For the people were numbered, and, behold, there were none of the inhabitants of Jabesh-gilead there.
A numbering of the assembled host revealed that not one person from Jabesh-gilead was among those present. That numbering belonged to the history of the outrage committed at Gibeah and the national crisis that followed it, when the whole tribe of Benjamin made common cause with the men of Gibeah. It stands within chapters 17 through 21, which relate incidents from the early portion of the judges era, whereas the continuous main narrative of the book closes with chapter 16.
These closing chapters give the record of Israel sunk to a low spiritual state in the last part of the judges period, a state of apostasy followed by shame and retribution. In that state the claims of customary hospitality were placed above the safeguarding of womanly virtue, and blind devotion to tribal kin was placed above the duty to execute justice. The same moral perversion is still witnessed at the present time, yet no circumstances can ever furnish an excuse for sin.
A numbering of the assembled host revealed that not one person from Jabesh-gilead was among those present. That numbering belonged to the history of the outrage committed at Gibeah and the national crisis that followed it, when the whole tribe of Benjamin made common cause with the men of Gibeah. It stands within chapters 17 through 21, which relate incidents from the early portion of the judges era, whereas the continuous main narrative of the book closes with chapter 16.
These closing chapters give the record of Israel sunk to a low spiritual state in the last part of the judges period, a state of apostasy followed by shame and retribution. In that state the claims of customary hospitality were placed above the safeguarding of womanly virtue, and blind devotion to tribal kin was placed above the duty to execute justice. The same moral perversion is still witnessed at the present time, yet no circumstances can ever furnish an excuse for sin.