is the following: Ye may have your daughters with the Benjaminites who have taken them by force, for ye have not given them voluntarily, so as to have broken your oath by so doing. In the last clause כּעת has an unusual meaning: “at the time” (or now), i.e., in that case, ye would have been guilty, viz., if ye had given them voluntarily.
Verse 23
The Benjaminites adopted this advice. They took to themselves wives according to their number, i.e., two hundred (according to Jdg 21:12, compared with Jdg 20:47), whom they caught from the dancing daughters of Shiloh, and returned with them into their inheritance, where they rebuilt the towns that had been reduced to ashes, and dwelt therein.
In Jdg 21:24 and Jdg 21:25, the account of this event is brought to a close with a twofold remark: (1) that the children of Israel, i.e., the representatives of the congregation who were assembled at Shiloh, separated and returned every man into his inheritance to his tribe and family; (2) that at that time there was no king in Israel, and every man was accustomed to do what was right in his own eyes. Whether the fathers or brothers of the virgins who had been carried off brought any complaint before the congregation concerning the raid that had been committed, the writer does not state, simply because this was of no moment so far as the history was concerned, inasmuch as, according to Jdg 21:22, the complaint made no difference in the facts themselves.[1]
With the closing remark in Jdg 21:25, however, with which the account returns to its commencement in Jdg 19:1, the prophetic historian sums up his judgment upon the history in the words, “At that time every man did what was right in his own eyes, because there was no king in Israel,” in which the idea is implied, that under the government of a king, who administered right and justice in the kingdom, such things could not possibly have happened. This not only refers to the conduct of the Israelites towards Benjamin in the war, the severity of which was not to be justified, but also to their conduct towards the inhabitants of Jabesh, as described in Jdg 21:5. The congregation had no doubt a perfect right, when all the people were summoned to deliberate upon important matters affecting
- ↑ “No doubt the fathers and brothers of the virgins demanded them both from the Benjaminites themselves, and also from the elders of Israel, or at any rate petitioned that the Benjaminites might be punished: but the elders replied as they had said that they should; and the persons concerned were satisfied with the answer, and so the affair was brought to a peaceable termination.” - Seb. Schmidt.
