שופטים, פרק כ״א, פסוק ב׳

As the dust settles on a devastating civil war, the community gathers to face the tragic reality of their actions. The tribe of Benjamin has been nearly wiped out, leaving the nation in a state of profound grief.

The people assemble at a location identified as Bethel, though this does not refer to the well-known city by that name. Instead, it points to Shiloh, which served as the House of God during that era, holding the Tabernacle and the Ark of the Covenant [מצודת דוד, אברבנאל]. There, the people sit in fasting and mourning [אברבנאל], crying bitterly. This outpouring of grief stands in sharp contrast to the tears they shed earlier during the battles [ביאור שטיינזלץ].

Their mourning is driven by two connected tragedies. First, they grieve the loss of forty thousand Israelite soldiers who died in the early stages of the conflict. Second, they mourn the final, horrifying result: the destruction of an entire tribe in Israel. These two disasters are deeply linked. The heavy losses the Israelites suffered at the start of the war sparked intense anger and a drive for revenge. This fury ultimately pushed them to wipe out the tribe of Benjamin entirely, including women and children.

In the wake of this disaster, the people engage in deep soul-searching. They try to understand why God was angry with them from the beginning, allowing them to suffer those initial defeats. They realize that these early failures are exactly what triggered the much larger disaster of losing a whole tribe [מלבי״ם]. Furthermore, the six hundred men who managed to survive can no longer be viewed as a functioning tribe; they are merely a broken remnant [מלבי״ם].

The pain is made even worse by the realization that their fallen soldiers did not die heroic deaths fighting a foreign enemy. Instead, their lives were sacrificed for a terrible cause: destroying their own brothers. Both the journey and the final outcome are harsh and bitter [אברבנאל]. Overwhelmed by the terrible mistake they have made, the broken people turn to God. They cry out, seeking His guidance on how to move forward and asking how they can rebuild and restore the tribe they have lost [מצודת דוד].