The Piety of Murderers Text: Judges 21:8-15
Introduction: The Logic of the Abyss
We come now to the final, shuddering gasps of the book of Judges. The refrain of this section, "in those days there was no king in Israel; everyone did what was right in his own eyes," is not a lament for a lost monarchy. It is a diagnosis of a theological disease. When a people reject Yahweh as their king, they do not become free. They become enslaved to the most brutal tyrant of all: their own fallen hearts. The result is not liberty, but a race to the bottom of the abyss.
Israel has just concluded a bloody civil war against their brothers, the tribe of Benjamin. They were right to be outraged at the atrocity of Gibeah, but their response was a self-righteous, undisciplined fury. In their righteous rage, they swore a rash and foolish oath not to give any of their daughters in marriage to the surviving Benjamites. Now, the fury has cooled, and the consequences have set in. They are faced with the extinction of an entire tribe. They weep and wail before the Lord, but their sorrow is not the sorrow of repentance. It is the sorrow of regret over consequences.
And so, they set about to "fix" the problem. But when unrepentant men try to solve a problem created by sin, their solution is always more sin, just dressed up in the robes of piety. What we are about to witness is a committee of elders, with all the gravity of a church council, devising a plan that involves a massacre and a mass kidnapping. They will use the language of covenant faithfulness, of holy war, and of divine justice to justify what amounts to sanctified murder and theft. This is the logic of the abyss. When you refuse to call your first sin a sin, your second sin will be called a necessity, and your third will be called a virtue.
This is not just some dusty, barbaric story from the ancient world. This is a perpetual mirror for the church in every age. It shows us what happens when we value the keeping of our own foolish traditions and vows over the plain commands of God to love mercy and do justice. It shows us how easily we can use the vocabulary of Zion to perpetrate the works of darkness.
The Text
So they said, "What one is there of the tribes of Israel who did not come up to Yahweh at Mizpah?" And behold, no one had come to the camp from Jabesh-gilead to the assembly. Indeed the people were numbered, but behold, not one of the inhabitants of Jabesh-gilead was there. And the congregation sent 12,000 of the men of valor there and commanded them, saying, "Go and strike the inhabitants of Jabesh-gilead with the edge of the sword, with the women and the little ones. Now this is the thing that you shall do: you shall devote to destruction every man and every woman who has known, that is lain with, a man." And they found among the inhabitants of Jabesh-gilead 400 young virgins who had not known a man by lying with him; and they brought them to the camp at Shiloh, which is in the land of Canaan.
Then the whole congregation sent word and spoke to the sons of Benjamin who were at the rock of Rimmon and called out peace to them. Then Benjamin returned at that time, and they gave them the women whom they had kept alive from the women of Jabesh-gilead; yet they did not find enough for them. And the people were sorry for Benjamin because Yahweh had made a breach in the tribes of Israel.
(Judges 21:8-15 LSB)
A Scapegoat for a Stupid Vow (vv. 8-9)
We begin with Israel's search for a loophole.
"So they said, 'What one is there of the tribes of Israel who did not come up to Yahweh at Mizpah?' And behold, no one had come to the camp from Jabesh-gilead to the assembly. Indeed the people were numbered, but behold, not one of the inhabitants of Jabesh-gilead was there." (Judges 21:8-9 LSB)
They are in a bind of their own making. Their oath prevents them from giving their own daughters to the Benjamites. A simple solution would be to repent of the rash oath. But they are too proud for that. Their piety, false as it is, has been publicly declared, and they will not walk it back. So instead of repentance, they look for a workaround. And the workaround requires a victim.
Their question is a hunter's question. They are not seeking to administer justice. They are looking for prey. They had apparently made another oath at Mizpah, that anyone who did not join the war effort would be put to death. Now, this second rash oath becomes the convenient instrument to solve the problem of the first. They conduct a roll call, and lo and behold, Jabesh-gilead is absent. The trap is set. Jabesh-gilead has just been selected as the source for the Benjamite wives, only they do not know it yet.
This is the cold logic of godless pragmatism. A problem exists. We need a resource to solve it. That city over there has the resource we need. Let us construct a religious justification for taking it. This is how corrupt states operate, and it is how corrupt churches operate. They do not ask, "What is righteous?" They ask, "What is necessary to preserve our position and solve our immediate problem?"
Sanctimonious Slaughter (vv. 10-12)
The council's solution is swift, brutal, and cloaked in the language of holy war.
"And the congregation sent 12,000 of the men of valor there and commanded them, saying, 'Go and strike the inhabitants of Jabesh-gilead with the edge of the sword, with the women and the little ones. Now this is the thing that you shall do: you shall devote to destruction every man and every woman who has known, that is lain with, a man.' And they found among the inhabitants of Jabesh-gilead 400 young virgins... and they brought them to the camp at Shiloh..." (Judges 21:10-12 LSB)
This is a grotesque parody of herem, the command to devote a city to destruction. That command was given by God Himself, to be used against the idolatrous Canaanites who were under His divine judgment. It was a unique, redemptive-historical act. It was never, ever intended to be a tool for Israel to use against itself to solve a logistical problem.
Israel is usurping a divine prerogative. They are playing God. They speak with the authority of God, "this is the thing that you shall do," but the voice is the voice of Jacob and the hands are the hands of Esau. The command is a masterpiece of cynical piety. They will kill everyone, men, children, and married women. But they will carefully spare the virgins. Why? Not out of mercy, but because they need breeding stock for Benjamin. The virgins are not people; they are a commodity. They are the spoils of a war that was manufactured for the sole purpose of acquiring them.
And where do they bring these traumatized, orphaned girls? To Shiloh. The center of Israel's worship. The place where the tabernacle of Yahweh rested. They are bringing the bloody, horrific fruit of their sin and laying it on God's doorstep, as if it were a pleasing offering. They are consecrating their crime. This is the very definition of taking the Lord's name in vain. It is attaching His holy name to a wicked deed.
A Peace Purchased with Blood (vv. 13-14)
With the spoils of their raid secured, they make their offer to the Benjamites.
"Then the whole congregation sent word and spoke to the sons of Benjamin who were at the rock of Rimmon and called out peace to them. Then Benjamin returned at that time, and they gave them the women whom they had kept alive... yet they did not find enough for them." (Judges 21:13-14 LSB)
They cry "peace, peace," when there is no peace. This is a peace treaty written in the blood of their kinsmen from Jabesh-gilead. They offer the 400 girls to the 600 surviving Benjamite men. And here, the dark absurdity of their plan is laid bare. It was not even a successful plan. "They did not find enough for them."
Sin is not only wicked; it is also incompetent. It is fundamentally stupid. It never accomplishes what it sets out to do. They perpetrated a massacre, orphaned 400 girls, and desecrated the name of God, and they still came up 200 wives short. The devil is a bad employer; the wages of sin is death, and the retirement plan is terrible. Their grand, violent, and oh-so-pious solution was a logistical failure.
Blaming God for the Breach (v. 15)
The chapter concludes with a final act of self-deception.
"And the people were sorry for Benjamin because Yahweh had made a breach in the tribes of Israel." (Judges 21:15 LSB)
Here is the final, cowardly evasion. After all this, after their civil war, their rash oath, and their sanctified massacre, they look at the wreckage and blame God for it. "Yahweh had made a breach."
This is the oldest sin in the book, going right back to the Garden. "The woman whom You gave to be with me, she gave me from the tree, and I ate" (Genesis 3:12). Adam blamed both Eve and God, and his sons in Israel have learned the lesson well. They were the ones who made the breach. Their sin, their pride, their refusal to repent, their murderous piety, created this disaster. But an unrepentant heart cannot bear the weight of its own guilt, so it must project it outward, and the highest and most convenient target is always God.
They felt sorry. But it was a worldly sorrow, a sentimental regret over the mess, not a godly sorrow that leads to repentance. They lamented the consequences but clung to the sin. This is the kind of sorrow that leads to death, because it inoculates the heart against the true cure.
The King Who Heals the Breach
This entire sordid affair cries out for a king. Not a king like Saul, who would also be prone to rash vows and partial obedience. It cries out for a true King, a righteous King, who would not solve problems by creating new victims.
The problem of our sin is like Israel's problem with their oath. We are in a bind we cannot escape. We stand guilty before God, and we cannot save ourselves. Our attempts to fix the problem through our own righteousness are like Israel's raid on Jabesh-gilead. They are acts of violence against God's law, dressed up in pious clothes, and they always fall short.
But God, in His mercy, did not leave us to our own devices. He sent a King. And this King, Jesus Christ, is the one who truly heals the breach. The breach was not made by God; it was made by our sin. But Jesus steps into that breach. On the cross, He takes the curse of all our foolish vows. He becomes the one who is devoted to destruction, the object of the holy war of God's wrath against sin, so that we, the guilty, might be spared.
Unlike the men of Israel who slaughtered others to get brides for Benjamin, our King was slaughtered to get His Bride, the Church. He did not seize us as spoils of war; He purchased us with His own blood. He calls out a true peace to us, a peace purchased not with the blood of others, but with His own. And when He provides, He does not fall short. He provides a full and complete salvation, more than enough for all who come to Him.
The lesson of Judges 21 is this: stop trying to fix your sin with more, cleverer sin. Stop blaming God for the breaches you have made. Lay down the bloody sword of your own self-righteousness. Look to the King who stepped into the breach for you, and receive from His hand a peace that is true, a righteousness that is sufficient, and a salvation that is gloriously, eternally complete.