6. Now the Israelites grieved for the tribe of Benjamin, their fellow Israelites. “Today one tribe is cut off from Israel,” they said.
7. “How can we provide wives for those who are left, since we have taken an oath by the Lord not to give them any of our daughters in marriage?”
8. Then they asked, “Which one of the tribes of Israel failed to assemble before the Lord at Mizpah?” They discovered that no one from Jabesh Gilead had come to the camp for the assembly.
9. For when they counted the people, they found that none of the people of Jabesh Gilead were there.
10. So the assembly sent twelve thousand fighting men with instructions to go to Jabesh Gilead and put to the sword those living there, including the women and children.
11. “This is what you are to do,” they said. “Kill every male and every woman who is not a virgin.”
12. They found among the people living in Jabesh Gilead four hundred young women who had never slept with a man, and they took them to the camp at Shiloh in Canaan.
13. Then the whole assembly sent an offer of peace to the Benjamites at the rock of Rimmon.
14. So the Benjamites returned at that time and were given the women of Jabesh Gilead who had been spared. But there were not enough for all of them.
15. The people grieved for Benjamin, because the Lord had made a gap in the tribes of Israel.
16. And the elders of the assembly said, “With the women of Benjamin destroyed, how shall we provide wives for the men who are left?
17. The Benjamite survivors must have heirs,” they said, “so that a tribe of Israel will not be wiped out.
18. We can’t give them our daughters as wives, since we Israelites have taken this oath: ‘Cursed be anyone who gives a wife to a Benjamite.’