You Must Choose, So Choose Wisely

In those days there was no king in Israel; every man did what was right in his own eyes.

Judges 17:6

This verse occurs a few times towards the end of the Book of Judges.

I frequently cite the instance that closes out Judges—Chapter 21 verse 25—when grounding an argument that we are individually called and individually accountable for how well or how poorly we carry out God’s Law.

I have cited this verse when arguing that if people will but follow God’s Law, man’s laws are made superfluous, yet if people reject God’s Law, man’s laws are made irrelevant.

Yet the closing chapters of Judges are a complex and fairly dark story about people choosing what they thought was right, acting on it—and reaping horrific consequences as a result.

We are called to decide for ourselves moral right and moral wrong, but the closing chapters of Judges are a study in our capacity to make not just the wrong decision, but the worst possible decision.

In Chapter 17 we read about a man named Micah, who retrieves by theft silver that belonged to his mother, who then uses the silver “to make a graven image and a molten image.” That is an odd choice of uses for the silver, as the commandment is quite clear: no graven images. Micah builds a shrine, and makes one of his sons a priest. There is no mentioning of Micah following the rites of ordination directed in Exodus 29. Later, a Levite happens upon Micah’s home, and is hired to be the priest instead of Micah’s son.

In Chapter 18, a group of Danites rob Micah, and persuade the Levite to join them. After attacking the city of La’ish, the group settles around that city, renaming it Dan. There they set up Micah’s graven image and install a descendant of Moses as priest.

In Chapter 19, we read of the Levite taking for himself a concubine—and even in the original Hebrew she is referred to as "concubine” (פִילֶ֔גֶשׁ) and not “wife”. She then tires of the relationship and returns to her father in Bethlehem. The Levite goes after her, and after many days, prepares to return back to his own home, with concubine in tow. On the way back the Levite and his concubine arrive in the city of Gib′e-ah, a city of Benjaminites, and end up spending the night there, the guest of an old man.

In the middle of the night, several young men gather around the old man’s house, demanding he send the Levite out to them to be assaulted (a scene which recalls the Sodomites demanding the same of Lot in Genesis). Instead of sending the Levite out, his concubine is put out to the mob instead, where she is brutally assaulted repeatedly and slain.

The following morning, the Levite gathers up her dead body, cuts her up into twelve pieces, sending a piece to each of the tribes of Israel, who then gather to hear the Levite’s story. Outraged upon hearing, every tribe except the tribe of Benjamin swears an oath to avenge the woman’s death. An army is raised, which goes back to Gib′e-ah, there to punish the Benjaminites, first for the sexual assault and murder of a young woman, and second for refusing to hand over the miscreant young men when challenged to do so.

Bloody civil war among the Israelite tribes follows, which the Benjaminites ultimately lose. Before losing, however, they suffer the loss of all of their wives and all of their children. Only some 600 of the tribe of Benjamin survive—all male.

This poses a problem for the victorious Israelites: if the Benjaminites are not able to take wives for themselves, an entire tribe of the Children of Israel, the chosen of God, will vanish forever. However, the tribes arrayed against the Benjaminites had sworn an oath that they would never give the Benjaminites any of their daughters in marriage. If they keep their oath, the Tribe of Benjamin will cease to exist, but if they violate their oath they go against God.

Their solution—allow the surviving Benjaminites to “steal” wives for themselves from the remaining tribes of Israel.

Let that sink in: the tribes of Israel were outraged that a Levite’s concubine was savagely attacked and killed, yet the war they wage to “punish” the young men guilty of the deed ends with the other tribes of Israel agreeing to allow the Benjaminites to “steal” wives for themselves among the daughters of the other tribes. A war fought over sexual assault ends with an agreement to allow sexual slavery.

The story adds an ironic subtext to the closing verse of Judges. The men of Israel were morally outraged by what had transpired, and were full of righteous indignation when they went off to wage punitive fratricidal war. They were doing what they thought was right.

Interestingly, God is conspicuous mainly by His absence in this narrative. God offers no encouragement, and He certainly does not command the war. He delivers only a few cursory directions before allowing the Benjaminites to finally lose.

The war against the Tribe of Benjamin was a choice made by men and men alone. God did not command it, yet God also did not stop it. Even though God’s edict to the Israelites in Leviticus 19:18 was to forsake vengeance among the Israelite people—and the war against the Benjaminites was undeniably a war of vengeance—God allowed the Israelites the freedom to walk down the path of vengeance they had chosen.

At the end of that path was the near destruction of one of the Twelve Tribes, forcing the remainder of Israel to make some very drastic decisions to preserve the Tribe of Benjamin.

The Israelites were free to choose right and wrong for themselves—and they got it wrong. Their choice, full of seeming righteousness and righteous indignation, turned into a consequence of vengeance and fratricidal slaughter, something God specifically told the Israelites not to do.

We are free to choose right and wrong for ourselves. We are called to choose right and wrong for ourselves. We are commanded to choose right and wrong for ourselves.

We are not guaranteed to get the choice right.

We are not guaranteed our choices will work out as we want.

We are not guaranteed God will make the choices for us and save us from ourselves.

We have to choose, and so it is imperative that we choose wisely, with deliberation and much reflection. That is our best hope—our only hope—for making the right choice, and even then we will get it wrong at least some of the time.

How many choices have we seen unfold in the world today where things did not go as expected, and carried consequences far in excess of what was anticipated? How many judgements of national leaders have led to wasting of blood and treasure? How many pronouncements of so-called “experts” have ultimately done far more harm than good?

How many times have we learned the truth of the aphorism that the road to Hell is paved with good intentions?

We are called to choose for ourselves how we will carry out God’s Law, but always there is a catch: we are not God. We are human. We are imperfect. We make mistakes.

Even if we believe in our hearts we are doing what is right, that is no assurance that what we are doing is, in fact, right.

Even small mistakes—small sins—left uncorrected can lead us into minefields where all choices become bad. The Levite started out allowing himself to be hired out as a rogue priest, where it is unclear he was ever properly ordained as commanded by God. Instead of marrying, he took for himself a concubine—what we might today describe perhaps as a “friend with benefits”. Being unmarried, the woman thought nothing of leaving when the relationship grew tiresome.

If the Levite had been more diligent in following the rules for priests, would he have entered into a sexual relationship outside of marriage? If the woman were his wife, would she have left just because of some dispute with him? If she was his wife and had not left, would they have found themselves in Gib′e-ah, at the mercy of a mob?

We do not know, nor can we, but the possibility cannot be denied.

If the Levite had buried the concubine in the proper funerary custom and not used her body as a brutal and ugly message to Israel, would the tribes themselves still have been triggered into vengeful fury, and moved to violence against their brethren?

We do not know, nor can we, but the possibility cannot be denied.

If the tribes had not been moved to violence, would they have sworn drastic and intemperate oaths before God?

We do not know, nor can we, but the possibility cannot be denied.

The people of Israel did not leap all at once into fratricidal violence. They wandered there steadily, by degrees. The path began with small mistakes, slight deviations from the path of righteousness, and ended with the tribes of Israel very nearly wiping out a portion of their own people.

Yet at every stop along the path, there is no intimation that the people ever considered what they were doing was wrong, or that they had gotten God’s Law very wrong. At every step, they presumed what they were doing was right.

Only at the end, when consequence came crashing down on them, did it become clear that they had gotten the choice of right and wrong very wrong.

The closing chapters of Judges are a sobering commentary on hubris and human fallibility. They are not a tale of dark and evil forces, but of carelessness leading to corruption leading to cruelty leading to chaos.

We must judge right and wrong for ourselves. There is no one else who can judge for us. Yet always we must be mindful of our own capacity for error, our own facility for sin. Always we must be mindful that self-righteous indignation is never actual righteousness. Always we must be mindful that we are not God.

My prayer on every day is that I may always be mindful of this. My prayer on every day is that I may always be mindful of my own capacity for simple error, for making the wrong choice even when I am certain I am right. My prayer on every day is that I may always be mindful that I am but God’s creation, not God, and that my judgement is never perfect.

My prayer for you on every day is that you also may always be mindful of this. My prayer for you on every day is that you also may always be mindful of your own capacity for simple error, for making the wrong choice even when you are certain you are right. My prayer for you on every day is that you also may always be mindful that you are but God’s creation, not God, and that your judgement is likewise never perfect.

We are free to choose right and wrong for ourselves. We are called to choose right and wrong for ourselves. We are commanded to choose right and wrong for ourselves.

We are not guaranteed to get the choice right.

We are not guaranteed our choices will work out as we want.

We are not guaranteed God will make the choices for us and save us from ourselves.

We have to choose, and so it is imperative that we choose wisely, with deliberation and much reflection. That is our best hope—our only hope—for making the right choice.