Chapter 19
A Levite staying in the remote mountains of Ephraim takes a concubine from Bethlehem in Judah. (Very similar start to the last story.) But she "plays the harlot" and goes back to Daddy. After four months the Levite goes to try and talk her into coming back. He stays three days at her father's house. Her father likes the Levite. He is called the Levite's Father-in-law.
The father-in-law urges him to stay a fourth day. The Levite does. The fifth day, the father-in-law detains the man until afternoon, and urges him to stay overnight. But the man won't stay this time. He leaves, though it is late, and gets to the area near Jerusalem. The servant wants to spend the night in Jebus (Jerusalem), but the Levite won't because foreigners live there.
2021 - Are we to assume that this father is trying to keep his concubine daughter home as long as possible? Are these delays about the daughter or about the budding relationship with the Levite? Or perhaps some of both? There does not seem to be any ulterior motive to the father's repeated attempts to get them to stay. It seems he genuinely wants them there in his house. Further, there doesn't seem to be any kind of blame assigned to either the Levite or the father in what is to come. The delay does not seem in any way to contribute to the horrible events to come...except maybe insofar as they arrive late and are forced to stay in a town where they ought not to have stayed. And to that we can add the prejudice of the Levite about staying in Jebus/Jerusalem, which is occupied by foreigners rather than Israelites. Gibeah is inhabited by Israelites, and so in the opinion of the Levite, a better place to stay, even though they arrive so very late. So perhaps another lesson is that strangers are strangers, whether of your own people or of some other people. The lesson might be that if you are going on a journey, get up and go, and don't put yourself into a "forced" situation. I have never seen any good lessons here before, but maybe I am seeing a few now. I had focused on the "three day delay" in departing, but maybe the key is starting a journey when the day is far gone.
2026 - Or maybe it is about both. If you have somewhere to go, get on with it. Don't be distracted from your plans. Or don't let others convince you that you can delay, that there is no need to stick with a plan? And then when you do go, be decisive...Ahh! Maybe that is it. We are to understand that the Levite is a wishy washy indecisive man. Perhaps that's the reason his concubine left in the first place. He was such a do nothing that she decided she'd rather be back in her father's house than stay and waste away with this Levite. The first "hard line" the Levite takes is that he will not spend the night in Jerusalem. His first unchangeable decision is a bad decision. So, wishy washy and with no real sense of the priorities. Treats "foreigners" as unworthy of this time, when he doesn't make any use of his time anyway. So now maybe we have a better insight into the kind of man this Levite might be. Where does it go from here?
Hmm...another possibility. The Levite is one of those people who is so unwilling to offend anyone - even a person who does not have his best interest at heart - that he gets himself into these lose-lose situations. He has not wanted to shun the hospitality of his father-in-law, and finally gets so far past the date he was supposed to be home, that he decides to do something dumb just to get back on schedule. Maybe ended up offending the father-in-law even more by doing something so bone-headed and stupid.
They go on to Gibeah, arriving late. They settle in the town square because they've gotten no dinner invitation.
2021 - Because he arrived so late, no one in the town was around, the streets were deserted, the houses closed. So instead of hospitality, they would have to sleep in the street. Would have been better off to sleep out in the countryside somewhere as it turned out.
An old man comes into town, turns out that they are both from Ephraim. Gibeah is inhabited by Benjamites. The old man invites the Levite and his party to stay at his house.
2021 - This old man had some business he was attending to in Gibeah. Perhaps a craftsman of some kind, or maybe to work the land of another. In any case, though he didn't live in Gibeah, he had "rented" a house there for a while. Note that he obviously knew the danger of staying out in the open in the town square. He knew what kind of people lived around him. As did Lot. Many lessons here about that. If you are not called as a missionary to such a place, it is unreasonable to assume you are safe in such a place. I had not really thought before about the old man not really being an inhabitant of that town. Unlike Lot, who was a prominent citizen of Sodom - though he knew what kind of people they were.
Homosexuals begin to pound on the door and want the man sent out to them. The old man goes out and offers both the concubine and his virgin daughter to the mob. But they won't be swayed. So "the man", which I believe refers to the Levite, sends out his concubine, and sort of locks the door behind her. She is raped all night, and let go in the morning.
2021 - Let's remember that this concubine had previously been unfaithful to the Levite. There is no implication in these verses that the Levite considered this, or that her previous actions influenced his actions on this night at all. As horrible and repulsive to us as this whole sequence might be, we have to remember that this was another culture and another time. This is how things were done, these were the priorities of behavior. The top priority was to protect your guest and save him - and it was about "him" - from any harm, no matter the loss to yourself. Once you took someone in for the night, they were to be treated well, even to your own harm. We ought not to judge in 2021 what was done in 1000 BC or so. We have no context to do so.
Further, since I know the rest of this story, it occurs to me that the outrage throughout all Israel is going to be against the men of Gibeah rather than the Levite for waiting too late to start his journey, or against the old man, who in fact showed kindness and hospitality to strangers. We see where a sequence of questionable decisions in this case led to catastrophe. They shouldn't have. They were small errors of judgement. The villains in this story are the men of Gibeah, and the truly heinous steps taken to keep the Levite safe from these men were prompted by Gibeah's actions. No blame is placed on the old man or the Levite, because that would be to focus on the lesser wrong. The true horror here is that a whole town is infested with men who would behave in this way at all, and that such a town is allowed to persist. All Israel is to blame for this. Something is horribly wrong in Israel, and that is in fact what the whole book of Judges is about. When left to themselves, Israel turns away from God and His commandments. And with nothing to correct them, you get Judges 19-21. Men will sink lower than low unless some kind of restraint is in place. I can think of no better proof text for the depravity of man than this story right here.
The next morning, when the man arises to leave, there's his concubine, with her hands on the doorstep. He tells her to get up, but she can't, so he puts her on a donkey and they leave. (Very kind-hearted guy, this Levite).
2026 - We get the idea that the Levite was not expecting to see her again. He apparently believed he had given her to the evil men and that she was gone forever as a result. We don't know how he felt about that, but he seems clearly to have abandoned the concubine. Hmm...and then there's that cultural difference. It calls her a concubine and says she plays the harlot. Yet it called him her husband. We just don't know the rules of that time.
2026 - It looks to me like she died on the doorstep. She was already dead when he put her on that donkey. And all the way home, he thought about what he should do. And what did this wishy washy, worried about insulting anyone guy decide was best?
When they get home, he takes a knife, and cuts the concubine up into twelve pieces and sends the pieces throughout Israel, creating quite a stir. (Surely with no king, with no rule of law, it becomes difficult to distinguish the good from the bad. Men sink to their lowest in the absence of authority over them, and the absence of any laws, or even any common cultural standards.)
2021 - I believe the concubine was dead on the doorstep. Her lack of response means that she was dead. He cuts her into pieces when he gets home. He didn't do that while she was alive. Verse 20:4 also bears this out. I had this part wrong also. I had assumed she died on the way. This chapter was certainly a low point for Israel, as shown by this verse:
30 And all who saw it said, "Such a thing has never happened or been seen from the day that the people of Israel came up out of the land of Egypt until this day; consider it, take counsel, and speak." [Jdg 19:30 ESV]
Without restraint, evil will prevail.
2021 - Oh my! All this stuff about restraint, and since today is the 29th, I read Proverbs 29 after these chapters in Judges. And here is what I found:
18 Where there is no prophetic vision the people cast off restraint, but blessed is he who keeps the law. [Pro 29:18 ESV]
I was thinking of this verse, but to have it show up in my Proverbs reading really enforces the thought.
2023 - It is hard to get any lessons from this. Indeed, I am not sure we're supposed to get any. It is very similar to the story about the angels' arrival in Sodom being taken in by Lot. The men who surround this house in Gibeah would have known all about that story, and yet they repeat it? It is almost like we get the same story, but with a different ending. This time, the concubine does go out, and they abuse her to death. Is the lesson that she should never have left this Levite in the first place? I have a footnote that says she was angry at him rather than she was unfaithful to him. And he goes to retrieve here and hits it off with her Dad. Would these horrible things have happened if the Levite had left the day he said he would? Or is it that, if you are planning to depart, don't sit around eating and drinking all day then leave in the late afternoon? All journeys ought to start early in the day? No...don't think that was the reason for the way they acted in Gibeah. And he could have stopped at Jebus, if he hadn't been so arrogant about staying with foreigners. Maybe that's the lesson? Don't be so arrogant, but do what is best for those in your charge? I don't like that one either. It could be that nothing about this makes any sense because that's what happens when there is no central authority - indeed, not even local authority - to impose at least some kind of legal restraint on people. This Levite is not a very good man. I don't believe the customs of Sodom were the rule in Israel in those days. The Levite and the girls father are both cowards. Where was the law to keep the homosexuals at bay? They had no fear at all. Things in Israel were just rock bottom. And in such times, people plumb the absolute depths of human behavior because they have nothing at all to "normalize" their thinking. When each man makes his own rules, you can get some ridiculous rules!