Verse-by-Verse Commentary
The Book of Judges
Chapter 21: Every Man Did That Which Was Right in His Own Eyes
The book closes not with triumph but with a nation trying to patch the wreckage of its own sin. Grieved that a tribe is nearly lost, and bound by a rash oath, Israel devises troubling human remedies to save Benjamin. And over the whole book falls its final, haunting verse: 'In those days there was no king in Israel: every man did that which was right in his own eyes.'
About This Commentary
This is a verse-by-verse study of Judges chapter 21, the last chapter of the book. For each section you will find the KJV text, the Hebrew words that sharpen the meaning, plain explanation, and a Gospel Focus. Chapter 21 shows Israel trying to mend its ruin by its own devices, and ends with the verse that sums up the whole book. Every Scripture quotation is from the King James Version.
One Tribe Lacking in Israel (Judges 21:1-7)
The war won, Israel weeps that a whole tribe is nearly lost, and finds itself trapped by a rash oath sworn in the heat of the crisis.
Why Is This Come to Pass in Israel?
"Now the men of Israel had sworn in Mizpeh, saying, There shall not any of us give his daughter unto Benjamin to wife. And the people came to the house of God, and abode there till even before God, and lifted up their voices, and wept sore; And said, O LORD God of Israel, why is this come to pass in Israel, that there should be to day one tribe lacking in Israel? And it came to pass on the morrow, that the people rose early, and built there an altar, and offered burnt offerings and peace offerings. And the children of Israel said, Who is there among all the tribes of Israel that came not up with the congregation unto the LORD? For they had made a great oath concerning him that came not up to the LORD to Mizpeh, saying, He shall surely be put to death. And the children of Israel repented them for Benjamin their brother, and said, There is one tribe cut off from Israel this day. How shall we do for wives for them that remain, seeing we have sworn by the LORD that we will not give them of our daughters to wives?"
Word Study
"repented them," Hebrew nacham (נָחַם), "to be sorry, to grieve, to be moved with compassion." The same word used of God's own grieving heart (Judges 2:18) now describes Israel: "the children of Israel repented them for Benjamin their brother." Their fury against Benjamin's sin has cooled into grief for Benjamin's near destruction. This is a right and tender sorrow, they mourn that "one tribe" of the covenant family should perish, and they weep before God asking, "why is this come to pass in Israel?" But their grief comes tangled with a rash oath they had sworn in the heat of the war, never to give their daughters to Benjamin. Their compassion is real; their predicament is self-made. It is a picture of how sin, even sin rightly judged, leaves wreckage that grief alone cannot mend, and how hasty vows made in passion return to bind us.
Explanation
With Benjamin reduced to six hundred men and no women, Israel suddenly grasps the horror of what they have done: a whole tribe is about to vanish from the twelve. They weep before God and cry, "why is this come to pass in Israel?", a strange question, since the answer was their own sin and Benjamin's. But now they are snared by two oaths sworn at Mizpeh: one to execute any tribe that failed to join the war, and one never to give their daughters to Benjamin. Their zeal in the crisis had bound them with vows that now threaten to finish what the war began. They meant well at every step, yet their rash words have boxed them into an impossible corner.
Gospel Focus
Israel's tangle is a lesson in the danger of hasty vows and the limits of grief. Like Jephthah before them, they swore in the heat of the moment and were bound by their own words, "Be not rash with thy mouth... for God is in heaven, and thou upon earth: therefore let thy words be few" (Ecclesiastes 5:2). And their tears, though sincere, could not by themselves undo the ruin. Sorrow over sin's consequences is right, but it is not the same as the wisdom to walk humbly with God in the first place. How much heartache we spare ourselves by weighing our words and seeking God before we act, rather than weeping over the wreckage after. Yet even here God's people turn to the altar with burnt offerings, the instinct, however clumsy, to seek God is the first step back.
The Wives of Jabesh-gilead (Judges 21:8-15)
To keep their oath and yet save Benjamin, Israel devises a grim solution that only adds bloodshed to bloodshed.
The LORD Had Made a Breach
"And they said, What one is there of the tribes of Israel that came not up to Mizpeh to the LORD? And, behold, there came none to the camp from Jabeshgilead to the assembly. For the people were numbered, and, behold, there were none of the inhabitants of Jabeshgilead there. And the congregation sent thither twelve thousand men of the valiantest, and commanded them, saying, Go and smite the inhabitants of Jabeshgilead with the edge of the sword, with the women and the children. And this is the thing that ye shall do, Ye shall utterly destroy every male, and every woman that hath lain by man. And they found among the inhabitants of Jabeshgilead four hundred young virgins, that had known no man by lying with any male: and they brought them unto the camp to Shiloh, which is in the land of Canaan. And the whole congregation sent some to speak to the children of Benjamin that were in the rock Rimmon, and to call peaceably unto them. And Benjamin came again at that time; and they gave them wives which they had saved alive of the women of Jabeshgilead: and yet so they sufficed them not. And the people repented them for Benjamin, because that the LORD had made a breach in the tribes of Israel."
Word Study
"a breach," Hebrew perets (פֶּרֶץ), "a break, gap, rupture, breach." The word pictures a broken wall, a gap torn in what should be whole: "the LORD had made a breach in the tribes of Israel." The near-loss of Benjamin was a rupture in the twelve-fold family of God, a wound in the nation's very structure. The same word names the tragic breaking-forth of God's judgment (as at Perez-uzzah, 2 Samuel 6:8) and, hopefully, the work of restoration: God's people are called "The repairer of the breach" (Isaiah 58:12), the same perets. Israel now scrambles to repair the breach their sin had torn, but by human devices that only widen the wound, another city destroyed to supply wives. Only God can truly mend the breaches sin makes; our own patches often tear the cloth further. The gospel is God Himself repairing the breach, reconciling and making whole what sin has broken.
Explanation
Bound by their oath not to give their own daughters, Israel looks for a loophole, and finds a grim one. The town of Jabesh-gilead had not joined the war and so fell under the other oath, death for any who failed to come up. So Israel destroys Jabesh-gilead and spares its four hundred virgins to give as wives to Benjamin. It "works" in a narrow, legal sense, keeping the letter of one vow, but at the cost of a whole city's blood. And even so, four hundred wives are not enough for six hundred men. The whole scheme reveals the moral confusion of the age: a people so tangled in their own rash oaths that they add slaughter to slaughter trying to undo the first slaughter. This is not God's guidance; it is man's desperate improvising.
Gospel Focus
Notice what is absent from this whole chapter: no judge is raised up, no prophet speaks, and though Israel weeps and offers sacrifice, they never truly ask God what to do, they only ask how to keep their own oaths. So they solve one self-made problem by creating another. This is the fruit of leaning "unto thine own understanding" instead of trusting the LORD "with all thine heart" (Proverbs 3:5). When we try to repair the damage of our sin by more schemes of the flesh, we usually tear the breach wider. The only true mending comes from God, who alone can bring good out of our ruin without adding to it. Man's cleverness patches; God's grace heals. The chapter is a warning to bring our tangles to God for His wisdom, not merely to manage them with our own.
No King in Israel (Judges 21:16-25)
A second improvised remedy at Shiloh completes the rescue of Benjamin, and the book closes on the verse that explains it all.
There Was No King in Israel
"Then the elders of the congregation said, How shall we do for wives for them that remain, seeing the women are destroyed out of Benjamin? And they said, There must be an inheritance for them that be escaped of Benjamin, that a tribe be not destroyed out of Israel. Howbeit we may not give them wives of our daughters: for the children of Israel have sworn, saying, Cursed be he that giveth a wife to Benjamin. Then they said, Behold, there is a feast of the LORD in Shiloh yearly in a place which is on the north side of Bethel, on the east side of the highway that goeth up from Bethel to Shechem, and on the south of Lebonah. Therefore they commanded the children of Benjamin, saying, Go and lie in wait in the vineyards; And see, and, behold, if the daughters of Shiloh come out to dance in dances, then come ye out of the vineyards, and catch you every man his wife of the daughters of Shiloh, and go to the land of Benjamin. And it shall be, when their fathers or their brethren come unto us to complain, that we will say unto them, Be favourable unto them for our sakes: because we reserved not to each man his wife in the war: for ye did not give unto them at this time, that ye should be guilty. And the children of Benjamin did so, and took them wives, according to their number, of them that danced, whom they caught: and they went and returned unto their inheritance, and repaired the cities, and dwelt in them. And the children of Israel departed thence at that time, every man to his tribe and to his family, and they went out from thence every man to his inheritance. In those days there was no king in Israel: every man did that which was right in his own eyes."
Word Study
"no king in Israel... right in his own eyes," Hebrew ein melek (אֵין מֶלֶךְ), "there is no king." This is the book's own explanation of everything we have read, and it is the last sentence of Judges: "In those days there was no king in Israel: every man did that which was right in his own eyes." The refrain has sounded through the closing chapters, and here it lands as the final verdict. The problem was not merely the lack of a human monarch; it was that no one reigned over the heart, that each man made himself the measure of right and wrong. The remedy the book longs for is a King, but not ultimately Saul or even David, who would themselves prove the insufficiency of earthly kings. The true King is the LORD Himself, "the LORD is our king; he will save us" (Isaiah 33:22), the King who came in the flesh as Jesus Christ, "KING OF KINGS" (Revelation 19:16), and who alone can rule the heart and end the anarchy of self-will. Judges ends with a wound that only the King can heal.
Explanation
Four hundred wives being too few, the elders devise one more scheme: the remaining Benjamites are told to lie in wait at the yearly feast in Shiloh and seize wives from the dancing daughters as they come out, a plan to keep the letter of the oath (the fathers would not have "given" them) while getting around its intent. Benjamin does so, takes wives, rebuilds its cities, and the tribe is preserved. The nation disperses, "every man to his inheritance." And then comes the book's closing line, the key to the whole: "In those days there was no king in Israel: every man did that which was right in his own eyes." Every horror we have read, idolatry, civil war, atrocity, and these desperate improvisations, flowed from that one root: a people with no true King, each his own authority.
Gospel Focus
The book of Judges ends unresolved, on purpose. It leaves us aching for something it cannot supply, a King who will rule not just the nation but the heart, and set right what self-will has ruined. The whole book is a four-hundred-year argument that man cannot govern himself; left to "his own eyes," he descends into idolatry and blood. The answer to Judges is not better human effort but a King, and the King has come. Where "every man did that which was right in his own eyes," Jesus said, "I seek not mine own will, but the will of the Father" (John 5:30), and He calls us to be ruled by Him: "if ye love me, keep my commandments" (John 14:15). To crown Christ as King of your heart is the end of the anarchy Judges laments. He is the King Israel had not, the King we need, the LORD our righteousness who reigns to save.
Chapter 21 in Review
Judges 21 closes the book with Israel grieving that Benjamin is nearly extinct and scrambling to save the tribe without breaking their rash oaths. They destroy Jabesh-gilead for its virgins, then arrange for the remaining Benjamites to seize wives at the feast of Shiloh, human devices that keep the letter of their vows while patching the ruin their own sin had made. The tribe is preserved, the people disperse, and the book ends on its defining verse: "In those days there was no king in Israel: every man did that which was right in his own eyes."
For the Apostolic reader, this final chapter drives home the whole book's message. Rash oaths, self-made problems, and remedies of the flesh only widen the breach; grief over sin's wreckage cannot mend it. What Israel needs, what the whole book cries for, is a King to rule the heart. That King is not Saul or David but the LORD Himself made flesh, Jesus Christ, King of kings, who alone can end the anarchy of self-will and heal the breaches sin has torn. Judges leaves the wound open so that we will look for Him.
- Rash oaths and fleshly remedies widened the breach; grief over sin's ruin cannot by itself repair it.
- Israel asked "how" to keep their vows, but never truly asked God "what shall we do", self-will to the end.
- "No king in Israel; every man right in his own eyes", the root of every horror in the book.
- The answer to Judges is the King: the LORD Himself made flesh, Jesus Christ, who alone rules and heals the heart.
Questions for Reflection
- Do you try to patch the damage of sin with schemes of your own, or bring it to God for His healing?
- In what areas are you still doing "what is right in your own eyes" rather than submitting to the King?
- Have you crowned Jesus Christ as King of your heart, the only end to the anarchy of self-will?
- All twenty-one chapters of Judges are now complete, from the failure to drive out the Canaanites to the closing cry, "no king in Israel."
- The book traces the downward cycle, sin, servitude, supplication, salvation, through Othniel, Ehud, Deborah, Gideon, Jephthah, Samson, and the rest, and the deepening darkness of its final chapters.
- Its great theme is the persistent mercy of God to a failing people, and its unanswered cry is for a King, fulfilled in Jesus Christ, the LORD who saves and reigns.
References & Sources
Scripture is quoted from the King James Version (KJV). The Hebrew terms are standard and can be checked in any Hebrew lexicon. Supporting passages are listed so every claim can be verified in its own setting. If anything here does not look right, a verse, a reference, or a wording, please tell us at info@FruitBearers.net. Thank you for helping us keep Bible Learning error free.
- Grief for Benjamin; rash oaths: Judges 21:1-7; Ecclesiastes 5:2.
- The breach in Israel; God the repairer: Judges 21:8-15; 2 Samuel 6:8; Isaiah 58:12; Proverbs 3:5.
- No king in Israel; the King who came: Judges 21:16-25; Isaiah 33:22; Revelation 19:16; John 5:30; 14:15.