The Piety of Fools
Introduction: The Morning After Zeal
The book of Judges ends with a repeated, haunting refrain: "In those days there was no king in Israel. Everyone did what was right in his own eyes." And here, in this final, bloody episode, we see what that looks like. It does not look like overt, hedonistic rebellion. It looks like piety. It looks like weeping before God, building altars, and making solemn vows. This is the terrifying nature of sin when it puts on its Sunday best. The problem is not that the men of Israel were not zealous; the problem is that their zeal was a forest fire without a firebreak. It was a runaway train with no brakes.
We have just come through the horrific account of the Levite's concubine and the subsequent, righteous civil war against the tribe of Benjamin. Their anger was not misplaced. The sin of Gibeah was a cancer in the body politic of Israel, and it had to be cut out. They went to war with God's blessing, and they won a terrible, bloody victory. But now the battle is over, the adrenaline has faded, and they are standing in the smoking ruins of their own house, looking at the empty chair at the family table. They were right to be angry, but they let their anger dictate their oaths. And now they find themselves trapped, not by the Benjamites, but by their own words. They are caught in a covenantal straitjacket of their own devising.
This is a passage about the consequences of graceless zeal. It is a story about men who confuse emotional fervor with spiritual wisdom. They mistake the heat of their anger for the light of God's counsel. And in their weeping and their sacrifices, they reveal a profound theological confusion. They are trying to fix a problem with religious ritual that can only be fixed with repentance for their own folly. This is a timeless lesson. The church is always tempted by this kind of righteous, self-destructive foolishness. We see an evil, and in our haste to destroy it, we pick up tools that wind up destroying us.
The Text
Now the men of Israel had sworn in Mizpah, saying, "None of us shall give his daughter to Benjamin as a wife." So the people came to Bethel and sat there before God until evening and lifted up their voices and wept bitterly. 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?" Now it happened the next day that the people arose early and built an altar there and offered burnt offerings and peace offerings. 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." And the sons of Israel were sorry for their brother Benjamin and said, "One tribe is cut off from Israel today. 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."
(Judges 21:1-7 LSB)
The Irreversible Vow (v. 1, 7)
The problem is stated immediately, and it is entirely self-inflicted.
"Now the men of Israel had sworn in Mizpah, saying, 'None of us shall give his daughter to Benjamin as a wife.'" (Judges 21:1)
Here is the anchor that is now dragging them to the bottom. In the heat of their righteous fury at Mizpah, before the war, they made a solemn oath. An oath before Yahweh is a serious thing; it is a self-maledictory promise. You are calling God down as a witness and a judge if you fail to perform. But they used this sacred instrument to legislate their anger. They did not just swear to punish the guilty men of Gibeah. They swore to ostracize and effectively eliminate an entire tribe from the covenant family of Israel. To deny wives to the survivors is to condemn the tribe of Benjamin to extinction. It was an oath of genocide by attrition.
This is what happens when men act without wisdom. Their zeal for justice was good. Their execution of that justice was clumsy and brutal. And their vow was utter folly. They failed to distinguish between the cancerous tumor in Benjamin and the tribe of Benjamin itself. And now, as verse 7 shows, they are trapped. "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." They see their dilemma, but they see it as a puzzle to be solved, not a sin to be repented of. They treat their foolish vow as an unchangeable law of the Medes and Persians, more inviolable than God's own desire for the preservation of His people.
A vow that contradicts the higher law of God is not binding. A vow to do something wicked, or a vow that necessitates wickedness, should be repented of, not kept. Herod was a fool to keep his vow to Salome and behead John the Baptist. Israel is being foolish here, treating their own rash words as though they were handed down from Sinai. They have made an idol of their own promise.
The Tears of Misdirection (v. 2-3, 6)
The scene at Bethel is full of religious emotion, but it is an emotion that is tragically misaimed.
"So the people came to Bethel and sat there before God until evening and lifted up their voices and wept bitterly. And they said, 'Why, O Yahweh, God of Israel, has this come about in Israel...?'" (Judges 21:2-3)
They are weeping, and their grief is real. A tribe, their brother Benjamin, is on the brink of vanishing. But look at their prayer. It is a masterclass in blame-shifting. "Why, O Yahweh, has this come about?" They speak as though this were a natural disaster, a famine, a plague sent from heaven. They are asking God for an explanation for a catastrophe they themselves engineered. It is the equivalent of a man burning down his own house and then demanding to know from the fire chief how the blaze could have possibly started.
This is not the prayer of repentance. The prayer of repentance says, "God, what have we done?" Their prayer says, "God, what have You done?" This is the piety of victimhood. They are lamenting the consequences of their sin without acknowledging the sin itself, which was their rash, unmerciful vow. Their sorrow, described in verse 6, is for their "brother Benjamin," but it is not a sorrow that leads to repentance for their own part in his demise. They feel bad, but they are not yet ready to admit they were wrong.
This is a profound danger for the church. We can create enormous messes through our own pride, anger, and lack of wisdom, and then sit in the rubble, weeping and asking God why He allowed it to happen. The first step to fixing a problem is to take responsibility for the part you played in creating it. Israel is not there yet.
The Altar of Panic (v. 4)
Their response the next day is to get busy with religious activity.
"Now it happened the next day that the people arose early and built an altar there and offered burnt offerings and peace offerings." (Judges 21:4)
On the surface, this is commendable. They are turning to God. They are sacrificing. But what is the function of these sacrifices? Burnt offerings were for atonement of sin, and peace offerings were for fellowship and thanksgiving. But what sin are they atoning for? Are they repenting of their foolish oath? Not at all. They are about to double down on it. These sacrifices are not the result of a clear-eyed assessment of their sin. This is a panicked, religious reaction. It is an attempt to get God on their side to help them solve the logistical problem their vow has created.
They are treating worship like a vending machine. They are putting in the coins of sacrifice and hoping a clever solution pops out. But God is not interested in the sacrifices of fools. He desires obedience more than sacrifice, and wisdom more than burnt offerings. Their actions are pious, but their hearts are still clinging to the folly that got them into this mess. They are trying to use the tools of worship to manipulate God into blessing their unrepented-of foolishness. This is not worship; it is spiritual engineering, and it is doomed to fail.
Compounding Folly (v. 5)
Just when you think they might stumble into wisdom, they remember another vow and decide that the solution to one bad oath is to enforce a second one.
"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... saying, 'He shall surely be put to death.'" (Judges 21:5)
This is the logic of the fanatic. When you have dug yourself into a hole, the answer is to keep digging with more enthusiasm. They are trapped by their oath not to give their daughters to Benjamin. So how will they solve this? They remember another oath, made in the same fit of passion, to kill everyone from any city that did not join the war effort. Their solution to the problem of a missing tribe is to create a massacre in another town. They are about to solve a problem caused by a lack of mercy with an act of breathtaking cruelty.
This reveals the downward spiral of sin. One foolish decision necessitates another, and then another. They are so committed to their own words, their own "great oaths," that they are willing to butcher the people of Jabesh-gilead to solve a problem that a little humility and repentance could fix in an instant. They have forgotten the weightier matters of the law, justice and mercy and faithfulness, and are now focused on the rigorous tithing of mint and dill and cumin. They are straining out the gnat of a broken promise to Benjamin while preparing to swallow the camel of slaughtering the men, women, and children of a fellow Israelite city.
The Need for a King
This whole sorry episode is a giant, flashing neon sign that says, "These People Need a King." They are a ship without a rudder, driven by the winds of passion and the currents of popular opinion. They are zealous for God, but their zeal is utterly untethered from the wisdom of God's law.
They are trapped in a logic problem of their own making, and they cannot see the simple, humble way out: repent of the foolish vow. Admit you were wrong. Ask God for forgiveness. And then give your daughters to the remnant of Benjamin and restore your brother. But that would require them to admit that their solemn, unified, passionate oath was a mistake. And their pride will not allow that.
This is why we needed David. And this is ultimately why we need Christ. We are just like this. We make foolish commitments, we get trapped by our own words, we let our righteous anger boil over into destructive action, and then we weep at the consequences and wonder why God let it happen. We need a High Priest who can forgive us for our foolish vows. We need a Prophet who can speak a word of true wisdom into our confusion. And we need a King who will rule us with perfect justice and mercy, who will break the cycles of our self-inflicted wounds, and who will lead us in the paths of righteousness for His name's sake. The chaos of Judges is the problem to which King Jesus is the only answer.