Commentaria in Judices
Chapter Twenty-one
The eleven tribes swear that they will not give their daughters in marriage to the Benjamites; whence soon, grieving over the destruction of that tribe, they give to the six hundred men left of it as wives 400 virgins reserved from the slaughter of Jabes Galaad, and two hundred of Silo by rape.
1. And the children of Israel swore also in Maspha, and said: No man of us shall give of his daughters to the children of Benjamin to wife. 2. And they all came to the house of God in Silo, and sitting in his sight till evening, they lifted up their voice, and began to weep with great howling, saying: 3. Why, O Lord God of Israel, is this evil come to pass in thy people, that today one tribe should be taken away from us? 4. And the next day rising early, they built an altar; and offered there holocausts and peace victims, and said: 5. Who of all the tribes of Israel came not up in the army of the Lord? For they had bound themselves with a great oath, when they were in Maspha, that they should be put to death who were wanting. 6. And the children of Israel, moved with repentance for their brother Benjamin, began to say: One tribe is cut off from Israel, 7. whence shall they take wives? For we all in general swore that we would not give them our daughters. 8. Therefore they said: Who is there of all the tribes of Israel that came not up to the Lord in Maspha? And behold it was found that the inhabitants of Jabes Galaad were not in that army. (9. At that time also, when they were in Silo, none of them was found there.) 10. So they sent ten thousand most valiant men, and commanded them: Go, and strike the inhabitants of Jabes Galaad with the edge of the sword, with their wives and little ones. 11. And this is what you must observe; kill every male, and the women that have known men; but the virgins reserve. 12. And there were found of Jabes Galaad four hundred virgins, that had not known the bed of man, and they brought them to the camp in Silo, in the land of Chanaan. 13. And they sent messengers to the children of Benjamin, that were in the rock Remmon; and commanded them that they should receive them in peace. 14. And the children of Benjamin came at that time, and wives were given them of the daughters of Jabes Galaad; but others they found not, whom they might give in like manner. 15. And all Israel was exceedingly grieved, and did penance for the slaughter of one tribe out of Israel. 16. And the ancients said: What shall we do for the rest who have not received wives? all the women of Benjamin are fallen, 17. and with great care and mighty zeal we must provide that one tribe be not destroyed out of Israel. 18. For we cannot give them our daughters, being bound by the oath and curse by which we said: Cursed be he that shall give of his daughters a wife to Benjamin. 19. And they took counsel and said: Behold there is a yearly solemnity of the Lord in Silo, which is situate on the north side of the city of Bethel, and on the east side of the way that goeth from Bethel to Sichem, and on the south of the town of Lebona. 20. And they commanded the children of Benjamin, and said: Go, and lie hid in the vineyards. 21. And when you shall see the daughters of Silo come out to dance, as the custom is, come out suddenly from the vineyards, and catch you every man a wife out of them, and go into the land of Benjamin. 22. And when their fathers and brethren shall come, and begin to complain against you, and to chide, we will say to them: Have pity on them; for they took them not away by the right of war and victory, but when they asked them that they might take them, you did not give them, and the fault is on your part. 23. And the children of Benjamin did as they had been commanded; and according to their number they caught to themselves wives, one each, of them that were dancing in the choirs, and went away into their possession, building cities, and dwelling in them. 24. The children of Israel also returned by their tribes and families into their tents. In those days there was no king in Israel; but every one did that which seemed right to himself.
4. ALTAR.—They did not sin, because they erected this altar in the sanctuary. For now, Deut. xvi, 2, it is only forbidden that they sacrifice victims on an altar outside the sanctuary. Add that that precept was laid down by God on account of the danger of idolatry; but here there was no danger of it. Whence it seems that here that law was dispensed. So Abulensis. Cajetan thinks that they did not build another new altar, but restored that which was in the tabernacle. Fourthly, and best, you may say that this new altar was erected on account of necessity. For since all the tribes were gathered together, and each wished to offer many victims to God, the one altar of the tabernacle was not sufficient to receive them. Wherefore it was necessary that another altar be erected, that all might be satisfied. But this case of necessity was reckoned an exception to that common law of one altar. Whence Solomon in like necessity erected another altar, 3 Kings viii, 64. On other occasions, however, there was for this work a peculiar instinct and dispensation of God, by which it was lawful for Samuel to sacrifice in Rama, Galgal and Bethlehem, 1 Kings vii, 17; for David in the threshing-floor of Ornan, 2 Kings xxiv; for Elias on mount Carmel, 3 Kings xviii.
10. THEY SENT THEREFORE TEN THOUSAND,—the Hebrew, Chaldee and Septuagint constantly have twelve thousand. So also Josephus, book V of the Antiquities, chap. ii. Whence some suspect there is a mistake here.
AND STRIKE THE INHABITANTS OF JABES GALAAD,—justly, because they alone withdrew themselves from the common battle of the eleven tribes and the vengeance of the crime: whence by the (unanimous) consent of the tribes, that is, of the whole people, they received a just sentence of death. For they ought, in the public cause of the Republic, to have appeared at the assembly and the battle like the rest, and to help the Republic, and fight for it like the rest. For legal and golden justice requires this.
6. AND MOVED WITH REPENTANCE,—not properly so called: for they had not sinned in slaying the Benjamites, but repentance, that is sorrow, as if to say grieving that one tribe, Benjamin, was almost extinguished in Israel; for God wished all twelve tribes to be preserved, both for the honour of the patriarchs Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, and for the strength and fulness of the Synagogue, as also of the Republic of Israel; and on account of the mysteries of the number twelve, especially because the twelve tribes, and the Patriarchs their heads and princes, were a type of the twelve Apostles; and finally because from Benjamin Saul was to be born, whom God had destined the first king of Israel, and St. Paul the Doctor of the Gentiles, and the twelve thousand sealed, who in the time of Antichrist shall be converted, and shall resist him, Apoc. vii, 8. “In Gabaa,” says St. Jerome in the Epitaph of Paula, “the city razed to the ground, Paula paused a little, remembering its sin, and the concubine divided into pieces, and the six hundred men of the tribe of Benjamin reserved on account of Paul the Apostle, of whom Jacob had foretold,” Genes. chap. xlix, 27: “Benjamin a ravenous wolf, in the morning shall eat the prey, and in the evening shall divide the spoil.” Of Paul, therefore, you may rightly say here what Ovid sang of Fabius Maximus, book I On the Pontus, eleg. 2: That he might be born, though three hundred fell (the Fabii slain by Hannibal), one day did not take away all the Fabii.
11. BUT RESERVE THE VIRGINS.—For virgins love their first spouses more than the corrupted do. And they distinguished the virgins, not by an examination by matrons, as Abulensis would have it, but by common report that they had never been married.
See what was said Numer. xxxi. Moreover the eleven tribes seem here, from excessive zeal, to have exceeded the measure of just vengeance, in that they commanded innocent little ones and women also to be slain.
18. FOR WE CANNOT GIVE THEM OUR DAUGHTERS, BEING BOUND BY OATH.—This oath bound in that case in which provision could have been made for the remaining Benjamites by another way, as to wives who were Israelites, so that they should not be forced to take Gentile and foreign women, or be forced to remain unmarried with the destruction of the whole tribe. For then this oath of theirs did not bind, namely in the case in which one tribe would have had to perish, or foreign women would have had to be taken from the neighbours, which was dangerous and forbidden by law; and because, as a vow, so also an oath made about a lesser good, which hinders a greater good, does not bind in so far as it hinders it; and one who swears is thought tacitly to have wished to except the greater good when he swore; for otherwise the oath would have been unlawful: because a promise, though confirmed by oath, is not thought to be broken when it is changed for the better; but here it was better that one tribe should not perish than that they should not give it their daughters as wives. See Sylvester, under the word oath. Wherefore the Israelites would have sinned, says Abulensis, if they had sworn that in such necessity and danger they would not give wives to the Benjamites; yet they themselves, being simple and unlearned, thought themselves bound by this oath: whence they seek reasons by which both the oath and the preservation of the tribe might be provided for; and although Abulensis thinks these were feigned, and in fraud of the oath, yet Lyranus, Hugo, Cajetan and Arias better hold them to have been lawful; and as to the Galaadite women given to them it is plain, because the Galaadites had not taken part in the war (whence also they were justly cut off: for they ought, as Abulensis rightly says, being called to the common vengeance of so great a crime, to have come); but the oath concerned only those present, who had sworn, not the absent.
19. BEHOLD THE SOLEMNITY,—not of a market, as Abulensis would have it, but of some feast. But this feast seems to have been that of Tabernacles, which is celebrated in September; for then, the grapes being gathered, the vines abound in leaves and tendrils, under which these ravishers of virgins could lie hid, as is said verse 20. So Arias, Serarius and others.
21. CATCH YOU EVERY MAN A WIFE OUT OF THEM.—You will ask whether they could lawfully counsel this rape, and whether the Benjamites, in carrying out this counsel, lawfully seized the virgins of Silo? I answer in the affirmative; whence I say that neither the ancients who counselled this rape were perjured, because each had only sworn individually that they would not give their own daughters to them, not that they would not by common decree give the daughters of others. Likewise neither were the parents of the daughters perjured, because they themselves were not privy to the counsel of the rape, nor gave their daughters; but they were snatched away by those men, nay, as the text intimates, the parents had before refused them to the Benjamites when they asked for them. Whence the sin, or the inequality, is said to have been on their part, because namely, when the Benjamites asked for them by their right, they had refused them in such necessity out of the religion of an oath.
Finally, there was here no sin of rape, as Lyranus, Cajetan, Dionysius and Arias rightly say; because it was only a merciful one, the daughters not being greatly unwilling, nor even the parents, except on account of the danger of perjury, which here was none; and because this rape was made by the command of those to whom belonged the care of the whole people and the common good, whose duty it was in such necessity both to provide for the oath, and to determine the wives, and the manner of receiving them with the oath saved, whom any of them would otherwise have had to give to the Benjamites, lest that tribe should perish, or increase too slowly.
In like manner Romulus and the Romans instituted games, and carried off the Sabine virgins who came to them, that they might have them for wives. This was done after 700 years; for so many years did Phinees, as well as Othoniel, precede Rome and Romulus. The rape of the Romans happened on the 14th of the Kalends of September, says Plutarch; that of the Benjamites in the same month of September. The Romans carried off 597 virgins, or as Halicarnassensis says 689; the Benjamites 900. Necessity drove the Benjamites to rape, liberty the Romans, as St. Augustine teaches, book II On the City, chap. xvii, and book III, chap. xiii. Whence the rape of the Romans stirred up wars and slaughters, but that of the Benjamites peace and joy.
Here ends the history of the twelve Judges of Israel, who were a type of the twelve Apostles, and presided over the people from Josue to Heli, for 299 years; namely Othoniel 40 years, Aod 80, Barac, Jephte 6, Abesan 7, Ahialon 10, Abdon 8, Samson 20. Of whom Rupert thus writes, book IV On the Victory of the Word of God, chap. vi: “They were vicars of the one and true Saviour (Jesus Christ). Salvation was administered through them in a twofold manner, namely by judging and by fighting: for by judging they kept the people from the servitude of idols; by fighting, themselves marching in the front, they bravely avenged them on the enemies whom they had served. They were therefore judges in discipline, leaders in battle, saviours in both, prefiguring by their illustrious deeds and mystical victories the Sacraments and victories of the eternal Saviour. For as a mirror set opposite the sun renders a like image, so the bright faith of those saviours and judges bore in their deeds a likeness of beauty to the eternal Saviour and Judge, whose vicars they were.”