No King in Israel (47)

Can you think of any current law so unjust that you would be willing to give your life to prevent its enforcement?

ICE agents killed two Minneapolis protesters attempting to prevent the deportation of foreign illegals in separate incidents recently, resulting in a level of public controversy almost impossible to miss. I suppose it’s conceivable one or both of the deceased was committed to his or her cause to the point of martyrdom, but my uneducated guess is that the protestors simply did not believe that, even when personally endangered, enforcement agents were prepared to open fire on American citizens in the charged atmosphere of post-George Floyd Minneapolis. Now they know.

The tribe of Benjamin had no delusions about the world they lived in, as we will see in our continuing study of Judges 20. They had 400,000 Israelites on their doorstep, so they knew the other twelve tribes were serious about enforcing the Law of Moses on the criminals in Gibeah. Knew they were wildly outnumbered and would probably die for their convictions. Knew they would never give up their kin, no matter what they had done.

They were serious. Serious enough to start Israel’s first civil war.

III. Two Historical Vignettes from the Period (continued)

b. Benjamin becomes Sodom (continued)

Judges 20:12-17 — A Perfectly Reasonable Request

“And the tribes of Israel sent men through all the tribe of Benjamin, saying, ‘What evil is this that has taken place among you? Now therefore give up the men, the worthless fellows in Gibeah, that we may put them to death and purge evil from Israel.’ But the Benjaminites would not listen to the voice of their brothers, the people of Israel. Then the people of Benjamin came together out of the cities to Gibeah to go out to battle against the people of Israel. And the people of Benjamin mustered out of their cities on that day 26,000 men who drew the sword, besides the inhabitants of Gibeah, who mustered 700 chosen men. Among all these were 700 chosen men who were left-handed; every one could sling a stone at a hair and not miss. And the men of Israel, apart from Benjamin, mustered 400,000 men who drew the sword; all these were men of war.”

A Comment Miscellany

Several things worth noting in these six verses:

• Israel did not initially escalate. Sure, they gathered on Benjamin’s doorstep, an intimidating prospect for anyone. But their initial request was entirely reasonable: give up the gang rapists and murderers, and we’ll execute them and go away. If only Benjamin had complied at this first stage, things would have ended far better for them. Siding with murderers and deviants was an explicit rejection of the Law of Moses concerning murder. The tribe of Benjamin was not just taking sides against Israel but against Israel’s God.
• Benjamin escalated. In addition to refusing to hear the voice of their nation, Benjamin now came together to go out to battle. These men had a very good idea what refusing to give up murderers might cost them. Benjamin’s position is inexplicable. They must have known there was no question of Gibeah’s guilt (the requisite two witnesses were surely available to testify to the events of that fateful night) and they could see that Israel was fully prepared to enforce the law. Yet on they went. Jacob once prophesied that Benjamin was “a ravenous wolf”. It looks like they set out to prove him right.
• Benjamin was ridiculously outnumbered. Benjamin mustered first, and Israel followed. The result must have seemed foreordained: it was 400,000 armed men against 26,700, a ratio of something close to 15:1. Israel had so many soldiers it was not even feasible to field them all at once.*
• Hyperbole. I’m prepared to believe there were 700 Benjamites who could literally sling a stone at a hair and not miss, but I suspect this is hyperbole, a device not unknown in scripture. The writer is telling us these warriors were unusually accurate.

Nepotism and Tribalism

Before we go too much further down the road here, we should probably stop and examine Benjamin’s motivation in a little more detail and attempt to take a lesson or two from these pages for ourselves. The tribe of Benjamin was not protesting an unjust law. Had the same appalling crime been committed on a Benjamite and his concubine traveling through Judah, we can be pretty sure Benjamin would have been lined up to go to war on their brother’s behalf. I very much doubt the issue with giving up the men from Gibeah to be executed for their crimes had anything to do with injustice. I also doubt all Benjamites were as depraved as those in Gibeah. They did, however, have a very serious problem with unreasoning family loyalty; it had become their own little god.

Nepotism and tribalism are among the most obvious recurring themes in the book of Samuel. They might not rate the subtitle of a commentary, but they are there all the same, threading their way through the stories of Samuel, Saul and David, chronicling the perils of family ties that are just a wee bit too tight, and their potentially injurious effects on the people of God. Once you see it, you can’t stop seeing it.

The Blessings of Family

Hey, families are wonderful. They are one of God’s many ways of showing his love to us. “Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh,” says the Law. “Children are a heritage from the Lord” and “A brother is born for adversity,” say scripture’s poetry and wisdom literature. “A son honors his father,” say the Prophets. God “settles the lonely in families,” notes the psalmist. All these are great things, and give us reason to be thankful for our blessings. That said, unchecked family loyalty can cause compromise, favoritism, rivalry, jealousy and division among God’s people.

The first hard evidence of over-the-top Benjamite tribalism is right here in Judges. Sadly, the tribe did not appear to learn anything significant about the evils of unchecked family loyalty from the experiences of these chapters. Preferring family over justice, equity and the word of God continued unabated into the later historical books of the OT.

Saul and Nepotism

Israel’s first king, Saul, was a Benjamite. He filled his administration with family members, gave his relatives fields and vineyards, and made them commanders of thousands and commanders of hundreds. He made his hometown of Gibeah his capital, despite the fact that his tribe was the smallest in Israel. (We are about to discover why that was.) Almost any other choice would have been more politically savvy and conducive to national unity.

Saul’s desire to pass on his kingdom to his son Jonathan drove him to try repeatedly and unsuccessfully to murder God’s anointed, and to strike out murderously at anyone who supported David. In one appalling case, he had eighty-five members of the priesthood murdered at Nob for supposedly aiding David, then put the entire city to the sword, right down to the last donkey and sheep.

More Ill-Fated Loyalty

Even death does little to mitigate the effects of an unrestrained tribal spirit. Saul’s cousin Abner commanded his army. After Saul was killed in battle, Abner split the united kingdom by crowning Saul’s son Ish-bosheth king over Israel in defiance of God’s anointing of David. For seven years Abner’s influence turned Israelite against Israelite in the name of family, and many on both sides died because of it. Other tribes followed Ish-bosheth, but Benjamin was always the driving force keeping Israel from unity.

The acrimony between Benjamin and Judah went on for years. Almost every thorn in David’s side during his reign turns out to have been some unhappy relative of Saul, blaming David for his death, and most probably for their own loss of power and influence in Israel. Disgruntled Benjamites turn up everywhere. Shimei cursed David and threw rocks at him when he was at his lowest ebb. (If this seems a comparatively small thing, note that there were about 1,000 fellow Benjamites who agreed with him, and later came to apologize to David in fear of their lives.) Sheba son of Bichri actually started a rebellion. That ended badly.

One for the Ages

To be fair to Benjamin, David was almost as bad as Saul in promoting relatives to positions in which they caused problems. In fact, nepotism and tribalism are issues unlikely to ever go away. These stories were written down not just for later generations of Israelites to learn from, but for us too. Over the years, I have seen far too many disputes and injustices in local churches that could be traced right back to an abiding spirit of misplaced family loyalty.

That didn’t work out well for Benjamin. It’s unlikely to please the Lord much better today even if we manage to maintain a lower body count.

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* This is yet another argument in favor of an early date for the culling of Benjamin. At the end of the period of the judges, there were no blacksmiths in Israel. The Philistines had oppressed Israel to the point where its people were entirely without swords. To go from 400,000+ weapons of war to two in a short period would be a level of confiscation efficiency that has proved well beyond the Canadian government. It’s far more logical to accept an early date for these three chapters.