Daily Manna, Year Two · Day 163 · June 12
In His Own Eyes
“In those days there was no king in Israel: every man did that which was right in his own eyes.”
Vineyards on the hillside outside Shiloh, at the yearly feast, with men lying between the rows waiting for the dancing to start.
That is the last scene the book of Judges describes before its closing sentence. Israel had gone to war with Benjamin and nearly finished the tribe off, having sworn that none of them would give a daughter to a Benjamite, and then worked out that the oath would erase it. The elders of the congregation met on it. Their solution was to tell the surviving men to hide in the vineyards during a feast of the LORD at Shiloh and catch you every man his wife of the daughters of Shiloh. Nobody asks the women anything. The chapter records that the men took them, of them that danced, and lets the subject drop.
In those days there was no king in Israel: every man did that which was right in his own eyes. That is the caption on this. And what it captions is a council decision, taken by elders at a religious festival, in order to keep an oath sworn in the name of God. Nobody in the chapter is acting on impulse, and every element of the plan has a devout shape.
The line turns up earlier in the book as well, over a man who set up a private shrine and hired a Levite to run it, so what it covers both times is religion people designed for themselves. Moses had used the phrase for exactly that, warning Israel against worship where every man does whatsoever is right in his own eyes. Proverbs states the problem with no history attached: Every way of a man is right in his own eyes: but the LORD pondereth the hearts. The distance between Shiloh and your week is real and worth keeping. What crosses it is a room where the rule is honoured to the letter and the cost is quietly moved onto somebody who was never in the room.
The next time a decision where you are is defended by how carefully the rule was kept, find out who is standing in the vineyard. Ask it in the meeting, while the plan is still a plan.
Daily Manna runs on a two-year cycle. The year one reading for day 163 is Perfect Gifts (James 1:17).