Context at a Glance
Author:Traditional Attribution
Topic:judges Chapter 21 Study
This chapter provides a foundational look at the theological themes of judges, analyzed across multiple historic translations for maximum scholarly depth.
Judges 21
New Revised Standard Version
1Now the Israelites had sworn at Mizpah, "No one of us shall give his daughter in marriage to Benjamin."
2And the people came to Bethel, and sat there until evening before God, and they lifted up their voices and wept bitterly.
3They said, "O LORD, the God of Israel, why has it come to pass that today there should be one tribe lacking in Israel?"
4On the next day, the people got up early, and built an altar there, and offered burnt offerings and sacrifices of well-being.
5Then the Israelites said, "Which of all the tribes of Israel did not come up in the assembly to the LORD?" For a solemn oath had been taken concerning whoever did not come up to the LORD to Mizpah, saying, "That one shall be put to death."
6But the Israelites had compassion for Benjamin their kin, and said, "One tribe is cut off from Israel this day.
7What shall we do for wives for those who are left, since we have sworn by the LORD that we will not give them any of our daughters as wives?"
8Then they said, "Is there anyone from the tribes of Israel who did not come up to the LORD to Mizpah?" It turned out that no one from Jabesh-gilead had come to the camp, to the assembly.
9For when the roll was called among the people, not one of the inhabitants of Jabeshgilead was there.
10So the congregation sent twelve thousand soldiers there and commanded them, "Go, put the inhabitants of Jabesh-gilead to the sword, including the women and the little ones.
11This is what you shall do; every male and every woman that has lain with a male you shall devote to destruction."
12And they found among the inhabitants of Jabesh-gilead four hundred young virgins who had never slept with a man and brought them to the camp at Shiloh, which is in the land of Canaan.
13Then the whole congregation sent word to the Benjaminites who were at the rock of Rimmon, and proclaimed peace to them.
14Benjamin returned at that time; and they gave them the women whom they had saved alive of the women of Jabesh-gilead; but they did not suffice for them. The rape of the daughters of Shiloh
15The people had compassion on Benjamin because the LORD had made a breach in the tribes of Israel.
16So the elders of the congregation said, "What shall we do for wives for those who are left, since there are no women left in Benjamin?"
17And they said, "There must be heirs for the survivors of Benjamin, in order that a tribe may not be blotted out from Israel.
18Yet we cannot give any of our daughters to them as wives." For the Israelites had sworn, "Cursed be anyone who gives a wife to Benjamin."
19So they said, "Look, the yearly festival of the LORD is taking place at Shiloh, which is north of Bethel, on the east of the highway that goes up from Bethel to Shechem, and south of Lebonah."
20And they instructed the Benjaminites, saying, "Go and lie in wait in the vineyards,
21and watch; when the young women of Shiloh come out to dance in the dances, then come out of the vineyards and each of you carry off a wife for himself from the young women of Shiloh, and go to the land of Benjamin.
22Then if their fathers or their brothers come to complain to us, we will say to them, 'Be generous and allow us to have them; because we did not capture in battle a wife for each man. But neither did you incur guilt by giving your daughters to them.'"
23The Benjaminites did so; they took wives for each of them from the dancers whom they abducted. Then they went and returned to their territory, and rebuilt the towns, and lived in them.
24So the Israelites departed from there at that time by tribes and families, and they went out from there to their own territories.
25In those days there was no king in Israel; all the people did what was right in their own eyes. RUTH
536RUTH Introduction Ruth is an exquisite short story that instructs and delights. The three main characters — Naomi, Ruth, and Boaz — and the pastoral landscape in which they move come to life with the deftest of verbal strokes. Four chapters of elegant Hebrew prose transport Ruth and Naomi from sorrow to triumphant joy by means of dramatic dialogues, suspense, extended word play, and intricate compositional symmetries. The book's verbal sophistication suggests that its author was a literate member of the upper classes — a court scribe, perhaps. At the same time, the folktale patterns and motifs provide evidence of the story's origins in the oral tales enjoyed and embellished by ordinary Israelites as they raised their families and worked the fields. The dilemmas faced by two women left destitute and isolate by the deaths of their husbands and sons are the focus of the plot. The turning point in their fortunes occurs when Ruth takes advantage of an Israelite legal tradition that allowed foreigners, widows, and the poor to gather grain during the harvest (Lev 19.9-10; 23.22; Deut 24.19-22). In the fields of rural Israel, which demanded the labor of men and women alike, the socially mandated boundaries separating the worlds of mean and women lost their rigidity. In that context Ruth encounters Boaz, her future husband. The themes of life and fertility evoked so richly by the harvest scenes carry over to the final chapter of the book when Naomi embraces the newborn son of Ruth and Boaz. The book ends with a genealogy and the delightful revelation that Ruth of Moab is the great-grandmother of King David himself. Early Christian tradition concerning the ancestry of Jesus names only four women (three of them non-Israelite): Mary, Tamar, Rahab, and Ruth (Mt 1.5). Rabbinic tradition celebrates Ruth the Moabite as the model proselyte (convert). Christian Bibles place the book of Ruth between RUTH
537Jewish tradition, however, Ruth is the liturgical reading for the harvest festival of Shabuot/Weeks, reflecting the book's agricultural setting. Consequently, it is grouped with the other festival scrolls (the Megillot), including Esther, Song of Solomon, Ecclesiastes, and Lamentations. Although the story is set "in the days when the judges ruled" (ca.
12001025BCE), the date of Ruth's composition remains unresolved. On the one hand, a date during the monarchy is suggested by the book's obvious interest in celebrating the ancestry of King David, whose descendants continued to rule until the Babylonian capture of Jerusalem in
586BCE. Equally pronounced, however, are the story's frequent reminders that its heroine is not an Israelite. Indeed, the storyteller suggests that Boaz's gracious treatment of Ruth the Moabite is unusual as well as exemplary. This insistence on an inclusive attitude toward foreigners suggests to many scholars a date of composition in the fifth century BCE when the issue of intermarriage between the Israelites and non-Israelites had become extremely controversial (see Neh 13.1; Ezra 9.1). Whatever its date, however, Ruth is not a polemical book. The values it proclaims — loyalty, love of family, and generosity toward strangers — are universal and timeless.