As Joshua prepared to die, he brought Israel together and recounted God’s grace and faithfulness to them. From God’s call to Abraham, the gift of Isaac, freedom from Egypt, protection in the Wilderness, and placement in the land of promise, God had been very good (Josh 24).
Joshua urged his people to stop serving the gods of Egypt and Canaan. Three times they made a collective promise to be faithful and worship only Jehovah (24.16-Josh.24.18" class="scriptRef">Josh 24:16-18, 21, 24). Within a generation came the events of Judges 21. Israel was an apostate, rebellious people doing what seemed right to them (Judg 2:6-19). Israel was a nation of spiritual apostasy, moral awfulness, and political anarchy; evidences of a people far from God.

I. A Foolish Religion (Judg 21:01-3). The Levite sacrificed his wife to a mob (Judg 19:25); Israel sacrificed right to a sinful sense of justice (Judg 19:25). The world always looks different when crazed, irrational emotion settles down. Four months after winning the war of revenge, Israel realized they’d nearly exterminated the tribe of Benjamin (Judg 20:47).
The people cried and sacrificed, but it was empty ritual. There was no recognition of sin, no repentance from sin, and no request for God’s wisdom. They blamed God for their sin while still disobeying Him (Judg 21:3; 1 Sam 15:22). Weeping and fake repentance always returns to sin and never changes attitudes or actions (2 Pet 2:22); truth and time go hand-in-hand.

II. A Foolish Vow (Judg 21:4-11). Israel foolishly vowed to punish Benjamin by never giving their daughters in marriage (Judg 20:1). The mad rush for mob justice led to a second foolish vow to exterminate Benjamin’s women and children; one evil upon another. At Mizpah they also vowed to kill any Israelite who didn’t join their war. They could resolve their three foolish vows by killing all the men in the Jewish city of Jabesh Gilead.
Israel did what seemed right in their own eyes (Jas 3:13-18). How different is the wisdom of this world and of God! How unlike is man’s justice to God’s justice! How deceitful and irrational sin is! Israel would be faithful to their vows to one another while breaking their vow to the Lord.
When you don’t know what to do, go first to your Father in Heaven in prayer. He loves you, cares for you, and from His unbounded knowledge graciously supplies wisdom from above for every situation.
Twelve thousand soldiers were sent to Jabesh Gilead on the east side of the Jordan River. Once God is rejected, only godless evil can reign. Where human life is devalued or made worthless, personal gratification becomes supreme (2 Tim 3:2, 4).

III. A Foolish Result (Judg 21:12-15). Men are called by God to protect women, but Israel treated them as farm animals to be bought, traded, sold, and bred. When a person or a nation abandons God’s standard of right and wrong, it will do whatever seems right in their eyes and evil will reign.
The Israelite army killed everyone in Jabesh Gilead but 400 young virgins who were taken captive to Shiloh to be given as a peace offering to the surviving men of Benjamin. But they needed 600 women (Judg 20:47)!
Again, Israel blamed God for their rash, foolish, emotional, vengeful mob justice. Spiritual apostasy. Moral awfulness. Political anarchy. Can you see the national confusion and corruption about good and evil, right and wrong? Can you also see God’s great grace? Despite Israel’s sin, He would not give Israel up. He would be faithful to His promise even when they would not!