A Broken Moral Compass (Judges 19)

The final section of the book of Judges recounts a disturbing incident and in the process lets us know the state of Israel’s relationship with God. During this time period, Israel still had no king as they had rejected God as their Heavenly King, so everyone basically followed their hearts, their corrupted hearts. In those days, there lived a Levite in a remote area in the hill country of Ephraim who had taken a concubine as his wife from the town of Bethlehem but the woman was unfaithful to him and left him to live with her parents.

Four months later, the Levite wanted his wife to come back and arrived in her hometown of Bethlehem. He reached the house of his wife’s parents to try and persuade the woman to come back and was welcomed by her father with open arms. Seeing his son-in-law come all the way from Ephraim to take back his daughter would have relieved the father and he was more than happy to facilitate this reunion.

His father-in-law, the woman’s father, prevailed on him to stay; so he remained with him three days, eating and drinking, and sleeping there

Judges 19:4 (NIV)

The father of the woman was weirdly persistent in getting his son-in-law to stay for as long as possible. The divorce of his daughter would have had societal repercussions and the girl’s father is trying to rectify it by keeping his son-in-law happy. He was from the town of Bethlehem, the place that did not offer lodging to Mary and Joseph thinking that she was pregnant out of wedlock. The concubine had left the Levite of her own accord and went to live with her parents. She was clearly not happy with the Levite as it had been four months since she had left him. Perhaps the father was buying more time to convince his daughter to go back to Ephraim with her husband. It could have also been that he simply wanted them to leave at a reasonable hour but then he would have allowed them to leave in the morning but the couple departed from there when evening was upon them.

Gibeah over Jebus

When they were near Jebus and the day was almost gone, the servant said to his master, “Come, let’s stop at this city of the Jebusites and spend the night.”
His master replied, “No. We won’t go into any city whose people are not Israelites. We will go on to Gibeah.” He added, “Come, let’s try to reach Gibeah or Ramah and spend the night in one of those places.” So they went on, and the sun set as they neared Gibeah in Benjamin.

Judges 19:11-14 (NIV)

The Levite did not want to spend the night in the gentile city of Jebus and travelled further to stay in Gibeah, in the land of the Benjamites which resulted in dire consequences. The Levite feared that if he went to Jebus he would not be offered the hospitality that any other town square in Israel would have provided for him. In blindly dismissing the Jebusites and trusting the town of Gibeah, the Levite brought trouble on himself. Even in Gibeah, the Israelite town no one showed them hospitality but for an old man who was not able to protect his guests.

Today people use the example of the tribes of Israel and Jesus’s instructions to the “Seventy-Two” to freeload out of the kindness of the believers. Our actions should be directed by God and Him alone. We value people from our own religion and tribe more than knowing the plan that God has for them. If we follow a template and stereotype people based on our beliefs, we will miss out on His leading. God works for everyone through anyone. We should not discount anyone because of their religion or denomination as God is the God of every soul.

Sodom and Gibeah

In the Benajimite town of Gibeah, the Levite and his wife could not find any lodging as the people were not as hospitable as he had imagined. However, there was an old farm worker who took pity on them and offered his place for the couple to spend the night. The old man was also from the hill country of Ephraim and that was grounds enough for him to invite the Levite and his concubine to spend the night with him. Perhaps, the old man had the foresight about the evil present in the men of Gibeah and did not want the travellers spending the night in the town square. this incident is eerily similar to the scene at the town square of Sodom when Lot offered accommodations to the LORD’s angels.

While they were enjoying themselves, some of the wicked men of the city surrounded the house. Pounding on the door, they shouted to the old man who owned the house, “Bring out the man who came to your house so we can have sex with him. ” The owner of the house went outside and said to them, “No, my friends, don’t be so vile. Since this man is my guest, don’t do this outrageous thing. Look, here is my virgin daughter, and his concubine. I will bring them out to you now, and you can use them and do to them whatever you wish. But as for this man, don’t do such an outrageous thing.”

Judges 19:22-24 (NIV)

The old man was ready to offer his own daughter to protect a man he had met only a couple of hours back. The old man feared what would happen to him if a Levite was raped in his protection. To him a man sleeping with another man was deplorable and they were ready to have the women in their house being raped by these men. They were also travelling with a servant (presumably male) but their first thought was to throw the women in the house to the wolves.

In the ancient days, women were considered the property of their fathers or husband. Their job was only to carry out the household chores in their father’s household and birth heirs for their husbands. Also, the customs of the time put the security of the guests a top priority for the host. It would be a mark of dishonour for the old man if something happened to the traveller who was also a Levite when he came to his house. Moreover, given the old man was also from Ephraim, he did not want his tribesman to be hurt by the evil men of Gibeah.

But the men would not listen to him. So the man took his concubine and sent her outside to them, and they raped her and abused her throughout the night, and at dawn they let her go. At daybreak the woman went back to the house where her master was staying, fell down at the door and lay there until daylight. When her master got up in the morning and opened the door of the house and stepped out to continue on his way, there lay his concubine, fallen in the doorway of the house, with her hands on the threshold. He said to her, “Get up; let’s go.” But there was no answer. Then the man put her on his donkey and set out for home.

Judges 19:25-28 (NIV)

The callous attitude of the Levite towards his concubine makes us wonder why he had put so much time and effort to bring back his wife from his father’s household. After a good night’s sleep, he got up to leave for Ephraim as if nothing had happened. To protect himself the Levite sacrificed his concubine to be raped by the men of Gibeah. Even after seeing his wife lay motionless at the doorstep of the house, he did not call for help or inform her father that his daughter had died. He simply carried his property back to his hometown and plotted his revenge.

When he reached home, he took a knife and cut up his concubine, limb by limb, into twelve parts and sent them into all the areas of Israel. Everyone who saw it was saying to one another, “Such a thing has never been seen or done, not since the day the Israelites came up out of Egypt. Just imagine! We must do something! So speak up! ”

Judges 19:29-30 (NIV)

Rather than mourning for his wife or giving her family a chance to pay their respect at her funeral, the Levite cut his wife’s body into twelve pieces and shipped them off to all the tribes of Israel. He was again thinking only about himself and how he had been wronged by the men of Gibeah. He used his wife’s body parts as props to make a bold statement. He wanted to generate strong sentiment in the hearts of the elders of the tribes of Israel when they would see the gruesome sight of his wife’s chopped-up body and read about what had been done to her to exact his personal revenge against the men who destroyed his property him.

According to him, he had done nothing wrong in butchering his already dead wife as he wanted to prove that he did everything to bring her back to Ephraim. Without the body parts, the news of this gruesome incident would not have been as widespread. People would have taken it only as a news item without having any emotional connection with it. For any accusation to stick the wronged party must produce two witnesses to corroborate their claim. The Levite did not have any witnesses but he used his wife’s body to give validity to his story leaving out the part where he was sleeping peacefully through the night when the crime happened. As stated at the beginning of this account that this was a dark period in Israel’s history and this incident sparked a civil war that nearly wiped out one of the twelve tribes of Israel. Ironically, Gibeah later become the capital city of Israel when Saul was coronated as its first king.

Discussion Questions

• Why is the Father-in-law of the Levite weirdly persistent for him to stay at his house?
• Why would the old man be ready to sacrifice his own daughter for a man he just met?
• Why did the Levite cut the body of his dead wife just to make a statement?
• The Levite did not want to spend the night in the gentile city of Jebus and travelled further to stay in Gibeah, in the land of the Benjamites which resulted in dire consequences. Do we do the same by trusting namesake Christians in our church more than the people who are actually willing to help us?