What regard for virtue our forefathers had to avenge by a war the wrongs of one woman which had been brought on her by her violation at the hands of profligate men! No, when the people were conquered, they vowed that they would not give their daughters in marriage to the tribe of Benjamin! That tribe had remained without hope of posterity, had they not received leave of necessity to use deceit. And this permission does not seem to fail in giving fitting punishment for violation, since they were only allowed to enter on a union by a rape, and not through the sacrament of marriage. And indeed it was right that they who had broken another’s intercourse should themselves lose their marriage rites.

The end of the war was also the end of their wrath, and anger turned to sorrow. Then, putting off their armor, the men of Israel met together and wept much and celebrated a fast, grieving that one tribe of their brothers had perished and a strong band of people had been wiped out. They had warred rightly against the authors of the crime because of the cost of the sin, but the people had turned unhappily against their own flesh and each was afflicted with civil war. The outpouring of tears moved their minds to compassion and stirred their feelings; the plan conceived in anger was gone. Sending legates to the six hundred men of Benjamin, who for four months guarded themselves on the top of sheer rocks and by the desert’s barrenness, which was dangerous for a mass of attackers, they lamented their common hardship in losing their fellow tribesmen, relatives and allies. Yet the hope of renewing the tribe was not utterly destroyed, and they consulted together how they might agree on a pledge of faith and one tribe not perish, severed from the body.

The sentence, further, was that none of the people of the ancestors should give his daughter in marriage to [members of Benjamin’s tribe]. This was confirmed by a solemn oath. But relenting at having laid so hard a sentence on their brothers, they moderated their severity so as to give them in marriage those maidens that had lost their parents, whose fathers had been slain for their sins, or to give them the means of finding a wife by a raid. Because of the villainy of so foul a deed, they who had violated another’s marriage rights were shown to be unworthy to ask for marriage. But for fear that one tribe might perish from the people, they connived at the deceit.

After a long time spent in this state of indecision^[1] and while I was still busily searching for the cause I have mentioned, there came to my mind the book of Judges, which tells how each man did what was right in his own eyes and gives the reason for this in these words: In those days there was no king in Israel. With these words in mind, then, I applied also to the present circumstances that explanation which, incredible and frightening as it may be, is quite truly pertinent when it is understood; for never before has there arisen such discord and quarreling as now among the members of the church in consequence of their turning away from the one, great and true God and only King of the universe. Each person, indeed, abandons the teachings of our Lord Jesus Christ and arrogates to himself authority in dealing with certain questions, making his own private rules and preferring to exercise leadership in opposition to the Lord to being led by the Lord.