Judges 21:16, commentary and pictures

The elders' question is how to provide wives for the Benjaminites who remained, because the women of Benjamin had been destroyed. It belongs to the account of the crime at Gibeah and the resulting conflict in which the tribe of Benjamin was nearly destroyed. It stands in the book's closing section in chapters 17-21, particularly chapters 20-21, completing the span from chapter 1 through chapter 21, and the final chapters show how low Israel had fallen before Samuel's call.

Although placed at the end, the events in chapters 17-21 occurred in the early part of the history of the judges, while the main story of the book ends with chapter 16. Judges is named for the leaders God raised up from time to time whose deeds are recorded, generally called to service in a great national crisis when the nation had gone into captivity and therefore called saviours, the last of whom was Samuel, and the book was written about the time there was a king in Israel. In a plan for reading Judges 1 through 21, this passage falls in the portion assigned for Tuesday April 5. The verse belongs to Israel's troubled period under the judges, a time marked by unsatisfactory leadership, subjection to heathen peoples, devastation, delayed repentance, and only partial deliverance.

The book records Israel's fearful backsliding and the disgrace and punishment that follow it, alongside God's great mercy, goodness, and deliverance. The verse exposes a sinful pattern in which conventional hospitality is placed higher than female virtue and loyalty to a tribe is placed higher than rendering justice. As part of Israel's record of backsliding, the verse gives no license to backslide with impunity, shows a sinful pattern still seen today, and leaves never any excuse for sin.