C. F. Keil and Franz Delitzsch on Judges 21:15-16

Jdg 21:15-16

Of the six hundred Benjaminites who had escaped, there still remained two hundred to be provided with wives. To these the congregation gave permission to take wives by force at a festival at Shiloh. The account of this is once more introduced, with a description of the anxiety felt by the congregation for the continuance of the tribe of Benjamin. Jdg 21:15, Jdg 21:16, and Jdg 21:18 are only a repetition of Jdg 21:6 and Jdg 21:7, with a slight change of expression. The “breach (perez)in the tribes of Israel” had arisen from the almost complete extermination of Benjamin. “For out of Benjamin is (every) woman destroyed,” viz., by the ruthless slaughter of the whole of the people of that tribe (Jdg 20:48). Consequently the Benjaminites who were still unmarried could not find any wives in their own tribe. The fact that four hundred of the Benjaminites who remained were already provided with wives is not noticed here, because it has been stated just before, and of course none of them could give up their own wives to others.