Judges 20
All Israel gathers to demand justice from Benjamin over Gibeah; Benjamin refuses to surrender the perpetrators, and the resulting civil war nearly destroys the tribe.
Summary
All the people of Israel come out, from Dan to Beersheba and from Gilead, and the congregation assembles as one man to the Lord at Mizpah — four hundred thousand men on foot who draw the sword. The men of Benjamin hear that the people of Israel have gone up to Mizpah. The Levite, husband of the murdered woman, tells the assembly what happened at Gibeah: they intended to kill me, and they raped my concubine so that she died. The people rise and inquire of God: which of us shall go up first to fight against the people of Benjamin? The Lord says: Judah first. Israel sends word to all the tribe of Benjamin: give up the men of Gibeah so that we may put them to death and purge evil from Israel. But the Benjaminites will not listen. They muster twenty-six thousand swordsmen plus seven hundred left-handed men from Gibeah who can sling a stone at a hair and not miss. The men of Israel, not counting Benjamin, are four hundred thousand armed men.
Israel goes up to Beth-el and inquires of God: shall we draw near to fight against our brother Benjamin? The Lord says: go up against him. The first day Israel is defeated; twenty-two thousand men of Israel fall. Israel weeps and inquires again. The Lord says: go up against him. The second day they array themselves and eighteen thousand more of Israel fall. The people go up to Beth-el and weep; they fast until evening, offer burnt offerings, and inquire of the Lord through Phinehas the priest: shall we go out once more to battle? The Lord says: go up, for tomorrow I will give them into your hand. Israel sets an ambush around Gibeah. On the third day Israel feigns retreat; Benjamin pursues. The ambush rises from its place and strikes the city with the sword and puts it to the torch. When the men of Benjamin look behind them, the smoke of the city is going up to heaven. Israel turns and strikes them down. Benjamin loses twenty-five thousand swordsmen in one day. Six hundred men turn and flee to the rock of Rimmon and remain there four months.
- Judges 1Chapter 1 functions as a historiographical preface to the whole book, cataloguing the success or failure of each tribe to dispossess the Canaanites after Joshua's death.
- Judges 2Chapter 2 is the hermeneutical key to Judges.
- Judges 3Chapter 3 introduces the judge cycle in action for the first time.
- Judges 4Chapter 4 is the prose account of the same events that chapter 5 will sing.
- Judges 5The Song of Deborah in chapter 5 is widely considered one of the oldest pieces of Hebrew poetry in the entire Bible, possibly dating to the twelfth century BCE, nearly contemporaneous with the events it describes.
- Judges 6Chapter 6 is the opening of the Gideon narrative, which runs through chapter 8 and is the longest major-judge story in the book.
- Judges 7Chapter 7 is the central action of the Gideon narrative and one of the most memorable military scenes in the book.
- Judges 8Chapter 8 is the darkest portion of the Gideon narrative.
- Judges 9Chapter 9 is the longest chapter in Judges and the only episode in the book devoted to an anti-judge — a man who makes himself king by violence and holds it for exactly three years.
- Judges 10Chapter 10 performs two functions.
- Judges 11Chapter 11 is one of the most morally complex chapters in the Hebrew Bible.
- Judges 12Chapter 12 begins with a conflict that is structurally parallel to the Ephraimite quarrel after Gideon's battle in chapter 8, but this time Jephthah's response is not diplomacy — it is war.
- Judges 13Chapter 13 is the birth narrative of Samson, and it is the most elaborate annunciation scene in Judges.
- Judges 14Chapter 14 introduces the adult Samson and establishes the pattern that will govern the rest of his narrative: a desire for a Philistine woman, a display of supernatural strength, a riddle or trap, betrayal by intimacy.
- Judges 15Chapter 15 escalates the private vendetta between Samson and the Philistines into a series of increasingly spectacular acts of violence.
- Judges 16Chapter 16 is the climax and conclusion of the Samson narrative.
- Judges 17Chapter 17 begins the two-part appendix with which Judges closes, and the shift in tone is immediate.
- Judges 18Chapter 18 is the first of the book's two closing appendices.
- Judges 19Chapter 19 is one of the most disturbing chapters in the Hebrew Bible, and the text makes no attempt to soften it.
- Judges 20Chapter 20 is the longest military account in Judges and is remarkable for what it shows about what has gone wrong with Israel as a political and moral community.
- Judges 21Chapter 21 closes the book and extends the moral horror of chapter 19-20 in a different register: the horror of improvised solutions to self-inflicted catastrophe.