Judges 21

Judges 21 is the twenty-first chapter of the Book of Judges in the Old Testament or the Hebrew Bible. According to Jewish tradition the book was attributed to the prophet Samuel, but modern scholars view it as part of the Deuteronomistic History, which spans in the books of Deuteronomy to 2 Kings, attributed to nationalistic and devotedly Yahwistic writers during the time of the reformer Judean king Josiah in the 7th century BCE. This chapter records the war between the tribe of Benjamin and the other eleven tribes of Israel, belonging to a section comprising Judges 17 to 21.

Text

This chapter was originally written in the Hebrew language. It is divided into 25 verses.

Textual witnesses

Some early manuscripts containing the text of this chapter in Hebrew are of the Masoretic Text tradition, which includes the Codex Cairensis, Aleppo Codex, and Codex Leningradensis. Fragments containing parts of this chapter in Hebrew were found among the Dead Sea Scrolls including 4Q50 with extant verses 12–25.
Extant ancient manuscripts of a translation into Koine Greek known as the Septuagint include Codex Vaticanus and Codex Alexandrinus.

Analysis

Double Introduction and Double Conclusion

Chapters 17 to 21 contain the "Double Conclusion" of the Book of Judges and form a type of inclusio together with their counterpart, the "Double Introduction", in chapters 1 to 3:6 as in the following structure of the whole book:
There are similar parallels between the double introduction and the double conclusion as the following:

Introduction 1	Conclusion 2
The Israelites asked the, saying, "Who will be the first to go up and fight for us against the Canaanites?" The answered, "Judah is to go…."	The Israelites... inquired of God... "Who of us shall go first to fight against the Benjaminites?" The replied, "Judah…."
The story of how Othniel got his wife	The story of how the remainder of the Benjaminites got their wives
The Benjaminites fail to drive out the Jebusites from Jebus	A Levite carefully avoiding the Jebusites in Jebus suffers terrible outrage in Gibeah of Benjamin
Bochim: God's covenant; Israel's unlawful covenants with the Canaanites; Israel weeping before the angel of YHWH	Bethel: the ark of the covenant of God; Israel weeps and fasts before the
Introduction 2	Conclusion 1
The degeneration of the generations after the death of Joshua ; God leaves certain nations "to test the Israelites to see whether they would obey the 's commands, which he had given… through Moses"	A mother dedicates silver to the Lord for her son to make an idol; That son makes one of his own sons a priest in his idolatrous shrine, then replaces him with a Levite. That Levite is Moses' grandson. He and his sons become priests at Dan's shrine

The entire double conclusion is connected by the four-time repetition of a unique statement: twice in full at the beginning and the end of the double conclusion and twice in the center of the section as follows:
It also contains internal links:
Both sections end with a reference to Shiloh.

The Bethlehem Trilogy

Three sections of the Hebrew Bible — Judges 17–18, Judges 19–21, Ruth 1–4 — form a trilogy with a link to the city Bethlehem of Judah and characterized by the repetitive unique statement:
as in the following chart:

Judges 17–18	Judges 19–20	Ruth 1–4
A Levite of Bethlehem	A Levite of Ephraim who took as his maiden a concubine from Bethlehem	A movement from a Moabite to David in Bethlehem
Left to seek employment	Received his concubine from Bethlehem to which she had fled	A man left Bethlehem, but unlike the other two stories does not ultimately deface the town, but enhances its name
Came to a young man of Ephraim	Returned to Ephraim by way of Gibeah of Benjamin	Bethlehem became the subtle setting for the birthplace of King David
Served as a private chaplain in Micah's illicit chapel	Set upon by evil men who brutalized her and left her for dead
Hired by the tribe of Dan as a priest and relocated in Laish	Her husband related the event to all of Israel
Established a cult center which continually caused God's people to stumble	They attacked the tribe of Benjamin almost annihilating it
The Levite was Jonathan the son of Gershom and the grandson of Moses	Repopulated Benjamin with women from Shiloh and Jabesh Gilead for the 600 surviving men of Benjamin
	Jabesh-Gilead was the home of Saul's ancestors
	Reflects badly on Benjamin and by implication Saul—Saul's ancestors humiliated and disgraced a Bethlehemite
	Bethlehem suffered at the hands of Benjaminites

Chapters 19 to 21

The section comprising Judges 19:1-21:25 has a chiastic structure of five episodes as follows:
In particular, chapter 21 records how the Benjaminites were reintegrated into the pan-Israelite community, after they were nearly wiped out in the civil war except for the 600 men who hid in the Rock of Rimmon. Paradoxically, the process requires another massacre against fellow Israelites and another violence of women. The rape of the daughters of Shiloh is the ironic counterpoint to the rape of the Levite's concubine, with the "daughter" motif linking the two stories, and the women becoming 'doorways leading into and out of war, sources of contention and reconciliation'.
The structure of chapter 21 is as follows:

The problem
An apparent solution
A further problem
The outcome
Closing refrain
A new problem and an apparent solution (21:1–14)

The war had just ended when a fresh complication appeared because the Israelites made an ill-considered oath in Mizpah that they would not voluntarily give their daughter to the Benjaminites. During the war all the Benjaminite women have been slaughtered and because of the oath the six hundred male survivors must die childless, raising an obstacle to restore the brotherhood. When the people's call to YHWH went unanswered, they took actions that led to an added excessive slaughter. A search indicates that the inhabitants of Jabesh-gilead did not join the Israelites at Mizpah and the war, so hērem was applied to that city, but with a purpose to capture their virgin women while killing the rest of the people, to supply brides for the surviving Benjaminites. However, only 400 virgins were available, thus not enough for the 600 men of Benjamin.

Verse 3

The threefold reference to "Israel" after calling YHWH indicates an 'oblique form of protest' to imply that this situation was God's responsibility, but God would not be drawn into it, so God remained silent.

The rape of the daughters of Shiloh (21:15–25)

When the earlier solution did not adequately solve the problem, another morally questionable plan was hatched. Still affected with the curse of the oath they have placed for whoever willingly help Benjamin as a tribe to survive, the Israelites provided the Benjaminites an opportunity to 'engage in wife-stealing' of the young Israel virgins during their annual pilgrimage to Shiloh, linked to the story of Jephthah's daughter.

Verse 21

"To perform their dances": from Hebrew לחול במחלות, ba-, "to dance in dances".
Verse 25

This final occurrence of the refrain links the two parts of the coda together. It could be seen as the final verdict of the book that the institution of judges is politically unsatisfactory, thus points forward to the Books of Samuel in which Samuel, as the last judge, anoints Saul to become the first king of Israel.