The Israelites assemble at Mizpeh: the Levite declares his wrong, 1-7. Their decree, 8-11. They require the delinquents of the Benjamites to do justice on them; they are denied, 12-17. Whereupon, having consulted God, they march to fight against them; are twice foiled; and lose forty thousand men, 18-25. Being humbled, and receiving clearer revelation from God, they, by a stratagem, destroy the whole tribe, six hundred men excepted, (who fled away,) and burnt their cities, 26-48.
Thomas Boston's "The Sins of Sinners Finding Them Out": 'As to history. What profane history, written by Christians, Jews, Mahometans or pagans, wants striking instances of this nature [of sins finding sinners out]? But I shall confine myself to sacred history, where we have wonderful instances, first, of sins finding out sinful nations and societies. We have heard already of sins finding out the Sodomites and the Egyptians. The sinning angels wanted not wisdom to have hid their sin, if it could have been hid; nor strength to have staved off the meeting, if any such thing could have been done: but it found them out, and put them in chains of darkness. The old world, it seems, thought th…
Matthew Henry: 'Into the book of the wars of the Lord the story of this chapter must be brought, but it looks as sad and uncomfortable as any article in all that history; for there is nothing in it that looks in the least bright or pleasant but the pious zeal of Israel against the wickedness of the men of Gibeah, which made it on their side a just and holy war; but otherwise the obstinacy of the Benjamites in protecting their criminals, which was the foundation of the war, the vast loss which the Israelites sustained in carrying on the war, and (though the righteous cause was victorious at last) the issuing of the war in the almost utte…