Judges 19 Study Notes

19:1 The opening line of this chapter anticipates the story’s direction. Like the Levite in the last story, this one was staying in the hill country of Ephraim, and he was connected to Bethlehem in Judah (17:7,9), this time through marriage to a concubine, a lower-status wife. The Levite is nameless, as is almost every character in this story. This highlights the fact that this episode is not unique but was characteristic of these lawless times.

19:2-4 The Levite’s concubine was unfaithful to him, a broad term that would cover sexual immorality and more general desertion. There was no provision in ancient Israel for a woman to divorce a man; nevertheless, she left him and returned to her father’s house. Finally after four months, the Levite went to try to persuade her to go back with him. The girl’s father was glad to see him and gave him a warm welcome. As was typical in the ancient Near East, the requirements of hospitality took several days of feasting to fulfill.

19:5-9 On the morning of the fourth day, the Levite was eager to go on his way, but his host detained him with further offers of hospitality that would have been rude to decline in that culture. As a result, he was persuaded to stay another night. In an almost comic scene, the next day followed an identical pattern, with the host insisting on further hospitality and the Levite seeking to make his departure. In these exchanges, the concubine is nowhere to be seen.

19:10-12 As a result of this profuse hospitality, it was late in the day by the time the Levite and his party got underway. By the time they had arrived at the city of Jerusalem, a mere six miles journey from Bethlehem, the day was almost over. The Levite’s servant proposed seeking shelter for the night in the city. At this time, Jerusalem was still in the hands of the Jebusites, and the Levite was reluctant to seek hospitality from non-Israelites. The Levite’s fear is doubly ironic. First, if the Israelites had pressed forward with the conquest at the outset, Jerusalem would already have been in Israelite hands by this time. Second, the treatment they would experience at the hands of fellow Israelites in Gibeah was to be far worse than anything they could have expected from the Jebusites.

19:13-15 The Levite decided to press on another six miles or so to the Israelite cities of Gibeah or Ramah. By the time they reached Gibeah, the sun had already set. They sat down in the city square where, according to ancient Near Eastern custom, strangers might expect to receive hospitality. No offers of hospitality were forthcoming, unlike their experience in Bethlehem.

19:16-21 Finally, an old man came in from his work. Like the Levite, he was from the hill country of Ephraim and was merely residing in Gibeah, which perhaps explains his greater hospitality. Custom demanded hospitality should be shown to every stranger, but the Levite would not have been a burdensome guest. He could provide food for his own party and his animals. The Levite’s statement that he was going to the house of the Lord seems odd in this context since the temple had not yet been built. Most likely, a scribe misunderstood the final letter in the Hebrew word “my house” as an abbreviation for the name of the Lord. The old man’s insistence that they should come to his home and not spend the night in the square suggests that he knew things were not as they ought to be in Gibeah. The square, inside the town walls, should have been a safe location.

19:22-24 The echoes of the story of Sodom and Gomorrah in Gn 19 were already present in the preceding verses, in which strangers arrived in the town square in the evening and found lodging with one of the town’s inhabitants. These echoes now become a virtual reenactment. The scene of peaceful hospitality was shattered by the arrival of wicked men (lit “men of Belial,” or “worthless men”; cp. 9:4). The old man appealed to them as his brothers, but he characterized their request for sex with his male guest as an offense against hospitality and morality. It would be an outrage, a word that characterizes an act that cries out for retributive justice (20:6; Gn 34:7; Dt 22:21). Yet the alternative that the old man proposed is equally abhorrent.

19:25-28 The similarities with the narrative of Sodom and Gomorrah heighten the differences. The perpetrators were not pagans but Israelites. There were no angels to step in and rescue the innocent parties. There was no judgment from heaven at daybreak as with Sodom and Gomorrah. In the morning, the Levite got up from his rest and opened the doors of the house to leave on his journey, as if nothing had happened the previous night.

19:29-30 There is no mention of the concubine’s death in the story, which raises the question of whether she was dead when the Levite found her, or even at the point when he cut her into twelve pieces. Her unresponsiveness to his commands suggests she was dead. At the very least, the Levite’s action goes against the normal respect shown to a dead body in Israel, carving it up as if it were the carcass of an animal and sending the pieces to the twelve tribes of Israel as a call to arms. The similar passage in 1Sm 11:7, where Saul cut up a pair of oxen into twelve parts and distributed them among the tribes, shows that this act included an implied curse. Those who failed to respond to the muster could expect to meet a similar fate. Everyone who saw the grisly message agreed that such an outrage demanded a response.