The final chapter deals with the provision of wives for the 600 Benjamites who had escaped to the desert.
The men of Israel had taken an oath at Mizpah, “Not one of us will give his daughter in marriage to a Benjamite.” (v1)
They went to Bethel and in great distress before The LORD, bemoaned the fact that as a result of this sin and ensuing slaughter one of the twelve tribes would be wiped out. After all, the Benjamites had been allotted a portion of the land and it seemed untenable that they should lose it. (v3,6,17) It appears that they might be regretting their stand against Benjamites by wiping out their family. Only 600 remained so the people came before God asking for the perpetuation of the tribe of Benjamin, their brother. One writer suggest it shows their fickleness and impetuous zeal.
They worked at ways of finding wives for the remaining 600 Benjamites and hatched out a plan that because no-one from Jabesh-Gilead had come in response to the call to the oath ceremony at Mizpah and therefore had not made the promise to keep their daughters from marrying the Benjamites, they would be free to oblige. So an army is sent to destroy the inhabitants of that place and spare only the virgin girls (v12) – 400 were found which was still not enough. Thus, an ambush was set for the daughters of Shiloh who came out to dance and the Benjamites were instructed to take the girls to wife.
It was apparent that they made oaths and then set about ways of trying to circumvent them. What a pathetic situation!
We get ourselves into all sorts of ‘messes’. We make all kinds of excuses for our sin, perhaps the most common is, ‘Well I am only human’. True enough but we often use that as a paltry excuse. The Bible says that we are a holy and a chosen people. Are we as holy as we should be? I search my own heart! The answer must come back a resounding ‘No’, but we have no excuse. We need to give ourselves to God in complete surrender.
Are we bearing fruit? Is our church bearing fruit? If not it is not God’s fault, it is entirely ours. The Bible shows that we should be different from the world and separate. Worldliness is killing the effectiveness of Christians both individually and collectively. The last verse of this book (v25) describes a people who were disobedient to God – “Everyone did that which was right in his own eyes.”
Is that what we are doing? It denotes individual desires and actions without any thought for others and least of all, for God. If we are doing what we want irrespective of theirs and of God it will inevitably lead to chaos and more than likely, Godlessness and consequently, deadness and coldness and ineffective witness.
We must be right before God individually and collectively; the latter usually comes as a direct result of the former. Let us come before God in humility and repentance and seek His will for our lives.
In Deuteronomy 12:1, Moses instructed the people on worship when they entered the Promised Land. “These are the statutes and judgments which you shall be careful to observe in the land which the LORD God of your fathers is giving you to possess, all the days that you live on the earth.
2You shall utterly destroy all the places where the nations which you shall dispossess served their gods, on the high mountains and on the hills and under every green tree.
3 And you shall destroy their altars, break their sacred pillars, and burn their wooden images with fire; you shall cut down the carved images of their gods and destroy their names from that place. 4 You shall not worship the LORD your God with such things.
5 “But you shall seek the place where the LORD your God chooses, out of all your tribes, to put His name for His dwellingplace; and there you shall go….
8 “You shall not at all do as we are doing here today—every man doing whatever is right in his own eyes—
30 take heed to yourself that you are not ensnared to follow them, after they are destroyed from before you, and that you do not inquire after their gods, saying, ‘How did these nations serve their gods? I also will do likewise.’
31 You shall not worship the LORD your God in that way; for every abomination to the LORD which He hates they have done to their gods; for they burn even their sons and daughters in the fire to their gods.
32 “Whatever I command you, be careful to observe it; you shall not add to it nor take away from it.
We do not come in any old way to God. We come before Him in awe and reverence, humility and repentance. He will accept of our worship as we come clean before Him.
There have been many lessons I have learned from this book and I trust you have. Let us not judge one another but let us judge ourselves.
