‘ And the children of Israel repented because of what they had done to Benjamin their brother, and said, ‘There is one tribe cut off from Israel this day.'
Their musings from one subject to another was to indicate that they were thinking through a solution to the problem of the Benjaminites. ‘Benjamin' had nearly been destroyed and they were thinking how they could restore them.
In the circumstances in which they found themselves they were convinced that they had destroyed all of Benjamin apart from the six hundred holed up in the Rock of Rimmon (Judges 20:47). They were almost certainly overlooking the realities of the situation. Quite a number of Benjaminites would have been travelling and would not have been present in the area when the battles and massacre took place. A good number would have escaped in the flight from the massacre, however fierce pursuit was, and would now be in hiding in the mountains, with some possibly in Jerusalem under the protection of the Jebusites. And some would have escaped from the cities before the avenging armies arrived there, as fugitives passed through with news of the defeat. But as armies will they had convinced themselves that they had left none alive.