A common misinterpretation views this verse as divine endorsement of indiscriminate genocide or sexual slavery, ignoring its specific historical context within Israel's internal tribal conflict and desperate preservation efforts; it is wrongly used to paint God or the Bible as promoting violence against women or justifying modern atrocities, overlooking the narrative's portrayal of these events as tragic outcomes of Israel's disobedience and lack of kingship, rather than prescriptive moral commands for all time.
Judges 21:11
King James Version (1769)
11 And this is the thing that ye shall do, Ye shall utterly destroy every male, and every woman that hath lain by man.
Judges 21:11 instructs the Israelites, in the chaotic aftermath of their civil war against the tribe of Benjamin, to execute all males and non-virgin women from Jabesh-gilead as punishment for failing to join the battle, sparing only the virgin daughters to provide wives for the surviving Benjaminites and preserve the tribe; this grim directive underscores the era's moral anarchy, the dire consequences of collective vows and sin, and God's mercy in preventing total tribal extinction amid human folly, as echoed in the book's refrain that everyone did what was right in their own eyes.