(16) How shall we do . . .?--They want to keep their vow in the letter, while they break it in the spirit. The sense of the binding nature of the "ban" was intensely strong (Exodus 20:7; Ezekiel 17:18-19), but, as is so often the case among rude and ignorant people, they fancied that it was sufficient to keep it literally, while in effect they violated it. Similarly in Herodotus (iv. 154), Themison having sworn to throw Phronima into the sea--the intention having been that she should be drowned--feels himself bound to throw her into the sea, but has her drawn out of it again. Their want of moral enlightenment revealed itself in this way, and still more in having ever taken this horrible oath, which involved the butchery of innocent men, and of still more innocent women and children. In point of fact, the cherem often broke down under the strain which it placed on men's best feelings (1Samuel 14:45) as well as on their lower temptations. The guilt of breaking a guilty vow is only the original guilt of ever having made it. What the Israelites should have done was not to bathe their hands in more rivers of fraternal blood, but to pray to God to forgive the brutal vehemence which disgraced a cause originally righteous, and to have allowed the remnant of the Benjamites to intermarry with them once more. As it was, they were led by ignorance and rashness into several vows which could not be fulfilled without horrible cruelty and bloodshed, and the fulfilment of which they after all casuistically evaded, and that at the cost of still more bloodshed. As all these events took place under the guidance of Phinehas, they give us a high estimate indeed of the zeal which was his noblest characteristic (Psalm 106:30), yet a very low estimate of his state of spiritual insight; and clearly to such a man the fulfilment of Jephthah's cherem by sacrificing his daughter (see Note on Judges 11:39) would have seemed as nothing compared to the extermination of tribes and of cities, involving the shedding of rivers of innocent blood. But why should we suppose that the grandson of Aaron, in such times as these--when all was anarchy, idolatry, and restlessness, against which he either did not strive or strove most ineffectually--should stand on so much higher a level than his schismatical and semi-idolatrous cousin, the wandering grandson of Moses?

Verse 16. - Seeing the women. It is rather more in accordance with the Hebrew style to take the words as the narrator's explanation of the question, What shall we do? They said this because all the women of Benjamin had been destroyed.

17:7-13 Micah thought it was a sign of God's favour to him and his images, that a Levite should come to his door. Thus those who please themselves with their own delusions, if Providence unexpectedly bring any thing to their hands that further them in their evil way, are apt from thence to think that God is pleased with them.Then the elders of the congregation said.... This being the case, that there were not wives enough for them, they were obliged to consult again, and consider of another expedient to provide for them; and this motion came from the elders of the people, not only in years, but in office:

how shall we do for wives for them that remain: the other two hundred, who had none:

seeing the women are destroyed out of Benjamin? and so no wives to be had there; and as for the Israelites which came to Mizpeh, who were of all the tribes of Israel, they had solemnly sworn that they would not give any of their daughters to them, and therefore it was a very difficult thing to provide wives for them.