Odious Oaths

“Go and lie in wait in the vineyards, and watch; and behold, if the daughters of Shiloh come out to take part in the dances, then you shall come out of the vineyards and each of you shall catch his wife from the daughters of Shiloh, and go to the land of Benjamin.” Judges 21:20b-21 NASB

Catch – The Hebrew verb hatap is rare. You will find it once again in Psalm 10:9. But its infrequent occurrence doesn’t affect determining its meaning. The ESV communicates the action better with “snatch” rather than “catch.” As a result of foolish and ill-conceived oaths, the men of Israel effectively create a situation where the tribe of Benjamin will most likely be extinguished. Now, in order to prevent that possibility, they enter into even more outrageous behavior. They kidnap women in order to supply the men of the tribe of Benjamin with wives not from any of the tribes of Israel. One act of stupidity leads to another and another. Instead of repenting of their original oath, they add more despicable behavior to a human “solution.” Yael Ziegler sees a societal pattern developing: “A successful society revolves around recognition of the Other, the ability to see a person who has a name and an individual identity. Appreciation of the distinctiveness of each individual stimulates acts of generosity, loyalty, and compassion. On the flip side, when a person is viewed without a name or individuality, he becomes an object, unworthy of human rights.”[1] And the first persons to be treated without individual identity in the history of the human race seem to be women.

The book of Judges is a sorrowful tale of the breakdown of society. It is filled with mistaken alliances, foolish promises, disregard for individual life, lack of leadership and the decline of moral and religious purity. It is a history of a people whose vain attempts to deal with human issues apart from the direction of God result in civil collapse. Ziegler continues: “As society steadily splinters off into smaller units, tribalism mutates and becomes individualism as individuals revert to their basic allegiances with increasingly narrow frames of loyalty. Their first loyalty is to themselves, followed by an allegiance to their immediate family, then to their extended family, and finally to their tribe.”[2]

The very fact that the men of Israel sanction kidnapping and proffer religious excuses should cause us spiritual shock, not because God Himself considers kidnapping a capital offense but because of the fact that God’s chosen people have fallen so far from Torah observance that they think this to be an acceptable solution to a problem they created. But, for the moment, set aside the immoral act and ask yourself, “Have I treated some unnamed other as if he or she was of no value except to resolve my dilemma?” “Have I participated in the kidnapping of another’s worth by requisitioning that person to serve my interests regardless of the result to him? When Yeshua elevated Leviticus 19:18 to the status of Deuteronomy 6:4, he placed a burden of every one of his followers to reject the Judges solution.

Topical Index: kidnapping, hatap, Leviticus 19:18, Judges 21:20-21, Psalm 10:9

[1] Yael Ziegler, Ruth: From Alienation to Monarchy (Maggid: Jerusalem, 2015), p. 30.

[2] Yael Ziegler, Ruth: From Alienation to Monarchy, p. 39.