Today, I am reading and commenting on Judges 20-21.
First, I want to comment on the fact that the passage tells us that the Israelites “assembled before the Lord in Mizpah.” In fact, on multiple occasions throughout the book of Judges it says that the Israelites assembled at, or in, Mizpah. For example, in Judges 10, in the account of Jephthah, it describes them as doing so. However, on that occasion, Mizpah was clearly in the area east of the Jordan River (in fact, at one point later in the story of Jephthah it refers to Mizpah of Gilead). While it is possible that the Mizpah referred to here was the same Mizpah, it seems more likely the Israelites assembled in the Mizpah which was in the territory of Bethlehem. Considering that the Hebrew word transliterated as “mizpah” means “watchtower”, or “outlook”, I wonder if any of these were proper noun place names when the Israelites first gathered there.
So, the Israelites gathered, but the Benjamites did not join them, although the passage makes clear that the Benjamites were aware of the assembly. Further, when the rest of Israel asked the Benjamites to bring these men to justice, the Benjamites rejected their request and mustered to defend the city of Gibeah. We see here, and in the account of Jephthah which I mentioned earlier, that the tribes of Israel had been losing their unity. So, while this event was devastating for the tribe of Benjamin, it did lead to the Israelites seeing themselves as one people once again. At the end of the war, the Israelites realized that they had over reacted in the heat of battle and had almost wiped out the tribe of Benjamin. They acted to preserve Benjamin. Before this year, I never connected this account with the fact that Israel’s first king, King Saul, was a Benjamite, and from the very town which precipitated this war. It is likely that the memory of this event, passed down through the generations, which caused King Saul, after the victory which established his authority, to refuse to kill those Israelites who had rejected him as king before that.
I use the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.