48. All that came to hand. This indiscriminate slaughter of noncombatants, not to mention that of the broken and fleeing army, was entirely uncalled for. The sin of the men of Gibeah needed to be punished, for it was great. However, when the effective resistance of the army of Benjamin was destroyed, the duty of the Israelite army was finished. The individual perpetrators of the deed could then be caught and punished. Their city, Gibeah, was already in ruins. It should have been enough. There was no excuse for the relentless extermination of the whole tribe, nor for the burning of its cities. However, the heat of battle seems to work men into an unreasoning passion which carries them on to actions they would not perpetrate in their saner moments. In such times men are often not their own masters; reason does not guide and the voice of conscience is not heard. This would be especially true when they were without an outstanding leader to whom the army could look for directions and who could exercise control. The wounded pride of the Israelite army, stinging under the two defeats by their much smaller adversary, led them to commit a greater wrong, measured by extent, than the sin they were trying to punish.
