Ambush becomes near-annihilation of Benjamin

Ambush, feigned flight, and smoke over Gibeah

Israel sets men in wait round about Gibeah. They go up against the children of Benjamin on the third day and put themselves in array against Gibeah as at other times. Benjamin goes out against the people and is drawn away from the city. They begin to smite of the people and kill, as at other times, in the highways, about thirty men of Israel, and say, They are smitten down before us as at the first. The children of Israel say, Let us flee and draw them from the city to the highways. The liers in wait rush upon Gibeah, spread out, and smite all the city with the edge of the sword. The appointed sign is a great flame with smoke rising from the city. When Benjamin looks behind, the flame of the city has gone up to heaven. They turn, and the men of Israel have given way; they are amazed, for they see that evil is come upon them.

The army is broken; six hundred reach the rock Rimmon

They turn before the men of Israel to the way of the wilderness, but the battle overtakes them, and those who came out of the cities destroy them in the midst. They enclose Benjamin, chase them, and tread them down. Eighteen thousand men of valor fall. They turn and flee toward the wilderness to the rock of Rimmon; five thousand are gleaned in the highways; two thousand more are slain near Gidom. All who fell of Benjamin are twenty-five thousand men that drew the sword that day; all these were men of valor. Six hundred men turn and flee to the wilderness unto the rock Rimmon and abide there four months.

The overlapping totals are battlefield reports, not a puzzle that must be forced into one neat arithmetic. What is not in doubt is near-erasure of a tribe's fighting men and a remnant hiding on a rock.

Then Israel turns on towns, people, and beasts

The men of Israel turn again upon the children of Benjamin and smite them with the edge of the sword, as well the men of every city as the beast, and all that came to hand. Also they set on fire all the cities they come to. The promised defeat of Benjamin's army has become slaughter of whoever is found and burning of places. Noncombatants and animals are in the sentence.

Gibeah's crime was real. Collective destruction of a kin people is a new atrocity. The earlier promise of delivery does not approve this widening. A tribe is almost gone, and the women of Benjamin have already been destroyed in the towns.