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Judges 21

Israel’s effort to preserve Benjamin produces further violence as the people protect their oaths through slaughter and abduction.

Israel mourns the threatened loss of Benjamin while facing an oath that forbids giving their daughters to its surviving men. The assembly seeks wives through an attack on Jabesh Gilead, sparing four hundred young women and giving them to Benjamin. When more wives are needed, the elders arrange for women dancing at Shiloh to be abducted. The tribes return home, and the narrator closes with Israel’s lack of a king and each person’s reliance on his own judgment.

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1Now the men of Israel had sworn in Mizpah, saying, “None of us will give his daughter to Benjamin as a wife.”
2The people came to Bethel and sat there until evening before God, and lifted up their voices, and wept severely.
3They said, “The LORD, the God of Israel, why has this happened in Israel, that there should be one tribe lacking in Israel today?”
4On the next day, the people rose early and built an altar there, and offered burnt offerings and peace offerings.
5The children of Israel said, “Who is there among all the tribes of Israel who didn’t come up in the assembly to the LORD?” For they had made a great oath concerning him who didn’t come up to the LORD to Mizpah, saying, “He shall surely be put to death.”
6The children of Israel grieved for Benjamin their brother, and said, “There is one tribe cut off from Israel today.
7How shall we provide wives for those who remain, since we have sworn by the LORD that we will not give them of our daughters to wives?”
8They said, “What one is there of the tribes of Israel who didn’t come up to the LORD to Mizpah?” Behold, no one came from Jabesh Gilead to the camp to the assembly.
10The congregation sent twelve thousand of the most valiant men there, and commanded them, saying, “Go and strike the inhabitants of Jabesh Gilead with the edge of the sword, with the women and the little ones.
11This is the thing that you shall do: you shall utterly destroy every male, and every woman who has lain with a man.”
12They found among the inhabitants of Jabesh Gilead four hundred young virgins who had not known man by lying with him; and they brought them to the camp to Shiloh, which is in the land of Canaan.
13The whole congregation sent and spoke to the children of Benjamin who were in the rock of Rimmon, and proclaimed peace to them.
14Benjamin returned at that time; and they gave them the women whom they had saved alive of the women of Jabesh Gilead. There still weren’t enough for them.
15The people grieved for Benjamin, because the LORD had made a breach in the tribes of Israel.
17They said, “There must be an inheritance for those who are escaped of Benjamin, that a tribe not be blotted out from Israel.
18However, we may not give them wives of our daughters, for the children of Israel had sworn, saying, ‘Cursed is he who gives a wife to Benjamin.’”
19They said, “Behold, there is a feast of the LORD from year to year in Shiloh, which is on the north of Bethel, on the east side of the highway that goes up from Bethel to Shechem, and on the south of Lebonah.”
21and see, and behold, if the daughters of Shiloh come out to dance in the dances, then come out of the vineyards, and each man catch his wife of the daughters of Shiloh, and go to the land of Benjamin.
22It shall be, when their fathers or their brothers come to complain to us, that we will say to them, ‘Grant them graciously to us, because we didn’t take for each man his wife in battle, neither did you give them to them; otherwise you would now be guilty.’”
25In those days there was no king in Israel. Everyone did that which was right in his own eyes.
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Key verses
Judges 21:25The closing verdict frames the slaughter and abduction within Israel’s lack of a king and dependence on personal judgment.
Judges 21:1Israel’s oath against giving daughters to Benjamin creates the dilemma that drives the chapter’s search for wives.
Judges 21:5A second oath supplies the assembly’s stated grounds for attacking Jabesh Gilead and taking its surviving young women.
Where this chapter reaches

Judges 21 shares with 1 Samuel the places Jabesh Gilead and Shiloh, the tribe of Benjamin, and the question of kingship in Israel. Its concern with binding oaths connects with Numbers and Deuteronomy, which contain laws governing vows and obligations made before God.

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After reading the whole chapter

What do you notice about Israel’s grief for Benjamin alongside its treatment of the women?

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How does the final verse shape your reading of the elders’ plans?

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Questions people ask about Judges 21

Why were the women of Shiloh abducted in Judges 21?

Israel had sworn against giving daughters to Benjamin, yet wanted the tribe to survive. After four hundred women from Jabesh Gilead proved insufficient, the elders arranged abductions at Shiloh. Their reasoning was that the women’s fathers had not given them, so the oath’s curse would not apply.

Did God command the violence in Judges 21?

The chapter records Israel’s prayers and sacrifices, but it reports no divine command to attack Jabesh Gilead or abduct women at Shiloh. Those orders come from the congregation and its elders. Verse 15 attributes the breach among the tribes to YHWH; it does not authorize their proposed remedies.

What does Judges 21:25 mean?

The verse links Israel’s lack of a king with people doing what seemed right to them. As the book’s closing statement, it frames the preceding violence as part of Israel’s disorder. It does not say that any king would be good or that personal approval makes an action right.

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Cross-reference data from OpenBible.info (CC BY). Scripture from the World English Bible (public domain). Arc diagram after Chris Harrison and Christoph Römhild (2007).