive and act, then they prove that they're capable of doing that, but they do it against their own kinsmen, all the while really acting

like Canaanites in much of the way that they behave. So I guess, you know, that's par for the course for the book of judges uh which is just kind of full of dark comedy and and irony okay we have one more chapter to cover and i think we have uh about 10 minutes to do that so let's jump into it this is a this might be the strangest chapter in the book of judges i mean we've had some weird stuff but this might just be the strangest chapter in the book of judges because these guys okay they made this vow that's the way the chapter starts out they made this well the chapter starts out actually with him uh saying that in mizpah so early on when they gathered together the first time when they heard from the levite what when he they heard his his version of

events they i guess were not told this at that time but now we're told that they they swore an oath and this oath they swore at mizpah was that none of us shall give his daughter to benjamin in marriage so there was you know there was intermarriage back and forth between the various tribes. You know, you have a daughter from the tribe of Dan, and you want to marry her to a guy who's from the tribe of Judah. That's all well and good. There's no problem with that kind of tribal intermarriage. But they swore an oath. It's like, nope, not going to do it with the tribe of Benjamin. So even though they are faithless in so many ways, in so many serious ways in Israel, it's like, well, we're going to have to keep this oath. I mean, to me, that's another one of the

ironies here it's like no no no we we gotta keep this up we're gonna break all the other commandments of god but by god we swore this oath we can't we can't break it there's some selective righteousness going on here is very selective righteousness going on and i mean they're serious about this they're like going to crazy lengths to make sure they don't break this vow so what do they do verse two says they go to bethel and they sat there before god until evening and they're lifting up their voices, they're weeping bitterly, and they say, why, oh Lord, God of Israel, has this come about in Israel so that one tribe should be missing today in Israel? It's kind of an odd question, right? Why did this happen? It's like, were you not paying attention?

Were you not paying attention to chapter 20? Do you not realize why actually all of this happened? I mean, I know it's a rhetorical question. It's more of a lament kind of why than a why that's actually wanting an answer to the to the question i mean you can you can it's kind of one of these you know we've all experienced this we do something uh maybe it's violent maybe it's hateful maybe it's just it's wrong for some reason and then afterward of course we regret it because we went a lot farther than we intended or were saddened by the the aftermath whatever whatever it might be it's like finally after it's all over the reality comes home and you're like oh good grief what are we going to do now yeah what's going to happen what's going to

happen now well that's kind of where the israelites right so they get up they build an altar they offer offerings to the lord and then it's like they come up with a with a plan god is silent in all this which i think is very significant there's this divine silence which is deafening he doesn't tell them what to do they come up with this kind of this uh this legal i guess or at least in their eyes it's a it's a it's a legal plan on how they're going to be able to solve the issue so they say you know what who didn't gather with us when we went to fight against the the the tribe of Benjamin? Was it, was anybody who, any city or people group, you know, that didn't show up? And it says, then it goes on to say that, you know, we're sorry, one tribe was cut

off from Israel today. And what should we do for wives for those who are left? So, I mean, we've sworn to the Lord that we're not going to give any of our daughters in marriage. And so then they asked this question, okay, anybody not come up? And they said, you know what? Yes. Verse 8 says no one came to the camp from Jabesh Gilead. So here's what they do. They send 12,000 warriors to the city of Jabesh Gilead with these instructions. Go instruct the inhabitants of Jabesh Gilead with the edge of the sword with the women and the little ones. So there's to be this slaughter of the city because they had sworn an oath that anybody who didn't show up had to be killed but they had one the one exception verse 11 this is the thing you shall do you shall utterly

destroy every man and every woman who's lame with a man and they found among the inhabitants of 400 young virgins who had not known a man by lying with him and they brought them to the camp at shiloh that was where the tabernacle was which is in the land of canaan so they go to this city which didn't take part we're not told why jabesh gilead didn't take part in this this campaign against the tribe of benjamin but whatever the reason could have been ignorance could have been willfulness whatever happened they didn't show up and so they decide you know what we can kind of uh you know kill two birds with one stone here because we can take our we can be faithful to our oath to put to death anyone who didn't participate and at the same time we can find

wives for these guys who are hiding out at the the pomegranate rock so they find these 400 virgins in the in the town of jabesh gilead and they spare them and they decimate the entire population and they bring them back to shiloh and then it says that they sent some messengers to where the 600 survivors of benjamin were saying hey peace to you and then they returned and they gave them these 400 virgins there's only one problem of course i mean i'm not very good at math but i know if you've got 600 guys and you have 400 virgin brides then you got 200 guys who aren't going to get a wife so now what are they going to do yeah this is all this is all horrible ways to keep promises yeah this yeah i mean this is a great example of like living by the letter

of the law and just trampling underfoot the spirit of the law yep there's no love here this is nothing more than just yeah we're gonna we've made this vow and by god we're gonna keep this vow even if it means wiping out an entire city population and taking these poor virgins who've just seen their families murdered and giving them as wives to these guys that they have absolutely no connection with. So this is the book of Judges, after all. Now, how do we conclude this? Verses 16 through 25 tell of how they're going to get 200 more wives for the remaining members of the tribe of Benjamin. So they asked the question, what are we going to do? I mean, there has to be an inheritance for the survivors. And we're kind of between a rock and a hard place, right?

We can't give our wives to them as daughters because we swore, cursed is he who gives a wife to Benjamin. And then somebody comes up with this plan and says, hey, I know exactly what we can do. Look, every year there's a Feast of the Lord in the city of Shiloh, which is on the north side of Bethel. So they get these 200 guys who didn't get the wives, and they say, here's what you can do. Go and lie in wait in the vineyards and just keep your eyes open. and if the daughters of Shiloh come out and they and they take part in these dances then you just like rush out of the vineyard and every guy is gonna like grab a woman from the daughters of Shiloh and then run off with her to the land of Benjamin sounds like and then this

sounds like a great way to start a war yeah no kidding well I mean they they like come up with their their statement ahead of time it says well you know if their fathers are their brothers the fathers of these women who were kidnapped or their brothers if they come and complain to us we'll say you know more or less hey you know cut them some slack be gracious to them because you know we didn't find enough wives for these members of the tribe of benjamin and we couldn't give our wives to them so we thought well this is a a legal loophole that we can use they obviously don't think this is a uh something that's so reasonable that that these guys would agree with it so they're gonna have to present it as reasonable after the fact yeah yeah this is a

this is certainly a case of uh easier to ask forgiveness and permission so i well that's what happens uh they the the guys had it put out in the hid out in the vineyards and when the girls came out to dance they took them and they carried them away and says they rebuilt the cities and lived them lived in them and then we we wrap up i mean how would we finish the book of judges right let's see what what words could we use that would accurately sum up the entire book of judges well how about these from the last verse in those days there was no king in israel everyone did what was right in his own eyes yeah that's uh that is that is the theme of of judges this is what it looks like when people just do what is right in their own eyes they they pull some real it's like i mean

this last chapter is like seven brides for seven brothers if you ever saw that movie back in the day uh i grew up watching that movie it's like that but like way darker yeah this is some this is a pretty dark so i mean so we got to get 600 virgins so here's how we're going to do it we're going to completely murder an entire population except for the virgins and then we're going to set up a place where we can get some girls kidnapped so murder and kidnapping leads to leads to marriage i i have a feeling that the marriages of of these 600 guys were not the happiest of the happiest of marriages you know this is a yeah this is i mean this is a a dark way to end a dark book but that's just the way that judges is uh is set up i mean it's

it's intended and this this this book kind of reminds me if you're if you're a reader of flannery o'connor any of her novels or her short stories i mean she has this kind of just audacious way of writing, where it's really in your face, everything is exaggerated. And she says that sometimes, I think this is a Flannery O'Connor quote, she says, to the heart of hearing, you must shout. So her writing is a lot of shouting. And I think that's kind of what this book is doing. It's a Flannery O'Connor kind of book. This is God taking all of these various narratives and shouting at Israel and shouting at us as well as to indicate that this is what happens when people do what is right in their own eyes, that humanity cannot be trusted

to kind of decide what is right and wrong, what is good and bad, because when they do, inevitably, on an individual level or a family level or a national level, things are going to slip into more and more violence and self-serving behavior, and even into stories like we've covered in these last few chapters. And it also, as the counterpart to that, impresses upon us that there's only one hope, and there's only one way that humanity can be saved from itself, and that is from the Lord, who so often is ignored or rejected in the book of Judges. He sends savior after savior to them, deliver after deliver to them. He's patient.

He's merciful. He judges as well. But behind all of these dark stories is the light of his love that is going to be the only thing that's able to save the Israelites as well as all of us. Yeah, I mean, this statement, in those days, there was no king in Israel, includes God. Absolutely. In fact, some people think that that is what is meant. Yeah. Not that there was no human king, but there was no king period. Yeah. That God was not acknowledged as the king of Israel. And this is what happened. With that being said, in the book

of Ruth, which we will start next week, we're going to hear a whole lot more about people who are devoted to Yahweh and some of their struggles and how God is going to, in the midst of this very dark period is going to bring about a lot of hope in a marriage as well as the conception of a of a of a boy who will end up from his line producing the greatest king as you'll ever have that's right so yeah here we go all right guys well if you're depressed uh stay tuned uh don't bail on don't bail out on us now uh things are going to get better so next week is ruth guys if you would like to uh rate and review the podcast that would help us out uh go do that on itunes and wherever you listen to it makes us more visible you need to support the podcast and everything

else that we do you can go to 1517.org and go to the donate page you can become a a contributor chad i will see you next week all right we'll see you here Thank you.