Thread by @JamesBejon

(1/6). A question.

What exactly takes place at the outset of Judges 19?

A Levite is said to ‘take himself a woman/wife, a concubine’ (אשה פילגש),

which sounds slightly odd because (aside from other things) the Levite isn’t said to have a wife already,

or, if he does, he certainly doesn’t take her with him when he heads off on his travels.

Either way, the wife/concubine of ch. 19’s Levite is soon said to act ‘unfaithfully’ (לזנות).

But what follows in the narrative doesn’t pan out as we’d expect if she’d been unfaithful.

The concubine isn’t disowned or rejected; rather, she leaves of her own accord (ותלך מאיתו).

Four months later, the Levite comes ‘to speak to her in a kindly way’ (לדבר על לבה), which is odd,

since the Levite isn’t, to put it mildly, one of the kindest individuals in Scripture. (The Levite’s speech might, however, be more explicable if he’d wronged her in some way.)

And the Levite’s concubine isn’t said to be pleased to see him; only her *father* is,

and thereafter the text only reports interaction between the Levite and his concubine’s father (as if the father is keener on the idea of reconciliation than his daughter is).

Of course, people don’t always behave as we’d expect them to,

and so Biblical narratives don’t always behave as we’d expect them to either.

But the phrase ותזנה עליו in 19.2 might warrant further consideration.

The verb לזנות doesn’t (to my knowledge) take the preposition על anywhere else in Scripture (and is used quite often).

And (some) Greek translations of Judges 19.2 translate ותזנה עליו as καὶ ὠργίσθη αὐτῷ (‘and she was angry with him’),

which may be instructive given the cluster of ZNY/ZMY = ‘to be angry’ words attested in Ugaritic, Babylonian, and Assyrian.

Input welcome.

Might the form וַתִּזְנֶה in Judg. 19.2 be intended to distinguish its sense from וַתִּזֶן = ‘she played the whore’ (so Jer. 3.8, Ezek. 23.5)?