The end of Sefer Shoftim-- What's Right in Their Own Eyes

Chapters 17-21 of Sefer Shoftim don't follow the same pattern as the first 16 chapters of the book.   Here there are no outside enemies, no general statements of the sins of Israel, no Judges to save them.

Instead, we have two incidents that are disturbing, even nauseating.    (This and the next paragraph are summaries of the chapters;  additional ideas are below these paragraphs).  The first, about "pesel Michah", the story of Michah, (not to be confused with the prophet of the same name) a man from the tribe of Efrayim, who builds an idol and hires his own Levi to serve as his personal priest.   Some armed members of the tribe of Dan come, forcibly remove the Levi and make him their priest, and seek out some land.   They then set up the idol for themselves, and set up "Gershon son of Menashe" as their priests.

The second is the story of Pilegesh b'Givah, of the man and his concubine who, traveling as night comes, decide not to stay in the "dangerous" Jebusite city of Jerusalem, but instead go on to the city of Givah in the area of Benjamin, where they are taken in by the only hospitable man there.  With deliberate echoes of the story of Sodom, the townspeople surround the home, demand that they "know" the man, and instead, the man throws out his concubine to the people, who rape and abuse her until morning.   The next morning, the husband finds his wife dead, cuts her up into twelve pieces, and sends the pieces of her body to all the tribes of Israel.   The tribes of Israel assemble an army together and demand of the tribe of Benjamin that they hand over the men of Givah to be killed.  The tribe of Benjamin refuses, there is a civil war where all the men of Benjamin except for 600 are killed, and the other tribes swear they will not give their daughters to the men of Benjamin for wives.  They then regret this oath, and come up with two brutal ways to "marry off" the men of Benjamin so the entire tribe of Benjamin is not wiped out.

A few things to note:  

1)  The priest who was established by the tribe of Dan to serve the idol they stole is "Yehonatan ben Gershom ben Menashe."    The "nun" of Menashe is written in a large letter in the Hebrew text.      The Talmud (Bava Batra 109b) says that this "nun" really hides the true identity of the grandfather of this Yehonatan.   His grandfather is not Menashe, but Moshe--Moshe Rabeinu.   In other words, the grandson of Moshe Rabeinu was set up as the priest for this idol established by the tribe of Dan.

This raises a number of issues and questions for thought.   Was there anything that Moshe Rabeinu did or didn't do that led to this degraded fate of his grandson?    Is there any guarantee for the results of human action?  (and does God ever hold us accountable for results?)

2)  On a broader note, these horrible stories that end the book of Shoftim appear to have taken place earlier, not at the end of this period.   For example, reference is made to Pinchas the son of Elazar the son of Aharon haKohen.   For Pinchas to have been alive even at the beginning of the period of Shoftim, he presumably must have been extremely old.   But certainly, the story did not take place later than that.    

So why are these stories placed at the end of the book, disregarding chronology?   I think it is because they paint a detailed picture of the degradation to which the Jewish people had sunk at various times during this period, and thus highlights the need for a centralized leader to keep them in line with God's will.   Thus, the book ends "In those days, there was no king in Israel, each man did what was right in his own eyes."

Presumably, having a "king in Israel", while not a guarantee of spiritual success, will at least give the possibility of raising the spiritual and moral level of the people.    On this note we transition to the book of Shmuel I, where the last (and indeed spiritually the greatest) of the Judges, Shmuel, anoints the first of the kings of Israel, king Saul.