The elders authorize abduction, and the book closes with right-in-one's-eyes disorder

Elders keep the oath and the inheritance, not the women's will

The elders of the congregation say, How shall we do for wives for them that remain, seeing the women are destroyed out of Benjamin? They say, There must be an inheritance for them that be escaped of Benjamin, that a tribe be not destroyed out of Israel. They cannot give them wives of their daughters, for the children of Israel have sworn, Cursed be he that gives a wife to Benjamin.

Male lineage and land still define the emergency. The curse is treated as immovable. The persons who will pay for the workaround are not in the meeting.

They authorize seizure at the LORD's feast in Shiloh

They ask, Behold, there is a feast of the LORD in Shiloh yearly in a place on the north of Bethel, on the east side of the highway that goes up from Bethel to Shechem, and on the south of Lebonah. They command the children of Benjamin: Go and lie in wait in the vineyards. If the daughters of Shiloh come out to dance in dances, then come out of the vineyards and catch every man his wife of the daughters of Shiloh, and go to the land of Benjamin. When their fathers or brethren come to complain, the elders will say, Be favourable unto them for our sakes, because we reserved not each man his wife in the war; for you did not give unto them at this time, that you should be guilty.

Catch means snatch. This is planned abduction at a worship festival, not courtship, not elopement, and not romance. The legal trick is the difference between giving and seizing: fathers will not have "given," so the oath is technically intact while the women are taken. The preloaded answer is for male relatives. The dancers are never asked.

They do so, rebuild, go home, and the book closes its diagnosis

The children of Benjamin do so, take wives according to their number of them that danced, whom they caught. They go and return unto their inheritance, repair the cities, and dwell in them. The children of Israel depart from there at that time, every man to his tribe and family; they go out from there every man to his inheritance. In those days there is no king in Israel: every man does that which is right in his own eyes.

The refrain lands on abduction, not on healthy freedom. It diagnoses a society where groups can define right while girls at a feast pay. It is not a warrant for monarchy as automatic salvation, not a warrant for theocracy, and not permission to copy the violence. Kingship elsewhere in Israel's Scripture can take women too. Accountable rule is not the same as a strongman, and no later ruler is licensed by this ending to kidnap, rape, or wage holy war.