Preparing Context
Loading the book, timeline, map, and study notes.
Book
World Stage
Structure
Historical Setting
Opening Book
Loading the overview, historical setting, map, timeline, and chapter structure.
Book
World Stage
Structure
Historical Setting
Opening Chapter
Loading the chapter, structure, timeline, and Scripture reader.
Book
World Stage
Structure
Historical Setting
Opening Passage
Loading the passage, surrounding structure, questions, and study notes.
Book
World Stage
Structure
Historical Setting
Judges 21:13-15
The congregation calls Benjamin back, assigns the rescued women, and notes the supply is insufficient while regret remains.
Meaning in context
The congregation calls Benjamin back, assigns the rescued women, and notes the supply is insufficient while regret remains.
Section 4 of 7
Peace with Benjamin and partial provision
The congregation calls Benjamin back, assigns the rescued women, and notes the supply is insufficient while regret remains.
Movement
Life before Israel had a king
Artifact
Cycles of rebellion and deliverance
Biblical Timeline
Exodus & Settlement
Judges context: 1500 BC - 1000 BC
Biblical Timeline
Exodus & Settlement
Judges context
Exodus & Settlement / 1500 BC - 1000 BC
Judges context is set in the exodus and settlement period, where Moses, the exodus, wilderness, covenant instruction, conquest, and judges.
Scripture Text
Thesis
The congregation calls Benjamin back, assigns the rescued women, and notes the supply is insufficient while regret remains.
Verse by Verse
Peace offer to survivors The whole gathered community sends messengers to the Benjaminites who are still at the rock of Rimmon. They speak to them and formally announce peace, signaling an end to hostilities and an invitation to rejoin the larger group.
Return and first provision of wives Benjamin returns “at that time,” apparently responding to the peace message. Israel gives them the women they had kept alive from Jabesh-gilead. But the narrator stresses the mismatch: even with these women, the supply is still not enough for Benjamin.
Communal regret and the sense of a torn Israel The people feel regret and grief concerning Benjamin’s plight. The text explains their emotion by pointing to the result: a “breach” exists among Israel’s tribes, attributed to Yahweh having brought about this tearing-apart within Israel’s tribal structure.
Literary Context
These verses sit inside the closing crisis narrative of Judges (chapters 19–21), where a horrific crime leads to inter-tribal war and an almost total wiping out of Benjamin. Immediately before this unit, Israel attacks Jabesh-gilead for not joining the assembly and spares certain young women for redistribution (21:8–12). Immediately after, the story continues to solve the remaining shortfall of wives through a further plan at Shiloh (21:16–23). So vv. 13–15 function as a hinge: peace is announced, the survivors return, and the first attempt at restoring Benjamin is shown to be incomplete.
Historical Context
The setting reflects a loose tribal confederation in early Israel, without a centralized monarchy and with decisions made through assemblies and ad hoc leadership. The narrative assumes clan and tribal survival depends on land inheritance and family lines continuing, which makes the lack of wives an urgent problem after civil war. “Rock of Rimmon” suggests a defensible refuge for the last fighters, while “Jabesh-gilead” points to the Transjordan region and the reach of inter-tribal demands. The passage also shows how group vows and wartime actions create new social crises that the community then tries to manage.
Theological Significance
Questions
Keep Studying
Judges 21:13–15 marks a pivot from civil war to reconciliation. The “whole congregation” reaches out to the surviving Benjaminites at the rock of Rimmon and announces peace. Benjamin then returns, and Israel hands over women who had been kept alive from Jabesh-gilead. The narrator highlights that this provision is still insufficient, leaving Benjamin’s future only partly secured.
The passage also records Israel’s emotional response: the people feel regret (grief, remorse, pity) over what has happened to Benjamin. The text frames the outcome as a serious tear in Israel’s tribal unity, described as a “breach” among the tribes.
One question is how to understand “proclaimed peace.” Some read it as a formal settlement that likely included terms (e.g., safe return, reintegration). Others read it more simply as an announcement that fighting is over and Benjamin is no longer being hunted.
Another question is how to connect the statement that Yahweh “made a breach” with Israel’s own decisions in the war. Some take it as emphasizing divine involvement in the national catastrophe (God’s judgment, or God’s governance over events). Others read it as a way of speaking that credits God with what happened without excusing Israel’s choices—Israel caused the disaster, and yet the final “breach” is still spoken of as something God allowed or brought about.
The verses are brief and do not spell out details: they report peace, return, and an inadequate solution, but not the exact “terms” of peace, nor how divine causation and human responsibility relate in this episode. The larger chapter includes vows and improvised remedies, which makes it easy to weigh the agency differently.
Explicitly, the text shows (1) an official move toward peace, (2) an attempt at rebuilding Benjamin through providing women, (3) the failure of that attempt to fully solve the problem, and (4) corporate sorrow over a tribe’s near-erasure. Theologically inferred, it presents Israel as fractured and trying to repair itself with limited, morally complicated means, while still speaking of the crisis in relation to Yahweh’s action in Israel’s history (compare Judges 21:15).
women (han·nā·šîm)