The Ashkenazi Revolution

43The intertribal struggle continued in the Land of Israel as an inescapablehistoric necessity. Furthermore: In the Land of Israel it continued moreintensely, for conditions aided every manifestation of independence,including the advent of civil war. The tribes ambushed and spied againsteach other, lest one tribe become too powerful. The great success ofSamson aroused jealousy and fears in the heart of the Tribe of Judah.Three thousand men from Judah ascended to a section of the cave of Etam,where Samson was camped, and restrained the mighty man with cords, thenforced him to pass into the camp of the Philistines (Judges 15). The powerof the Tribe of Judah was not entirely nullified, as is evident from thefollowing chapters of the book of Judges, where we are told the shockingstory of the concubine of Gibeah and the destruction of the Tribe ofBenjamin. This story, whose historic authenticity is made abundantly clearabove, has forever branded the nature of intertribal relations upon thePeople of Israel. Sexual crimes were very common in the tents of thechildren of Israel, as the incidents of Reuben and Amnon and Tamar prove.The abominable sex crime that was committed in Gibeah was, by nomeans, enough to justify the eradication of an entire tribe. Wholesalemurder was done for two reasons: The decision, by the elders of Judah, tobring to an end, at any cost, the growing strength of the Tribe of Benjamin;the formation of a cult of prophets and religious hysterics, who stood at theforefront against Benjamin and served the interests of Judah and turnedthem into a holy war to eradicate evil. The following verse gives cleartestimony that it was the Tribe of Judah that was behind the plan to destroyBenjamin:They arose and ascended to Beth El and asked God. The children of Israelasked, “who shall rise up for us initially to make war with the children ofBenjamin.” God said, “Judah shall rise first” (20:18).In the chapter of the sale of Joseph, Judah saved Joseph from death byconvincing his brothers to sell him to Ishmaelites, but in the battle againstBenjamin, which was a continuation of the sale of Joseph, it wasspecifically Judah that was the primary instigator for the war ofannihilation. This fact proves that the division between the tribes, and the