Seven Brides for Seven Brothers is, for the most part, a happy-go-lucky, charming musical with a frothy tone, but one of its premises is a little disturbing: Basically, the brothers kidnap a group of women so that they can marry them. All turns out (relatively) hunky-dory in the end, but nowadays, the act of kidnapping a woman (or a man) with the intent of marriage is rather unseemly, to say the least. And what if the abductee says no (as they most likely would)? The abductor basically has two choices: 1.) let his quarry go and consequently get locked up when the abductee rats him out, or 2.) force the abductee to marry him--in which case he's basically spending his life with a spouse who hates his rotten guts. (Yes, I know about Stockholm syndrome and all that, but there's a reason it's called a "syndrome.") Neither choice is particularly attractive.
The Israelites use this marriage-by-abduction ploy to obtain "Wives for the Benjamites," as the NIV title puts it. After the Israelites realize that they've pretty much decimated the tribe of Benjamin, they feel remorse for their brethren. Wanting to give the diminished tribe heirs, the Israelites find one solution when those from Jabesh Gilead fail to show up at the sacred assembly. They mercilessly slaughter every non-virgin, giving them to the Benjamites as wives. Though after seeing their friends and families killed, I imagine the virgins of Jabesh Gilead were appreciably traumatized. It's a harsh judgment, but the Gileadites did break a sacred vow (verse 5).
But that's still not enough women to supply all the Benjamites with heirs (which makes me think: Does every single Benjamite man need an heir?) So that's where the abduction-marriages come into play. As the young women of Shiloh dance joyously in a field, the Benjamites are to spoil their rapture by spiriting them away and taking them as wives. This does provide a loophole so that the Israelites can get around their vow of not giving their daughters as wives to the Benjamites, but it comes across as just that--a loophole.
I do get that most people didn't marry for love back then--that was a luxury that most couldn't afford. And I do wonder about the logistics of the kidnapping. If two Benjamites had their eyes on the same woman, I suppose it came down to whoever moved their legs the fastest. Still, families did normally give their consent to marriages, and here they couldn't. The last verse of the chapter perhaps puts it best: "everyone did as they saw fit" (verse 25). (Though apparently that didn't apply to the abducted wives.)
Book Conclusion
Judges reflects a dark time in Israelite history; the people seemed to be stuck in a perpetual negative cycle of having to be rescued by a sometimes-violent judge before falling back into depravity. Yes, there were some bright spots, but the sanguine tint of Joshua had all but disappeared. I do wonder if we're in a "dark age" right now, spiritually. We have all this newfangled technology to make our lives better and complete tasks more efficiently, and we're getting a little better at understanding our differences and recognizing our similarities. But certain current events involving law enforcement, terrorism, and legal injustice, along with the farce of the current U.S. presidential election, certainly cast a pall on things. But, even if we are in a dark time in history, the next book of the Bible will reveal that, even in the depths of degeneracy, genuine kindness and faith can still manifest--and even make a difference for generations to come.
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