Judges 20:31-33
Evangelical Heritage Version
31 Again the Benjaminites went out to confront the people of Israel. The Benjaminites were drawn away from the city, and they began to strike down some of the people, killing them in the open country as they had done before, along the highway that goes up to Bethel and the one to Gibeah.[a] They killed about thirty men of Israel.
32 The Benjaminites thought, “They are being struck down before us, just as they were before.”
But the Israelites had said, “We will retreat and draw them out of the city to the highways.”
33 So all the men of Israel fell back from their positions and drew up a battle line at Baal Tamar. Then the Israelites who were hiding in ambush came bursting out from their positions west of Geba.[b]
Read full chapterFootnotes
- Judges 20:31 Gibeah is the starting point of the pursuit, so it seems that the other places named should be endpoints of the pursuit some distance from Gibeah. Geographically it makes sense that the pursuit is from Gibeah to Bethel and from Gibeah to Gibeon, but there is no manuscript evidence for this. This variant is, however, mentioned in the apparatus of the BHS Hebrew text.
- Judges 20:33 If the ambush was west of Geba, as the Hebrew text reads, it was east of Gibeah. This is an ideal location to carry out the strategy described in the following verses. There is, therefore, no need to emend the text to Gibeah as some translations do.
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