Israel inquires of God, Who shall go up first for us to fight against the people of Benjamin?
The Israelites are confident about the rightness of their cause, and they simply assume the Lord’s approval. Instead of first asking, Should we go up against our brother?
they raise a purely procedural point. Who will lead into battle?1 This language is just like what they used at the start of the book, in Judges 1:1–2. There, however, it says that Israel inquired of the Lord,
where God’s personal covenant name is used. And they were acting on orders received earlier from Joshua, fighting Canaanites. Now, the narrator refers to deity with the generic God,
Elohim. And the Israelites are acting under the direction of the Levite, and fighting one another.
18 The people of Israel arose and went up to Bethel and inquired of God, “Who shall go up first for us to fight against the people of Benjamin?” And the LORD said, “Judah shall go up first.”