Scripture Daily

Context No. 572 of 4322 · Judges

Context · Reflection

Judges 20:19-23: in context

19The children of Israel rose up in the morning and encamped against Gibeah. 20The men of Israel went out to battle against Benjamin; and the men of Israel set the battle in array against them at Gibeah. 21The children of Benjamin came out of Gibeah, and on that day destroyed twenty-two thousand of the Israelite men down to the ground. 22The people, the men of Israel, encouraged themselves, and set the battle again in array in the place where they set themselves in array the first day. 23The children of Israel went up and wept before the LORD until evening; and they asked of the LORD, saying, “Shall I again draw near to battle against the children of Benjamin my brother?” The LORD said, “Go up against him.”

Israel has gone to war against the tribe of Benjamin over a genuine atrocity, a horrifying crime that had to be answered, and they have done it the right way, inquiring of God before they march. God tells them to go up. And then the first day is a catastrophe. Benjamin comes out and cuts down twenty-two thousand Israelites. Twenty-two thousand dead, on the very day they obeyed God's direction to fight. If ever a defeat looked like proof that God had abandoned them or that they had misread his will, this was it. They were in the right, they had asked God, he had said go, and they were crushed.

What they do next is the instructive part. They do not conclude that they must have been wrong, and they do not walk away. They go up and weep before the LORD until evening, and then they ask him again: shall we go back out to battle against our brothers? And God again says, go up. They will actually be beaten a second time before they finally prevail on the third day. But the pattern is set here: obeying God and being in the right did not spare them a devastating loss, and the faithful response to that loss was not to quit but to grieve honestly before God, seek him again, and keep going. Being on the right side of God's will is not a guarantee of an easy or immediate victory.

That corrects an assumption I carry into obedience, that if I am doing what God wants, things should go well, and that a hard defeat must mean I misheard or was somehow wrong. Israel was exactly where God told them to be and still lost twenty-two thousand men in a day. When I do what is right, even what God has clearly directed, and meet a crushing setback, do I take the defeat as proof I was mistaken and give up, or can I, like Israel, weep before God, ask him again, and keep going toward what he has called me to?

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