Judges 21:7-12

⁷Yahweh heard us solemnly declare that we would not allow any of our daughters to marry any man from the tribe of Benjamin. What can we do to make certain that the men of the tribe of Benjamin who were not killed will have wives?”

⁸Then one of them asked, “What group from any of the tribes of Israel did not send any men here to Mizpah?”

⁹They realized that when the soldiers were counted, there was no one from Jabesh-Gilead city who had come there.

¹⁰So all the Israelis decided to send 12,000 very good soldiers to Jabesh-Gilead to kill the people there with their swords, even to kill the married women and children.

¹¹They told this to those men: “This is what you must do: You must kill every man in Jabesh-Gilead. You must also kill every married woman. But do not kill the unmarried women.”

¹²So those soldiers went to Jabesh-Gilead and killed all the men, married women, and children. But they found 400 unmarried young women there. So they brought them to their camp at Shiloh, in Canaan, across the river from the Gilead area that belonged to the tribe of Benjamin.