Judges 21:7

7 We swore before the Lord that we would not allow our daughters to marry a Benjaminite. How can we make sure that the remaining men of Benjamin will have wives?"

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, "Did any tribe of Israel not come here to meet with us in the presence of the Lord?" They asked this question because they had sworn that anyone who did not meet with them at Mizpah would be killed.

6 The Israelites felt sorry for their relatives, the Benjaminites. They said, "Today one tribe has been cut off from Israel.

7 We swore before the Lord that we would not allow our daughters to marry a Benjaminite. How can we make sure that the remaining men of Benjamin will have wives?"

8 Then they asked, "Which one of the tribes of Israel did not come here to Mizpah?" They found that no one from the city of Jabesh Gilead had come.

9 The people of Israel counted everyone, but there was no one from Jabesh Gilead.