It shall be, when their fathers or their brothers come to complain to us, that we will say to them, Grant them graciously to us, because we didn't take for each man his wife in battle, neither did you give them to them, else would you now be guilty.
"There is a certain rightness and a certain wrongness about what Israel does. They justifiably requite Jabesh-gilead with unjustifiable severity (Judges 21:5; Judges 21:10). They stand consistently upon their wife-oath (Judges 21:7; Judges 21:16-18) but trample happily upon the rights of the Shiloh girls and their families (Judges 21:19-22). It is a mix of consistency and confusion. . . .