Judges 19:1 In those days Israel had no king. Now a Levite who lived in a remote area in the hill country of Ephraim took a concubine from Bethlehem in Judah.
I am still surprised by the depth to which humans can dig. I’m not talking about the mining of precious metals, but the moral degradation of humans. This may sound strange to our ears, as we live in a society where the very notion of moral values that are universal has been rejected. But for almost everyone, the story that concludes the book of Judges is appalling.
Some might reject universal moral values because they want to engage in their own little infractions without others judging them. They want to be able to determine for themselves what behaviors are right and which are wrong. So when they read a story like the one told following our text, they get uncomfortable, because the universal repulsion that arises belays their lack of universals.
Our text sits at the beginning of a story that spans three chapters in our current Bibles. It begins and ends with this assertion: there is no king in Israel. This phrase signals that this three chapter section is one narrative unit, carrying on message.
The message is this: when Israel rejects the LORD’s presence and guidance, things go down hill rapidly. And Israel at that time was on the fast track of disobedience. Some were not as far along as others, but all were going for the ride.
So this is the story in a nutshell. A man, from the tribe of Levi, the tribe from whom the workers in charge of the daily operations of the Tabernacle were taken, took a concubine. A concubine was like a wife, but without the same legal obligations that came with being a wife. We would call this a mistress today. He was having a sanctioned affair.
She didn’t like the arrangement, so she went back to her family home. He went to retrieve her, and after a short delay, left to take her back to his home. Along the way men with evil intent did the most horrendous things to this woman. She died.
In this man’s rage he cut up her body and sent the pieces to the other tribes of Israel, evoking a response of horror. They rally to do something about this horrendous act. Their response is just a horrendous as the initial act that spawned their hasty action.
They lose forty thousand of their own people in the battle. But in the process they wipe out an entire tribe of Israel! Twenty-five thousand Benjamites were killed. All but six hundred were killed. This isn’t justice, this is revenge on steroids!
Right after the battle has ended they take and oath together, that none of them will give their daughters to the surviving men. Then remorse hits the entire group. They have just wiped out one of their relatives and their whole families. What have we done! What must we do to rectify the situation. They can’t help out because of their oath.
So things get even worse. They find out who didn’t show up for the war party, and they go and wipe out that portion of their extended family in order to procure wives for the remaining Benjamites.
But it doesn’t end there. They still need two hundred more wives, so they officially sanction the kidnapping of their own daughters to provide for the missing wives. This would certainly be on a Jerry Springer show if it happened today.
This whole story tells the tragic moral downfall of a whole people. They are supposed to be displaying the glory of the LORD to the nations, but instead are demonstrating their own degradation. If ever there was a need for a leader cut from a different mold, this was the time.
The Arnold Journey 