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.”
The last story in the book of Judges takes place in the vineyards outside Shiloh, during a yearly feast. Men are hiding between the rows of vines, waiting for the young women of the town to come out and dance.
Here is how it came about. Israel had gone to war with the tribe of Benjamin and nearly wiped it out. The other tribes had also sworn that none of them would give a daughter in marriage to a man of Benjamin. Then they realised that their oath would finish the tribe off for good. "Then the elders of the congregation said, How shall we do for wives for them that remain, seeing the women are destroyed out of Benjamin?" Their answer was to tell the men of Benjamin to hide in the vineyards during "a feast of the LORD in Shiloh," and to "catch you every man his wife of the daughters of Shiloh." Nobody asks the women anything. The chapter records that the men took wives "of them that danced, whom they caught," and moves on.
Then comes the book's closing sentence: "In those days there was no king in Israel: every man did that which was right in his own eyes." That is the caption over this scene. What it describes is a decision made by elders, at a religious feast, in order to keep an oath sworn in the name of God. Nobody in the chapter is acting on a sudden urge, and every part of the plan was given a holy shape.
The same line appears earlier in the book, over a man named Micah who set up his own private shrine and hired a Levite to serve as his priest. So both times the line is used, it describes religion that people designed for themselves. Moses had warned Israel against exactly that kind of worship, where each one does "whatsoever is right in his own eyes." Proverbs states the problem without any story: "Every way of a man is right in his own eyes: but the LORD pondereth the hearts." Shiloh is a long way from your life, and that distance is real. Yet one thing crosses it easily: a room where the rule is kept to the letter while the cost is quietly passed to somebody who was never asked.
So the next time a decision near you is defended by how carefully the rule was kept, find out who is standing in the vineyard. Ask about them in the meeting, while the plan is still only a plan. The LORD who "pondereth the hearts" sees those people, and He is the King that Israel had forgotten. When you speak up for them, you are living under His rule instead of your own eyes.
Daily Manna runs on a two-year cycle. The year one reading for day 163 is Perfect Gifts (James 1:17).