Judges 20:32-36. The defeat of the Benjaminites. This is the end of the story that started when a man and his concubine/wife sought shelter in the home of an old man as they returned from Bethlehem to their home in the Hill country of Ephraim. The home they stayed in was the was in the town of Gibeah, part of the land of the Benjaminites. Several Benjaminites surrounded the house and wanted to kill the traveller, but instead they ended up raping his wife to death. When the rest of the tribes of Israel heard of this (in a very grizzly way) they asked the tribe of Benjamin to turn over these men for justice. Instead, the Benjaminites went to war against the other tribes. There were several battles, and much death, before the Benjaminites were finally defeated (after a day of prayer and fasting by the other Israelites).

The men in question here are obviously guilty of a great evil, a great sin. Why then did their tribesmen not turn them over to face justice? It seems to me that it was misplaced loyalty. The tribes of Israel can be viewed in many allegorical ways - as brothers from one family (they are, actually, all descended from brothers of one family); as states in one nation; as political parties in one country; as nations in one world - there are lessons to be learned in each level of comparison. In this story, we see the terrible price that is paid when one puts one's loyalty to his or her tribe, family, party, or even country, over the good of the whole. Such loyalty does not have God as it's primary focus, and therefore is disordered. It leads people to defend themselves, or their group and members of their group, at all costs, even when they know they have done wrong.

We can see this throughout history, in both our personal histories, and the history of nations - a stubborn refusal to acknowledge our wrongdoing or the wrongdoing of a member of our group because it would be seen as a weakness. This has devastating consequences, not only for individuals and their groups, but for humanity in general. Families are torn apart, nations go to war, civil wars are fought, there is no end to the suffering that this misplaced loyalty has wrought.

Our loyalty and allegiance must be to God first. If God had been first to the Benjaminites, they would have known the importance of justice in order for the nation of Israel to remain unified, and they would have turned over the guilty men. Instead, they put their tribe first, and thousands died.