The War Between Israel and Benjamin

20 So all the people of Israel joined together. They all came together to stand before the Lord in the city of Mizpah. People came from everywhere in Israel.* Even the Israelite people from Gilead* were there. ²The leaders of all the family groups of Israel were there. They took their places in the public meeting of God’s people. There were 400,000 soldiers with swords in that place. ³The people from the family group of Benjamin heard that the people of Israel were meeting together in Mizpah. The people of Israel said, “Tell us how this terrible thing happened.” ⁴So the husband of the woman that had been murdered told them the story. He said, “My woman servant* and I came to the city of Gibeah in the area of Benjamin. We spent the night there. ⁵But during the night the leaders of the city of Gibeah came to the house where I was staying. They surrounded the house, and they wanted to kill me. They raped my woman servant, and she died. ⁶So I took my woman servant and cut her into pieces. Then I sent one piece to each of the family groups of Israel. I sent the 12 pieces to the lands we have received. I did that because the people of Benjamin have done this terrible thing in Israel. ⁷Now, all you men of Israel, speak up. Give your decision about what we should do.” ⁸Then all the people stood up at the same time. They said together, “None of us will go home. No, not one of us will go back to his house. ⁹Now this is what we will do to the city of Gibeah: We will throw lots* to let God show us what to do to those people. ¹⁰We will choose ten men from every 100 from all the family groups of Israel. And we will choose 100 men from every 1,000. We will choose 1,000 men from every 10,000. Those men we have chosen will get supplies for the army. Then the army will go to the city of Gibeah in the area of Benjamin. The army will punish those people for the terrible thing they did among the people of Israel.” ¹¹So all the men of Israel gathered together at the city of Gibeah. They were all agreed to what they were doing. ¹²The family groups of Israel sent men to the family group of Benjamin with a message. The message was: “What about this terrible thing that some of your men have done? ¹³Send those bad men from the city of Gibeah to us. Give us those men so that we can put them to death. We must remove the evil from among the people of Israel.” But the people from the family group of Benjamin would not listen to the messengers from their relatives, the other people of Israel. ¹⁴The people from the family group of Benjamin left their cities and went to the city of Gibeah. They went to Gibeah to fight against the other family groups of Israel. ¹⁵The people from the family group of Benjamin got 26,000 soldiers together. All those soldiers were trained for war. They also had 700 trained soldiers from the city of Gibeah. ¹⁶There were also 700 trained soldiers that were trained to fight with their left hand.*Each one of them could use a sling* with great skill. They all could use a sling to throw a stone at a hair and not miss! ¹⁷All the family groups of Israel, except Benjamin, gathered together 400,000 fighting men. Those 400,000 men had swords. Each one was a trained soldier. ¹⁸The people of Israel went up to the city of Bethel. At Bethel they asked God, “Which family group will be first to attack the family group of Benjamin?” The Lord answered, “The family group of Judah will go first.” ¹⁹The next morning the people of Israel got up. They made a camp near the city of Gibeah. ²⁰Then the army of Israel went out to fight the army of Benjamin. The army of Israel got ready for a battle against the army of Benjamin at the city of Gibeah. ²¹Then the army of Benjamin came out of the city of Gibeah. The army of Benjamin killed 22,000 men in the army of Israel during the battle that day. ^22–23The people of Israel went to the Lord. They cried until evening. They asked the Lord, “Should we go to fight the people of Benjamin again? Those people are our relatives.” The Lord answered, “Go fight against them.” The men of Israel encouraged each other. Then they again went out to fight, like they did the first day. ²⁴Then the army of Israel came near the army of Benjamin. This was the second day of the war. ²⁵The army of Benjamin came out of the city of Gibeah to attack the army of Israel on the second day. This time, the army of Benjamin killed another 18,000 men from the army of Israel. All of those men in the army of Israel were trained soldiers. ²⁶Then all the people of Israel went up to the city of Bethel. At that place they sat down and cried to the Lord. They did not eat anything all day, until evening. They also offered burnt offerings and fellowship offerings to the Lord. ²⁷The men of Israel asked the Lord a question. (In those days God’s Box of the Agreement* was there at Bethel. ²⁸Phinehas was the priest that served God there. Phinehas was the son of Eleazar. Eleazar was the son of Aaron.) The people of Israel asked, “The people of Benjamin are our relatives. Should we again go to fight against them? Or should we stop fighting?” The Lord answered, “Go. Tomorrow I will help you to defeat them.” ²⁹Then the army of Israel hid some men all around the city of Gibeah. ³⁰The army of Israel went to fight against the city of Gibeah on the third day. They got ready for battle, like they did before. ³¹The army of Benjamin came out of the city of Gibeah to fight the army of Israel. The army of Israel backed up and let the army of Benjamin chase them. In this way, the army of Benjamin was tricked into leaving the city far behind them. The army of Benjamin began to kill some of the men in the army of Israel, like they did before. They killed about 30 men from Israel. They killed some of those men in the fields, and they killed some of those men on the roads. One road led to the city of Bethel. The other road led to the city of Gibeah. ³²The men of Benjamin said, “We are winning like before!” The men of Israel were running away, but it was a trick. They wanted to lead the men of Benjamin away from their city and onto the roads. ³³So all the men ran away. They stopped at a place named Baal Tamar. Some of the men of Israel were hiding west of Gibeah. They ran from their hiding places {and attacked Gibeah}. ³⁴10,000 of Israel’s best trained soldiers attacked the city of Gibeah. The fighting was very heavy. But the army of Benjamin did not know what terrible thing was going to happen to them. ³⁵The Lord used the army of Israel and defeated the army of Benjamin. On that day, the army of Israel killed 25,100 soldiers from Benjamin. All those soldiers had been trained for war. ³⁶So the people of Benjamin saw that they were defeated. The army of Israel had moved back. They moved back because they were depending on the surprise attack. They had men hiding near Gibeah. ³⁷The men that were hiding rushed into the city of Gibeah. They spread out and killed everyone in the city with their swords. ³⁸Now the men of Israel had made a plan with the men that were hiding. The men that were hiding were supposed to send a special signal. The men were supposed to make a big cloud of smoke. ^39–41The army of Benjamin had killed about 30 Israelite soldiers. So the men of Benjamin were saying, “We are winning, like before.” But then a big cloud of smoke began to rise from the city. The men of Benjamin turned around and saw the smoke. The whole city was on fire. Then the army of Israel stopped running away. They turned around and began to fight. The men of Benjamin were afraid. Now they knew what terrible thing had happened to them. ⁴²So the army of Benjamin ran away from the army of Israel. They ran toward the desert. But they could not escape the fighting. And the men of Israel came out of the cities and killed them. ⁴³The men of Israel surrounded the men of Benjamin and began chasing them. They did not let them rest. They defeated them in the area east of Gibeah. ⁴⁴So 18,000 brave and strong fighters from the army of Benjamin were killed. ⁴⁵The army of Benjamin turned around and ran toward the desert. They ran to a place called the Rock of Rimmon. But the army of Israel killed 5,000 soldiers from Benjamin along the roads. They kept chasing the men of Benjamin. They chased them as far as a place named Gidom. The army of Israel killed 2,000 more men from Benjamin in that place. ⁴⁶On that day, 25,000 men of the army of Benjamin were killed. All those men fought bravely with their swords. ⁴⁷But 600 men from Benjamin ran into the desert. They went to the place called the Rock of Rimmon and stayed there for four months. ⁴⁸The men of Israel went back to the land of Benjamin. They killed the people in every city they came to. They also killed all the animals. They destroyed everything they could find. They burned every city they came to.

from everywhere in Israel Literally, “from Dan to Beersheba. Gilead This area was east of the Jordan River. woman servant Or, “concubine,” a slave woman who was like a wife to a man. lots Sticks, stones, or pieces of bone used like dice for making decisions. See Proverbs 16:33. trained … left hand Literally, “restrained in their right hand.” sling A strip of leather for throwing rocks. Box of the Agreement Or, “ark of the Covenant,” the box containing the flat stones with the Ten Commandments written on them and other things that proved God was with the people of Israel during their time in the Sinai desert.

Getting Wives for the Men of Benjamin

21 At Mizpah, the men of Israel made a promise. This was their promise: “Not one of us will let his daughter marry a man from the family group of Benjamin.” ²The people of Israel went to the city of Bethel. There they sat before God until evening. They cried loudly as they sat there. ³They said to God, “Lord, you are the God of the people of Israel. Why has this terrible thing happened to us? Why has one family group of the people of Israel been taken away?” ⁴Early the next day, the people of Israel built an altar.* They put burnt offerings and fellowship offerings to God on that altar. ⁵Then the people of Israel said, “Are there any family groups of Israel that did not come here to meet with us before the Lord?” They asked this question because they had made a serious promise. They had promised that anyone that did not come together with the other family groups at the city of Mizpah would be killed. ⁶Then the people of Israel felt sorry for their relatives, the people of Benjamin. They said, “Today, one family group has been separated from Israel. ⁷We made a promise before the Lord. We promised not to allow our daughters to marry a man from Benjamin. How can we make sure that the men of Benjamin will have wives? ⁸Then the people of Israel asked, “Which one of the family groups of Israel did not come here to Mizpah? We have come together before the Lord. Surely one family was not here!” Then they found that no one from the city of Jabesh Gilead had met together with the other people of Israel. ⁹The people of Israel counted everyone to see who was there and who was not. They found that no one from Jabesh Gilead was there. ¹⁰So the people of Israel sent 12,000 soldiers to the city of Jabesh Gilead. They told those soldiers, “Go to Jabesh Gilead, and use your swords to kill every person that lives there, even the women and children. ¹¹You must do this! You must kill every man in Jabesh Gilead. Also kill every woman that has had sexual relations with a man. But do not kill any woman that has never had sex with a man.” So the soldiers did those things.* ¹²Those 12,000 soldiers found 400 young women in the city of Jabesh Gilead, that had never had sex with a man. The soldiers brought those women to the camp at Shiloh. Shiloh is in the land of Canaan. ¹³Then the people of Israel sent a message to the men of Benjamin. They offered to make peace with the men of Benjamin. The men of Benjamin were at the place named the Rock of Rimmon. ¹⁴So the men of Benjamin came back to Israel. The people of Israel gave them the women from Jabesh Gilead that they had not killed. But there were not enough women for all the men of Benjamin. ¹⁵The people of Israel felt sorry for the men of Benjamin. They felt sorry for them because the Lord had separated them from the other family groups of Israel. ¹⁶The elders (leaders) of the people of Israel said, “The women of the family group of Benjamin have been killed. Where can we get wives for the men of Benjamin that are still alive? ¹⁷The men of Benjamin that are still alive must have children to continue their families. This must be done so that a family group in Israel will not die out! ¹⁸But we cannot allow our daughters to marry the men of Benjamin. We have made this promise: ‘Bad things will happen to anyone that gives a wife to a man of Benjamin.’ ¹⁹We have an idea! This is the time for the festival of the Lord at the city of Shiloh. This festival is celebrated every year there.” (The city of Shiloh is north of the city of Bethel, and east of the road that goes from Bethel to Shechem. And it is also to the south of the city of Lebonah.) ²⁰So the elders (leaders) told the men of Benjamin about their idea. They said, “Go and hide in the vineyards. ²¹Watch for the time during the festival when the young women from Shiloh come out to join the dancing. Then run out from where you are hiding in the vineyards. Each of you should take one of the young women from the city of Shiloh. Take those young women to the land of Benjamin and marry them. ²²The fathers or brothers of those young women will come and complain to us. But we will say, ‘Be kind to the men of Benjamin. Let them marry those women. They took women from you, but they did not make war against you. They took the women, so you didn’t break your promise to God. You promised that you would not give them women to marry—you did not give the women to the men of Benjamin, they took the women from you! So you did not break your promise.’” ²³So that is what the men of the family group of Benjamin did. While the young women were dancing, each man caught one of them. They took those young women away and married them. They went back to their land. The men of Benjamin built cities again in that land, and they lived in those cities. ²⁴Then the people of Israel went home. They went to their own land and family group. ²⁵In those days the people of Israel did not have a king. So everyone did whatever he thought was right.

altar(s) A stone table used for burning sacrifices that were offered as gifts to God. But do not kill … those things This is in the ancient Greek translation, but not in the Hebrew.