Inner Repentance In Judges 21

Neville's Inner Vision

Judges 21:5-6 speaks in the language of collective oath and later remorse. The people inquire who among the tribes failed to answer the call of the Lord at Mizpeh, and they pronounce a death sentence on the one who did not come. Then they repent for Benjamin, confessing that one tribe is cut off. In Neville’s terms, these are states of consciousness arranged like a political assembly. The 'congregation unto the LORD' is the field of awareness, and every tribe represents a pattern held in mind. The great oath is a fixed belief about separation and consequence, a story we tell to justify a sense of danger. When they repent for Benjamin, they are not punishing a real tribe but revising their own inner alignment. The moment of repentance is an inner revision that dissolves the sense that part of self is banished from the whole. Benjamin becomes an inner disposition that is suddenly restored to unity in consciousness, and with that inner shift, the imagined verdict loses its power over experience.