After the termination of the war, the people, i.e., the people who had assembled together for the war (see Judges 21:9), went again to Bethel (see at Judges 20:18, Judges 20:26), to weep there for a day before God at the serious loss which the war had brought upon the congregation. Then they uttered this lamentation: "Why, O Lord God of Israel, is this come to pass in Israel, that a tribe is missing to-day from Israel?" This lamentation involved the wish that God might show them the way to avert the threatened destruction of the missing tribe, and build up the six hundred who remained. To give a practical expression to this wish, they built an altar the next morning, and offered burnt-offerings and supplicatory offerings upon it (see at Judges 20:26), knowing as they did that their proposal would not succeed without reconciliation to the Lord, and a return to the fellowship of His grace. There is something apparently strange in the erection of an altar at Bethel, since sacrifices had already been offered there during the war itself (Judges 20:26), and this could not have taken place without an altar. Why it was erected again, or another one built, is a question which cannot be answered with any certainty. It is possible, however, that the first was not large enough for the number of sacrifices that had to be offered now.

Judges 21:10 Parallel Commentaries

Go and smite As they had sworn to destroy those who would not assist in the war (ver.

Judges 21:5 And the children of Israel said, Who is there among all the tribes of Israel that came not up with the congregation to the LORD?...

) they determined to destroy the men of Jabesh, and to leave none except the virgins; and to give these to the

600 Benjamites who had escaped to the rock of Rimmon. The whole account is dreadful. The crime of the men of Gibeah was of the deepest dye; the punishment involving both the guilty and innocent, was extended to the most criminal excess, and their mode of remedying the evil they had occasioned was equally abominable.

Judges 21:5 And the children of Israel said, Who is there among all the tribes of Israel that came not up with the congregation to the LORD?...

Judges 5:23 Curse you Meroz, said the angel of the LORD, curse you bitterly the inhabitants thereof; because they came not to the help of the LORD...

Deuteronomy 13:15 You shall surely smite the inhabitants of that city with the edge of the sword, destroying it utterly, and all that is therein...

Joshua 7:24 And Joshua, and all Israel with him, took Achan the son of Zerah, and the silver, and the garment, and the wedge of gold, and his sons...

1 Samuel 11:7 And he took a yoke of oxen, and hewed them in pieces, and sent them throughout all the coasts of Israel by the hands of messengers...

1 Samuel 15:3 Now go and smite Amalek, and utterly destroy all that they have, and spare them not; but slay both man and woman, infant and suckling...