Commentary - Judges 21:1-7

Bird's-eye view

This passage opens on the grim morning after a righteous, yet catastrophic, civil war. Having executed God's judgment on the tribe of Benjamin for their heinous sin and their subsequent refusal to repent, the men of Israel are now confronted with the consequences of their own passionate, but foolish, vows. In the heat of their righteous indignation, they had made two sweeping oaths: one, to not give their daughters to the surviving Benjamites, and two, to execute any Israelites who did not join the fight. Now, with Benjamin on the brink of extinction, they are trapped. The chapter details their sorrowful, convoluted, and ultimately worldly attempts to solve a problem of their own making. Their weeping before God at Bethel is sincere, but their solutions reveal a people who still do not grasp the nature of true repentance and wisdom. They are trying to fix a spiritual disaster with carnal logic, all while bound by the chains of their own rash words.

The core of the problem is a religion of high emotion that is not grounded in the wisdom of God's law. They are sorry for the outcome, but they do not repent of the foolish vows that created the crisis. This section serves as a stark illustration of the book's refrain: "In those days there was no king in Israel. Everyone did what was right in his own eyes." Even when trying to do the right thing, their lack of godly leadership and wisdom leads them into a tangled web of sin, sorrow, and absurdly tragic solutions.

Outline

Context In Judges

Judges 21 is the final, tragic chapter of the book, serving as the capstone to the horrifying narrative of the Levite's concubine and the subsequent civil war (Judges 19-20). After a bloody conflict where the confederation of Israel acted as God's instrument of judgment against the wicked men of Gibeah and the tribe of Benjamin that shielded them, the nation is left fractured. The previous chapters showed a spiral into depravity mirroring that of Sodom, followed by a war that nearly annihilated one of the twelve tribes. This final chapter deals with the messy, complicated cleanup. It is the logical conclusion of a society without a king, where zeal is not matched with knowledge. The events here are a direct result of the decisions made in the heat of battle and righteous anger at Mizpah, and they demonstrate that even in victory, sin and foolishness create intractable problems. This chapter seals the argument of the entire book: Israel is in desperate need of a righteous king, a true savior, because even at their best, they are a mess.

Key Issues

Painting Themselves into a Covenantal Corner

The men of Israel find themselves in a classic bind, a trap entirely of their own devising. In their zeal to punish evil, which was a righteous impulse, they made a set of vows that were anything but. A vow is a serious thing, a self-imposed ordinance that brings one under the direct judgment of God. But vows must be consistent with the larger law of God. You cannot swear an oath to sin. You cannot swear an oath that forces you to violate a greater commandment, such as the commandment to love your brother and to seek the welfare of the covenant people.

But this is precisely what Israel did. They swore not to give their daughters to Benjamin, effectively sentencing their brother tribe to a slow death. Then they remembered another oath, to kill anyone who shirked their duty in the war. They are now faced with a choice: break an oath, or annihilate a tribe. Their solution, as we will see, is to find a bloody loophole, a way to keep the letter of their law while violating its spirit entirely. This is pietistic tail-chasing. They are so concerned with the sanctity of their own words, their own passionate declarations, that they fail to ask what God actually requires. What God requires is justice, mercy, and faithfulness, not the meticulous execution of foolish promises. Their predicament is a powerful sermon on the dangers of letting our mouths run ahead of our minds, and our emotions run ahead of God's written Word.

Verse by Verse Commentary

1 Now the men of Israel had sworn in Mizpah, saying, “None of us shall give his daughter to Benjamin as a wife.”

The problem begins here, with words spoken in a moment of high passion. The oath was made at Mizpah, the gathering point for the holy war. It was a corporate vow, a national resolution. And on the surface, it feels righteous. It is a form of excommunication. "The Benjamites have behaved like Canaanites, so we will not enter into marriage covenants with them." The problem is that it was an overreaction. The law provided for punishing wickedness, but it also provided for restoration. This oath, however, was absolute and permanent. It was a sentence of slow extinction, turning a necessary act of judgment into a potential act of annihilation. They used a bazooka to kill a fly, and now they are standing in the rubble of their own living room.

2 So the people came to Bethel and sat there before God until evening and lifted up their voices and wept bitterly.

The emotional high of the war is over, and the cold, hard reality of their vow sets in. They come to Bethel, the "house of God," and they weep. This is not the weeping of repentance. It is the weeping of regret. They are not sorry for making a foolish vow; they are sorry for the consequences of that vow. They are like a man who gets drunk, wrecks his car, and then cries bitterly over his repair bill without ever repenting of his drunkenness. Their sorrow is real, their tears are genuine, but their hearts have not yet grasped the root of their problem, which was their own self-willed, presumptuous oath-making.

3 And they said, “Why, O Yahweh, God of Israel, has this come about in Israel, so that one tribe should be missing today from Israel?”

Here is the proof that their repentance is shallow. Who do they blame for this mess? God. Their question is a thinly veiled accusation. "Lord, why did you let this happen?" This is the oldest trick in the book, going all the way back to Adam: "The woman whom you gave to be with me, she gave me fruit." They are essentially saying, "Lord, we fought your battle, as you commanded, and now look at the result. A tribe is missing. Why did you arrange circumstances this way?" They refuse to see that the problem is not with God's providence, but with their own foolish mouths. God commanded the judgment; He did not command their idiotic vow.

4 Now it happened the next day that the people arose early and built an altar there and offered burnt offerings and peace offerings.

After a night of weeping and blaming God, what do they do? They engage in religious activity. They get up early, build an altar, and offer sacrifices. This is what you do when you want to feel better about your situation without actually fixing the root cause. Burnt offerings signify consecration, and peace offerings signify fellowship with God and with one another. But how can you be consecrated to God while upholding a vow that contradicts His character? How can you have peace when your plans are about to lead to more bloodshed? This is external religion, a going-through-the-motions piety that serves as a substitute for genuine, humble repentance before God for their specific sin of making a rash vow.

5 Then the sons of Israel said, “Who is there among all the tribes of Israel who did not come up in the assembly to Yahweh?” For they had taken a great oath concerning him who did not come up to Yahweh at Mizpah, saying, “He shall surely be put to death.”

The wheels of their carnal logic begin to turn. They are in a bind because of Oath Number One (no wives for Benjamin). Now they remember Oath Number Two (death to anyone who didn't show up to fight). An idea begins to form. Perhaps they can use the second foolish oath to solve the problem created by the first foolish oath. This is what happens when you refuse to simply repent and admit you were wrong. You start looking for clever loopholes. You start scheming. They are not asking, "What does the law of God say?" They are asking, "What did we say in our anger, and how can we manipulate our own words to get what we want?"

6 And the sons of Israel were sorry for their brother Benjamin and said, “One tribe is cut off from Israel today.

Again, their sorrow is emphasized. They truly are grieved for their brother Benjamin. They recognize the horror of a tribe being "cut off" from the covenant people. This is a right and good sentiment. They understand the importance of the twelve tribes, the corporate solidarity of Israel. The body is missing a part, and it causes them pain. But sentiment is not a substitute for wisdom. Feeling bad about a problem is not the same as solving it righteously. Their emotions are in the right place, but their theology is all tangled up.

7 What shall we do for wives for those who are left? But we have sworn by Yahweh not to give them any of our daughters in marriage.”

Here they state the dilemma plainly. The problem is wives. The obstacle is their oath. "What shall we do?" This is the central question of the chapter. And because they have already ruled out the simplest, most righteous answer, which would be to repent of and renounce their foolish vow, they are forced down a path of increasingly bizarre and violent "solutions." They have locked the front door and thrown away the key, and so now they are contemplating blowing a hole in the side of the house with dynamite. Their commitment to their own word has superseded their commitment to God's Word, and that is a recipe for disaster.

Application

The church today is not immune to the sins of ancient Israel. We too can fall into the trap of emotional, reactive religion that is untethered from the wisdom of Scripture. We see an evil in the world, and in our righteous zeal to condemn it, we make sweeping public pronouncements and resolutions. We swear oaths, not necessarily with our hands on a Bible, but through our social media posts, our denominational resolutions, and our ministry mission statements. We commit ourselves to courses of action that seem right in the heat of the moment, but which have disastrous, unforeseen consequences.

And when the bill comes due, when our rash words create division and strife and intractable problems, our first instinct is often the same as Israel's. We weep over the consequences. We lament the disunity. And sometimes, we even have the audacity to ask God why He allowed this mess to happen. We then busy ourselves with religious activity, conferences, and programs, all designed to fix the problem, when the one thing needful is to simply repent. To repent of our pride, our presumption, and our foolish words. We must learn to confess, "We spoke rashly. We were wrong. That vow was not from God."

This passage calls us to a grounded, sober, and wise faith. It is a faith that feels deeply but thinks biblically. It is a faith that is slow to speak and quick to listen to the settled counsel of God's Word. It is a faith that understands that true righteousness is not found in keeping our own foolish promises, but in humbly submitting to the perfect law of liberty found in Jesus Christ, the one who frees us from the very sort of legalistic traps we are so good at building for ourselves.