Thread by @JamesBejon

THREAD: Judges 19. When life in Israel becomes like life in Sodom.

As usual, the aim isn’t to cover/summarise the whole text, but simply to pick out particular and sometimes overlooked points of interest.

Just when we think things can’t get much worse in the book of Judges (cp. chs. 17-18), it turns out they can.

And, remarkably, what happens: a] is said to fall into the category of ‘things which are good in man’s eyes’ (19.24),

and b] takes place early on in Israel’s history.

In ch. 19, ‘the men of Gibeah’ rape and murder a Levite’s concubine.

And, in ch. 20, when the Israelites gather together to punish the guilty party (& rightly so),

...the Benjaminites decide to take their stand with the guilty men of Gibeah rather than with the rest of Israel,

...which leads to all-out civil war and the near-extinction of the tribe of Benjamin.

Ch. 19 is part of a continuous narrative which takes us all the way up to the end of the book of Judges.

Like chs. 17-18, chs. 19-21 begin out in the sticks, and involve an unnamed Levite

...who travels from/to Bethlehem to/from the hill country of Ephraim.

And, as is the case in chs. 17-18, what starts out in the sticks ultimately involves a city, at which point it escalates into a national crisis.

The similarity of these two stories seems significant.

Considered as a couplet, they depict a hugely unstable society--a world where similar events can spiral off in completely different directions with completely unexpected (and catastrophic) effects.

Indeed, our text seems to invite us to consider all sorts of imponderables.

Had the Levite only lodged in Jebus, maybe him and his concubine would have been safe and 66,000 Israelites would not have been slain.

Or had the Levite only left earlier in the day. Or had he only left on the 3rd day rather than the 5th day.

Or had his concubine only remained faithful to him. Or had the Judahites only conquered Jebus when they first entered the land (1.21).

The story has a chaos-theory-like undertone to it.

It reveals how fundamentally unstable, fragile, and dangerous life can be when we wander away from God’s precepts.

That the characters involved in our text remain nameless is an equally important detail.

When people are no longer viewed as individuals (with names & identities) but simply as instances of a collective, it frees us up to treat them as objects.

(Consider by analogy how much easier it is to justify abortion once we refer to the obj. of the verb ‘abort’ as a ‘foetus’

which takes an impersonal pronoun.)

Indeed, the Levite is treated precisely like a sex object by the men of Gibeah,

while the concubine is treated like ballast which can be cast overboard to save the souls of others,

...and the Gibeonite’s daughter is viewed in much the same way even if she is not actually fed to the wolves.

The namelessness of our text’s main characters also reminds us of the preventative/preservative purposes of law and order.

When men cannot be held responsible for their crimes but are instead able to dissolve themselves into larger collectives (such as ‘the men of Gibeah’), sin is able to run rampant.

Block summarises the situation very incisively:

‘Ironically, in a world where the individual has made himself the measure of all things (each man does what is right in his own eyes), the individual eventually counts for nothing.’

So, then, on to the specifics of our text.

While horrific in content, ch. 19’s narrative is brilliantly told.

Initially, our text lulls us into a false sense of security.

It introduces us to a Levite who pursues his unfaithful wife and speaks tenderly to her.

His desire is to restore (להשיב) her to a right relationship with her master (אדון: cp. 19.27).

As such, he is reminiscent of Hosea. He faithfully plays the role of Yahweh (as all good priests should) insofar as he pursues an unfaithful bride (in Yahweh’s case, Israel).

But, with the advent of 19.3b, our text seems to get stuck in a rut.

The story begins to drag, as the same (rather verbose) details are repeated over and over again.

We become anxious as we read--and not a little frustrated.

Why can’t the Levite just get on with things and go his way? He seems trapped somehow.

He has work to get on with, and a life to get back to in Ephraim,

and the repeated pursuit of ‘merriment’ (להיטיב את הלב) in his father-in-law’s house seems purposeless and out of place.

Tension also builds up in other ways.

The numbers involved in our text begin to rise.

The Levite arrives with one servant and two donkeys.

He then stays for three days at his father-in-law’s house, at which point it looks as if he will leave.

But then comes a 4th day and a 5th day and he has still not left, and a 6th day begins to loom on the horizon.

Meanwhile, different ways to describe a ‘delay’ are piled on top of one another. (להתמהמהות = ‘to wait’ | לחזק ב = ‘to detain’ | לשבת = ‘to abide, remain’.)

And some of the rare/characteristic verbs of the Sodom and Gomorrah story creep into the text (e.g., להתמהמהות = ‘to wait’ | לפצור ב = ‘to detain’).

At the same time, the night--in particular, that awful night due to be spent in Gibeah--begins to close in.

The day gradually ‘declines’ (חנה) and ‘eases/subsides’ (רפה) into dusk (19.9),

until the sun finally sets on the Levite & his companions as he enters Gibeah (19.14),

at which point we find the group of travellers alone in an empty city square as the night ominously closes in.

When the next day finally dawns, it dawns on one of the most horrific scenes described in Scripture.

We find the Levite’s concubine prostrate at the door, her hands on the threshold, which symbolises her last desperate attempt to find a source of refuge onto which to cling.

(That she seeks refuge from the very men who previously threw her to the wolves makes her plight all the more pitiful.)

And, just as we think things cannot get any worse, we see the Levite emerge from the house to continue on his journey,

at which point he appears to notice his concubine, & simply says to her, ‘Up, & let us go!’.

(What happened to the man who ‘spoke tenderly’ to his concubine only 6 nights ago?)

The resonances between our text (19.15-28) and the Sodom & Gomorrah story (Gen. 19) are unmistakable,

but their number and specificity is easy to overlook.

At nightfall (בערב), a group of travellers ‘turn in’ (סור) to a city in order to spend the night (לון) there.

Initially, the travellers decide to stay in the open city square (רחוב),

but a man who is not a native of the city becomes aware of their plight and offers them accommodation for the night.

(He seems keen for them not to spend the night in the square; he may know more than he lets on.)

The man provides his guests with food (יאכלו) and drink (ישתו | משתה) and allows them to wash their feet (לרצח את הרגלים).

But, as night falls, while relaxation/merriment prevails within the house, a world of iniquity begins to rage outside the door.

The men of the city (אנשי העיר) surround (סבב על) the house, & command the host to send his guests out (להוציא) so they can rape (ידע) them.

(The men of Sodom refer to Lot’s guests as האנשים אשר באו אליך, while the men of Gibeah refer to the Levite as האיש אשר בא אל ביתך.)

The host pleads with the men of the city, whom he refers to as אַחַי = ‘my brothers’.

He begs them not to act (אַל־תַּעֲשׂוּ) wickedly towards his guests, and offers them two females in exchange,

...whom he says they are free to treat as they please.

(The phrase employed by the host actually begins with an imperative: עשו להם/להן הטוב בעיניכם = ‘Do to them what is good in your eyes!’.)

...which, tragically, is exactly what the men in question do.

Gibeah has become the new Sodom.

And, appropriately, Gibeah will end up in exactly the same state as Sodom and Gomorrah, namely as a column of smoke (מַשְׂאַת הֶעָשָׁן cp. 20.38).

Note: The first time smoke is mentioned in ch. 20, it is accompanied by the def. art. (i.e., it is *the* smoke: העשן),

which provides a further contact-point with Sodom and Gomorrah, since ‘the smoke’ has the same gematrial value as ‘Sodom and Gomorrah’. (425 = העשן = סדם ועמרה: cp. Gen. 13.10.)

But while our text has many similarities to the Sodom and Gomorrah story,

it also differs from it in a number of ways, which are important to note.

While Lot is delivered from Sodom (by his angelic guests), a deliverer is conspicuously and tragically absent from our present text.

The Levite is certainly no angel, nor is he a deliverer,

and God is not mentioned even once in our text (with the possible exception of 19.18, though versions differ)--tbd later.

While Lot’s angelic guests grab him (חזק + ב) and carry him away to safety, the Levite grabs (חזק + ב) his concubine and hands her over to the men of Gibeah.

And, while the angels bring Lot outside (חוץ) the city where he will be safe, the Levite thrusts his concubine outside (חוץ) the house, where she will be abused.

Note: חוץ has the same gematrial value as סדם (namely 104),

which is appropriate, since the streets of Sodom are exactly what lie outside the door in Gibeah.

Note also: Our text ends with a very sad instance of wordplay. The Levite’s wife is raped (ענה) all night and is hence left unable to answer (ענה) her master’s call the next day.

Some further numerical considerations: Numbers are important in our text.

Elsewhere in Judges, Adoni-Bezek subjugates 70 kings and hence carves out a kingdom for himself in Canaan,

and Gideon has 70 sons in order to (try to) carve out a similar kingdom.

And here in chs. 19-21, we are presented with a lurid snapshot of ‘the kingdom of man’ and of what happens when ‘every man does what is right in his own eyes’,

where the word ‘man’ (איש) occurs 70 times.

As for the disappearance of references to God in our text, chs. 1-19 include a total of 204 references to God. (The particular words employed are אלהים | אדני | יהוה.)

Elsewhere, we have noted how such numbers might initially seem to hint at God’s abandonment of his people to their enemies, but actually turn out to hint at God’s sovereignty over his enemies,

which appears to be the case here,

since the perpetrators of chs. 19-21’s crime are first referred to (in 19.22) as ‘worthless men’ (בני בליעל), which has a gematrial value of 204.

#HelpRequired

#WhenIsACoincidenceJustACoincidence?

Final thoughts: Our text speaks for itself in terms of what it reveals to us about the depravity of man, which does not make it a pleasant read,

but, from time to time, it can be good for us to think long and hard about exactly what is wrong with our fallen race,

and the enormous extent to which it is fallen.

It may also be helpful to think about an important difference between the Levite in our text and a later priest.

The Levite started off well in our text, but he did not end well.

And yet, when men surrounded Jesus and his disciples in the darkness of the Kidron valley (קדרון = ‘dark’) and demanded blood,

Jesus did not hand his disciples over like the Levite did.

Instead, he stepped forward, and said, ‘If you seek me, let these men go their way’.

Question: What kind of man would give himself up to suffer humiliation for the sake of an unfaithful wife?