And the people repented them for Benjamin, because that the LORD had made a breach in the tribes of Israel.
The closing chapters of Judges, chapters 17 through 21, record events that occurred in the early part of the history of the judges though they are placed at the end of the book, whose real story ends with chapter 16. The verse belongs to the account of the crime at Gibeah, with which the whole tribe of Benjamin identified itself. It stands in the closing pitiful record of Israel's backsliding and transgression and constant lapsing into idolatry, of its troubled condition, and of its consequent disgrace and punishment.
That record exposes inverted values that set conventional hospitality higher than female virtue and clannish loyalty to a tribe higher than the rendering of justice. It shows a pattern of tardy repentance met with only partial deliverance through God's mercy and goodness. The same wrong is seen today, yet there is never any excuse for sin, and the record does not show that backsliding can be done with impunity.
The closing chapters of Judges, chapters 17 through 21, record events that occurred in the early part of the history of the judges though they are placed at the end of the book, whose real story ends with chapter 16. The verse belongs to the account of the crime at Gibeah, with which the whole tribe of Benjamin identified itself. It stands in the closing pitiful record of Israel's backsliding and transgression and constant lapsing into idolatry, of its troubled condition, and of its consequent disgrace and punishment.
That record exposes inverted values that set conventional hospitality higher than female virtue and clannish loyalty to a tribe higher than the rendering of justice. It shows a pattern of tardy repentance met with only partial deliverance through God's mercy and goodness. The same wrong is seen today, yet there is never any excuse for sin, and the record does not show that backsliding can be done with impunity.