I read the book of Judges last week. And it confronted me over and over again. There are some obvious headliners in the book - Gideon and Samson - but there is an undeniable tension throughout the twenty-one chapters carried by women. Yes, women.

The book opens and closes with women and marriage.
In Judges 1, Caleb pledges his daughter Achsah in marriage to whoever attacks and captures Debir.
In Judges 21, virgins from Shiloh are kidnapped and married by force to the men of Benjamin.

Achsah has a voice. She asked her father Caleb for a blessing. He doubled it.

The virgins of Shiloh were seized. And their captors, their husbands?
They were from the tribe of Benjamin and had been almost completely obliterated in judgment because of their refusal to deal with gross sexual sin. Even in 2020, the details of what happened in the town of Gibeah are shocking. The victim of their sin is a woman - gang-raped, abused, murdered, then dismembered and mailed throughout the land.

The text of Judges:
“In those days there was no king in Israel; everyone did what was right in his own eyes.”

The subtext:
When men do what is right in their own eyes, women will always suffer.