Judges 21:7

7 What can we do to provide wives for the ones who are left, since we ourselves have made a pledge before the LORD not to allow our daughters to marry them?"

Judges 21:7 Meaning and Commentary

Judges 21:7

How shall we do for wives for them that remain
By which it seems, as well as by what is after related, that they knew of the six hundred men hid in the rock Rimmon:

seeing we have sworn by the Lord;
by the Word of the Lord, as the Targum; and such an oath with them was a sacred thing, and to be kept inviolable, even to their own hurt:

that we will not give them of our daughters to wives;
as in ( Judges 21:1 ) and therefore they must either marry among the Heathens, which was forbidden, or they must make void their oath, or the tribe in a little time would be extinct; these were difficulties they knew not how to surmount, and this was the object of their inquiry.

Judges 21:7 In-Context

5 Then the Israelites asked, "Were there any out of all the tribes of Israel who didn't march up to the assembly before the LORD?" Indeed, they had made a solemn pledge that anyone who didn't march up before the LORD at Mizpah would be put to death.

6 The Israelites had a change of heart concerning their relatives the Benjaminites. They said, "Today one tribe has been cut off from Israel.

7 What can we do to provide wives for the ones who are left, since we ourselves have made a pledge before the LORD not to allow our daughters to marry them?"

8 So they asked, "Is there anyone from the tribes of Israel who didn't march up before the LORD at Mizpah?" There was! No one from Jabesh-gilead had come to the assembly at the camp.

9 When the people's attendance was taken, not one of those who lived in Jabesh-gilead had been there.