Judges 20:8–13a

So all the people arose as one man, saying, “None of us will go to his tent, nor will any turn back to his house; but now this is the thing which we will do to Gibeah: We will go up against it by lot. We will take ten men out of every hundred throughout all the tribes of Israel, a hundred out of every thousand, and a thousand out of every ten thousand, to make provisions for the people, that when they come to Gibeah in Benjamin, they may repay all the vileness that they have done in Israel.” So all the men of Israel were gathered against the city, united together as one man.

Then the tribes of Israel sent men through all the tribe of Benjamin, saying, “What is this wickedness that has occurred among you? Now therefore, deliver up the men, the perverted men who are in Gibeah, that we may put them to death and remove the evil from Israel!”

This is a mobilization. They will take ten percent of all the tribes of Israel. They will be chosen by lot. That’s a draft. In fact, as we’ll see at the end of Judges, failure to respond to this call-up will have serious consequences.

Israel is making deliberate preparations for war—a war with their own people. It’ll be the people of Gibeah (actually Benjamin) vs. all the other tribes.

And this is all over what they did to a single concubine.

Normally, a war of this kind would be some kind of civil war, or maybe a war of liberation, independence, or secession. The stakes would be high.

But not this time. Here, a small-town crime is enough to start a war over. A single death may lead to many more deaths. Why?

They’re acting like this is a sin that must be purged from the land—like Achan’s sin.

But the children of Israel committed a trespass regarding the accursed things, for Achan the son of Carmi, the son of Zabdi, the son of Zerah, of the tribe of Judah, took of the accursed things; so the anger of the LORD burned against the children of Israel. — Joshua 7:1

The only problem is that this isn’t like Achan’s sin. Achan’s sin was a specific violation of a specific command God gave about the conquering of Jericho. God responds to that sin by causing Israel to lose a battle in which many Israelite soldiers are killed.

The crime committed by the men of Gibeah is horrible, and should be punished severely, but it’s not analogous to Achan’s sin. The mobilization of an entire army is out of proportion. This crime is a matter for the courts, not an army.

Oh, right. They don’t have any courts.

That’s part of what everyone did what was right in his own eyes means.

These Monday—Friday DEEPs are written by Mike Slay. The Weekend DEEPs are written by Matt Richardson. To subscribe to all the DEEPs click here:

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Except as indicated, Scripture taken from the New King James Version. © Copyright 1982 by Thomas Nelson, Inc. Used by permission. All rights reserved. ESV stands for the English Standard Version. © Copyright 2001 by Crossway. Used by permission. All rights reserved. NIV stands for The Holy Bible, New International Version®. © Copyright 1973 by International Bible Society. Used by permission. All rights reserved. KJV stands for the King James Version.