‘ And the children of Benjamin came forth out of Gibeah, and destroyed down to the ground of the Israelites on that day twenty two eleph of men.'
The phrase ‘destroyed down to the ground' is unusual. They were not necessarily all killed, but many knocked to the ground as though dead. This may have been partly through the slingstones. But they lost in this way twenty two of their units, a shattering defeat.
The question may be asked why they were defeated when they were in a righteous cause. The answer may lie in a similar complaint to that when Joshua failed against Ai. Instead of taking their whole army they had sent only a tenth (Judges 20:10 see Joshua 7:3). They had, like Joshua, been presumptuous and had gone forward confident in their own strength and ability. Others have attributed it to the fact that idolatry was still rife in the land as illustrated in Judges 18. The men of Dan, who had set up their own graven image and established their own priesthood, were in the confederacy. But a third possibility lies in the fact that God does not always give success immediately. Sometimes failure is a test to see whether His people will persevere in what is right even when things go wrong. What He promises is final success, and this they would achieve.