The account of the Levite and his concubine is possibly the most horrible account in all of scripture. And it is confined entirely within the nation of Israel. No outside party has a role in the story. It is a story that shocks and conscience and boggles the mind. I remember years ago watching the Ashton Kutcher film “Butterfly Effect” and being so angry and frustrated with the character for constantly making the worst possible decisions one after the other. This is how I feel watching the events of Judges 19-21 unfolding.
The Reader’s Digest version is that a man’s wife (concubine) becomes angry1 with him for undisclosed reasons and goes to her father’s house. The Levite comes to get her and on the way home he stop with an old man from Gilead in Benjamin. Men comes to sexually assault the Levite, so the throws his wife into the street where she suffers the fate he was trying to avoid, ultimately resulting in her death. The Levite then cuts her up sending her body to all the tribes. They lead an attack on the Benjaminites, both sides suffered heavy losses. Benjamin was almost wiped out (except for 600 men), so Israel felt bad for them and massacred a town of Israelites who didn’t participate in the battles so they could kidnap their daughters as wives for the tribe they just tried to destroy. But there weren’t enough women in the town they razed, so kidnapped some more women from a festival.
What? In? The? World?
There is so very, very much that could be discussed and disseminated in these three chapters that the prospect of choosing one seems almost overwhelming. But I think we can look at the thread that runs through Judges and come away with something more personal and cautionary than academic. And it comes down to the question that was twice asked in today’s passage.
How has this happened?
Judges 20:3; 21:3, Paraphrased
Literally tens of thousands of families were destroyed because of the actions of some Benjaminite degenerates and the response of a cold-hearted and selfish husband. We are told throughout Judges that “there was no king in Israel and everyone did what was right in his own eyes”. We need to understand that in order for a king to rule, people need to follow him. There was no earthly king and the people seemed unable or unwilling to allow Yahweh to be king. And so they tried to follow their own moral compass. That is called subjectivity. And if we allow our moral compass to be subjective rather than grounded in some permanent truth we have no objective reason to condemn Pol Pot, Mao, Lenin/Stalin, Hitler, or Hamas — we merely do not AGREE with their moral ethic.
This, friends, is what sin does. It corrupts us. It destroys us. It does it slowly, insidiously. It warps our perceptions until we can no longer see clearly. The effects of sin are so incredibly powerful that we often cannot even tell it has us in its clutches. This is why we are so desperately in need of God’s grace to open our eyes and reveal our hearts.
This Levite (a PRIEST) fell so far from the God he was meant to serve that he threw his wife out into the street to be gang-raped then dismembered her body and mailed it around. Friends, please hear me on this: this seems horrific beyond words, and there but for the grace of God go I. Stay in close communion with God. Stay in His Word. Stay in prayer — don’t ever hang up that phone. The pull of sin is too strong to fight it alone.
At that time Israel had no king. Yes they did. And so do we. King Jesus. We just need to treat Him that way.
Judges 19-21 | 096/365
- Your Bible might say she was unfaithful, this is possible, but I prefer the angry reading for multiple reasons ↩︎