Judges 20:1
Then all the children of Israel went out, and the congregation was gathered together as one man, from Dan even to Beer-sheba, with the land of Gilead, unto the LORD in Mizpeh. Then all the children of Israel went out, and the congregation was gathered together as one man, from Dan even to Beer-sheba, with the land of Gilead, unto the LORD in Mizpeh.
The verse stands in the closing chapters of Judges as part of one of the book's two concluding episodes. Although recorded at the end of the book, the events it describes occurred early in the period of the judges. That was a fearfully checkered time in the history of Israel, before the call of Samuel the prophet, when Israel had fallen into a low state.
The episode concerns the crime at Gibeah and Benjamin's identification with its people. It centers on the murder of the Levite's concubine at Gibeah. The verse belongs to a record of Israel's backsliding and of the disgrace and punishment that followed. That crime nearly led to the extermination of the tribe of Benjamin. Benjamin was thus left least and nearly extinct, and God in divine wisdom later chose Israel's king from that weak tribe to remove all grounds of jealousy among the other tribes.