Cornelius a Lapide
Table of Contents
Synopsis of the Chapter
The eleven tribes swear not to give their daughters as wives to the Benjaminites; whence soon, grieving over the destruction of that tribe, they give as wives to the six hundred men remaining of it, 400 virgins reserved from the slaughter of Jabesh-Gilead, and 200 women of Shiloh taken by seizure.
Vulgate Text: Judges 21:1-24
1. The children of Israel also swore in Mizpah, and said: None of us shall give his daughters to the sons of Benjamin as wives. 2. And they all came to the house of God in Shiloh, and sitting in His sight until evening, they lifted up their voice, and with great wailing began to weep, saying: 3. Why, O Lord God of Israel, has this evil befallen Your people, that today one tribe should be taken away from us? 4. And the next day, rising at dawn, they built an altar; and they offered there burnt offerings and peace offerings, and said: 5. Who did not come up in the army of the Lord from all the tribes of Israel? For they had bound themselves with a great oath, when they were in Mizpah, that those who were absent should be put to death. 6. And the children of Israel being moved with repentance for their brother Benjamin, began to say: One tribe has been taken away from Israel, 7. Where shall they get wives? For we have all sworn in common not to give them our daughters. 8. Therefore they said: Who is there of all the tribes of Israel that did not come up to the Lord in Mizpah? And behold the inhabitants of Jabesh-Gilead were found not to have been in that army. (9. At that time also when they were in Shiloh, none of them was found there.) 10. So they sent ten thousand very strong men, and commanded them: Go, and strike the inhabitants of Jabesh-Gilead with the edge of the sword, both their wives and their children. 11. And this is what you shall observe: Kill every male, and every woman who has known a man; but reserve the virgins. 12. And there were found of Jabesh-Gilead four hundred virgins who had not known the bed of a man, and they brought them to the camp in Shiloh, in the land of Canaan. 13. And they sent messengers to the children of Benjamin who were in the rock of Rimmon; and they commanded them to receive them in peace. 14. And the children of Benjamin came at that time, and wives were given to them from the daughters of Jabesh-Gilead; but they did not find others whom they might give in the same way. 15. And all Israel grieved greatly, and did repentance over the destruction of one tribe from Israel. 16. And the elders said: What shall we do for the rest, who have not received wives? All the women in Benjamin have fallen, 17. and we must take great care and make every effort that one tribe not be destroyed from Israel. 18. For we cannot give them our daughters, bound as we are by the oath and curse by which we said: Cursed be he who gives any of his daughters as a wife to Benjamin. 19. And they took counsel and said: Behold there is a yearly feast of the Lord in Shiloh, which is situated to the north of the city of Bethel, and to the eastern side of the road that goes from Bethel to Shechem, and to the south of the town of Lebonah. 20. And they commanded the sons of Benjamin, and said: Go, and hide in the vineyards. 21. And when you see the daughters of Shiloh come out to lead the dances as is their custom, come out suddenly from the vineyards, and seize from among them each man a wife, and go into the land of Benjamin. 22. And when their fathers and brothers come and begin to complain against you and quarrel, we will say to them: Have pity on them; for they did not seize them by the right of warriors and victors, but when they asked that they might receive 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 seized from among those who led the dances, each man a wife, and went away to their possession, building cities and dwelling in them. 24. The children of Israel also returned by tribes and families to their tents. In those days there was no king in Israel; but every man did what seemed right in his own eyes.
Verse 4: An Altar.
They did not sin, because they erected this altar in the sanctuary. Now Deuteronomy XVI, 2 forbids offering victims on an altar outside the sanctuary. Add that this precept was given by God because of the danger of idolatry; but here there was no such danger. Hence there seems to have been a dispensation from that law here. So Abulensis. Cajetan holds that they did not build another new altar, but restored the one that was in the tabernacle. Fourthly and best, you may say this new altar was erected out of necessity. For since all the tribes had assembled, and each wished to offer more victims to God, the one altar of the tabernacle was not sufficient to receive them. Therefore it was necessary for another altar to be erected, so that all could be accommodated. But this case of necessity was considered to be excepted from that common law of one altar. Hence Solomon in a similar necessity erected another altar, 3 Kings VIII, 64. But otherwise for this there was needed a special instruction and dispensation from God, by which Samuel was allowed to sacrifice in Ramah, Gilgal, and Bethlehem, 2 Kings VII, 11 and 16; David in the threshing floor of Ornan, 2 Kings XXIV; Elijah on Mount Carmel, 3 Kings XVIII.
Verse 6: Moved with Repentance
Not properly so called: for they had not sinned by killing the Benjaminites, but with repentance, that is, grief, as if to say, grieving that one tribe of Benjamin had been nearly extinguished in Israel; for God willed that all twelve tribes be preserved, both for the honor of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob the patriarchs, and for the strength and fullness of the Synagogue, as well as of the Republic of Israel; also because of the mysteries of the number twelve, especially because the twelve tribes, and the Patriarchs as their heads and princes, were a type of the twelve Apostles; and finally because from Benjamin was to be born Saul, whom God had destined as the first king of Israel, and St. Paul the Doctor of the Gentiles, and the twelve thousand sealed, who in the time of Antichrist will be converted and will resist him, Revelation VII, 8. "At Gibeah," says St. Jerome in the Epitaph of Paula, "the city razed to the ground, Paula paused a moment, recalling its sin, and the concubine cut to pieces, and the six hundred men of the tribe of Benjamin preserved on account of the Apostle Paul, of whom Jacob had prophesied," Genesis chapter XLIX, 27: "Benjamin is a ravenous wolf; in the morning he shall devour the prey, and in the evening he shall divide the spoil." Of Paul therefore you may rightly say here what Ovid sang of Fabius Maximus, book I of the Pontic Letters, elegy 2:
That he might be born, although three hundred fell (the Fabii slain by Hannibal). One day did not carry off all the Fabii.
Verse 10: They Sent Ten Thousand.
The Hebrew, Chaldean, and Septuagint consistently have twelve thousand. So also Josephus, book V of the Antiquities, chapter II. Hence some suspect there is an error here.
AND STRIKE THE INHABITANTS OF JABESH-GILEAD — justly, because they alone had withdrawn from the common battle of the eleven tribes and the punishment of the crime: hence they received a just sentence of death from the eleven tribes, that is, from the entire people. For they were obliged to appear in a public cause of the Republic, in assembly and in battle as all the others did, and to help the Republic and fight for it as all the others did. For this is what legal and golden justice requires.
See what was said on Numbers XXXI. Moreover, the eleven tribes seem here to have exceeded the measure of just vengeance from excessive zeal, in that they ordered even children and innocent women to be killed.
Verse 11: Reserve the Virgins.
For virgins love their first husbands more than corrupted women do. They identified the virgins, not through examination by matrons, as Abulensis would have it, but from common repute, namely that they had never been married.
Verse 18: Bound by an Oath.
This oath was binding in the case where the remaining Benjaminites could have been provided with wives who were Israelites by some other means, so that they would not be forced to marry gentiles and foreigners, or be forced to remain celibate with the destruction of the entire tribe. For in that case their oath did not bind, namely in the case where one tribe would have had to perish, or foreign women from neighboring peoples would have had to be taken, which was dangerous and forbidden by law; since just as a vow, so also an oath made about a lesser good that impedes a greater good does not bind insofar as it impedes that good; and one who swears is understood to have tacitly wished to except a greater good when swearing; for otherwise the oath would have been unlawful: because a promise, even when confirmed by an oath, is not considered to be broken when it is changed for the better; but here it was better that one tribe not perish than that they not give their daughters as wives to it. See Sylvester, under the word "oath." Therefore the Israelites would have sinned if they had sworn not to give wives to the Benjaminites in such necessity and danger, says Abulensis; yet they thought, being simple and unrefined, that they were bound by this oath: hence they seek reasons by which both the oath and the preservation of the tribe might be safeguarded; and although Abulensis thinks those reasons were contrived and in fraud of the oath, Lyranus, Hugo, Cajetan, and Arias better judge them to have been legitimate; and as to the Gileadite women given to them, it is clear, because the Gileadites had not taken part in the war (hence they were justly destroyed: for they ought, as Abulensis rightly says, when called to the common punishment of so great a crime, to have come); but the oath concerned only those present, that is, those who had sworn, not those absent.
Verse 19: A Yearly Feast
Not of markets, as Abulensis would have it, but of some festival. It seems moreover that this feast was that of Tabernacles, which is celebrated in September; for at that time, with the grapes gathered, the vines are abundant with leaves and tendrils, under which these seizers of virgins could hide, as is said in verse 20. So Arias, Serarius, and others.
Verse 21: Seize from among Them Each Man a Wife.
You may ask whether they could lawfully counsel this seizure, and whether the Benjaminites, carrying out this plan, could lawfully seize the virgins of Shiloh? I answer affirmatively; hence I say that neither did the elders, by counseling this seizure, commit perjury; because each had only individually sworn not to give their own daughters to them, but not that they would not give others' daughters by a common decree. Likewise neither were the parents of the daughters perjured, because they were not privy to the plan of the seizure, nor did they give their daughters: but these were snatched from them; indeed, as the text suggests, the parents had previously refused them to the Benjaminites when they asked. Hence the fault, or inequality, is said to have been on their part, because they had denied them to the Benjaminites who were asking by their right, in such necessity, out of religious regard for the oath.
Finally, this was not the sin of rape, as rightly say Lyranus, Cajetan, Dionysius, Arias; because it was only an act of mercy, not very unwelcome to the daughters themselves, nor even to the parents, except for the danger of perjury, which was not present here; and because this seizure was done by the command of those to whom belonged the care of the entire people, and of the common good, whose role it was in such necessity both to provide for the oath and to determine wives and the manner of receiving them while preserving the oath, wives whom each of them would otherwise have been obligated to give to the Benjaminites, lest that tribe perish or grow back too slowly.
In a similar manner Romulus and the Romans organized games, and seized the Sabine virgins who had come to them, in order to have them as wives. This happened 700 years later; for by that many years Phinehas, as well as Othniel, preceded Rome and Romulus. The rape of the Romans occurred on the 14th of the Kalends of September, says Plutarch; that of the Benjaminites likewise in the same month of September. The Romans seized 527 virgins, or according to Halicarnassus 683; the Benjaminites seized 200. Necessity drove the Benjaminites to the seizure, freedom drove the Romans, as St. Augustine teaches, book II of the City of God, chapter XVII, and book III, chapter XIII. Hence the Roman seizure provoked wars and slaughter, but that of the Benjaminites brought peace and joy.
Epilogue: The Twelve Judges of Israel
Here ends the history of the twelve Judges of Israel, who were a type of the twelve Apostles, and who governed the people from Joshua to Eli, for 299 years; namely Othniel 40 years, Ehud 80, Barak 40, Gideon 40, Abimelech 3, Tola 23, Jair 22, Jephthah 6, Ibzan 7, Elon 10, Abdon 8, Samson 20. Of whom Rupert writes thus, book IV of the Victory of the Word of God, chapter VI: "They were the vicars of the one and true Savior (Jesus Christ). Salvation through them was administered in a twofold manner, namely by judging and by fighting: by judging, indeed, they kept the people from the slavery of idols; by fighting, going at the head themselves, they bravely avenged them against the enemies whom they had served. They were therefore judges in discipline, leaders in battle, saviors in both, prefiguring by their illustrious deeds and mystical victories the Sacraments and victories of the eternal Savior. For just as a mirror placed opposite the sun reflects a similar image, so also the bright faith of those saviors and judges displayed in their deeds a beauty similar to the eternal Savior and Judge, whose vicars they were."