Judges 21:22

The verse is difficult to understand owing to corruptions in the text.

to complain unto us Follow marg., and read to strive with you (so LXX, Vulgate); the angry parents would naturally go to the captors with their grievance, rather than to the Israelites. When that happens, say the Israelites, we will put in a plea for you.

Grant them graciously unto usetc.] To make sense the text may be emended as follows: Be gracious to them, because they received not each his wife in the war; for if ye(emphatic) had given them unto them, ye would surely now be guilty(of violating your oath). The correction they(for we) received notis supported by some mss. of the LXX The war will be that against Jabesh-gilead; but since the verse as a whole seems to belong to the older narrative, which knows nothing of the expedition against Jabesh, the sentence because they received not each his wife in the warmust be regarded as a harmonizing attempt to work in the narrative of B with that of A (cf. Judges 21:14 b, Judges 21:16 a).

Some scholars emend the text differently, reading Be gracious to them because they took each his wife in the war; the omission of the negative is found in some mss. of the LXX, but the evidence is not weighty enough for treating this as the true text of the LXX; moreover the waris too strong a term to apply to the rape of the Shilonites.