Seeking Wives at the Shiloh Festival

16

The leaders of the assembly asked, "What are we to do for those who still don't have wives, inasmuch as all the women of Binyamin have been killed?"

17

They said, "There has to be a way to help the survivors preserve Binyamin's inheritance, so that a tribe will not be eliminated from Isra'el.

18

Yet we can't give them our daughters as wives." For the people of Isra'el had sworn, "Cursed be whoever gives a wife to Binyamin."

19

Then they said, "Look, each year there's a festival in honor of ADONAI in Shiloh, north of Beit-El, on the east side of the road that goes up from Beit-El to Sh'khem, and south of Levonah."

20

They ordered the men of Binyamin, "Go, hide in the vineyards,

21

and keep watch. If the girls of Shiloh come out to do their dances, then come out of the vineyards, and each of you catch for himself a wife from the Shiloh girls, and go on to the land of Binyamin.

22

When their fathers or brothers come to complain to us, we will say to them, 'Give them as a personal favor to us, because we didn't take wives for each of them in battle. You didn't give them to them; that would have made you guilty of breaking your oath.'"

23

So the men of Binyamin did this - they took wives for themselves from the girls who were dancing, as many as they needed. They carried them off, went back to the land of their inheritance, rebuilt the cities and lived in them.

24

The people of Isra'el then left that place, each man returned to his tribe and family, and each man went out from there to the land he had inherited.

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