The Chosen Key Word in this Chapter is “Right in his own eyes” it comes from the Hebrew Word “yashar” which means “right, straight, upright.”
Israel realizes their harsh vow has nearly erased an entire tribe, and scrambles to fix what they’ve done. Welcome to Bible Life Basics Chapter Reviews, I am Chris and this is Judges 21.
Before the war against Benjamin, the men of Israel had sworn an oath at Mizpeh never to give their daughters in marriage to any Benjamite. Now, seeing that Benjamin has been nearly wiped out, with only six hundred surviving men and no women left among them, Israel weeps bitterly, recognizing that one entire tribe is in danger of disappearing completely from Israel.
Discovering that the city of Jabeshgilead had not participated in the earlier assembly at Mizpeh, and therefore had not sworn the same oath, Israel sends twelve thousand men to destroy that city, sparing only four hundred young virgins to give as wives to the surviving Benjamite men. Since this still leaves two hundred men without wives, and Israel cannot break their sworn oath directly, the elders devise another solution, instructing the remaining Benjamites to hide in the vineyards during a yearly feast at Shiloh and seize wives for themselves from among the dancing daughters of Shiloh, a plan the elders promise to smooth over with the girls’ fathers afterward.
The Benjamites do exactly this, securing wives and rebuilding their cities and their tribe, restoring their place among Israel’s twelve tribes once again. The book of Judges closes with a phrase that summarizes its entire troubled era. “In those days there was no king in Israel: every man did that which was “right,” “yashar” in Hebrew, in his own eyes,” a fitting, sobering conclusion to a book filled with cycles of sin, deliverance, and moral chaos, pointing forward to Israel’s eventual need for godly, centralized leadership.
Judges closes with a line that explains everything readers have just witnessed, no king in Israel, everyone simply doing what seemed right in their own eyes. Without a shared, godly standard guiding the nation, even well-intentioned attempts at justice, like this final scramble to save Benjamin, ended up requiring more compromise and improvisation to fix.
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