What does Judges 21:23 mean?
The men of Benjamin carry out the plan given to them by the leaders of Israel (Judges 21:19–22). Their former wives, daughters, and mothers were recently slaughtered (Judges 20:47–48). As instructed, the men hide in a vineyard. They wait for a specific group of young women to start dancing. Then they jump out from the vineyard, each of them catching one of the young women for his wife and carrying her off by force back to their own territory. These women become Benjaminite wives and give birth to the next generation of Benjaminite citizens. The tribe survives its brush with extinction. They rebuild the towns and repopulate their land.This is the end of an ugly episode in the history of Israel. The situation begins with a runaway concubine (Judges 19:1–2) and ends with the staged abduction of hundreds of young women. In between, Israel wavers between seeking God's will and running out of control. The nation, at that time, seems to have some sense of worship of God and a desire to receive His direction. They hold people accountable for sin (Judges 20:11–13). Yet they repeatedly go beyond the will of the Lord in clumsy attempts to follow the law while also violating morality and virtue (Judges 21:10–14). As the final verse of this book notes, this is a time of spiritual anarchy in the Promised Land (Judges 21:25). Everyone does what is right according to their own preferences, with disastrous, tragic results.