Take your Bibles with me tonight and turn to Judges 20. We are going to look at Judges 20-21 tonight, the last story in the book of Judges. In many ways, it's a continuation of the story we looked at last week.
There are almost 75 verses in this story, so we aren't going to read the whole thing. However, I do want to read the first 7 verses of chapter 20, and we'll read other verses as we go through it.
[!bible] Judges 20:1-7 - KJV
- Then all the children of Israel went out, and the congregation was gathered together as one man, from Dan even to Beersheba, with the land of Gilead, unto the LORD in Mizpeh.
- And the chief of all the people, even of all the tribes of Israel, presented themselves in the assembly of the people of God, four hundred thousand footmen that drew sword.
- (Now the children of Benjamin heard that the children of Israel were gone up to Mizpeh.) Then said the children of Israel, Tell us, how was this wickedness?
- And the Levite, the husband of the woman that was slain, answered and said, I came into Gibeah that belongeth to Benjamin, I and my concubine, to lodge.
- And the men of Gibeah rose against me, and beset the house round about upon me by night, and thought to have slain me: and my concubine have they forced, that she is dead.
- And I took my concubine, and cut her in pieces, and sent her throughout all the country of the inheritance of Israel: for they have committed lewdness and folly in Israel.
- Behold, ye are all children of Israel; give here your advice and counsel.
When I was a kid, up until 5th grade, I lived in Leesburg, VA. Northern VA is kind of the headquarters for the Civil War. Every day, on my way to school, I would pass the Manassas battlefield, where the first and second battles of Bull Run were fought.
The Civil War in America resulted in over a million casualties. There were over 600,000 soldier deaths in the war.
Imagine that. That was 600,000 Americans. And who killed them? Was it some foreign power? Was it some terrorists from halfway around the world? No. It was their fellow Americans.
Virginians fought against Virginians. Tennesseans fought against Tennesseans. Here in our area, Grant got his army together, but also here in our area, a bunch of local Confederates caused trouble.
What causes that kind of fighting? What causes people to fight with their countrymen?
Or, let's get closer to home: What causes a church to start fighting amongst itself? What causes a family to fight with each other?
Proverbs 13:10 says:
[!bible] Proverbs 13:10 - KJV 10. Only by pride cometh contention: but with the well-advised is wisdom.
The book of James identifies another source of contention and infighting:
[!bible] James 3:16 - KJV 16. For where envying and strife is, there is confusion and every evil work.
and then says
[!bible] James 4:1 - KJV
- From whence come wars and fightings among you? come they not hence, even of your lusts that war in your members?
Whether we like it or not, contention is a part of life. But we as Christians are called to live above contention.
[!bible] James 3:18 - KJV 18. And the fruit of righteousness is sown in peace of them that make peace.
We follow a Lord who is known as the Prince of Peace.
And we are called to be, according to the Lord's "Sermon on the Mount" "peacemakers"
[!bible] Matthew 5:9 - KJV 9. Blessed are the peacemakers: for they shall be called the children of God.
Israel had their own civil war. It was extremely bloody. It was completely avoidable. It's the story we are looking at today.
At the end of this story:
There are just bodies and brokenness everywhere, and it was completely avoidable.
As we look at the story, I want to identify five avoidable problems that led to this destruction, and hopefully, we can learn from this and avoid our own civil wars.
The first avoidable problem we see in this story is...
Remember from last week - the Levite who went to fetch his concubine?
Well, this chapter begins with Israel's response to that odd parcel. They all gathered together in Mizpeh.
This is an important city. It's the place where Jacob and Laban had their little confrontation. It's also right in the middle of Benjamite territory.
So, they gather there and the Levite has all of their attention and he tells them why he called them.
He tells them the story. But he makes a few changes to it to make it a little juicier and to make himself look better.
First, he says that the men of Gibeah rose against me. It wasn't all the men of Gibeah. We are going to learn later that Gibeah had 700 left-handed sharpshooters. Gibeah was the capital of Israel under Saul. This is not a small town. It was a small group of men in Gibeah that tried to abuse the Levite.
So he's generalizing and exaggerating.
A second error comes when he says they "thought to have slain me." The Levite doesn't know what these men were thinking, and nothing in the story gives you the idea they were trying to kill him. They were trying to rape him, but they weren't trying to kill him.
So again, he's exaggerating.
A third error comes when he conveniently omits the fact that he forced his concubine out into the street to save his own skin. He's not going to tell that part of the story because it doesn't make him look good.
Proverbs 26:20 says:
[!bible] Proverbs 26:20 - KJV 20. Where no wood is, there the fire goeth out: so where there is no talebearer, the strife ceaseth.
This Levite man, victim though he was, was exaggerating and trying to stir up strife against Gibeah and the tribe of Benjamin. He was, by not being careful, "bearing false witness" against his neighbor.
Let me remind you of an inconvenient truth. Just because we are wronged, it doesn't make it right to exaggerate against those who have hurt us. We have to be truthful.
When God gave the law to Israel, there was an emphasis on carefulness of testimony; there were a lot of protections for the accused. In fact, it seems like one of the principles in the law is that it is better for the guilty to go unpunished than for the innocent to be falsely punished.
So just be careful in the way you talk about those you have disagreements with. Guard your tongue.
This Levite didn't do that. He seems like he was trying to pour gasoline on this situation.
And that leads to the second avoidable problem in this conflict...
In verses 12-18, what happens is the Israelites are disgusted by what they hear. This story shocks them. They determine that they are going to do something about it.
That was the right thing. Something did have to be done about this.
Deuteronomy 13 lays out what Israel is supposed to do in this situation, and it includes executing the men and if the city harbors them, destroying the city.
So they were right in their response. Look at verse 13:
[!bible] [Judges 20:13 - KJV](https://bible-api.com/Jud
ges+20:13?translation=kjv)
- Now therefore deliver us the men, the children of Belial, which are in Gibeah, that we may put them to death, and put away evil from Israel...
That's the right response. That's the biblical response. Notice how targeted this is. They just want these men delivered. They aren't going after the whole city of Gibeah, just the "children of Belial."
This is where this chapter and story should have ended. But look at the rest of the verse:
[!bible] Judges 20:13 - KJV ...But the children of Benjamin would not hearken to the voice of their brethren the children of Israel:
The Benjamites wouldn't listen. They wouldn't deliver these men. Rather than dealing with this, they closed ranks. They said, "these guys are coming after my family, my people."
And instead of delivering up these men - who were legitimate criminals - they got an army together. Verses 14-17 tell us they got together 26,700 men while the rest of Israel had an army of 400,000 men.
So these Benjamites would rather fight a battle where they were outnumbered nearly 20 to 1 than deal with the sin that was in their camp and deliver these perverts up for justice.
Do you know what they did? They did what we all are tempted to do: they made an idol of their people. Made an idol of their group.
When we say my people, right or wrong, that is what we are doing.
It was blind brotherhood, and it ended up costing them almost their whole tribe.
Let's move on to the third totally avoidable problem in this story: there is the problem of selective storytelling and the problem of blind brotherhood. The third avoidable problem was the problem of:
In this story, the children of Israel made some rather rash decisions. They swore some oaths they shouldn't have.
One of the oaths they swore was in this chapter in verses 8-9. They swore that they wouldn't go home until this problem was taken care of. They basically said, we'll fight this with our lives if we have to.
The second oath they swore, which we see in chapter 21, is that none of their daughters would marry men of Benjamin.
Basically, they were emotional. They were disgusted, and rightly so. They were dealing with a legitimate problem. It was a legitimate problem that these men had acted the way they did in Israel. They needed to be dealt with.
It was a legitimate problem that Benjamin as a tribe decided not to submit these men to punishment but instead escalated this thing by calling up an army.
Those were legitimate problems. But that didn't mean that necessarily the answer was war.
But instead, they let their emotions carry them, they made a bunch of oaths, and they rushed headlong into war.
It's interesting. In verse 18, they go to God and ask Him, "Which tribe should we send in first?"
(Benjamin was in the hill country, and so there was a natural chokepoint and only one or two tribes could go in at a time.)
They said, "Which tribe should we send in first?" But we never see them asking, "Should we go to battle?"
So they go to battle, and they get killed. They go in on day one and lose 22,000 men. No casualties are recorded for Benjamin. That's a whoopin'.
So they go to God again; this time, they ask the question they should have asked the first time: "Should we go up to battle against Benjamin?" And God says, "Go."
But they go out the next day, and again, they get whooped. This time, there are 18,000 casualties for Israel. Again, zero recorded for Benjamin.
At this point, they have lost 40,000 men. They have lost all of Coles County at this point. That's 40,000 widows. That's 40,000 fatherless children. This is awful.
And guess what, God told them to go, and they still lost. What do we make of that? Well, just because something is God's will doesn't mean it's going to be easy.
But the main point I'm trying to make is that they rushed into this. They made some hasty decisions. Emotional decisions that cost them far more later on.
My pastor in Tennessee, Pastor Scallions, used to tell me all the time:
"Most of the big problems in the ministry come about when we try to hastily solve smaller problems."
Or he would say:
"You cause more problems trying to solve problems than anything else. Be careful and move slow."
This is so true. So often in our conflicts, it isn't the thing itself that causes the problem, but our overreaction to the thing.
We have to remember James 1:20:
[!bible] James 1:20 - KJV 20. For the wrath of man worketh not the righteousness of God.
Parents, this is a good word. You need to deal with things in your home. You need to deal with your kids. But you can cause more problems by overreacting.
You do not kill mosquitoes with nuclear bombs. You use a scalpel for surgery, not a broadaxe.
You cannot overreact to things without causing a lot of damage. And by the way, the Israelites caused a lot of damage.
So they lose two days in a row. Before they go in on the third day, they fast, they pray, and they bring offerings to God. God tells them to go in and that they would win.
They change their tactics. They go against Gibeah with a smaller army to draw them out and then come into the abandoned city with a bigger army. It works. This time, they are victorious.
Yay! We can go home and put this behind us. Right? Right??
Look at the last verse in chapter 20:
[!bible] Judges 20:48 - KJV 48. And the men of Israel turned again upon the children of Benjamin, and smote them with the edge of the sword, as well the men of every city, as the beast, and all that came to hand: also they set on fire all the cities that they came to.
Do you know what the Israelites did after their victory? They killed everyone.
And that brings me to the fourth totally avoidable problem. We've seen:
But now we have...
They killed everyone. Old ladies. Old men. Little kids. Pets. Oxen. They slaughtered. They burned the cities to the ground.
This isn't justice. This is genocide. They are mad for their fallen comrades. They are angry at their losses. They are in a frenzy of blood lust.
Now, what was just? What was just was for the men who committed the crime to be killed. Maybe the soldiers who went into battle. Maybe. But probably not.
This is just ugly vengeance.
If they could have, they would have killed every soul in Benjamin. But a small group of men, 600 of them, ran away to a place called rock Rimmon.
(Now, little side note, when I was a kid, I used to hang out at a place called rock Rimmon. I always wondered where that name came from. Apparently, someone in Manchester, NH was reading their Bible when they went to naming things.)
So these 600 men hide out at rock Rimmon for four months. They are the last remaining members of their tribe.
I did some math and some research. Typically, 8-15% of a population are fighting-aged men. If the Benjamites had an army of 26,700, that means they had a population of around 178,000 people.
So get this. Of 178,000 people, there are 600 left. Over 99% of the population of Benjamin was killed.
Why? Because someone decided to juice up his story. Because a tribe decided to cover for the guilty within it. Because a group made some rash decisions. All of this led to a vengeful frenzy.
It's ugly stuff, isn't it?
But we aren't done. There is one more avoidable problem we see in this story, and that is the problem of:
We've seen selective storytelling, blind brotherhood, rash reactions, frenzied fury, and now prideful persistence.
Remember the vows they made in chapter 20? Well, those come into play in chapter 21.
Look at verses 1-3:
[!bible] Judges 21:1-3 - KJV
- Now the men of Israel had sworn in Mizpeh, saying, There shall not any of us give his daughter unto Benjamin to wife.
- And the people came to the house of God, and abode there till even before God, and lifted up their voices, and
wept sore;
- And said, O LORD God of Israel, why is this come to pass in Israel, that there should be to day one tribe lacking in Israel?
A few things to note here.
They are suddenly coming to their senses, realizing that what transpired in chapter 20 was an awful thing. But notice they ask God, "Why did this come to pass in Israel?"
Like it is God who did it. It happened because of you! God didn't massacre Benjamin - you did.
But they are realizing now that the whole tribe is going to pass off the scene if something isn't done. There are 600 survivors in Benjamin, the guys who survived at rock Rimmon, but they are 600 guys. Basic biology fact: You can't carry on a civilization with just guys.
And that is compounded by another problem: they swore an oath saying that they wouldn't give their daughters to any Benjamite men.
They opened their mouths and stuck their feet in them. They made promises they shouldn't have made.
So what should they have done? They should have repented. If you make a sinful promise or a sinful oath, it doesn't make that sinful act righteous.
In fact, the Law had a provision for this very thing. Leviticus 5:4-6. They had to confess their fault and offer a trespass offering, and they were free from their oath.
That's what they should have done. But that is not what they did.
There was one city in Israel that didn't answer the summons to go fight: Jabeshgilead. So they went and destroyed Jabeshgilead and killed all the people there except for 400 virgin girls.
Think about this: they slew a whole city. Probably thousands of innocent people.
Bob Jones Sr. used to say:
"It's never right to do wrong to do right."
They are trying to fix the problem of one sinful action with another. When what they need to do is to be humble and admit their sin.
But they still have a problem. They have 600 surviving Benjamite men, the guys who hid out at rock Rimmon. But they only found 400 women to be their wives.
So they are short 200 women. So the leaders put their heads together, and this is literally what they come up with. They have a religious festival where the young ladies come out and dance together. It happens every year.
So they tell these 200 men of Benjamin to go hide out at this festival, and then when the dancing starts, each of you take a girl and run for the hills. They basically sanction the kidnapping of 200 innocent girls.
Imagine what the family life in Benjamin must have been like. Your dad was a grizzled war veteran with PTSD. Your mom either:
Brilliant plan! And all of this is for what? To keep people from admitting they were wrong and spoke rashly.
A pastor friend of mine recently told me something I found interesting. He said, "People are proud, and sometimes they do things their pride won't let them take back."
That's sad. Maybe that is what Proverbs meant when it said, "Only by pride cometh contention."
Proverbs 6:16-19 says:
[!bible] Proverbs 6:16-19 - KJV 16. These six things doth the LORD hate: yea, seven are an abomination unto him: 17. A proud look, a lying tongue, and hands that shed innocent blood, 18. An heart that deviseth wicked imaginations, feet that be swift in running to mischief, 19. A false witness that speaketh lies, and he that soweth discord among brethren.
All of those things are at play in this story. All of them.
And what is the aftermath? Pain. Suffering. Needless death. A lot of cut-off dreams. A hurting people.
So I've given you five avoidable problems in contention:
What's the answer to this? Let me give you six statements, and then I'll be done:
First, we have to realize that God's work is done in peace by them that make peace. When we are on the warpath, full of strife, God's not in that.
Second, we have to realize that God has called us to be people of the truth. Even if we have been wronged, it's wrong of us to twist the truth to make our enemies look worse than they are.
Third, we need to slow down. We need to get counsel (without turning to gossip). We need to sleep on it. Maybe give it a week or two. We'll avoid a lot of pain that way.
[!bible] Proverbs 14:29 - KJV 29. He that is slow to wrath is of great understanding: but he that is hasty of spirit exalteth folly.
[!bible] James 1:19 - KJV 19. Wherefore, my beloved brethren, let every man be swift to hear, slow to speak, slow to wrath:
Fourth, we need to be wary of overreaction. Remember Proverbs 25:28:
[!bible] Proverbs 25:28 - KJV 28. He that hath no rule over his own spirit is like a city that is broken down and without walls.
Finally, if we say or do something foolish to another, we need to have the humility to admit our mistake and make it right. A little humility is a small price for a restored relationship.
[!bible] Matthew 5:22-25 - KJV 22. But I say unto you, That whosoever is angry with his brother without a cause shall be in danger of the judgment: and whosoever shall say to his brother, Raca, shall be in danger of the council: but whosoever shall say, Thou fool, shall be in danger of hell fire. 23. Therefore if thou bring thy gift to the altar, and there rememberest that thy brother hath ought against thee; 24. Leave there thy gift before the altar, and go thy way; first be reconciled to thy brother, and then come and offer thy gift. 25. Agree with thine adversary quickly...
What a story. I hope you learn these lessons. God doesn't want His people fighting with each other.
Don't let your church, your family, your group of friends be destroyed by a civil war because you didn't deal with these avoidable problems.
Let's stand and pray.