house of God, and the other to Gibeah in the field, about thirty men of Israel.

Defeat the Benjamites.

the LORD Smote Benjamin before Israel: and the children of Israel destroyed of

They are smitten down before us, as at the first. But the children of Israel said, Let us flee, and draw them from the city unto the highways. (33) And all the men of Israel rose up out of their place, and put themselves in array at 2 or, time. Baal-tamar: and the liers in wait of Israel came forth out of their places, even out of the meadows of Gibeah. (34) And there came against Gibeah ten thousand chosen men out of all Israel, and the battle was sore: but they knew not that evil was near them. (35) And

one led to Bethel, and the other to a place which, to distinguish it from Gibeah, seems to have been called "Gibeah in the field." In this feigned flight thirty Israelites were killed. "Gibeah in the field" seems to be Jeba, and the main road from Gibeah (Tuleil el Fûl), at about a mile's distance from the hill, branches off into two, of which one leads to Beitin (Bethel), and the other to Jeba (“Gibeah in the field "). The highways. (Mesilloth.) Roman viae regiae, regularly built.

-

Roads like the

(32) Said, Let us flee.-In a later historical style the plan of the feigned flight would have been mentioned earlier.

Unto the highways. - This would have the double effect of allowing the ambuscade to cut off their retreat, and of dividing their forces at the point where the roads branched off.

(33) Put themselves in array at Baal-tamar. -This is either a detail added out of place (so that we might almost suppose that there has been some accidental transposition of clauses), or it means that when the Israelites in their pretended rout had got as far as Baal-tamar ("Lord of the Palm") they saw the appointed smoke-signal of the ambuscade, and at that point rallied against their pursuers. What makes this probable is that Baal-tamar can only have derived its name from some famous, and therefore isolated, palmtree. Now there was exactly such a palm-tree-the wellknown "Palm of Deborah" (see Note on chap. iv. 5)— "between Ramah and Bethel," and therefore at a little distance from the spot where the roads branch. The place was still called Bathamar in the days of Eusebius and Jerome. The Chaldee rendering," in the plains of Jericho" ("the palm city," chap. i. 16), is singularly

erroneous.

Out of the meadows of Gibeah.- The word maareh, rendered "meadows," occurs nowhere else. Some derive it from arah, "to strip." The LXX., not understanding it, render it as a name, Maraagabe, and in Cod. A (following a different reading), "from the west of Gibeah," as also does the Vulg. Rashi renders it, "because of the stripping of Gibeah," and Buxtorf, "after the stripping of Gibeah." It is, however, clear that the words are in apposition to and in explanation of "out of their places." The Syriac and Arabic understand maareh to mean "a cave" or "caves," printing it maarah instead of maareh. Similarly the reading "from the west" only involves the change of a single letter (maarab). If the text be left unaltered, the

thousand and an hundred men: all these drew the sword.

(36) So the children of Benjamin saw that they were smitten: for the men of Israel gave place to the Benjamites, because they trusted unto the liers in wait which they had set beside Gibeah. (37) And the liers in wait hasted, and rushed upon Gibeah; and the liers in wait drew themselves along, and smote all the city with the edge of the sword. (38) Now there was an appointed sign between the men of Israel and the liers

"meadows" may have been concealed from the town by intervening rocks. In Isa. xix. 7 aroth means "pastures."

(34) Ten thousand chosen men.-Though the verse is obscurely expressed, the meaning probably is that this was the number of the ambuscade of picked warriors. If it means that this was the Israelite force left after the slaughter of 40,000, we are not told the number of the ambush.

The battle was sore.-It would be a battle in which the Benjamites were now attacked both in front and rear.

(35) Destroyed of the Benjamites Here again we have a summary of the final result, followed by details, in a manner which proves either that the narrative was compiled from various sources (one of which seems to have been a poem), or that it was penned before the periodic style " of history (lexis katestrammene) had been invented. If written consecutively, and not compiled, the writer must have been one whose method bore the same resemblance to that of later writers, as the style of Hellanicus did to that of Herodotus and Thucydides. It is the style to which Roman writers would have applied the epithet inconditus-the style of the oldest annals. Verses 36–46 are not, as has been conjectured by some writers, necessarily a different account of the battle, but contain a loose assemblage of details, which has been added to explain the general result.

(36) That they were smitten.-The "they" refers. to the Israelites. The rest of the verse gives the reason for the feigned flight.

(37) Results of the ambuscade.

19, 20.)

(Comp. Josh. viii. 15,

Drew themselves along.-The marginal suggestion, made a long sound with the trumpet, is untenable. (See chap. iv. 6.)

With the edge of the sword.-See chap. i. 8; Josh. viii. 24.

(38) The signal which had been agreed upon. That they should make.-Literally, multiply to cause to ascend. The actual words of the agreed on signal are quoted. For the word hereb (which is an imperative) some MSS. read chereb, "a sword," and

CHAPTER XXI.-(1) Now the men of Israel had sworn in Mizpeh, saying, There shall not any of us give his daughter unto Benjamin to wife. (2) And the people came to the house of God, and abode there till even before God, and lifted up their voices, and wept sore; (3) and said, O LORD God of Israel, why is this come to pass in Israel, that there should be to day one tribe lacking in Israel? (4) And it came to pass on the morrow, that the people rose early, and built there an altar, and offered burnt offerings and peace offerings.

(5) And the children of Israel said, Who is there among all the tribes of Israel

AND CATTLE, with the exception of 600 fugitives. There is something almost inconceivably horrible and appalling in the thought of thousands of poor women and innocent children ruthlessly butchered in cold blood in this internecine war between brother Israelites. The whole tribe were placed under the ban of extirpation, as though they had been Canaanites, just as mercilessly as Sihon and his people had been extirpated (Deut. ii. 34, xiii. 15, 16), or Jericho (Josh. vi. 17, 21), or Ai (Josh. viii. 25, 26). Their feelings were doubtless exasperated by the fearful destruction which Benjamin had inflicted upon them, as well as by religious horror at the conduct of the tribe; and for the rest, we can only say that "the times of this ignorance God winked at." The good side of the deed lies in its motive: it expressed an intense horror against moral pollution. The evil side lay in its ruthless savagery. In both aspects it agrees both with the recorded and the traditional character of Phinehas (Num. xxv. 8, xxxi. 6). (See Note on chap. xi. 39.)

XXI.

1-7. Remorse of the Israelites at the extirpation of a tribe in consequence of their oath not to give their daughters in marriage to the Benjamites. 8-15. Expedient of destroying Jabesh-Gilead to furnish wives from thence. 16-25. As there was still an insufficient number of wives, they persuade the Benjamites to seize the virgins of Shiloh at a sacred dance.

(1) Had sworn.-The circumstance has not been mentioned in the account of the proceedings at Mizpeh. It is clear from the sequel (verse 18) that the oath was not only an oath but " a vow under a curse," as in Acts xxiii. 14.

(2) To the house of God.-Rather, to Bethel, as in chap. xx. 18, 27.

Wept sore.-As after their defeat (chap. xx. 26); but this time they were remorseful for the fate of those whom they were then pledged to destroy.

(3) Why is this come to pass. ? This is not so much an inquiry into the cause, which was indeed too patent, but a wail of regret, implying a prayer to be enlightened as to the best means of averting the calamity. The repetition of the name "Israel" three times shows that the nation had not yet lost its sense of corporate unity, often as that unity had been rent asunder by their civil dissensions. Their wild justice is mingled with a still wilder mercy.

Lacking in Israel.

that came not up with the congregation unto the LORD? For they had made a great oath concerning him that came not up to the LORD to Mizpeh, saying, He shall surely be put to death. (6) And the children of Israel repented them for Benjamin their brother, and said, There is one tribe cut off from Israel this day. (7) How shall we do for wives for them that remain, seeing we have sworn by the LORD that we will not give them of our daughters to wives?

(8) And they said, What one is there of the tribes of Israel that came not up to Mizpeh to the LORD? And, behold, there came none to the camp from

One tribe lacking.-The number twelve had an almost mystic significance, and is always preserved in reckoning up the tribes, whether Levi is included or excluded.

(4) Built there an altar.-We find David doing the same at the threshing-floor of Araunah (2 Sam. xxiv. 25), and Solomon at Gibeon. Unless the entire tabernacle had, for the time, been removed to Bethel, there was no regular altar there. It has been suggested that in any case this altar must have been necessitated by the multitude of sacrifices required for the holocausts and the food of the people. (See Note on chap. xx. 26.) Probably there is some other reason unknown to us.

(5) Who is there...?-This verse is anticipatory of verse 8.

66

They had made a great oath.-Another detail which has been omitted up to this point. The spirit of this cherem was exactly the same as that which we find in chap. v. 23: Curse ye Meroz . . . because they came not to the help of the Lord, to the help of the Lord against the mighty." Now that these victories had been so complete, they probably were sick with slaughter, and would not have inquired after any defaulters but by way of finding an expedient to mollify the meaning of their rash oath. We see once more in this narrative both the force derivable from a vow and the folly and wickedness of fierce vows rashly taken in moments of passion. It is obvious that the direct meaning of the vow, taken in connection with the curse under which they had placed the Benjamites, had been to annihilate the tribe.

(8) There came none to the camp from Jabeshgilead.-Jabesh-Gilead, which Josephus calls the metropolis of Gilead (Antt. vi. 5, § 1), is probably to be identified with the ruins now called El-Deir in the Wady Yabes (Robinson, iii. 319). It was six miles from Pella, on the top of a hill which lies on the road from Pella to Gerasa. For some reason with which we are unacquainted, there seems to have been a bond of intense sympathy between the inhabitants of this town and Benjamin. If their abstinence from the assembly of vengeance was not due to this, we must suppose that the sort of companionship in misery caused by these wild events itself created a sense of union between these communities, for it is the peril of Jabesh which first arouses King Saul to action (1 Sam. xi.), and in memory of the deliverance which he effected the men of Jabesh alone save the bodies of Saul and Jonathan from the indignity of rotting on the wall of Bethshan

Taken by the Benjamites.

brought them unto the camp to Shiloh, which is in the land of Canaan.

(13) And the whole congregation sent some to speak to the children of Benjamin that were in the rock Rimmon, and to call peaceably unto them. (14) And Benjamin came again at that time; and they gave them wives which they had saved alive of the women of Jabeshgilead and yet so they sufficed them not. (15) And the people repented them

by man. (12) And they found among the inhabitants of Jabesh-gilead four hundred young virgins, that had known no man by lying with any male: and they

(1 Sam. xxxi. 11), which gained them the blessing of David (2 Sam. ii. 5, 6). We see from these later incidents that Jabesh recovered from the extermination now inflicted on its inhabitants.

(9) For the people were numbered. It is doubtful whether this implies another numbering besides that at Mizpeh (chap. xx. 1-17). In the tale which had then been made up, the absence of inhabitants of a single town might for the present escape notice. It would be sufficient now merely to refer to the lists then made (chap. xx. 1-17).

(10) Twelve thousand men.-The Vulgate has 10,000, but it is doubtless meant to imply that each tribe sent a thousand " valiant men" (Gen. xlvii. 6, &c.), as in the war against the Midianites, in which Balaam was slain and at which Phinehas had been present (Num. xxxi. 6).

(11) Ye shall utterly destroy.—The verb is tacharîmû-i.e., Ye shall place under the ban (cherem), ye shall devote to destruction. The words of the cherem are almost identical with those of the indignant command of Moses after the war with Midian alluded to in the last verse (Num. xxxi. 17, 18), and there the same exception is made. (Comp. Lev. xxvii. 21-28; Num. xxi. 2, 3.) The words are easy to read; it is needless to dwell on the horror of the massacre which they describe. We are dealing throughout with the fierce passions of men living in times of gross spiritual darkness; for we cannot doubt that the oath against Jabesh-Gilead was carried out, though the writer drops a veil over all but the result. The vow of destruction (cherem, anathema, Lev. xxvii. 28, 29) was quite different from the vow of devotion (neder) and the vow of abstinence (corban).

(12) They brought them. It can hardly be doubted that the "them" means the young virgins, although the pronoun is masculine (otham), as in verse 22. If so, the idiom is like the Greek one in which a woman speaking of herself in the plural uses the masculine (Brief Greek Syntax, p. 61). There is no other trace of this idiom in Hebrew, but we can hardly suppose that many Jabesh-Gileadite captives were brought to Shiloh, and then put to death in cold blood in accordance with the ban.

Unto the camp to Shiloh.-The Israelites, now that the war with Benjamin was over, appear to have moved their stationary camp to Shiloh, the normal and more central seat of the tabernacle at this period (chap. xviii. 31).

had made a breach in the tribes of Israel.

(16) Then the elders of the congregation said, How shall we do for wives for them

Which is in the land of Canaan.-We find the same addition in Josh. xxi. 2, xxii. 9. Perhaps there was another Shiloh on the east of the Jordan; but see Note on verse 19. The mere fact of Jabesh being in Gilead does not seem sufficient to account for it. (13) To call peaceably-i.e., proclaim peace. (14) Came again—i.e., returned to their desolate towns.

Yet so they sufficed them not.-There would still be 200 Benjamites left without wives.

(15) The Lord had made a breach.-The breach (perets, 1 Kings xi. 24) had been caused by their own headstrong fury and unreasoning passion, even though it had been in a righteous cause; but in the Hebrew conception the results even of man's sin and follies is referred to Jehovah as overruled by Him (Amos iii. 6; Isa. xlv. 7). It was therefore needless, and not quite honest of St. Jerome in the Vulg., to omit "the Lord." (16) How shall we do. ?-They want to keep their vow in the letter, while they break it in the spirit. The sense of the binding nature of the "ban" was intensely strong (Exod. xx. 7; Ezek. xvii. 18, 19), but, as is so often the case among rude and ignorant people, they fancied that it was sufficient to keep it literally, while in effect they violated it. Similarly in Herodotus (chap. iv. 154), Themison having sworn to throw Phronima into the sea-the intention having been that she should be drowned-feels himself bound to throw her into the sea, but has her drawn out of it again. Their want of moral enlightenment revealed itself in this way, and still more in having ever taken this horrible oath, which involved the butchery of innocent men, and of still more innocent women and children. In point of fact, the cherem often broke down under the strain which it placed on men's best feelings (1 Sam. xiv. 45) as well as on their lower temptations. The guilt of breaking a guilty vow is only the original guilt of ever having made it. What the Israelites should have done was not to bathe their hands in more rivers of fraternal blood, but to pray to God to forgive the brutal vehemence which disgraced a cause originally righteous, and to have allowed the remnant of the Benjamites to intermarry with them once more. As it was, they were led by ignorance and rashness into several vows which could not be fulfilled without horrible cruelty and bloodshed, and the fulfilment of which they after all casuistically evaded, and that at the cost of still more bloodshed. As all these events took place under the guidance of Phinehas, they give us a high estimate indeed of the

Wives Taken from

that remain, seeing the women are destroyed out of Benjamin ? (17) And they said, There must be an inheritance for them that be escaped of Benjamin, that a tribe be not destroyed out of Israel.

to year.

of our daughters: for the children of Israel have sworn, saying, Cursed be he that giveth a wife to Benjamin.

3 Or, on

(19) Then they said, Behold, there is a feast of the LORD in Shiloh 1yearly in a place which is on the north side of Bethel, on the east side of the highway that goeth up from Beth-el to Shechem, and on the south of Lebonah.

them.

zeal which was his noblest characteristic (Ps. cvi. 30), | yet a very low estimate of his state of spiritual insight; and clearly to such a man the fulfilment of Jephthah's cherem by sacrificing his daughter (see Note on chap. xi. 39) would have seemed as nothing compared to the extermination of tribes and of cities, involving the shedding of rivers of innocent blood. But why should we suppose that the grandson of Aaron, in such times as these —when all was anarchy, idolatry, and restlessness, against which he either did not strive or strove most ineffectually should stand on so much higher a level than his schismatical and semi-idolatrous cousin, the wandering grandson of Moses?

(17) There must be an inheritance.-Rather, possession of the remnant shall be for Benjamini.e., We will leave untouched their land and possessions. "We give you leave to take the whole land of Benjamin to yourselves" (Jos. Antt. v. 3, § 12).

Even

That a tribe be not destroyed.- Benjamin never quite recovered this crushing blow. though it furnished the second judge (Ehud) and the first king (Saul) to Israel, and was advantageously situated, and was often honoured by the residence of Samuel, it became a mere satellite to the more powerful tribe of Judah. Perhaps in the quiescence and permanence derived from the close association with its powerful neighbour we see in part the fulfilment of the blessing in Deut. xxxiii. 12.

(19) A feast of the Lord in Shiloh.-It is unlikely that the reference is to a local feast; but it is impossible to say which of the three yearly feasts is meant. The most natural would be the Feast of Tabernacles. We see from 1 Sam. i. 3 that even among pious families the trying custom of going up to the Tabernacle three times a year had fallen into complete abeyance.

A place which is on the north side of Beth-el...This elaborate description of the site of Shiloh, a place which is so often mentioned_elsewhere without any addition, is extremely curious. There can be little doubt that it is due to the marginal gloss of some Masoretic scribe, perhaps in the editing of the sacred books by Ezra. That it is a gloss seems clear, because it comes in as a parenthesis in the speech of the elders, and, of course, in their day such a description was needless. Indeed, it was spoken at Shiloh itself, and the site was well known to all Israel. But by the time that the story was committed to writing in the days of the kings, or finally edited in the days of Ezra, Shiloh had long been desolate, and probably the very site was unknown to thousands. Hence this very valuable and

interesting description was added, which has alone enabled us to identify Shiloh in the modern Seilún. South of Lebonah.-Lebonah, now Lubban, is not mentioned elsewhere. notice.

(20) They commanded.-Rather, they gave This is the keri or marginal reading of the Hebrew; the kethib, or written text, has the verb in the singular, in which case we must take it impersonally, "It was bidden," and suppose that some leading personageprobably Phinehas, the impress of whose character and reminiscences is observable throughout - is the speaker.

(11) To dance in dances.-Possibly the dances of the vintage festival. There is a fountain in a narrow dale, at a little distance from Shiloh, which was very probably the scene of this event. It is a needless conjecture that the feast was the Passover, and the dances a commemoration of the defeat of the Egyptians, like those of Miriam. There seems to have been no regular town at Shiloh; at least, no extensive ruins are traceable. It was probably a community like the Beth-Micah (see Note on chap. xviii. 2), which was mainly connected with the service of the Tabernacle. The "daughters of Shiloh" would naturally include many women who were in one way or other employed in various functions about the Tabernacle, and not only those who came there to worship (1 Sam. ii. 22, where "assembled" should be rendered served, as in Num. iv. 23; "the handmaid" of the priests is mentioned in 2 Sam. xvii. 17). But the traces of female attendants in the sanctuary are more numerous in Jewish traditions than in Scripture.

Catch you every man his wife. The scene is very analogous to the famous seizure of the Sabine women at the Consualia, as described in Liv. i. 9. St. Jerome (adv. Jovin, i. § 41) quotes another parallel from the history of Aristomenes of Messene, who once, in a similar way, seized fifteen Spartan maidens, who were dancing at the Hyacinthia, and escaped with them.

(22) Be favourable unto them for our sakes.—

Rather, Present them (otham, masc., as in verse 12) to us; or (as in the margin), Gratify us in them. The verse is somewhat obscure, but its general drift is a promise to pacify the parents of the damsels, by showing them that thus they did not violate the cherem, and that the cause was pressing. Perhaps they would be more readily consoled, because the land of these six hundred Benjamites must now have been far more than was necessary for their wants. They had become possessors of the lot of the whole tribe. Perhaps the reading should be, Gratify us as regards these damsels, for they (the