Those who have studied history or watched the movie, “Seven Brides for Seven Brothers” have heard of the Sabeans before. But just in case, here’s a refresher…
Essentially, the Romans were a budding tribe whose constant state of warring had taken the focus away from starting families. Well… how was an empire to rise if it died out in the first generation – regardless of how many neighboring tribes had been conquered. The Romans needed wives, badly, and at a particular moment, they noticed a nearby tribe, the Sabeans, had women. Plotting carefully, the Romans waited until the Sabeans were having a festival - drinking, dancing, a generally good time - and then struck. The men ran into the party and each grabbed a wife, threw her over his shoulder, and ran back into the mountains.
Needless to say, the Sabeans weren’t too happy about the abduction of their women, but by the time they were able to come against the Romans, the women were comfortable with their captors and the proliferation of a Roman empire was established.
I always thought the Sabeans were the first… but now I don’t think they were.
In the last chapter of Judges, we find out this had happened before. When the tribe of Benjamin committed crimes of such atrocity that the remaining tribes had to come against it to kill and destroy, there was one slight problem.
After the battle, the remaining tribes of Israel swore they would never give their daughters to men of the tribe of Benjamin. It wasn’t long before the Benjamites realized their predicament – they would die out if they had no wives for their men. You see, all the Israelites had taken an oath that they would not marry outside the camp of Israel; no foreigners or heathen were to be introduced into their bloodline. Period.
The men of Israel listened to what the Benjamites had to say, knew they had a point, and cast about to find a solution. Their first solution was to figure out who had not joined them when they went into battle against the Benjamites. After counting everyone, they pinpointed the inhabitants of Jabesh-gilead as not having fought.
It just so happened that the penalty for not fighting against the Benjamites was death. Solution: kill all the men of Jabesh-gilead and every woman who had known man and give all the virgins to the Benjamites. The result was 400 young virgins which were handed over to the Benjamites.
It wasn’t enough! This astonished me. How many men didn’t have wives? What were these Benjamites doing that there were so many unmarried men? From a previous chapter in Judges, the sin the Benjamites were punished for was attempted sodomy against a fellow Israelite. Since it was a group of men who attempted gang rape against one visiting man and actually gang raped his wife/concubine until she died, I have to wonder how many other inhabitants of the city were perverted. Another piece of evidence that the Benjamites were sexually perverted was the fact that the Israelites killed all the cattle in the cities, a common act when wiping out a perverted culture/city/tribe.
If the Benjamites were caught up in a web of sodomy and sexual perversion, it would logically follow that they hadn’t been taking wives and marrying according to the natural progression of things. Could it be the massive slaughter of 25,000 men of valor brought repentance and a turning from their wicked ways?
The Bible tells us that 600 men escaped and ran into the wilderness, hiding for four months. From what I can tell, these were the only survivors out of the entire tribe of Benjamin. Everyone else had been killed. After the warriors, the Israelites went into the cities and killed the remaining men, the beasts, and everyone else that came to hand, burning the cities behind them.
I don’t know how many people survived, but it seems at least 600 men were alive at the end. No wonder they were concerned they would be wiped out and obliterated as a tribe of Israel. Without Israelitish wives, how could they continue?
The Israelites thought about another way the Benjamites could get wives, since the 400 weren’t enough. They pointed out a feast that happened every year in Shiloh and mentioned that if the daughters of Shiloh came out to dance in the vineyards as part of the celebration, the men who still needed wives should be hiding nearby.
The plan was to come out of hiding, grab one of the dancing girls, and beat it back to their place of residence. It worked. There were enough women dancing to fulfill the needs of the Benjamites and they returned with their captured brides to their cities, repaired and rebuilt them, lived there, and kept their inheritance.
The Sabeans weren’t the first… I wonder if they were influenced by what the Benjamites had done or if they came up with it on their own.
