where the yearly feast of the Lord at Shiloh becomes an occasion for the Benjaminites to take a wife by force. In both cases the relationship was perhaps established in a less brutal way than the texts affirm. According to the Babylonian Talmud, on Ab the 15th and on Yôm Kippur, the Israelite girls dressed in white, danced in the vineyards, and invited the boys to make their choice (b. Taʿan. 26b; cf. 31a). This tradition suggests that the affairs developed with the accord of both partners, the regulation