The Dance of the Daughters of Shiloh and the Benjamites Take Wives at Lebonah

Judges 21 narrates the strange tribal-recovery episode after the civil war over the Levite's concubine had nearly wiped out the tribe of Benjamin. The six hundred surviving Benjamite warriors had no wives, and Israel had sworn not to give them daughters. The elders devised a workaround: "Behold, there is a feast of the Lord in Shiloh yearly in a place which is on the north side of Bethel, on the east side of the highway that goeth up from Bethel to Shechem, and on the south of Lebonah" (Judges 21:19). The Benjamites hid in the vineyards, ambushed the dancing daughters of Shiloh, and carried them off as wives — preserving the twelve-tribe structure through a contrived loophole.

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