READ: Judges 19/Psalm 146
REFLECT:
Judges 19 begins with the repeated warning that things are decaying: “In those days there was no king in Israel” (v. 1). Without moral authority, without a commitment to God as the Judge, without a sense of what is right and what is wrong ruling, then the nation loses its way. Such was the case here, and Judges 19 is famous for its horrific description of rape, murder, and (strangely to our ears) inhospitality.
In summary, the author of Judges is telling us that Israel had become like Sodom. The story will sound eerily familiar to those who recall the earlier story of Sodom in the book of Genesis, and will ring alarm bells that Israel was becoming as much an embodiment of decadence as Sodom had been previously. The story is soon told.
A man had a concubine (v. 1), not a lawful wife but some slave chattel with whom he had relations (later he was called her master, v. 26-27). It was not any man, but a Levite (v. 1), a priest, who of all people should have known better than to have broken God’s template of married commitment in this seedy way. The stage was set for something going wrong by a cleric with a sex-slave. She had been unfaithful to him (v. 2)—unsurprisingly. He went after her, found her with her father (v. 3), who instead of rebuffing the advances of her master, invited him to spend five days whooping it up and partying together, drinking and eating (v. 4-8). Finally, his head splitting, the man refused yet another night of drunken debauchery, and took his concubine with him and began his journey back home (v. 9-10).
He came to Gibeah, but no one would take him in (v. 13-15).
RELATE:
Like Sodom, inhospitality was a sign of something far worse. When we turn our backs on our neighbors, when we refuse to act as Good Samaritans, when we close our hearts and our minds to strangers, it is a sign that we are hardening our hearts to care for those from whom we can receive nothing in return. It is an “old man” who takes him into his heart (v. 16-21)—a member of a previous generation who is not best suited to provide hospitality, but who remembers the rightful duties of a host and takes in this guest.
But “worthless fellows” gathered (v. 22). They wanted to gang rape the man—this man who, in another extraordinarily finely crafted touch of narration, the storyteller never named, indicating that he was unworthy of naming. The host attempted to do anything to prevent this happening, even offering up his own daughter instead (v. 23-24). What sort of man would do that? And if this older man was the best that was left in Gibeah, throwing his daughter to the wolves, what must the worst men in that town had been like? We can tell by their vicious attack on the Levite’s concubine, who the Levite sent out to them, and who for some reason they accepted as fresh meat for their pleasure: they raped and abused her all night (19:25-26).
The next morning she was found dead (19:27-28). The man got up, simply said “Let’s go.” (What sort of man would speak to a woman who had been through an ordeal like that, let alone a woman with whom he was in one way or other close?) She did not reply for she couldn't reply. Her hands were “on the threshold” (v. 27). She had been clawing her way, appealing, trying to get back into the house to safety. Wordlessly, the Levite took his dead concubine with him (v. 28), and when he got home he cut her into twelve pieces and sent one piece to each of the twelve tribes of Israel (v. 29).
Understandably, the nation is in shock (v. 30). This bloody message was chilling—each part of the story that would have followed the pieces of the body would have horrified all who heard it.
REST:
Sometimes only a shock like this can wake up a nation, or a church, that something must be done. May we never let our devotion to God slide in this fashion! May we seek Him while He may be found, and realise that following God is good, beautiful, pleasant—and rejecting Him leads to increasing horror and, yes, terror.
TAN TEE KHOON
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