Tribal Listening Leads to Destruction

 By Daniel Cain (David's brother)

Chapter 19 of the book of Judges is the story of a gang rape of a woman—surely one of the most offensive and worst times in the history of Israel. (See the black-and-white 1880 artwork here by Gustave Dore, showing the woman being discovered on her master’s doorstep in the aftermath of the crime committed on her person.) But the subsequent group behavior in chapter 20 also defies any definition of reasonableness, since the Israelite tribe that was home for those committing the rape decided to defend those men and engage in a civil war instead. Just as the activity of listening involved real risk in chapter 9 [see the posting from 9/10/24], the situation in chapter 20 reveals that listening is again the source of a real problem:

 

The Israelites sent messengers to the tribe of Benjamin, saying, “What a terrible thing has been done among you! Give up those evil men [those who had committed the rape], those troublemakers from Gibeah, so we can execute them and purge Israel of this evil.”  But the people of Benjamin would not listen.

 

Choosing not to listen in this situation cost the whole tribe of Benjamin very dearly. They were virtually wiped out, with the exception of six hundred who were able to escape during a final battle. In retrospect, of course anyone can see how much better a decision the Benjaminites should have made. But they should have been able to make that kind of decision much sooner and save the lives of many people on both sides of the civil war that resulted, simply by recognizing and standing up to bad behavior in the beginning before the situation turned out the way it did. That is what reasonable people would and should have done.

 

In both chapter 9 and again in chapter 20, the listening that people engaged in had much too narrow a range. Listening to one man (Abimelech) or listening only to those within one’s own tribe (the Benjaminites) shut off any chance those people would make more reasonable decisions. In our modern day culture, the latter kind of listening has been defined as ‘tribalism.’

 

Just as I argued in the earlier posting, it’s not clear that listening in itself is wrong, and God will allow you as much freedom as you desire in who and what you listen to. But, the end result of tribalism can be incredibly destructive—even to those not guilty of doing it. Tribalists not only fool themselves into believing only what they want to believe, they cause conflict with others that ends up engulfing everyone, as the effort to affirm what’s really true and factual takes place. The book of James makes the case for the tongue being small but capable of much destruction. I guess I’m making the case that ears can be just as destructive, especially if we limit the range of who and what we’re listening to.

 

See information on the artwork here: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:1-concubine-dore.jpg …This work is in the public domain in its country of origin and other countries and areas where the copyright term is the author's life plus 100 years or fewer. {{PD-1996}} – public domain in its source country on January 1, 1996 and in the United States.