God doesn’t intervene to defeat evil as often as he should; at least that is what some people will tell you. They say that if God really loved humanity he would not allow evil to prosper. At first glance, they seem to make a strong argument that God is not doing enough to defeat wickedness. However, their argument does not take into account the reality that God has given mankind freewill and that God has chosen to limit his actions to those that respect freewill. God could create the world in such a way that there was no evil, but then freedom would become an illusion.

When God chooses to combat evil he does so in coordination and cooperation with humanity. Sometimes he works with unrighteous man as he did with the Israelites when they fought against the Benjamites. These verses illustrate perfectly the disaster that can result from God helping unrighteous men to punish wicked and evil men. Once the Israelites had won the victory, and the Benjamites had fled, the Israelites did not do what God wanted them to do. They did not do what was right and make peace with their former enemy, rather they return to the land of the Benjamites and put all the towns to the sword including the animals and everything else they found. All the towns they came across they set on fire. They started out as unrighteous man seeking to punish evil men who were rapists and murderers, but once God gave them victory, instead of being thankful and making peace they begin committing evil themselves. This illustrates that the saying “Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely,” in this case was true.

God wants to help humanity defeat evil, not to replace one evil group with another. God desires to use the church to defeat evil but he can only do so if the church is committed to righteousness. The church will be victorious when their righteous commitment to God protects them from the corrupting influence of power.