Be favourable unto them for our sakes. — Rather, Present them (otham, masc., as in Judges 21:12) to us; or (as in the margin), Gratify us in them. The verse is somewhat obscure, but its general drift is a promise to pacify the parents of the damsels, by showing them that thus they did not violate the cherem, and that the cause was pressing. Perhaps they would be more readily consoled, because the land of these six hundred Benjamites must now have been far more than was necessary for their wants. They had become possessors of the lot of the whole tribe. Perhaps the reading should be, Gratify us as regards these damsels, for they (the Benjamites) have not received every man his wife through the war.
At this time. — Rather, perhaps, in that case (i.e., “if you had given them your daughters in marriage, ye would be guilty”). We are left to assume that the appeal of the elders to the parents whose two hundred daughters were thus seized was sufficient to pacify them.