Or "How I met your mother"
For the true story, see Judges 19-21, particularly Judges 21:16-25.
We knew it would
have to come out sometime. Secrets have a habit of coming out when you least expect them to, and several times in the past we had discussed when would be the best time for us to tell the children to make sure they got the facts straight. After all, we didn’t want them thinking that we weren’t happy together – or that kidnapping a wife was a good idea!
Then, today, our oldest son Hushim came home from school and said to his mother, “Reuben said that his father calls
Dad a ‘snatcher’. When I asked him what he meant, he just looked mysterious and wouldn’t answer. What could he mean?”
My wife says that she just smiled at him, tried to look mysterious herself, and said, “Wait until your father gets home, Hushim, and we will answer that together.”
So, naturally, by the time I came in from the fields, Hushim was as beside himself with curiosity as a 12-year-old boy can be. And his two little sisters and two
little brothers weren’t far behind him either.
Literally, my foot was still in the air – I hadn’t even set foot in the house – when he pounced on me.
“Dad, Dad, why does Reuben’s Dad call you a ‘snatcher’?”
My wife had made sure that she was there to see the interception, and she caught my eye with a crooked smile on her face. The time had come.
But I could still put it off for a little while longer.
“It’s time to
eat, Hushim,” I responded. “After that, we might have time to talk about it. Otherwise, it might have to wait for tomorrow.”
He started to complain, but then he looked up at me and saw that I was laughing, so he toned down the complaint just enough to avoid getting in trouble, while still making sure I realised that he desperately wanted to know the answer.
We sat down to eat and my wife and I found ourselves exchanging smiles a few times during
the meal, helped along by questions from the little ones like, “What’s a ‘natcher’ Daddy?”
Hushim corrected his little sister loftily: “The word is ‘snatcher’, you little silly.”
“Well, why are you a ‘snatcher’, Daddy?”
My wife intervened with another smile, and I remembered that it was her smile that had first attracted me to her. “Just let your father eat his meal, dear. We don’t want to snatch away his appetite, do
we?”
“ ‘Natcher’-ally not,” I responded.
Immediately after the meal ended, Hushim was at my side. “Are you ready now, Dad?”
“Yes,” I responded. “Let’s begin.”
The bedding was all ready for the night, so I lay myself down on the mat on which two of the younger ones slept. The children quickly came and lay down beside me, and we all settled ourselves down comfortably with just a single flickering lamp giving
us light. Now that the moment had actually arrived, I was feeling rather nervous. It was all very well to joke about things, but it had been a very difficult time, following on as closely as it had from an utterly catastrophic time. But I wouldn’t go into much detail about that horrific drama with the children.
“We have never told you how I met your mother,” I began, “so we’re going to tell you tonight. And we need to start by telling you all that we are
very happy together now, so how we met doesn’t matter much to us any more, but it was, shall we say – unusual.”
As I looked around at the children, their eyes all gleamed in the dim light, and not one looked the least bit tired. Maybe if I drew the story out, the youngest ones would go to sleep. But now I had to start.
“Let me tell you a story. It’s about a very sad time, fourteen years ago, when many, many people died, including both of my
parents, all of my brothers and sisters, and most of the relatives I knew. When I was just twenty years old, there were some very big battles. Almost everyone in Benjamin died in those battles, which is why our towns are so empty now and we all have so much land to live on. I was in a group of 50 soldiers, and only two of us are alive now – all the rest were killed. Many thousands on the other side died also.”
As I recited this bald summary, my hands
began their familiar shaking, and I stopped speaking as the catalogue started to scroll through my brain as it always did: going through, one by one, how each of my fellow soldiers had died in those terrible battles against the other tribes of Israel.
My wife saw how I was feeling and started to say, “I think that we’ll finish the story there for tonight,” but I interrupted: “No, no. I can continue,” and with a great effort, I did.
“When the battles
ended, a few of us Benjaminites – only 600 – escaped to a place in the wilderness where we would be safe. I don’t really know how I got there, but some of the older soldiers helped me to keep moving and not give up. Anyway, we stayed there for four bleak months, ending in the depths of winter. We almost starved. Then a deputation from the other tribes came to see us, and they spoke of peace. So we collected together our pitifully few goods, and set off for the land
of Benjamin. When we arrived, we found a camp of soldiers acting as guards for 400 young women who were almost beside themselves with grief. They were all from a town in the north of Israel called Jabesh-gilead; apparently the thirst for blood and annihilation had spread there too, and they were the only survivors of their town. All of the older women had been killed, and all the men too. Only these young women had been spared to be wives for us survivors of Benjamin.
It was then that our true situation really struck home. We were being told that none of our womenfolk were alive. My parents had arranged with another local family for me to marry their daughter, but apparently she was now dead, along with her entire family. And so was all of my family. It was a devastating time.
“We surviving men were all lined up on one side and the young women were all lined up opposite. There was a lot of quick pairing
off – this man will marry this woman. But I was one of the youngest of the survivors, pushed down to the end of the line, and long before it came to my turn, there were no women left. About 200 of us still had no wife and no prospect of ever getting one.”
I stopped speaking as I remembered the utter hopelessness I had felt. No family. No home. And now, not even the hope of happiness with a wife. We had been told that all of the other tribes
of Israel had agreed that they would not give any of their daughters as wives to anyone from Benjamin, and there were no daughters of Benjamin alive to marry. I stared silently into the flame of the lamp for a few moments before my oldest son brought me back to reality with a jerk: “What happened then, Dad?” he asked, seriously.
“We returned to our homes and found everything in ruins,” I answered and as I spoke, I saw again in my mind’s eye the charred remnants of
our home, with no traces of any of the family members who had waved me goodbye when I left. Over the years since, I have found a few places nearby with several bones strewn around and wondered, but I can’t be sure.
“And then I started to build. All the woodwork had been burned, but the stone walls were still standing and it didn’t take long to make the empty shell into a simple home again. The ongoing winter rain was a strong incentive! Some kind
men from Judah and Ephraim were also travelling around helping, since most of the survivors were not builders or skilled in the things we now had to do. They helped us cart timber too, and I learned all I know about building from them. If only we had never fought them.” Once again, I stopped and pondered, marvelling at the stupidity that had seen us, the men of Benjamin, fighting to protect vicious criminals from justice. It sounds ridiculous when it is put that way, and
it was. Those murderers from Gibeah should have been executed at the start, but we didn’t like being told what to do. We wanted to do it our way – and that’s why so many died.
The lamp was still giving its warm yet feeble light, but the two youngest children had already succumbed to sleep. I wasn’t sorry that they would not hear the whole story.
“As winter drew to an end,” I continued, “our leaders met with the leaders of the other tribes
again, and someone came up with a very, very strange suggestion to get wives for those of us who had missed out. Every year, there is a feast to God at Shiloh[1]. Lots of people go to it and there used to be celebrations and dancing. We Benjaminites who had missed out on getting a wife from the girls of Jabesh-gilead were encouraged to go along, so we did.
“We hid in the vineyards next to a large open area just outside the walls of Shiloh where the dancers
met. Apparently it used to happen every year that the local girls had a special time of dancing, more or less by themselves. No guards, no supervisors, no chaperones, just hundreds of girls dancing and enjoying themselves together.
“We were all spread out through the vineyards which surrounded the dancers, and we stayed hidden, watching, for quite a long while. We watched the girls and each of us chose one that we liked the look of. I had my eyes on a
tall, slim girl who danced beautifully and sang well too. But what caught my attention most was the way in which she smiled and spoke to the other girls. Of course, you can’t really tell much about someone’s character from just an hour or two of watching, but this girl seemed to be kind and gentle, whereas some of the other girls seemed to like showing off or pushing other girls around. Finally, once every man had chosen the girl he wanted, and we had made sure that each of us
wanted a different girl, we got ready.
“The sun was going down by the time the signal was given. We all jumped up and climbed over the stone walls surrounding the vineyards and ran in among the girls as quickly as we could, taking them completely by surprise. Each man made a beeline for the girl he had chosen and grabbed her as quickly as he could. I made for that tall, slim, smiling girl, and did I have a fight on my hands! At first she acted as if she was going to
run away, but then she turned around and slapped me – it was such a shock.”
“I’m still sorry I did that,” my wife interrupted. “I was behaving as badly as you were!”
Hushim looked at me wide-eyed and open-mouthed, then looked across at my wife. There was awe in his voice as he asked, “Was that you, Mother? Did you really hit Dad?”
“She did,” I said, “but I managed to recover, snatch her away and bring her back here as my
wife. Yes, I snatched your mother from among the dancers, and that is why Reuben’s Dad calls me a ‘snatcher’. Now it’s time for bed.”
Hushim was still looking from one to the other of us. His eyes were still wide, and his mouth still hung open.
“Hushim,” said my wife, “it was very scary being stolen away like that. And my parents were very angry and complained to the judges. But what we didn’t know was that the judges had been
involved in arranging the whole terrible business, so they worked hard to convince my parents that everything was alright – as if it was quite normal for young girls to be stolen away and married out of hand when they went to the annual dance! Married life was very hard for your Dad and me for quite a while.”
“And one more thing, Hushim,” I added, smiling. “I do not recommend this as a way of getting a wife. For us, it has turned out well, but it would never
have worked except for the fact that your mother is a wonderful and forgiving person.”
“And one more thing, Hushim,” my wife said, mimicking my words, “no-one would ever want to become a wife in this way. For us, it has turned out well, but it would never have worked except for the fact that your father is a very gentle and patient person.”
My wife still has a beautiful
smile.
Notes
[1] Probably the Passover. God commanded attendance at three feasts every year (Exodus 23:14-17), but it seems that the Passover may have been the only one of these that was kept often during Israel’s history. References to the feast are made in Joshua 5:10-11; 1 Samuel 1:3, 21; 2 Kings 23:21-22; 2 Chronicles 30:1-5, 26; 2 Chronicles 35:1, 18; Ezra 6:19-20; and even Luke 2:41 in New
Testament times. 1 Kings 9:25 may suggest that Solomon kept the three feasts for some time.
