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About Jesus Steve Sweetman Chapter 20 Israelites
Fight The Benjamites (ch. 20:1 - 48)
Note
in verse 1 that all Israelis from Dan to Verses
2 through 8 is a hearing of Some
suggest that this Levite was not telling the truth.
They say that the wild gang just wanted to have homosexual sex
with the Levite. They didn't
want to kill her. Other's
suggest that the Levite understood that the homosexual sex would
eventually lead to his death, as it did with his concubine.
I would tend to think in these terms. The
conclusion to this hearing, and the answer to the question that ended
chapter 19, was that the rest of The
reason I suggest that the ensuing battle was a civil war is because Note
in verses 17 and 18 that Israel
enquired of the Lord who should go first to fight the battle.
The text states that Judah
was chosen by the Lord to go first.
How this determination was made, we really don't know.
It might be a matter of using lots, as in, throwing the dice.
That being said, the text does suggest that this was the will of
God, so we must believe it was. From
verse 19 to verse 48, the end of the chapter describes the battle
between Israel
and the tribe of Benjamin. This
was one very bad fight.
Israel
enquired of the Lord to see if
they should actually go ahead with the attack.
The Lord told them to go ahead and attack the tribe of Benjamin.
You might wonder if the Lord really told this to them, but I
believe He did. Unlike Micah
and his false personal priest who had his own temple, as we saw in
chapters 17 and the tribe of Dan who had their own personal priests, Note that the first couple of attacks failed, but "on the third day", as seen in verse 29, things began to go Israel's way. Throughout the Old Testament we see reference to the "third day", and here we see it again. I'm sure "the third day" has great meaning. It is the day of victory as seen in the resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ. Many Bible teachers say that the number three is the number of completion. Concerning
such things as the numerous times the "third day" is mentioned
in the Old Testament, liberal Bible teachers suggest that much of what
we read in the Old Testament are just stories with a moral point to
them. It is too hard to
believe that numbers like three, as in the third day, and the numbers
like seven, and other numerical significances could have really took
place. However, if God is who He says He is, all the numerical so-called
coincidences can easily be real historical events. In
verse 47 we see that only 600 men survived the battle.
These 600 men become significant in the next chapter.
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