Do 3 wrongs make a right? Yes!
The comments about Lot and his daughters made me remember another quite interesting story from the Bible, this one:
*** Rbi8 *** 22 While they were making their hearts feel good, look! the men of the city, mere good-for-nothing men, surrounded the house, shoving one another against the door; and they kept saying to the old man, the owner of the house: “Bring out the man that came into your house, that we may have intercourse with him.” 23 At that the owner of the house went on out to them and said to them: “No, my brothers, do not do anything wrong, please, since this man has come into my house. Do not commit this disgraceful folly. 24 Here are my virgin daughter and his concubine. Let me bring them out, please, and YOU rape them and do to them what is good in YOUR eyes. But to this man YOU must not do this disgraceful, foolish thing.”
25 And the men did not want to listen to him. Hence the man took hold of his concubine and brought her forth to them outside; and they began to have intercourse with her, and kept on abusing her all night long until the morning, after which they sent her off at the ascending of the dawn. 26 Then the woman came as it was turning to morning, and fell down at the entrance of the man’s house where her master was,— until daylight. 27 Later her master rose up in the morning and opened the doors of the house and went out to get on his way, and, look! the woman, his concubine, fallen at the entrance of the house with her hands upon the threshold! 28 So he said to her: “Rise up, and let us go.” But there was no one answering. At that the man took her upon the ass and rose up and went to his place.
29 Then he entered his house and took the slaughtering knife and laid hold of his concubine and cut her up according to her bones into twelve pieces and sent her into every territory of Israel. 30 And it occurred that everybody seeing it said: “Such a thing as this has never been brought about or been seen from the day that the sons of Israel went up out of the land of Egypt down to this day. Set YOUR hearts upon it, take counsel and speak.”
It is indeed a very harsh and horrible story, which reveal in all its horror the status of women in Israel of old. There are some puzzling details that reveal how casual those men involved seem to be about the matter. The host offered his virgin daughter and the guest’s concubine wife to the mob. Apparently somehow only the wife was actually given to the mob. Was the Levite master pacing the floor, in pangs of agony over the fate of his wife?
Apparently he was calm enough to get some sleep . . . another indication of how little he cared. “The master rose up in the morning”. But apparently he was calm enough to get some sleep, while his concubine wife was being molested through the night, which is another indication of how much he cared. If you found your wife dead on the doorstep, mauled and mangled, would you cry, pick up her corpse, ask, "What did I do? I'm so sorry."
Now the story gets even worse, because back home he actually cuts up the corpse in 12 pieces like a cow or a sheep and sends them around to the 12 tribes, one can only imagine how “delicate” this was considering the climate. No respect and reverence for his dead wife.
What had incensed the Levite to such a degree? Was it the treatment of his wife?
That might be a part of it because of the grave breach of the customary hospitality.
After all he wasn’t more concerned about her than he went to bed, it might not have been the sexual abuse in itself that caused his anger, but the killing of his property.
Anyway the tribe of Benjamin don’t seem overly concerned with the incident and the rest of the tribes decide to punish them. Who is the more “punished” the 11 tribes or Benjamin is difficult to say as the 11 tribes lose 40,000 men in two days. Then finally they succeed with an ambush and almost wipe out the tribe of Benjamin but for 600 men that escapes. The Watchtower has some quite priceless comments to this incident:
*** w61 2/15 127-8 Questions from Readers ***
The slaughtering of so many of them in the beginning imposed a great test upon the faithful tribes, especially with regard to the rightness of their cause. By letting the faithful tribes suffer such losses, forty thousand men in two days, Jehovah was testing them to see whether they would be persistent in this determined effort to uproot this gross evil in Israel when it brought such great losses to themselves.
The thousands of faithful ones who died because of the punitive campaign died in a righteous cause. The survivors who gained the victory vindicated themselves before Jehovah God and before all the readers of his Word. This vindication was worth the cost, and the nation of Israel was purged of a very degrading moral evil.
One wonders in vain how on earth anyone with half a brain could claim that Israel had been purged of a very degrading evil”, by their actions in this case. If anything they had clearly demonstrated their immense and limitless capacity for evil, and evil their God seemed to rejoice in. But then the 11 tribes aren’t yet quite satisfied with their evil deeds and they soon come up with a reason to inflict more pain and acts of terrorism.
*** Rbi8 Judges 21:1-23 ***
21 Now the men of Israel had sworn in Miz'pah, saying: “Not a man of us will give his daughter to Benjamin as a wife.” 2 Consequently the people came to Beth'el and kept sitting there before the [true] God until the evening and continued to raise their voice and indulge in a great deal of weeping. 3 And they would say: “Why, O Jehovah the God of Israel, has this occurred in Israel, for one tribe to be missing today from Israel?” 4 And it came about the next day that the people proceeded to get up early and to build an altar there and to offer up burnt offerings and communion offerings. 5 Then the sons of Israel said: “Who is there out of all the tribes of Israel that has not come up in the congregation to Jehovah, for there is a great oath that has taken place respecting the one that has not come up to Jehovah at Miz'pah, saying, ‘Let him be put to death without fail.’” 6 And the sons of Israel began to feel regret over Benjamin their brother. So they said: “Today one tribe has been chopped off from Israel. 7 What shall we do to those who are left over as to wives, now that we ourselves have sworn by Jehovah not to give them any of our daughters as wives?”
When these idiots had almost wiped out an entire tribe, they started weeping and wailing.
Look at this question: “And they would say: “Why, O Jehovah the God of Israel, has this occurred in Israel, for one tribe to be missing today from Israel?”
Even as a rhetorical question this seem to be extremely stupid, because they knew very well why this one tribe was “missing”, they had just done their very best to exterminate that very tribe themselves, to makes sure they had even swore that no one would let their daughters marry any man from Benjamin, and they had of course slaughtered their women.
What happened next? Well what could be more natural than to turn against those who had the decency to refuse to participate in the mindless slaughter? Those who didn’t want to have any part in the extermination of Benjamin. Now it was time to punish them for this terrible behaviour. Having almost wiped out the tribe of Benjamin had apparently not quenched their thirst for blood and slaughter so here we go again:
*** Rbi8 Judges 21:1-23 ***
8 And they went on to say: “Which one out of the tribes of Israel is it that has not come up to Jehovah at Miz'pah?” And, look! no one had come into the camp from Ja'besh-gil'e·ad to the congregation. 9 When the people were counted, well, look! there was not a man there from the inhabitants of Ja'besh-gil'e·ad. 10 Hence the assembly proceeded to send twelve thousand of the most valiant men there and to command them, saying: “Go, and YOU must strike the inhabitants of Ja'besh-gil'e·ad with the edge of the sword, even the women and the little ones.
It didn’t pay well to be peaceful in Israel in those days; if you were unwilling to murder indiscriminately you would be murdered yourself:
*** Rbi8 Judges 21:1-23 ***11 And this is the thing that YOU should do: Every male and every woman that has experienced lying with a male YOU should devote to destruction.” 12 However, they found out of the inhabitants of Ja'besh-gil'e·ad four hundred girls, virgins, that had not had intercourse with a man by lying with a male. So they brought them to the camp at Shi'loh, which is in the land of Ca'naan.
As we can see, they found 400 girls (most likely) children, which were virgins, those who were not virgins was of course exterminated for their heinous crimes of being married and having children.
Then the savage murderers sent a delegation to the remnant of the tribe of Benjamin to offer them the poor virgin girls, which had just witnessed their parents being cut down and hacked to death by their loving “brothers”:
*** Rbi8 Judges 21:1-23 ***
13 And all the assembly now sent and spoke to the sons of Benjamin that were on the crag of Rim'mon and offered them peace. 14 Accordingly Benjamin came back at that time. Then they gave them the women that they had preserved alive from the women of Ja'besh-gil'e·ad; but they did not find enough for them. 15 And the people felt regret over Benjamin because Jehovah had made a rupture between the tribes of Israel. 16 Consequently the older men of the assembly said: “What shall we do to the men that are left over as to wives, for womankind has been annihilated out of Benjamin?” 17 Then they said: “There should be a possession for those who have escaped of Benjamin, that a tribe might not be wiped out of Israel. 18 As for us, we are not allowed to give them wives from our daughters, because the sons of Israel have sworn, saying, ‘Cursed is the one that gives a wife to Benjamin.’”
Of course the mindless idiocy didn’t end there, but now they had to commit new atrocities to provide the rest of the men of Benjamin with breeding machines. To allow the People of Shiloh to wiggle out of their oath of not giving any from Benjamin their daughters, they came up with this clever plan. Of course Jehovah being as stupid as he is would never see through their cunning plan for circumventing their oath:
*** Rbi8 Judges 21:1-23 ***
19 Finally they said: “Look! There is a festival of Jehovah from year to year in Shi'loh, which is to the north of Beth'el, toward the east of the highway that goes up from Beth'el to She'chem and toward the south of Le·bo'nah.” 20 So they commanded the sons of Benjamin, saying: “Go, and YOU must lie in wait in the vineyards. 21 And YOU must look, and, there now, when the daughters of Shi'loh come on out to dance in circle dances, YOU must also come out from the vineyards and carry off for yourselves by force each one his wife from the daughters of Shi'loh, and YOU must go to the land of Benjamin. 22 And it must occur that should their fathers or their brothers come to conduct a legal case against us, we also shall certainly say to them, ‘Do us a favor for their sakes, because we have not taken for each one his wife by war, for it was not YOU that did the giving to them at a time when YOU would become guilty.’”
23 Accordingly the sons of Benjamin did just that way, and they proceeded to carry off wives for their number from the women dancing around, whom they snatched away; after which they went off and returned to their inheritance and built the cities and took up dwelling in them.
So because of the event that took place in the little village in the tribe of Benjamin territory a horrible chain of atrocities took place. Don’t you all see the immense wisdom and love of the almighty God behind it all? One thing we should all count ourselves fortunate for, we live here and now, not back then. It is quite strange isn’t it? This is the society all Jehovah's Witnesses and their fundamentalist brothers long back to and hope will come back in the near future.
Norm.