Judges 20:47

A common misinterpretation of Judges 20:47 portrays the Israelites as genocidal aggressors without moral justification, ignoring the preceding context of Benjamin's refusal to punish the Gibeah men who committed gang rape and murder, which sparked the war as a quest for tribal justice; others might see it as divine endorsement of total annihilation, overlooking how God allowed a remnant to survive, or extract it to claim the Bible glorifies pointless violence, missing its role in illustrating the chaotic 'everyone did what was right in their own eyes' era before the monarchy.

Judges 20:47 describes the survival of a remnant of 600 Benjaminite men who fled to the rock Rimmon and hid there for four months amid the devastating civil war where nearly their entire tribe was destroyed for failing to deliver justice against the perpetrators of a horrific crime in Gibeah; this highlights God's sovereign preservation of a small remnant despite severe judgment, foreshadowing the later efforts to preserve the tribe through marriage arrangements, underscoring themes of mercy interwoven with justice in Israel's history.