The Sin of a Fallen Israel

Traveling by night, a Levite stops to lodge in Gibeah, and when a mob comes for him he puts his wife outside to them. She is killed in the course of that night, and the Levite cuts her body into twelve pieces and sends them out to every tribe of Israel. Israel gathers at Mizpah and resolves with one voice to bring judgment on the tribe of Benjamin.

The Levite concealed his own wrongdoing and inflated the injustice done to him, and on his word alone Israel burned with anger. They inquired of God and were told that Judah should go up first, yet twice they suffered heavy defeat, which meant that God was not with them in this war. They wept and fasted and offered burnt offerings and peace offerings, but God did not accept sacrifice and prayer that came without repentance.

In the end Benjamin was all but wiped out, with only six hundred men left. Only then did Israel feel remorse, yet rather than coming to true repentance they put the people of Jabesh Gilead to death and heaped one more sin upon the rest. The sin of a corrupted Benjamin was the sin of a fallen Israel itself. The path God desires is this: to repent of one’s own sin first, before looking at the faults of a brother.