voluntarily expose herself to these men's lust, but was forced
away to their house; but as soon as he perceived she was dead, he
acted as prudently as the greatness of his misfortunes would
admit, and laid his dead wife upon the beast, and carried her
home; and cutting her, limb by limb, into twelve pieces, he sent
them to every tribe, and gave it in charge to those that carried
them, to inform the tribes of those that were the causes of his
wife's death, and of the violence they had offered to her.

9. Upon this the people were greatly disturbed at what they saw,
and at what they heard, as never having had the experience of
such a thing before; so they gathered themselves to Shiloh, out
of a prodigious and a just anger, and assembling in a great
congregation before the tabernacle, they immediately resolved to
take arms, and to treat the inhabitants of Gibeah as enemies; but
the senate restrained them from doing so, and persuaded them,
that they ought not so hastily to make war upon people of the
same nation with them, before they discoursed them by words
concerning the accusation laid against them; it being part of
their law, that they should not bring an army against foreigners
themselves, when they appear to have been injurious, without
sending an ambassage first, and trying thereby whether they will
repent or not: and accordingly they exhorted them to do what they
ought to do in obedience to their laws, that is, to send to the
inhabitants of Gibeah, to know whether they would deliver up the
offenders to them, and if they deliver them up, to rest satisfied
with the punishment of those offenders; but if they despised the
message that was sent them, to punish them by taking, up arms
against them. Accordingly they sent to the inhabitants of Gibeah,
and accused the young men of the crimes committed in the affair