What Does Judges 21:8 Mean?

(8) **There came none to the camp from Jabesh-gilead.**—Jabesh-Gilead, which Josephus calls the metropolis of Gilead (*Antt. vi.* 5, § 1), is probably to be identified with the ruins now called El-Deir in the Wady Yabes (Robinson, 3:319). It was six miles from Pella, on the top of a hill which lies on the road from Pella to Gerasa. For some reason with which we are unacquainted, there seems to have been a bond of intense sympathy between the inhabitants of this town and Benjamin. If their abstinence from the assembly of vengeance was not due to this, we must suppose that the sort of companionship in misery caused by these wild events itself created a sense of union between these communities, for it is the peril of Jabesh which first arouses King Saul to action (1 Samuel 11). and in memory of the deliverance which he effected the men of Jabesh alone save the bodies of Saul and Jonathan from the indignity of rotting on the wall of Bethshan (1Samuel 31:11), which gained them the blessing of David (2Samuel 2:5-6). We see from these later incidents that Jabesh recovered from the extermination now inflicted on its inhabitants.