Benjamin

And the sons of Israel go up and weep before Jehovah till the evening, and ask of Jehovah, saying, `Do I add to draw nigh to battle with the sons of Benjamin, my brother?' And Jehovah saith, `Go up against him.'

And the sons of Israel draw near unto the sons of Benjamin on the second day,

and Benjamin cometh out to meet them from Gibeah on the second day, and destroy among the sons of Israel again eighteen thousand men--to the earth; all these are drawing sword.

and Phinehas son of Eleazar, son of Aaron, is standing before it in those days--saying, `Do I add again to go out to battle with the sons of Benjamin, my brother, or do I cease?' And Jehovah saith, `Go up, for to-morrow I give him into thy hand.'

and the sons of Israel go up against the sons of Benjamin, on the third day, and arrange themselves against Gibeah, as time by time.

And the sons of Benjamin come out to meet the people; they have been drawn away out of the city, and begin to smite some of the people--wounded as time by time, in the highways (of which one is going up to Beth-El, and the other to Gibeah in the field), are about thirty men of Israel.

And the sons of Benjamin say, `They are smitten before us as at the beginning;' but the sons of Israel said, `Let us flee, and draw them away out of the city, unto the highways.'

And Jehovah smiteth Benjamin before Israel, and the sons of Israel destroy in Benjamin, on that day, twenty and five thousand, and a hundred men; all these are drawing sword.

And the sons of Benjamin see that they have been smitten--and the men of Israel give place to Benjamin, for they have trusted unto the ambush which they had set against Gibeah,

And the men of Israel turn in battle, and Benjamin hath begun to smite the wounded among the men of Israel, about thirty men, for they said, `Surely they are utterly smitten before us, as at the first battle;

And the men of Israel have turned, and the men of Benjamin are troubled, for they have seen that the evil hath stricken against them--

And there fall of Benjamin eighteen thousand men--the whole of these are men of valour;

And all those falling of Benjamin are twenty and five thousand men drawing sword, on that day--the whole of these are men of valour;

And the men of Israel have turned back unto the sons of Benjamin, and smite them by the mouth of the sword out of the city, --men unto cattle, unto all that is found; also all the cities which are found they have sent into fire.

And the men of Israel have sworn in Mizpeh, saying, `None of us doth give his daughter to Benjamin for a wife.'

And the sons of Israel repent concerning Benjamin their brother, and say, `There hath been to-day cut off one tribe from Israel,

And all the company send, and speak, unto the sons of Benjamin who are in the rock Rimmon, and proclaim to them peace;

and Benjamin turneth back at that time, and they give to them the women whom they have kept alive of the women of Jabesh-Gilead, and they have not found for all of them so.

And the people repented concerning Benjamin, for Jehovah had made a breach among the tribes of Israel.

And the elders of the company say, `What do we do to the remnant for wives--for the women have been destroyed out of Benjamin?'

And they say, `A possession of an escaped party is to Benjamin, and a tribe is not blotted out from Israel;

and we--we are not able to give to them wives out of our daughters, for the sons of Israel have sworn, saying, Cursed is he who is giving a wife to Benjamin.'

And they command the sons of Benjamin, saying, `Go--and ye have laid wait in the vineyards,

and have seen, and lo, if the daughters of Shiloh come out to dance in dances--then ye have gone out from the vineyards, and caught for you each his wife out of the daughters of Shiloh, and gone to the land of Benjamin;

And the sons of Benjamin do so, and take women according to their number, out of the dancers whom they have taken violently away; and they go, and turn back unto their inheritance, and build the cities, and dwell in them.