And this is the thing that ye shall do, Ye shall utterly destroy every male, and every woman that hath lain by man.
Judges 21:11 stands in the closing chapters of Judges, chapters 17 through 21, which form a pitiful record of backsliding followed by disgrace and punishment. That closing account centers on the crime at Gibeah and on the identification of the whole tribe of Benjamin with those responsible for it. The command to destroy belongs to that sequence of apostasy and its consequent judgment.
It illustrates putting conventional hospitality above female virtue and putting clannish loyalty to a tribe above the rendering of justice. That preference of custom and kin over righteousness defines the moral failure displayed in the narrative.
That same sin is still seen today, and for it there is never any excuse.
Judges 21:11 stands in the closing chapters of Judges, chapters 17 through 21, which form a pitiful record of backsliding followed by disgrace and punishment. That closing account centers on the crime at Gibeah and on the identification of the whole tribe of Benjamin with those responsible for it. The command to destroy belongs to that sequence of apostasy and its consequent judgment.
It illustrates putting conventional hospitality above female virtue and putting clannish loyalty to a tribe above the rendering of justice. That preference of custom and kin over righteousness defines the moral failure displayed in the narrative.
That same sin is still seen today, and for it there is never any excuse.