Living with the True God III: Right in Our Own Eyes

The Book of Judges as a Warning for the Evangelical Church

Welcome to the Whole Council Podcast. I'm John Snyder and with me again is Teddy James and we are looking, our final look, at some key themes in the book of Judges. And there, of course, being in the Word of God, it's always appropriate to take it seriously, but there are times where aspects of Scripture, certain portions, seem particularly applicable to our situation.

And Judges, I think, is particularly necessary for the evangelical church today to understand the dealings of God and how do we read the decline of society and the role of God's people in light of the book of Judges.

So we're going to pick back up today with our last big lesson. Yeah, we've got the one big point. So, like you said, there's so many things that we could focus on in the book of Judges. And just so you know, listener or viewer, we're really only hitting the high points and hitting just major points, major discussions.

So if you want to go a little bit deeper into the book of Judges, we do have a study. It's kind of what this is about. We're reintroducing that study. It's called Living with the True God Lessons from Judges.

We'll put a link to that in the description below. But this episode, this discussion, John, we're going to talk more about the expansive influence of sin. So I remember years ago, here in Mississippi, we have a plant and it's called kudzu.

And if you've ever been to the South, you've likely seen kudzu. It's actually a really pretty bloom. It's nice purple. It has a good scent to it. It was brought over from Japan to help with erosion. But it is one of the most invasive plants known to man.

And it will, and it did, it covered our barn when I was a kid and made the whole building collapse. And I remember a preacher telling me, you know, sin is quite a bit like this. This is a good illustration.

It can grow up to six feet a day. It can destroy anything that it wraps its tendrils around. And there's absolutely no controlling it. You can think you can control it, but ultimately it will just destroy everything it touches.

The Cycles of Sin, Judgment, and Restoration in Judges

Yeah. So when we look at the book of Judges, because of the nature of the account, we have a series of, we would say historical cycles. So we have the people walking with the Lord and then there is a dangerous, slow, you know, imperceptible at first drift away from God toward the idols of the nations around them.

And as that drift begins to accelerate, you know, it kind of picks up speed as it's going spiritually downhill. Then there are perhaps warnings that are ignored. And eventually, in gracious judgment, a judgment not meant to destroy, but to restore a people and to cut them off from their idolatry, God raises up the nations around them, which He at one point, in the days of Joshua, had handed over to them.

Now God hands Israel to its enemies. He gives the enemies the ability to rule over Israel. And we have this rule then by a foreign power and things become worse and worse until finally the children of Israel cry out.

And they just cry out in misery to God or cry out in repentance. Same Hebrew word can be used different ways. So certainly I think we would expect that, you know, as the cry goes up, that many of the godly in the land are crying out with the broken heart for the spiritual condition.

And many of the unbelieving Jews are crying out simply because life is miserable. You know, the Midianites, the Philistines, the Ammonites, these people are ruling us again. So when the cry goes up, God is merciful and He raises up a judge or a military, spiritual, and political leader all in one.

And the judge then is used by God to call the people really to repentance and to lead the people's armies against the enemy. And God then gives Israel success in battle. And they, you know, they're free from the foreign power.

They've put away their idols and they're worshiping God and walking with Him in a time of peace and prosperity, again, as long as the judge lives. And then we find that when the judge dies, then the people begin to drift again.

And this cycle happens about seven times in Judges. And because of the nature of that, you can see things that you wouldn't necessarily notice if you're looking at that cycle, say, reading from the book of Samuel to the book of, you know, 2 Chronicles.

It's the same principles we see repeated, but here in Judges, one after the next, the rapid, consecutive fashion of giving you these histories. In looking at it in that way, there are things that we notice quite clearly.

And one of the things is that when a people sin and God restores them, if they return again to that sin, if the next generation and the next generation again and again and again return to the idolatry of their parents and their grandparents and their great-grandparents, even if things get so bad that they're willing to put their idols away and God is merciful, that that downward spiral, it's not, we said the other week, it's not a merry-go-round that just goes, you know, in the same rut.

It's kind of a spiral staircase down. It's a whirlpool where every time we read of the Israelites embracing idolatry again after mercy, even though they do eventually cry out and God restores them, it's as if they don't come all the way back up.

So where they are at the beginning of the book and where they are at the end of the book are two very different places, even if they've put away their idolatry. Because sin, as you mentioned, has this invasive, permeating influence that if it is continually embraced, one of the consequences is that we get hard and indifferent and we don't even notice it.

There's a Psalm, Psalm 85, that begins with a statement of God's mercy. Verse 1, O Lord, you showed favor to your land. You restored the captivity of Jacob. You forgave the iniquity of your people. You covered all their sin.

So, wonderful statement. But then if you jump down to verse 8, after praying for God not to be angry again because the people have drifted again, and God to show loving kindness again, grant them salvation again, verse 8 he says this, I will hear what God the Lord will say, for he will speak peace to his people, to his godly ones, but let them not turn back to folly.

And if they do, then what we see in Judges is that there can be a hardening that begins to occur and we don't even notice that after repentance things are not quite where they were before. So, there's some examples of this and if you were to read Judges, Teddy, where would you say you see this most clearly?

Do you see it most clearly in the pagans, in the common people who are embracing idolatry, in the leaders? Where do you see it? Yeah, I mean, I think it's clearly, and I think that the writer of Judges makes it clear that we ought to see it in those leaders.

Gideon’s Golden Ephod and Doing What Is Right in His Own Eyes

So, everyone, whatever leader you tend to think of when you think of the book of Judges, you know, when we start out, we start with Joshua, godly man, he finishes well, and then immediately afterwards you see the people have fallen, a leader comes up, but every leader, even if he's an earnest man, he falls away into sin.

And then you also have the leaders who have no interest in God. Really, they're selfish leaders. Yeah, so it is the people that God himself has chosen to rescue, the people. It's the judges themselves, like you said, who are, these judges, we'll mention a few of them, they are found, the ones we'll mention, they are found in Hebrews chapter 11, all of them.

These are men who believe. Which is, when you're reading the book of Judges, you would not expect to read them in Hebrews. Not all of them, right, yeah. So, you know, maybe Gideon, but then you look at Samson or Jephthah, and you think, I don't know, you know, where do we see faith?

A very imperfect faith, but these men, Scripture tells us, are men who believed God and responded to God. So, we would call them believers. I think one lesson, before we even look at their lives, is that the New Covenant is a superior covenant, and the provisions of the New Covenant, though people in the Old Covenant were saved by grace through faith, looking forward to what the Messiah would do, in the same way that the New Covenant believer is saved by grace through faith, looking back at what the Messiah did.

There is a fullness that comes by living in the period of the completion of the Messiah's work, rather than living in the period of the anticipation, and that fullness is seen in the way that the New Covenant does produce superior lives.

We can't imagine reading what we read about in the life of Samson. We can't imagine that being the life of the Apostle Paul. You know, you would think, well, who would even listen to anything Paul said, if he lived like Samson?

You can't imagine, you know, Peter or John in the New Testament pastoring and ministering in a way that reflects Jephthah's confusion. So, a superior covenant, and we are grateful to live in these days where what Paul talks about in 2 Corinthians 3 is true.

We see God, not in the terrifying pictures of His holiness and the need of a Savior in the Old Covenant, but in the face of Christ. This same holy, you know, terrifyingly holy God has shown us Himself in the Redeemer, and in looking at Christ, we are transformed from one level to the next of Christ's likeness.

You know, we're transformed. But we can look at these leaders. They're all mentioned as believers, and we want, we'll give you them in the order that Judges gives us, these leaders. Which we'll get into why in a bit.

And we will see that there is, with these leaders, a progressively gloomy portrait of these men. So, give us the first one. Yeah, so first we start off with Gideon. So, everybody, we know the story of Gideon.

You know, he sets out the fleece, Lord, if this is You, if this is what You want me to do, let there be dew on the grass, and let the fleece be dry, and then he flips it. So, he's a man who has communion with God.

He talks openly and freely with God. He sees great success. Military campaign, revival of the people, and at the end, he has the opportunity to become king. And he even says, I will not be your king. My sons will not rule over you.

We have a king, and it's God. Faithful man. And then he makes a golden ephod that he worships, and generations after him worship. Yeah, so an ephod is, it's a part of the high priest's garment. It's kind of a golden plate, and so it hangs, it's attached to the garments, and it's used in the high priests representing all of Israel as he goes into the Holy of Holies.

But, for our purpose here, the ephod is just a really important religious thing. Gideon takes some of the gold that he's given from Israel. Like you said, he refuses to be king. They want to make him wealthy.

He accepts some gold, and some of that gold he takes, and he makes this golden ephod. What possesses him? I don't know. Maybe he thinks, you know, if we make a golden ephod, you know, my family, my little town that I live in, we'll be closer to God.

You know, I mean, this is a thing that the high priest wears. It's not... Could have been like a representation of God's presence or something like that. Yeah, does he think that God is extra close to them because he has an ephod, a copy of the ephod?

You know, kind of like, you know, for me, if I could get Spurgeon's Bible, I would think, would I be like... I could preach like Spurgeon if I had Spurgeon's Bible. So, you know, in anything, he makes a copy of something that God designed.

It's not a molek. It's, you know, it's not Dagon or Baal or Asherah. It's a copy of something that the high priest uses, but they turn their hopes toward it, and he, his family, his town, and as you mentioned, the Bible says all Israel, plays the harlot or is adulterous in their hearts, not loving the one true God.

They run off and have this spiritual affair with this other God, this ephod. And I think it's important, too, to take a note there that Gideon would not have called his actions wicked. I don't think. I think he felt like you were kind of insinuating here.

He thought that what he was doing, and we'll see this as a theme as we continue this episode, but he really thought, was convinced that what he was doing was pleasing and honoring to the Lord. Yeah, it seemed like the best thing to do for some reason.

And so, I think it's so interesting with Gideon, you know, that when God calls him, you remember that in order to obey the Lord, he has to go against not only the idolatry that Israel had embraced, but he has to go against his own dad and his family.

He's the preacher of the idol church. Yeah, so his dad is the preacher in town who has led the people in worship of Midianite idols. And so, they're worshiping these idols, and this Baal that promises, you know, Baal always promises, he's a fertility God, so he promises more, more children, more money, more crops, whatever.

And he's supposed to rule over the weather. And, you know, and if you're a farmer and your God rules over the weather, then, man, you're rich, you know, you just, as long as he's happy with you. So, at night he gets some friends, they tear down the Baal altar, and they burn it, you know, and they destroy it.

And the next morning, when the town wakes up and they go to have their morning devotions at Baal, you know, the three days of Baal, then they get there and it's gone, and they go to the preacher and say, where's our God?

And somebody's destroyed it, and they say, we'll kill whoever has dared to touch our God. And it's the preacher's son, Gideon. The preacher, his father, wisely says, if Baal is a real God, then he can take care of himself.

He can fight his own battles. Let him kill my son. If he's not a real God, you know, kind of by implication, then why are we wasting our time? And Gideon is renamed from that point forward, Jeroboam. And in the Hebrew, that means, let Baal be against him.

In other words, if we were to give a nickname, we'd say, this is my friend Gideon, but everybody calls him, Baal is out to get him, right? Baal hates Gideon. And now Gideon, at the end of his life, leads his family and his nation, really, probably inadvertently, to put hope in a golden ephod that he made, and to treat it as if it's a God.

So, very godly man, but doing what's right in his own eyes, we see that sin is embraced. But that is kind of small compared to if we keep following the history. That whirlpool, like you've been talking about, going down.

Jephthah’s Confused View of God and Human Sacrifice

Yeah, so, if we, let's mention another one, Jephthah. So, Jephthah is the son of a prostitute, that a Jewish man has a relationship with the prostitute. He's a wealthy, influential man. He has a relationship with a prostitute.

She has a son. When this man grows old and dies, his other sons, from his legal marriages, they look at their half-brother and they say, whoa, whoa, whoa. He doesn't get any of the inheritance because he's the son of a prostitute.

Our dad shouldn't even have had him. Illegitimate child. Yeah, so he's illegitimate. So, you get nothing. And they drive him out of their land into the land of Tob, T-O-B. Archaeologists are not exactly sure where the land of Tob is, but we understand where the region is.

We don't know where exactly where the city was. The region of Tob is, it's the region on the far edge of Israelite territory on the eastern side of Jordan. So, you remember, with Jordan, you have the Jordan River and then the West Bank.

We hear that in news all the time. The West Bank, the western side, and then you have the Mediterranean Sea. So, most of Israel is on the western side, but there were a couple of tribes that were allowed to settle on the eastern side.

But the problem with the eastern side is all their neighbors are pagans. And, of course, by this time, in the time of the judges, there's paganism everywhere in Israel, but especially in the area of Tob, Manasseh, and the other, the far eastern countries.

The border countries are just, they've intermarried and intermixed with paganism for many generations. So, what you have, I think, is you have a religion in that region that has Jehovah. So, we have Yahweh, we have God, the God of Abraham.

But we've lived for so long with pagan influence, we've adjusted Yahweh with pagan views to the degree it's went on so long, we don't even notice that the God that we worship is really not the God of the Bible.

It's the right name, but He doesn't resemble the God of the Bible very much. Maybe we could say there are large areas in their theology that need correcting. Yeah, well, and it's because the idea that they've gotten for God.

It's always interesting to me the things that people will keep when they've gotten away from a biblical idea of who God is. It's always interesting to me to see the things that they keep, what culture will keep.

So, in our case, I think we both agree that culturally we've left the God of the Bible in kind of American culture. But, we have absolutely kept God as a God of love. God loves everybody. Yes, John 3 .16.

Right. Years ago, the most popular verse, the one known by most Americans, and this was like a survey maybe 30 years ago, was not John 3 .16 any longer, but it had shifted, which was a historical shift.

It had shifted to another verse that was even better known than John 3 .16 for Americans, and that was in the Sermon on the Mount. Judge not that you be not judged. Yeah, so these things that culture just kind of catches and grabs hold of, more so in a way of excusing their own sin and the celebration of sin, rather than, you know, examining the God of the Bible.

But, that is what was happening in the days of Jephthah. They had let go of everything that didn't make their life easier to live with these other pagan nations, but they held on to the things that could be twisted to make it easier to add on Dagon, to add on Baal.

We talked about this last week, or maybe it was the week before. An idol never minds sharing you. They never have a problem. You know, sure, you can add Yahweh onto the worship of Baal, but the God of the Bible is jealous and zealous for his worship.

He doesn't share. So, Jephthah, driven from his family, he is quite a capable man. He is great at leading. He gathers around himself men from the land of Tob. They kind of see him as a natural leader.

They come to him, and they're worthless fellows, it says. All right, so these are like not Sunday school teachers. And so, he lives in basically a paganized area, and his views of God are affected by that generation after generation of that, and these people that he's leading are not godly.

And he's contacted by those that drove him out, and they say, look, the enemies have pressed in, and nobody here is very good at leading, and we know that you are a mighty man, a great military leader.

And so, if you will come back and lead our armies, then, you know, then we'll reward you. And so, you know, and so there's some bargaining going on, and then he does. He comes back. He's actually God's chosen man, and through Jephthah, he will lead the people who have become miserable and cried out to God.

He will lead them to conquer their enemies, push the enemies out of their territory, and to turn away from idolatry. But we know the strange account of Jephthah, that he makes this vow. There's no need to make a vow.

God had already chosen. You know, Gideon didn't have to make a vow. He didn't say, God, if you give me success, I promise to do A, B, and C. But Jephthah feels that he should do this, so he makes this vow to God.

The first thing that comes out of my house, I will sacrifice it to God. And, you know, if you go to commentaries at this point, you'll get a lot of different views. Basically, there's two different views.

That he, you know, being Middle Eastern at this time, well, animals would be in the house, so whatever animal comes out of the house first, I'll sacrifice it, and perhaps that's what he meant. But the real difference in commentaries, the real diversion, where they all go their own way, is when it comes to what happens.

His daughter comes running out of the house. She's the first thing he sees coming out of the house. And he has vowed to God that he would sacrifice the first thing he sees coming out of his house. And so he is just, his heart is destroyed.

He's brokenhearted, and he says to her, I promise God this. And she says, well, you have to keep your word to God. And so she has a period to go and mourn with her friends. She's never been married, never had children.

Her life is, you know, going to be truncated by her father's foolish vow. And then she is sacrificed. Some commentators say, no, she wasn't sacrificed. She just had to stay the rest of her life as a virgin, unmarried, you know, isolated.

But I think that when we read the text, I have not been convinced by any commentator that disagrees with what the text seems to clearly say. And that is, no, Jephthah does what he promised. He actually performs child sacrifice or the sacrifice of his daughter, human sacrifice.

And there are commentators, I think, that clearly show that is the clear meaning of the text. But like with Gideon, he thought that's what would please God. Yeah, so that's the question. What in the world?

And how could that guy be in the book of Hebrews? I mean, and that's the point. He can't have sacrificed his daughter because human sacrifice is offensive to God. And yet he's in the book of Hebrews as one who really believed God.

So that can't have been what he did. But I think, tragically, it is what he did. And I think that we can see hints at why he would do this. I think it's more than just keeping his word, more than just what his daughter said.

But there is that whole, if you look at the context of Judges, there is that decline that is occurring. It's much worse than what Gideon did. He is so confused about the nature of God that though he believes in God, he has these, he has some areas that are really wrong where he's mixed pagan influence in with biblical pictures of God.

And the pagans have always believed that child sacrifice would receive, you know, this great response by their God. Because it's the ultimate for a parent. If I gave up my child... There's no greater gift that I could give.

Yeah, so I will give the most expensive offering. I'll offer one of my children. And then this God that I offer it to will be so impressed with my devotion, He will give back, you know, far more than if I just gave crops.

So I think Jephthah represents a man who lives in an area of Israel that does have the true God, but their view of the true God through generations of synthesis with idols, they have such a wrong view of the true God that he believes that God would be pleased, even though it's tragic and costly to him and his daughter, that at least God would be pleased that he keeps his word and he offers his daughter because after all that is the greatest sacrifice any believer can give.

You know, and it's kind of like in in the medieval period, you know, martyrdom by the Romans or the Jews really doesn't occur anymore. So how can you be a Greenberet ultra-Christian? Well, you can be a nun, you can be a monk, and you give up all this life, you give up family, and you go and you live in the cloister, in the monastery, and God never commanded that.

So that ultimate sacrifice, what if God is not at all pleased? But certainly in Jephthah's case, the sacrifice of a human to the God of the Bible is heinous. It is a gross, offensive sin. But I think Jephthah thought he was doing what would be the right thing.

I think we would agree that he is, and I mean we get it from Hebrews, he was an earnest believer. But even his best effort, his highest thoughts that he had, that came from himself, my highest thoughts of God is that this would please him.

Samson and Living by What Is Right in My Own Eyes

But not all the leaders in the book of Judges, they are earnest believers because they're in the book of Hebrews. But if it weren't for Hebrews, we would not say that they're earnest believers. We have Samson.

Yeah, Samson. So his parents raised him in a godly way according to what the angel of the Lord told him to do. Unique. None of the other judges have this. I mean he's chosen by God before he's born. So this is not just the people's choice, this is God's choice, and he's raised in the way God said to be raised.

And the first thing we hear out of Samson's mouth is, he sees a Philistine girl, because the Philistines are ruling over Israel because Israel's idolatry. He sees a Philistine woman and he says, she looks good in my eyes, which is a play on words.

Because over and over, Judges says, they did what they did. They did what was good in their eyes, as if there's no king in the land. So what's good in God's eyes or what's good in our eyes? And so Samson is only interested in what's good in his eyes.

So he does what he thinks is best. I need this girl. I'm in love with this girl. She's beautiful. And the parents are so grieved because he's not interested in marrying a godly young Jewish woman. He wants an idol worshiping woman because she looks great.

So you know obviously it would be quite heartbreaking to any believing parent. But this is a mom and dad that raised him, according to God's rules, to be the deliverer of Israel. And his first choice as a young adult is as far from God as he can go.

And the Bible says, amazingly, that the parents were brokenhearted and they did not understand that this was of the Lord. That is, that God was ruling over even Samson's selfish choices so that even Samson's sin does not derail the merciful plans of God.

God is not pleased with those choices. God does not entice Samson. But God uses Samson's selfish choices to create strife between Israel and the Philistines because Israel is no longer crying out. This is the first time that in that cycle where judgment hits and a foreign power rules them that the Bible doesn't mention a cry going up.

So it seems as if they've gotten so used to living under the boot of another country and the emptiness of another idol that they don't know enough to look around and think, this is not the way God intended for us.

This is not how God's people should live. So they don't cry out. This is norm, the new norm. Samson causes strife with the Philistines and so there's fights and Samson ultimately is used to deliver Israel from Philistines and the false God Dagon.

But what a sad picture. Worse than Jephthah. Jephthah seemed at times to be in earnest to do what was right. Samson, we don't see any time. Every time he fights the Philistines, every time he pleads with God to give him strength, it's like it's only for you Samson.

But Samson is the tool in God's hand. And of course we see this decline. It's getting worse and worse and worse. But we're still not done. We haven't hit the absolute bottom that the writer of Judges talks to us about.

The Collapse of Benjamin and the Tragedy of Civil War

Because, and this is not a judge, right? This was the 11 tribes. Yeah, it's the princes and elders of Israel. Right, but not judges. So this is more of the common culture of all of Israel and they have this one tribe doesn't have wives.

So we got to fix that. Yeah, so the way we got there. So toward the end of the book, the last few chapters, like you say, it's the darkest spot. Starts off with this strange twisted love story. A priest, okay, so a spiritual leader.

He and his wife, but wait it's not his wife, it's a concubine. So it's his kind of mistress, his sleep-in girlfriend. They're having trouble. So she leaves him and goes back and stays with dad for a while.

The priest gets so lonely. He misses his girlfriend who he's been shacked up with. And he goes and he finds her at her dad's house. And they stay a while. And the dad's just so proud of the daughter. You know, you're a concubine of a priest, of a preacher, you know.

And he's, wow, you got a nice boyfriend this time. You know, you're not like the other boyfriends you've brought home before. He's a nice guy. So they, after a visit with father-in-law, they head back home.

As they're headed back home, they're traveling through areas where there are a lot of the pagan nations. There's still pockets of them living in Israel's territory. Not all of them were removed. And so they're going past the city.

And they say, it's getting very dark. And so, you know, should we stay there? Oh, no. No, no, no. That's a pagan city now. You know, foreigners live there. And they worship foreign gods. And those foreigners, you can't trust foreigners.

And they worship foreign gods. They'll act any way they want. You know, they're bad people. So we don't trust these people. But if you go, you know, 15, 20 miles further, there's an Israelite town. And so we're going to stop there.

And so they stop in the town of Abedgibia. And it's in the tribe of Benjamin. So these are Jews, God's people. They're safe. They arrive in town at night. An old man meets them. Offers to kind of, you know, take care of their livestock.

And lets them stay with him. He feeds them and gives them a place. And he says, whatever you do, do not stay in the city square, the town square. Because that's where they were going to stay. Yeah, they were just going to camp out.

Right. And he says, no, no, no. You don't want to do that. That's not safe. Come to my house. And when they're having supper with the old man, the door gets beat on. And there's a mob of men. And it's so much like the scene of Sodom and Gomorrah.

So the Sodom-like Jewish men, not pagans, Jews, are at the door. And they said, we noticed you have a stranger with you. A man. So you put him out. Unlock the door. Let us have him. And we can do what we want with him.

And the old man is horrified. And, you know, culturally, this is unacceptable. I gave this man protection under my roof. You can't do this. You know, the shame that would be to the old man if he just handed someone over.

And so he strangely, and this is another picture of how far they are from where they ought to be. This man who lives in Israel, who knows about the God of Abraham and has, you know, the benefit of Scripture.

He says, you can have my daughter. She's a young woman. She's never been married. You can have her. You can do what you want with her tonight. And they don't want her. They want the man. Well, the priest, being just a complete cad, decides that the best thing to do to save his skin is to take his sleeping girlfriend.

And he pushes his concubine out the door and locks it behind her. And so they molest her and then kill her. So she dies on the doorstep. He wakes up in the morning. There she is. He says, come on, wake up.

And by the way, this is a rough story, but it's intended to be a rough story. Yeah, it's intended to be so shocking. And so she won't wake up because she's dead. He puts her on his donkey. They travel back home.

When he gets home, he cuts her body into 12 pieces and sends it with 12 messengers to the 12, to the leaders of the 12 tribes of Israel and says basically this, do you see how bad society has gotten? I mean, our own people in the tribe of Benjamin, in this town, Jews are acting like sodomites.

They're worse than the pagans. We need to take care of this. And so the tribes get together and 11 of the tribes say absolutely. So they go to Benjamin and say, hand those people of Gibeah over. We're going to deal with them.

But the tribe of Benjamin gets all territorial and proud and says, these are our people and you're not going to judge our people. We'll handle our people, but not you. And so the 11 tribes basically say, hand them over or we'll go to war and we'll take them by force.

So Benjamin arms itself, the 11 tribes arm themselves, and they have a number of battles. And finally, the 11 tribes beat the Benjamites. But by this time, the hatred and revenge in the heart of the 11 tribes toward the people of Benjamin, not just those men of Gibeah who did what they did, but the entire tribe, not just the leaders, everybody that they go through Benjamin and they just kill every male Benjamite, boy, man, grandpa, and they kill all the soldiers in the Benjamite army that they capture.

And there's just a small remnant left. So they took a vow before the arm, before the battle, anybody that ever lets his daughter marry somebody from the tribe of Benjamin, we will come and we will kill the entire family related to that daughter.

Because the idea was we are wiping Benjamin out. Yeah. So it's genocide, you know? Well, afterwards, when tempers cool, they look and they realize, we have killed the tribe of Benjamin, there's only a few hundred men left.

And there's, there's nobody for them to marry. You know, we've wiped out men and women. And so there's no, there's no way the Benjamites are going to survive. The Benjamites don't have any women from their own tribe to marry.

And nobody from any of the other 11 tribes are allowed to let their daughters marry a Benjamite. Because if you let your daughter marry a Benjamite, so that the clan can, the tribe can continue to exist.

You, your wife, the rest of your family, your grandkids, you're all going to be wiped out. So, so they have a plan. We will tell those, those men who are left in Benjamin, the few hundred, there were some towns, there were some places that didn't go to war against you.

And so, you know, they were cowardly, and they didn't join us. So you can go and destroy their towns, kill all their men, and take whatever women you want for your wives. And we won't do anything about it.

Well, that, that worked partly. A few hundred wives were gotten, but there were still, there were still a number of soldiers that didn't have wives. And so they said, okay, here's what you do. Over here, there's going to be a special, you know, festival, a harvest festival, where the whole town worships God, grateful for the harvest.