Today’s passage: Judges 21:1-25

Helpful thoughts:

• Two oaths were taken and then later manipulated to serve new desires which sprang up after the end of the battles against the tribe of Benjamin.
  • Any Israelites who did not come to participate earlier were to be killed for not joining against Benjamin.
  • None of the participating families were to give their daughters to any remaining men from Benjamin as wives.
• In order to have a sense of having kept their rash vows:
  • They slaughtered everyone in Jabesh-gilead except for the 400 eligible young ladies.
  • They encouraged the remaining single men from Benjamin to capture women at a specific place and at a specific time…so that the fathers would not technically have given them their daughters in marriage.
• The final verse is not a commendation of Israel.  Everyone did what was right in their own eyes.
  • Hosea 6:6 – “For I desire steadfast love and not sacrifice, the knowledge of God rather than burnt offerings.”

Questions to consider:

1. How do you think the surviving women of Jabesh-gilead felt about their new assigned husbands?  How loving do you think those marriages would have been?  How has Israel’s treatment of these women been different from how the men of Gibeah valued the Levite’s concubine in the first place?
2. If everyone heard of the plan to provide women for the remaining 200 Benjamite men, who would have gone dancing at Shiloh?  What would have motivated the fathers (and mothers!) to allow their daughters to go dancing during this “Hunting season”?
3. In what ways do the offerings and attempts at worship not coincide with Israel’s relationship with God?  How could your feelings about your relationship with God mislead you? How would you correctly evaluate your walk with the Lord?

Today’s passage: Judges 20:19-48

Helpful thoughts:

• The tribe of Benjamin had sided with the sinful city of Gibeah, and now believed, after two days of unnaturally successful battle, they would have the upper hand against the rest of Israel.
• Israel would eventually rout the Benjamites, but not without great loss and not without crying out to the LORD.
• The tribe of Benjamin was nearly entirely destroyed.

Questions to consider:

1. After all of the battles and struggles of the book of Judges, who now appears to be Israel’s worst enemy?
2. Were the Benjamites the only people to suffer consequences for their sin?  Do we get to control or limit the extent of the consequences of our sin?

Today’s passage: Judges 20:1-18

Helpful thoughts:

• All the leaders of the tribes of Israel, 400,000 soldiers and whoever else would have come along gathered together in the wake of these dismembered body parts being sent all over Israel.  They met in Mizpah, not more than a couple miles away from Gibeah.  One tribe was missing however, Benjamin.
• The original intent of Israel was to focus its attention on Gibeah alone.  But the tribe of Benjamin came to their defense!
• For the first time in a long time, Israel has come together for a single purpose, to battle against and punish its own people.  Instead of defeating and removing the wickedness of the Canaanites, they are fighting their own.

Questions to consider:

1. What actions in this passage seem encouraging?
2. What components make this passage sad?
3. Why was the tribe of Benjamin in trouble?  What were they doing wrong?  Where did it all start and what had they forgotten?

Today’s passage: Judges 19:22-30

Helpful thoughts:

• The dark events of Sodom are repeated here in Gibeah…in Israel!  Except this time, there were no angels to save anyone.
• The host offered his own daughter in place of allowing the men of the city to abuse his male guest.
• The woman who was thrown out (By her husband!) into this unbelievable terror went from being a concubine, to having a husband who would speak kindly to her, to having a master who had given her up in order to save himself.  All this with the same man.
  • He did not go to get her until he awoke in the morning!  He slept through the night and didn’t expect to see her back in the night!
  • She died.
• All Israel was amazed and shocked into action.

Questions to consider:

1. What should have happened here?  What condition would this city have to be in for this kind of event to take place without any interference?
2. Are we supposed to think the Levite is innocent in all this?  Why does he seem to care so little for the loss of his “wife”?  Why did he even travel to her father’s house to get her back?  What had he wanted from her in the first place?
3. What condition is Israel in?  What is their general ethical guideline?  What are we supposed to notice in this correlation with the events of Sodom, whom God judged by completely wiping from off the face the earth?
4. How are men to treat their wives? (Ephesians 5:25)  Why should women be respected and treated with dignity? (Genesis 1:27)

Today’s passage: Judges 19:1-21

Helpful thoughts:

• The use of the word “Concubine” styles this marriage differently than God’s purpose for the unity of husband and wife.  This was a second class kind of marriage, perhaps similar to what Samson desired with the Timnite woman.
• The unfaithfulness of the woman should not automatically be assumed as sexual.  She may have simply not wanted to remain with the Levite, for whatever reason, and left him.
• The repetitive hospitality of her father toward the Levite seems strange but was quite hospitable.  It might seem stranger when we see the rest of the context tomorrow.
• The Levite rejects the idea of spending the night in Jebus because he didn’t expect to receive hospitality there…not like the hospitality he would expect to receive from his own countrymen.

Questions to consider:

1. What have you come to expect when you see the opening line, “In those days, when there was no king in Israel…”?  What should we be expecting to see in this narrative?
2. What kind of hospitality did the Levite and his party receive in Gibeah?  Who ended up actually helping them?
3. How do verses 16-21 compare to what happened in Genesis 19:1-4?  Why might this comparison give us cause for concern?