Anyone reading Judges straight through stops here. All the violence, all the betrayal, all the corruption we’ve seen up to this point doesn’t add up to the horror of this chapter.
A Levite man lived in a remote part of the hill country of Ephraim. He’d taken a concubine from Bethlehem in Judah, and she’d been unfaithful to him and returned to her father’s house. Four months later, he goes to bring her back.
So far this reads like an ordinary domestic story. Her father welcomes him warmly and keeps urging him to stay longer, several days longer. This hospitality scene runs on at surprising length, which makes what follows even more jarring.
The Levite finally leaves late in the afternoon, and as night falls he passes by the Jebusite city (Jerusalem) and reaches Gibeah, a town belonging to Benjamin. He deliberately chose an Israelite town, not wanting to spend the night among foreigners.
But no one in Gibeah takes him in. He’s left sitting in the town square. Finally, in the evening, an old man returning from the fields spots him and brings him home.
This is where one of the most horrifying scenes in all of Scripture begins.
“Now as they were making their hearts merry, behold, the men of the city, certain sons of Belial, beset the house round about, and beat at the door, and spake to the master of the house, the old man, saying, Bring forth the man that came into thine house, that we may know him.”
The old man goes out and tries to talk them down, offering his own daughter and the guest’s concubine instead. That offer alone is horrifying, but the mob won’t listen.
“Then the man took his concubine, and brought her forth unto them; and they knew her, and abused her all the night until the morning: and when the day began to spring, they let her go.”
The next sentence is difficult to even quote.
“Then came the woman in the dawning of the day, and fell down at the door of the man’s house where her lord was, till it was light. And her lord rose up in the morning, and opened the doors of the house, and went out to go his way: and, behold, the woman his concubine was fallen down at the door of the house, and her hands were upon the threshold. And he said unto her, Up, and let us be going; but none answered.”
That flat, restrained reporting is somehow more devastating than anything more emotional would be. The text never tells us how to feel. It just lays out the facts. And then comes the Levite’s response.
“And when he was come into his house, he took a knife, and laid hold on his concubine, and divided her, together with her bones, into twelve pieces, and sent her into all the coasts of Israel.”
This scene structurally echoes what King Saul later does in 1 Samuel 11, cutting up oxen and sending the pieces to summon the tribes. Except here, the summons is made through something far more horrific.
The chapter closes with this line:
“And it was so, that all that saw it said, There was no such deed done nor seen from the day that the children of Israel came up out of the land of Egypt unto this day: consider of it, take advice, and speak your minds.”
What kept coming back to me reading this is that no one ever spoke up for her. The old man offered her up to protect his own daughter and his guest. The Levite himself left her outside at dawn. From beginning to end, she appears only as someone handed over by others. The next chapter shows this event dragging all of Israel into civil war, yet her own voice never appears anywhere in the text.
It makes you wonder why the author of Judges chose to close the book with a story this dark. The answer is probably in that refrain running through the whole section. When there’s no king, when everyone does what’s right in their own eyes, this chapter shows exactly how low a society can sink.
Tags: #Judges19 #TheNightAtGibeah #TheLevitesConcubine #TheDarkestChapter #EveryManDidWhatWasRightInHisOwnEyes #AVoicelessVictim #Judges #BibleDevotional #BibleStudy #OldTestament