Today, I am reading and commenting on  Judges 20-21.

It is not clear to me from the passage if the tribe of Benjamin was invited to to conclave intended to address what had happened at Gibeah, and chose not to attend.  Or, if they had not been invited and only heard about the army of the rest of Israel gathering because of this incident.  My inclination is that it was the former, but that part of their decision to not attend was fear that they would be attacked by the rest while unable to defend themselves.  In any case, the tribe of Benjamin took the stance that the rest of Israel had no right to enforce their laws on the people of Gibeah, and were willing to fight to enforce this.  Once again I find myself getting lost in the weeds.

The important thing is that rather than recognizing that what happened at Gibeah was merely the logical conclusion of the idolatry going on in much of the rest of Israel and repenting of their sins, the Israelites merely chose to address this incident where people had gone too far.  I am not saying that the attack on Gibeah should not have happened.  What I am saying is that the people of Israel should have first confessed their own sins and sought out God’s will for how they could make their own sins right.  Then, once they had addressed their own sins, they could have brought retribution on Gibeah for its sins.  Or, perhaps, God would have shown them another, better, way to bring the men of Gibeah to justice.

I use the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.