Today, I am reading and commenting on  Judges 20-21.

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Today’s passage completes the account about Gibeah, which was the second of two accounts in yesterday’s passage.  I said yesterday that we do not know when either of these two passages occurred, except that the one involving Micah, the Levite, and the tribe of Dan must have occurred early because it happened before Dan claimed territory for its own.  In today’s passage we realize that this account must have taken place early in the time of the judges because the tribe of Benjamin was reduced to 600 warriors in this account and had restored its place among the tribes by the time of Saul.  What struck me was that the first place the other tribes went to find wives for the remaining warriors of Benjamin was Jabesh-Gilead.  That struck me because Jabesh-Gilead was the Israelite town threatened by the Ammonites which King Saul rallied to defend to establish his kingship.  I do not think that is a coincidence.

Now I want to look at a lesson on dealing with others we can learn from this passage.  When the tribes of Israel assembled at Mizpah to discuss what to do about what had happened in Gibeah, the people of Benjamin was aware that they were doing so, and why.  But the tribe of Benjamin did not send a representative to make their case.  However, the assembled Israelites also did not send to the tribe of Benjamin to ask them to join them.  Only after they had made a decision and gathered an army did they ask the people of Benjamin to surrender the men of Gibeah.  What should have happened?  The people of Benjamin should have joined the assembly at Mizpah and said, “The men of Gibeah are our brothers, we will hold them accountable for the sin they have done against Israel,” and then done so.  However, the assembled people of Israel should have, before they formed an army, sent a message to the people of Benjamin laying out the case against the men of Gibeah and asking the people of Benjamin to bring them to justice.  I am convinced that the writer also believed that both sides handled this poorly, and should have chosen a different path.  We need to seek a better path in our conflicts within the Church, but we all too often allow anger and pride to drive our actions when we should seek to allow the Holy Spirit to do so.

I use the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.