3rd Week of September Judges 19 Adult Sunday School Class

Judges chapter 19

We find out in the 28th verse of the 20th chapter that the events in the next three chapters take place not long after Joshua dies. Phinehas, Joshua's grandson is ruler over Israel at this time. This is not a shining moment for Israel, and the story here is one so horrible that you don't hear of stories much worse even in our wicked day. In my understanding of the story there are really no blameless people here. Every corner of the tale has some moral lapse that should be apparent. I'm not saying we're any better in our time, but in much of the history in the Bible, there is usually someone who is at least on God's side. Here it seems that everyone is out for themselves.

A man known only as a Levite from Ephraim takes a concubine against God's purpose for man and wife. This concubine then decides to sleep around on her 'mate', and leave and go live with her father. Out of shame or stubbornness we don't know. After four months of her absence the Levite goes after her. Where she is, and where the Levite's home was, wasn't all that close. He may have had many emotions while she was gone, but finally a cooler forgiving mind prevails and he journeys to go get her at his father-in-law's house.

His father-in-law seems genuinely happy to see him and they have a three day party. As the Levite thinks it is time to leave, he gets up to go and the concubine's father stops him and insists on him staying longer with more wine and food. After the fifth day, the Levite goes, even though it is too late to travel. Isn't this how we are sometimes? We procrastinate and fiddle until it is too late before we finally decide to do the task that must be done! Obeying human nature sometimes has a heavy price as we are about to find out.

The Levite is travelling with a servant, his concubine, and two donkeys with plenty of food for their journey. His servant says they should stay in Jebus because it is so late, but he says no, we'll have none of that, we'll stay with our own people further up the road. One can't help but wonder if the story would be any different if  they had lodged in Jebus. The Benjamites had a city called Gibeah and the Levite wants to lodge there. The only problem is when they get to Gibeah, no one will receive them, which happens to be against Jewish law not to receive a traveler. Finally a man coming from the field after work sees them, has compassion and finds out they are kindred people from the same part of the country. Things are looking up or so it seems. They make merry and eat and drink into the night.

Here the story goes south quickly. Unbeknownst to the Levite and his gracious host, there were some evil men watching for something evil to do. They picked this new stranger as there target for entertainment, and they didn't have anything good in mind. After trying to force themselves into the situation, the host decides to give out the concubine instead of his new friend to the evil men. They then have their way with her all night and let her go crawling back home when they are through with her in the morning.

This is a bad situation that seems to me to get worse by the moment. Instead of the Levite having compassion on the woman that sacrificed herself so that he might not be violated, he tells her to get up so they can be on their way. I understand that he would want to leave before things got worse, but I don't care what time in civilization this is, you couldn't help but have some compassion for this women in her state. I'm sure she was bruised and bloody, along with what psychological wounds she might have. Her injuries were bad enough that she died from them, so I would assume injuries were apparent on her body.

He finds out she will never go with him again, because she is dead. So now this heartless sinful man decides to carve up her body and send it to all the tribes in Israel to get justice. This is a story that makes the case that if two wrongs don't make a right, lets try three, four, five or more wrongs to see if that will make the situation improve. Of course, more sin doesn't make us any holier to God. Only Christ and his righteousness through the cross does away with sin.

The men from Gibeah were evil and should be punished. The Levite was wrong for taking a concubine, wrong for waiting too late to travel, wrong for having no compassion on this woman, and sinned again by what he did to her corpse. Israel truly was doing what was right in their own eyes.