Judges 19: The Levite's Concubine

Judges 19: The Levite's Concubine / Gibeah's Crime

Sometimes stories repeat themselves in the bible with different characters and dialogue, sort of the same way the Romeo and Juliet is updated in West Side Story. Or maybe you're watching a movie where a white man is thrown into a group of natives and learns something about them while still leading them in some way. Is that Dances With Wolves or Fern Gully or Avatar?

In any case, these story types repeat. Today we will see a repetition of the Sodom story in the "Gibeah's Crime" section below.

The Levite's Concubine: Judges 19.1-21
This is the third time in three chapters that the biblical author informs us that these stories take place in the days "when there was no king in Israel." These stories all exemplify in one way or another the normative lawlessness at the time.

And that thing about the repeating stories? It also appears here, with a new spin on the courtship scene between Jacob and Rachel

A Levite living in Ephraim takes a concubine for himself from Bethlehem in Judah. At some point the concubine becomes angry with the Levite and leaves for her father's house. Four months later the Levite sets out to woo her back. The father-in-law is overjoyed to see him and detains him five days. The Levite tries to leave with his concubine, but the father keeps insisting for some reason or another on eating in drinking (the antithesis of the Jacob story, in which he had to work for his wife).

The man leaves late on the fifth day and finds himself at Jebus (Jerusalem). His servant asks to stop there, but the Leivte insists on continuing to Gibeah, a city inhabited by Benjaminites, not the non-Israelite Jebusites. Apparently it is better to stay with family when you are out.

Gibeah is rather inhospitable. No one takes in the Levite, his concubine, and his servant, though they need no food or wine. They resolve to spend the night in the square when a man comes and offers him his house, saying, "Peace be to you. I will care for all your wants; only do not spend the night in the square."

Gibeah's Crime: Judges 19.22-30
That night a perverse lot surrounds the house and demands to have sexual intercourse with the Levite, the guest in this man's house. The man, as a sign of hospitality, offers his virgin daughter and the man's concubine, indicating their order of importance: daughter, female guest, male guest. (Where the servant figures in, it does not say.) The men will not listen, so Levite grabs his concubine and throws her outside, presumably to save himself. (In a perverse way, he returns the hospitality of the man by not throwing out the virgin daughter instead/as well.)

The men outside "wantonly raped her, and abused her all through the night until the morning. And as the dawn began to break, they let her go. As morning appeared, the woman came and fell down at the door of the man's house where her master was, until it was light." Besides the graphic (by biblical standards) depiction, the sheer length of this statement indicates the gruesomeness of the crime. Another important detail: the Levite is referred to the woman's master, though their relationship is man-concubine, not master-slave. Is it possible the biblical author's compassion for the woman has leaked into the writing?

The master awakes the next morning, finds his concubine lying at the door of the house with her hands on the threshold. She is at not only that literal threshold, but probably the threshold of death as well. If ever there was a symbolic, poetic description in the bible, this is it. But the Levite simply (coarsely?) tells his wife to get up so they can go. She does not answer. The author does not say if she is dead.

The Levite puts the concubine on his donkey and they head home. When the Levite arrives home, he uses a knife to cut his concubine limb from limb into 12 pieces, which he sends throughout Israel. It is to be delivered with this message: "Has such a thing ever happened since the day that the Israelites came up from the land of Egypt until this day? Consider it, take counsel, and speak out."

And there is speaking out, as we shall see tomorrow. And in the meantime we should dwell on the gruesomeness of the story - and the biblical author has given us many gruesome things to consider. Which is most disturbing - the homosexual tendencies of the men of Gibeah, the woman's treatment by the men of Gibeah, the Levite's treatment of his wife at the threshold, or the message sent limb by limb to the tribes of Israel?