How shall we do for wives for those who remain, seeing we have sworn by Yahweh that we will not give them of our daughters to wives?
"The action [against Jabesh-gilead] appears cruel in the extreme to the modern reader, but the virtual sacredness of the bond linking the several tribes into the amphictyony must be appreciated, and the sin of Jabesh-gilead seen in its light." [Note: Cundall and Morris, p. 210.] 