Judges 20:17

These verses follow the darkest chapter in Judges. In Judges 19, men of Gibeah, a city of Benjamin, abuse a Levite’s concubine through the night until she dies. The Levite cuts her body into twelve pieces and sends them throughout Israel, a terrible call for the nation to act. All Israel except Benjamin then gathers at Mizpah and resolves to act as one (Judges 20:1–11), after hearing the Levite’s own account of what was done (Judges 20:6).

Before anyone draws a sword, the tribes send men. The verb shâlach means to send, or to stretch out the hand, and here it is the sending of messengers on a formal errand. They go “through all the tribe of Benjamin”, so that the whole tribe hears the charge, Gibeah included, and the tribe has the chance to deal with the guilty itself before the matter goes further. The word for tribe, shêbeṭ, also means a stick, rod, staff, club or sceptre, and here it names Israel’s tribes and Benjamin’s alike. A whole people is speaking to a whole people.

Their question is “What wickedness is this that is done among you?” Everyone already knows what happened, since the Levite has told it, so the question is an accusation and a call to account. The word raʻ is the ordinary Hebrew word for what is bad or evil, covering harm as well as moral wrong, and here it names a deed against God’s law and against all human decency. “Among you” places the deed inside Benjamin’s own borders and makes it Benjamin’s business.

Verse 13 gives the demand, and it reaches only the guilty: “deliver us the men, the children of Belial, which are in Gibeah, that we may put them to death, and put away evil from Israel.” Israel asks for the men who did the deed. Under the law of Moses such a crime deserved death, and the tribes ask that the sentence be carried out.

bᵉlîyaʻal means worthlessness or wickedness, and “children of Belial” are men given over to evil, worthless men. Scripture gives the same name to the sons of Eli the priest (1 Samuel 2:12). In the mouths of the tribes it is a verdict on the men of Gibeah, drawn from what they had done.

The verb behind “put away”, bâʻar, means first to burn, kindle or consume, and by extension to put away or purge, so the phrase speaks of removing the evil completely. “Put away evil from Israel” is the language of the law of Moses, which commands Israel to remove grave evil, such as idolatry, murder and sexual sin, from among the people (Deuteronomy 13:5, Deuteronomy 17:7). Israel’s covenant with the LORD made the community answerable for wickedness in its midst, and putting it away kept the nation clean before him. Paul gives the church at Corinth the same charge when he deals with sin among them (1 Corinthians 5:6–7): “Put away from among yourselves that wicked person” (1 Corinthians 5:13).

Verse 13 ends: “But the children of Benjamin would not hearken to the voice of their brethren the children of Israel.” The verb shâmaʻ means to hear, and often to hear and heed, listening with a view to obeying. The words “would not” stand for ʼâbâh, to be willing, with a negative, so Benjamin was unwilling to hear. The refusal was a choice of the will. And the verse calls the other tribes “their brethren”, so the refusal was made against family.

Verse 14 turns the refusal into war: “But the children of Benjamin gathered themselves together out of the cities unto Gibeah, to go out to battle against the children of Israel.” ʼâçaph is the common verb for gathering, and the purpose that follows makes plain what this gathering was for. “To go out to battle” joins yâtsâʼ, to go or come out, with milchâmâh, battle or war. Benjamin’s men left their own towns and met at the very city where the crime had been done, so Gibeah became their rallying point and its cause became theirs.

The verse sets “the children of Benjamin” against “the children of Israel”. bên means son, and Binyâmîyn means “son of the right hand”. Benjamin was one of Israel’s sons, and now the sons of that one son take up arms against the sons of their own father. The law of Moses had set out how Israel was to deal with one of its own cities that turned to wickedness (Deuteronomy 13:12–18), and here a whole tribe rose to defend such a city. Jesus said that a house divided against itself shall fall (Matthew 12:25), and Israel’s house was now divided.

Verse 15 counts Benjamin’s force. The verb “numbered”, pâqad, means to attend to, visit, inspect, muster, appoint or punish, and here it is the muster of fighting men. From the cities came “twenty and six thousand men that drew sword”, and “beside” them, in addition, Gibeah supplied “seven hundred chosen men”, so Benjamin fielded 26,700 men in all. chereb means a sword, or another cutting tool such as a knife, and Strong’s ties the name to its destructive effect. “Men that drew sword” were armed men ready to fight. Numbers like these match the musterings of the tribes elsewhere in Scripture, as in the book of Numbers, and for a single tribe this was a strong army.

“Chosen” is bâchar, to try or select, and chosen men are picked men, often young, strong and skilled in battle. Gibeah’s men are counted on their own because Gibeah was where the crime was done (Judges 19:22–25), and its men were the ones Israel had demanded. Counting its defenders apart keeps the city at the centre of the quarrel, and its seven hundred chosen men were perhaps the city’s own picked defenders.

Verse 17 counts the other side: “And the men of Israel, beside Benjamin, were numbered four hundred thousand men that drew sword: all these were men of war.” “Beside Benjamin” sets Binyâmîyn apart from the rest of the nation and marks this as a war inside Israel. “Men of war” joins ʼîysh, man, with milchâmâh, war, so these were fighting men, armed and ready for battle. An army that size was a great undertaking, and it measures how deeply the nation was outraged and how resolved it was to see justice done for Gibeah.

The swords meant for Israel’s enemies were now turned on a brother tribe. A psalm praises the goodness of brethren dwelling together in unity (Psalm 133:1), Paul warns believers against biting and devouring one another (Galatians 5:15), and Proverbs says, “Righteousness exalteth a nation” (Proverbs 14:34). The rest of the chapter shows the limits of Israel’s strength. The first battles go against the larger army, and by the end Benjamin is almost wiped out, so that Judges 21 tells of desperate steps to keep the tribe alive. Israel’s cause was just, and still its pursuit of justice, carried on without wisdom or mercy, brought the nation to the brink of losing one of its own tribes.

These chapters show how badly Israel needed a righteous king who would do justice and hold the people together under God’s law, and God gave that King in Jesus Christ. Israel tried to put evil away by the sword and could reach only the guilty men of one city, and even that brought the nation to the edge of losing a tribe. Christ is “the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world” (John 1:29). God made him to be sin for us, so that we might be made the righteousness of God in him (2 Corinthians 5:21), and he “put away sin by the sacrifice of himself” (Hebrews 9:26). The English words of verse 13, “put away”, come back there, and what Israel could only attempt at Gibeah, Christ accomplished for good.

The Father has committed all judgment to the Son (John 5:22), so the justice the tribes sought belongs in the end to him, and he judges perfectly. He purifies his church and presents it to himself holy (Ephesians 5:27). Isaiah foretold the child who would be called the Prince of Peace, whose kingdom would be established with judgment and with justice for ever (Isaiah 9:6–7), and Daniel saw a kingdom God would set up to stand for ever (Daniel 2:44). Christ is King of kings (Revelation 19:16), he said, “My kingdom is not of this world” (John 18:36), and his kingdom is righteousness, peace and joy in the Holy Ghost (Romans 14:17).

Where Benjamin and Israel turned their swords on each other, Christ broke down the wall between estranged peoples and made them one in himself (Ephesians 2:14–16), and in him the lines of tribe and nation give way, for all are one in Christ Jesus (Galatians 3:28). The slingers of verse 16 hit their mark every time with stones of war. Israel, in the sense of châṭâʼ, missed God’s mark again and again, and Christ alone kept it perfectly, in a life of full obedience to his Father.

These six verses show that God takes evil among his people seriously, and that a community is answerable for wickedness it shelters. Love for our own people is good, and Benjamin shows what it becomes when it shields the guilty against God’s law: a whole tribe marched to Gibeah to defend the indefensible and came close to perishing. Israel’s zeal for justice was right in its cause, and the war that followed shows how costly justice becomes when wisdom and mercy are missing. Over all of it stands the God whose law called for evil to be put away, and who in the end put it away himself through his Son. When wrong is done among those we love, this passage sets the call to account and the refusal side by side, and it shows where each road leads.