Judges 21:19
Ver. 19. Then they said,.... Some of the elders that sat in council debating this matter, and considering of ways and means to assist their brethren the Benjaminites, and preserve their tribe from being lost:
behold, there is a feast of the Lord in Shiloh yearly; where the tabernacle then was, and before which the males of Israel were obliged to appear three times of the year; and this was one of them, as is clear by its being called a feast of the Lord; and therefore cannot design any civil festival or fair kept for trade and commerce. Some have thought of the feast of the passover, but it is most likely to be the feast of tabernacles, as Abarbinel takes it to be; which in Jewish writings is emphatically called "the feast"; and the time of year when that was kept was a time of great rejoicing, on account of the fruits of the earth being gathered in, and the reading of the law and especially at the tithe of drawing of water at this feast; insomuch that it is said {e} that he who never saw the rejoicing at drawing of water never saw rejoicing in his life, which was attended with piping, and dancing, and singing. It is pretty strange what Kimchi notes, that this may be either one of the above feasts, or the day of atonement, at which, he says, the daughters of Israel used to go and dance in the vineyards, according to the words of the Rabbins; when though that is reckoned among the feasts, Le 23:1 it was properly a fast, as it is called, Ac 27:9 and all tokens of festivity and joy were forbidden on it; and where these words of their Rabbins are to be met with, he says not: in a placewhich is on the north side of Bethel; we rightly supply "in a place": for the intention is not to describe the situation of Shiloh, which was well known, but a place not far from it, where at this festival the daughters of Shiloh used to dance:on the east side of the highway that goeth up from Bethel to Shechem; this place lay to the east of a public road, that led from Bethel to Shechem:and on the south of Lebonah; which Mr. Maundrell {f} takes to be a place now called Kane Leban, which stands on the east side of a delightful vale, having a village of the same name standing opposite to it on the other side of the vale; one of these places, either that Kane or the village, is supposed to be the Lebonah mentioned Jud 21:19 to which both the name and situation seem to agree.{e} Misn. Succah, c. 5. sect. 1, 4. Vid. Maimon. Hilchot Lulab, c. 8. sect. 13. {f} Journey from Aleppo, p. 63. Judges 21:20Ver. 20. Therefore they commanded the children of Benjamin,.... The two hundred men of the tribe that wanted wives; they ordered them as follows, and which they spake with authority, being the elders of the congregation, Jud 21:16saying, go and lie in wait in the vineyards; which might belong to Shiloh, or it may be to Lebonah, which perhaps is the same with Bethlaban, famous for its wine with the Misnic writers; who say {g} the second places for wine are Bethrimah and Bethlaban; and I suspect that Bethrimah is the same with Bethrimmon, near which was the rock Rimmon these men were in; now this being the time of year when the vintage was just over, the vines were full of branches and leaves, under which the men might the better hide themselves; and the grapes being gathered, there were no men in the vineyards, and so might lie in wait safely, and under cover.{g} Misn. Menachot, c. 8. sect. 6. Judges 21:21Ver. 21. And see, and, behold, if the daughters of Shiloh come out to dance in dances,.... As they used to do at this festival, not along with men, but by themselves; and so might the more easily be taken and carried off; and though only males were obliged to appear from all parts at this feast, yet females might come if they would; and, no doubt, from neighbouring places, at least many did; however, the daughters of Shiloh, who dwelt where the tabernacle was, these always attended the feast with demonstrations of joy, and among the rest with dancing, and that as expressive of spiritual and religious joy, as in the case of Miriam, and the Israelitish women, Ex 15:20 and as in latter times the most religious men used to express their joy at this feast; now the two hundred men in the vineyards, which lay near the field where these virgins used to dance at this time, were to watch and observe when they came out of the city thither, and were engaged in such an exercise:then come ye out of the yards, and catch you every man his wife of the daughters of Shiloh, and go to the land of Benjamin; they are directed to rush out at once upon them, as they were dancing, secure, as they thought, from molestation and danger; and they were to take everyone one, not more, and go off directly with them to their own tribe. Judges 21:22Ver. 22. And it shall be, when their fathers or their brethren come unto us to complain,.... Of this rape of their daughters or sisters, or to bring an action against them, and desire they might be summoned before them, the elders of the people, and be tried and judged according to law for what they had done; or to put them upon going to war with them again for such treatment of them:that we will say unto them, be favourable unto them for our sakes; for the sake of the elders, who advised them to do what they did; or for the sake of us Israelites, your sake and ours, who were too severe upon them, and prosecuted the war with too much vigour, which made what they have done necessary, or otherwise a tribe must have been lost in Israel:because we reserved not to each man his wife in the war; either in the war with Benjamin, which they carried on with such wrath and fury as to destroy all the women, so that there were no wives left for the men that remained, which they now repented of; or in the war with Jabeshgilead, they did not reserve enough of the women taken, only four hundred virgins, whereas there were six hundred men: but the first seems best:for ye did not give unto them at this time, that you should be guilty; the meaning is, that if they had any uneasiness upon their minds about the oath which they had taken, not to give any of their daughters in marriage to Benjamin, they need not be disturbed at that, since they did not "give" them to them, but these "took" them by force; which was the scheme these elders contrived to secure from the violation of the oath. This they proposed to say to quiet them, and make them easy, to which other things might have been added as that these were their brethren, and not strangers they were married to, and not to mean men, but to men of large estates, having the whole inheritance of the tribe of Benjamin devolved upon them; and their daughters would be the original mothers of the posterity of that tribe in succeeding ages. Judges 21:23Ver. 23. And the children of Benjamin did so,.... Went and laid wait in the vineyards, and when the daughters of Shiloh came out to dance, they rushed upon them:and took them wives according to their number; two hundred of them, each man a wife, and no more; for though polygamy was in use in those times, and if at any time necessary, and could be excused, it might seem now; yet it was not indulged to, neither by the elders, nor by the children of Benjamin:of them that danced whom they caught; the rape of the Sabine virgins by Romulus, at the arena plays and shows, mentioned by various authors {h}, and the carrying off of fifteen Spartan virgins from the dances by Aristomenes the Messenian {i}, are sometimes observed as parallel cases to this, and justified by it, particularly that of Romulus {k}:and they went and returned unto their inheritance; the six hundred Benjaminites, with their wives, returned to their own tribe, which was their inheritance by lot; and these, being the only survivors, had a right to the whole:and repaired the cities, and dwelt in them: in process of time they rebuilt the cities the Israelites had burnt in the late war, and repeopled them as their posterity increased. And the Jewish writers say, that in later times they were allowed to marry with other tribes as before, since the oath only bound those present at Mizpeh; for they observe, that it ran only,there shall not any of us, &c. not any of our sons; they might give wives to Benjamin, and so in time they became numerous again.{h} Liv. Hist. l. 1. p. 7, 8. Flor Hist. Rom. l. 1. c. 1. Aurel. Victor. de Vir Illustr. c. 2. Valer. Maxim. l. 1. c. 4. {i} Hierop adv. Jovinian. l. 1. fol. 17. B, C. {k} Vid. Albericum Gentil. de armis Roman l. 2. p. 114. Judges 21:24Ver. 24. And the children of Israel departed thence at that time, every man to his tribe and to his family,.... The war being ended, and things settled as well as circumstances would admit of, for the preservation of the tribe of Benjamin, who were the cause of it, and had suffered so much in it; the Israelites that had met at Mizpeh, and who had not fallen in the war, returned to their respective countries, to their wives and children, and the business of their callings:and they went out from thence every man to his inheritance; divided by lot to them, to their estates and possessions, which each had a right unto. Judges 21:25Ver. 25. In those days there was no king in Israel,.... No supreme magistrate, Joshua being dead, and as yet no judge in Israel had risen up; for all related in the five last chapters of this book were done between the death of Joshua and the time of the judges:every man did that which was right in his own eyes; there being none to restrain him from it, or punish him for it; and this accounts for the many evil things related, as the idolatry of Micah and the Danites, the base usage of the Levite's concubine, the extreme rigour and severity with which the Israelites treated their brethren the Benjaminites, the slaughter of the inhabitants of Jabeshgilead, and the rape of the daughters of Shiloh.