"And the Israelites inquired of the LORD. (In those days the ark of the covenant of God was there, with Phinehas son of Eleazar, the son of Aaron, ministering before it.) They asked, "Shall we go up again to fight against the Benjamites, our fellow Israelites, or not?" The LORD responded, "Go for tomorrow and I will give them into your hands."
Judges 20:27,28 (NIV)
The book of Judges covers roughly 400 years of history, and many of us come to the conclusion as we read it through, that things got worse and worse as the years went on. We base this conclusion on the horrific treatment of women in the account of the last three chapters as compared to the great treatment of women in the first chapter. I don’t like to read the last 3 chapters, let alone study them and draw lessons out of them! The Levite who gave his concubine to the Benjamites to rape and kill was a coward who was willing to allow his wife to die for him, instead of being willing to die for her. The bull headed stubborn refusal to allow the wrongdoers to be punished, led to open warfare that cost 40,000 soldier’s lives, and eventually led to the brutal wiping out of the whole tribe of Benjamin except for 600 men. Then their terrible solution to the problem of having killed all the women of Benjamin was to wipe out a town who hadn’t come to help and enslave their teenage girls???
I do enjoy reading vs 9 through 15 of the first chapter; here we have a man who is willing to die (to risk his life to win the hand of a woman) and we have a woman whose father respects her enough to give her property. These verses are more like it - they are verses you can point your children to! We wonder at the reasons why society disintegrated over those 400 years - YET chapter 1 and the last 3 chapters happened in the same time period, in the same generation. Judges 20:28 tells us that Phineas (the same Phineas who stopped the plaque at Shittim before the Israelites crossed the Jordan) is the high priest of Israel.
The book of Judges doesn’t reveal the slow disintegration of a society, rather it reveals the need for society to be governed by a king! When people do what is right in their own eyes disaster befalls a nation. When people are ruled by a king whose decisions are based on justice and righteousness, the nation thrives. Out of this tribe of Benjamin would come Israel’s first king named Saul whose reign is linked to the town whose girls are stolen. Out of the tribe of Judah who had 22,000 men killed in this episode, would come king David, and then Solomon and then our King of kings and Lord of lords.
There is nothing we can do in Nigeria to help these girls, but there is something we can do to help the girls around us, right now. Submit your life to the King, obey His righteous rule in what you do, what you say and what you think, and submit to the governing authorities.
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