Ye shall utterly destroy. — The verb is tacharîmû — i.e., Ye shall place under the ban (cherem), ye shall devote to destruction. The words of the cherem are almost identical with those of the indignant command of Moses after the war with Midian alluded to in the last verse (Numbers 31:17-18), and there the same exception is made. (Comp. Leviticus 27:21-28; Numbers 21:2-3.) The words are easy to read; it is needless to dwell on the horror of the massacre which they describe. We are dealing throughout with the fierce passions of men living in times of gross spiritual darkness; for we cannot doubt that the oath against Jabesh-Gilead was carried out, though the writer drops a veil over all but the result. The vow of destruction (cherem, anathema, Leviticus 27:28-29) was quite different from the vow of devotion (neder) and the vow of abstinence (corban).
(11) To dance in dances. — Possibly the dances of the vintage festival. There is a fountain in a narrow dale, at a little distance from Shiloh, which was very probably the scene of this event. It is a needless conjecture that the feast was the Passover, and the dances a commemoration of the defeat of the Egyptians, like those of Miriam. There seems to have been no regular town at Shiloh; at least, no extensive ruins are traceable. It was probably a community like the Beth-Micah (see Note on Judges 18:2), which was mainly connected with the service of the Tabernacle. The “daughters of Shiloh” would naturally include many women who were in one way or other employed in various functions about the Tabernacle, and not only those who came there to worship (1 Samuel 2:22, where “assembled” should be rendered served, as in Numbers 4:23; “the handmaid” of the priests is mentioned in 2 Samuel 17:17). But the traces of female attendants in the sanctuary are more numerous in Jewish traditions than in Scripture.
Catch you every man his wife. — The scene is very analogous to the famous seizure of the Sabine women at the Consualia, as described in Liv. i. 9. St. Jerome (adv. Jovin, 1 § 41) quotes another parallel from the history of Aristomenes of Messene, who once, in a similar way, seized fifteen Spartan maidens, who were dancing at the Hyacinthia, and escaped with them.