The Bible: Judges Chapter 21

In this video listen to Judges 21 read by David Alley, followed by comments and prayer.

Judges 21 is possibly the strangest chapter in the Bible? Everyone in Benjamin is dead except for 600 men. St Paul was a descendant of Benjamin, who here was nearly wiped out. This story outlines how they found wives for these men, given that they ha taken vows not to give wives to them. First one city had no participate in the battle, Jabesh Gilead.

The inhabitants of the city of Jabesh Gilead were completely destroyed except for 400 virgin women. The 400 virgins provide wives for two thirds of the remaining Benjamites. They then arrange a strange kidnapping process to obtain the other 200. All of this is entertaining but very odd. The book concludes saying that there was no king, and everyone lived however they deemed right to them. The last sentence of the book is a good summary of the entire book of Judges.

We could even further summarise it with one word, lawlessness. In the NT this word is in Greek anomia - without a law. Jesus spoke against people who lived as if there was no law. The Israelites had a very clearly spelled out law, and yet it seemed to have been forgotten. We too have the law written on our own hearts, but we ignore it and our own consciences.

We have far less excuse that the people in the time of the Judges. At the end of Judges we realise there were few standout good people. Deborah was one, and Othniel and Ehud perhaps others… and if his vow is understood properly, Jephthah also. This comment by Block (1999) seems interesting at the end of the book of Judges: “​​No book in the Old Testament offers the modern church as telling a mirror as this book.

From the jealousies of the Ephraimites to the religious pragmatism of the Danites, from the paganism of Gideon to the self-centeredness of Samson, and from the unmanliness of Barak to the violence against women by the men of Gibeah, all of the marks of Canaanite degeneracy are evident in the church and its leaders today… everywhere congregations and their leaders do what is right in their own eyes.”