King James Version · The judges
Judges 21
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Now the men of Israel had in , saying, There shall not any of us give his daughter unto to wife. And the people came to the house of , and abode there till even before , and lifted up their voices, and wept sore; And said, O of Israel, why is this come to pass in Israel, that there should be to day one tribe lacking in Israel? And it came to pass on the morrow, that the people rose early, and built there an , and offered burnt offerings and . And the said, Who is there among all the tribes of Israel that came not up with unto ? For they had made a great concerning him that came not up to to , saying, He shall surely be put to . And the them for their brother, and said, There is one tribe Israel this day. How shall we do for wives for them that , seeing we have by that we will not give them of our daughters to wives? And they said, What one is there of the tribes of Israel that came not up to to ? And, behold, there came none to the camp from to . 9For the people were numbered, and, behold, there were none of the inhabitants of there. And sent thither twelve thousand men of the valiantest, and commanded them, saying, Go and smite the inhabitants of with the edge of , with the women and the children. And this is the thing that ye shall do, Ye shall every male, and every woman that hath lain by man. And they found among the inhabitants of four hundred young virgins, that had known no man by lying with any male: and they brought them unto the camp to , which is in the land of . And the whole sent some to speak to the children of that were in , and to call peaceably unto them. And came again at that time; and they gave them wives which they had alive of the women of : and yet so they sufficed them not. And the people them for , because that had made a breach in the tribes of Israel. 16Then the of said, How shall we do for wives for them that , seeing the women are destroyed out of ? And they said, There must be an for them that be escaped of , that a tribe be not destroyed out of Israel. Howbeit we may not give them wives of our daughters: for the have , saying, be he that giveth a wife to . Then they said, Behold, there is a feast of in yearly in a place which is on the north side of Beth–el, on the east side of the highway that goeth up from Beth–el to , and on the south of Lebonah. 20Therefore they commanded the children of , saying, Go and lie in wait in the vineyards; And see, and, behold, if the daughters of come out to dance in dances, then come ye out of the vineyards, and catch you every man his wife of the daughters of , and go to the land of . And it shall be, when their fathers or their brethren come unto us to complain, that we will say unto them, Be favourable unto them for our sakes: because we reserved not to each man his wife in the war: for ye did not give unto them at this time, that ye should be guilty. And the children of did so, and took them wives, according to their number, of them that danced, whom they caught: and they went and returned unto their , and repaired the cities, and dwelt in them. 24And the departed thence at that time, every man to his tribe and to his family, and they went out from thence every man to his . In those days there was no king in Israel: every man did that which was right in his own eyes.
The 1611 translation, public domain. Its original printing included the Apocrypha, which is why the deuterocanonical books can be read here. Notes and cards are EKLI’s own.
The world at this moment · The judges, 1200 BC to 1050 BC ›
No central government and no standing army. The great empires are weak, which is precisely why Israel's troubles come from close neighbors: Moab, Ammon, Midian, and the newly arrived Philistines on the coast.
- Egypt
- Broken into competing power centres and no longer able to project force into Canaan. Its withdrawal is the single biggest reason this period has no imperial overlord.
- Mesopotamia
- Assyria exists but is dormant, hemmed in and looking east. The century that would have crushed a stateless Israel simply has not arrived yet.
- The coast
- The Philistines settle their five cities after arriving from the Aegean world, bringing Mycenaean-style pottery, a taste for pork, and an early advantage in ironworking. Further north the Phoenician ports of Tyre and Sidon start the trading expansion that will eventually give the alphabet to Greece.
- Further afield
- Greece has entered its dark age: the palaces are gone, Linear B is forgotten, and writing disappears from the Aegean for three centuries. In China the Zhou dynasty replaces the Shang in 1046 BC and issues the doctrine that heaven withdraws its mandate from unjust kings, an idea with an interesting resemblance to the book of Judges.