(The view expressed in this blog are my own and should not be taken as inspired in any way.)
Judges 21:16–25, “Then the elders of the congregation said, How shall we do for wives for them that remain, seeing the women are destroyed out of Benjamin? And they said, There must be an inheritance for them that be escaped of Benjamin, that a tribe be not destroyed out of Israel. Howbeit we may not give them wives of our daughters: for the children of Israel have sworn, saying, Cursed be he that giveth a wife to Benjamin. Then they said, Behold, there is a feast of the LORD in Shiloh yearly in a place which is on the north side of Bethel, on the east side of the highway that goeth up from Bethel to Shechem, and on the south of Lebonah. Therefore they commanded the children of Benjamin, saying, Go and lie in wait in the vineyards; And see, and, behold, if the daughters of Shiloh come out to dance in dances, then come ye out of the vineyards, and catch you every man his wife of the daughters of Shiloh, and go to the land of Benjamin. And it shall be, when their fathers or their brethren come unto us to complain, that we will say unto them, Be favourable unto them for our sakes: because we reserved not to each man his wife in the war: for ye did not give unto them at this time, that ye should be guilty. And the children of Benjamin did so, and took them wives, according to their number, of them that danced, whom they caught: and they went and returned unto their inheritance, and repaired the cities, and dwelt in them. And the children of Israel departed thence at that time, every man to his tribe and to his family, and they went out from thence every man to his inheritance. In those days there was no king in Israel: every man did that which was right in his own eyes.”
This section began and ended with the statement, “In those days there was no king in Israel: every man did that which was right in his own eyes.” This section describes a period in Israel’s history when they tended to ignore the Law of the Lord and follow the practices of the people who inhabited the Land before they arrived. We should also remind ourselves that marriage was seen more as an arrangement made between two families than an arrangement between two people. However, even this concept was not in keeping with the Lord’s first description of marriage when He gave the concept of marriage to Adam. At first it was to be seen as an arrangement between a man and a woman where the both left their former homes and established a new home for themselves. However, after Benjamin’s rebellion against the morals of the majority of Israel and their desire to go after the ways that the Lord punished at Sodom it was essential that this kind of evil be dealt with in Israel forever. Benjamin, on the other hand chose to support their own tribesmen and, thus, condoned the evil. Now that the perpetrators had been dealt with according to the Law the rest of Israel sough to reestablish Benjamin as a viable tribe again. In order to do this they had to find wives for some of the unmarried survivors. The kidnapped some women from Shiloh and forced them to become wives for the men who required wives. Again, we must stress that this historical record does not mean that the Lord condoned their actions.
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