The
final unit in Judges is established by the statement “In those days Israel had
no king” in 19.1 and 21.25. This unit is exceeded in length only by the unit on
Gideon if we include the Abimelech cycle within the Gideon unit. What starts
out as a seemingly simple family dispute telescopes in a full blown national
crisis that threatens the integrity of the nation. The plot is complex and the
writer continues his expert use of a variety of literary features to make some
very subtle and some not so subtle points about the impact of the Canaanization
of Israel on the moral integrity of Israel and its entire people. 
A
particular striking feature of this account is that outside of a single
instance, none of the characters, major or minor, are named. The only name
mentioned is that of the priest at Bethel, Phinehas, in 20.28. All the other
characters are nameless. The only reason for the writer to even mention the
name of the priest is to provide us with a clue to the approximate time of
these events. The commentator Daniel
Block tells us that “Phinehas, the priest, is the grandson of Aaron, and that
places the events transpiring in this chapter within one hundred years of the
death of Moses and within a few decades after the death of Joshua.” This literary device is intended to
demonstrate the universal nature of Israel’s Canaanization.
By
making the characters nameless the writer accomplishes a couple of things. The
characters become similar to Everyman of the English morality plays, in that
they represent everyone in their particular group. For example “the Levite
represents every Levite; the concubine, every woman; the father-in-law, every
host; the old man residing in Bethel, every outsider in a Benjamite town.” Much
like the “If it makes you feel good do it” philosophy of our day the “everyone
did as he saw fit” attitude in Israel opened the way for people doing what they
wanted. “Every host was capable of committing the atrocities of the Benjamites;
every guest could be mistreated; and every woman was a potential victim of
rape, murder, and dismemberment.”
The
namelessness of the characters also reflects “the dehumanization of the
individual in a Canaanized world.” A name makes us distinct, it separates us
from others, and it gives us an identity. Without names we become objects, we lose our individuality and we become
part of the faceless crowd. For our writer, it is apparent that “In a world in
which the individual makes himself the measure of all things the individual
eventually counts for nothing.” Man is made unique by Yahweh, without a belief
in Yahweh, without knowing Yahweh; man is simply another nameless creature in
the universe. “By means of anonymity
the narrator has depicted a sinister world of alienation, denigration, and
deconstruction.”
These
final chapters of Judges provide us with a final, great example of the
Canaanization of Israel. We will be
faced with the Canaanization of Israel at both the individual level as well as
a communal level as we are shown just how deep and important the impact of
individual actions are on the community. This is a fitting conclusion for our
writer’s story of the spiritual and moral destruction of Israel from the inside
out.
We
will review this section in four parts.
1. The Background to the Rape at Gibeah
(19:1-10a)
2. The Rape at Gibeah (19:10b-30)
3. Israel’s Response to the Rape at Gibeah
(20:1-48)
4. The National Crisis Precipitated by the
Rape at Gibeah (21:1-25)
From
a theological stand point God is almost never mentioned. In sections one and
two, God is not mentioned by his name Yahweh or by the more generic term of
Elohim. In section three we are told that Israel assembles “before the Lord” at
Mizpah (20:1) as the “people of God” (20:2), and when they consult him at
Bethel he responds (20:18, 23, 27-28). In section four we see the Israelites
weep before Yahweh at Bethel (21:1) and let his name drop freely from their
lips (21:3, 5, 7-8). Other than these few examples, we see the people making their
own decisions. God is silent, allowing them to do things their own way and He
even allows them to succeed. We have a key to the writer’s understanding of
these events in 21:15: “The Lord had made a gap in the tribes of Israel.” Here
the writer is asking us, his readers, to see the intervention of God. In
Israel‘s “Holy War” against a fellow tribe, God has delivered the enemy into Israel’s
hand (cf. 20:28) just as if it were an external enemy. Hoverer, this concluding
narrative in Judges, Israel discovers her greatest enemy, and that enemy is in
the enemy within her very own midst.
It
is not accidental that this chapter, as provides the background leading up to
the rape and the rape itself, presents a close parallel to Genesis 19. Daniel
Block provides us with a list of some of the most obvious links:
1. A small group of travelers arrives in
the city in the evening.
2. A person who is himself an alien
observes the presence of this company.
3. The travelers have a mind to spend the
night in the open square.
4. At the insistence of the host, the
travelers agree to spend the night in his house.
5. The host washes the guests’ feet (implied
in Gen 19:3 after the offer of v. 2).
6. The host and guest share a meal.
7. Depraved men of the city surround the
house.
8. They demand that the host deliver his
male guests to them so they may commit homosexual gang rape.
9. The host protests this display of
wickedness.
10. When the protests prove futile, a
substitute female is offered or handed over.
However
not only the two incidents share common plot line, they even share a common
vocabulary. Consider some of the common verbs used: “to spend the night,” “to
turn aside,” “to rise early and go on one’s way,” “to dilly-dally,” “to wash
the feet,” and “they ate.” The parallels
between the two intensify as the narratives proceed and reach their climax in
Gen 19:4-8 and Judges 19:22-24 respectively. We will look at some of these
similarities as they occur. There can be
little doubt that the writer’s intent was to compare the time of Judges with
one of the darkest times in Old Testament times; the destruction of Sodom and
Gomorrah. The elements of moral and spiritual decay are obvious in both but the
writer leaves it to us to draw our own conclusions.
The
Background to the Rape at Gibeah (19:1-9)
In
19:1, the beginning of the final plot of Judges is opened with the ominous
announcement of the absence of a king in Israel. By refusing to acknowledge
Yahweh as its King, Israel does not have the spiritual strength to resist
sinking to the moral level of the Canaanites at all levels of its society, the
personal, tribal, and national levels. As we have suggested before it is also
true that the people do not need a human king to lead them into sin and
immorality, they are quite capable of doing that on their own. If asked, it is
likely that these people would profess to be followers of Yahweh, they could
talk the talk, but walking the talk was an entirely different matter, “their
conduct and their consequent fate contradict this claim.”
After
the statement about the absence of a king, the writer introduces us to the main
characters, another priest and his concubine. The writer introduces the priest
as a Levite, a member of the tribe of Levi who were charged with maintaining
the spiritual character of the nation of Israel. As we mentioned earlier, like
everyone else in this narrative with the exception of the priest Phinehas, the
priest is not named. This would indicate that the writer wants us to generalize
the issues surrounding the character. The priest is to be understood as “every
priest.” Who the priest is of little importance in comparison to the issue he
represents. The Levite was a traveler who does not appear to have permanent
home and is without a mission or calling in his life. Like the priest in the
previous narrative regarding the Danites, this priest also is associated with
Bethlehem of Judah. In this narrative, just the opposite situation arises as
our priest travels from the hill country of Ephraim to Bethlehem. If you recall
in the previous version the priest made the journey in reverse traveling from
Bethlehem to the hill country in Ephraim. The issue of hospitality also arises in both narratives though the way
in which hospitality is expressed is quite different.
Similarly
to our priest, his concubine is also nameless, but the writer does give us
three pieces of information about this woman. First, we are told that the woman is the priest’s concubine. The use of
the term concubine raises the immediate question of whether or not the Levite
has other wives, as the term concubine as used here would indicate that this
woman is a second-class wife. If he doesn’t have other wives then why is this
woman not being treated as “a normal wife?” Second, the woman is referred to as the “young woman,” which would help
explain her running back to her father’s house. Third, the woman leaves her
husband and goes back home to her father’s house. Her motive for going home is not entirely
clear. On the surface this would seem to be a case of a woman leaving her
husband because as Daniel Block says: “She seems simply to have abandoned her
husband, perhaps because she was tired of being treated as a secondary wife,
and returned to her father’s home.” Divorce in Israel was a one way street, a man could divorce a woman for
a multitude of reason but we are not given any hint that a woman was permitted
the same freedom of choice. If she left
her husband, she may have been called a prostitute because of her walking out
on him. Block again offers us an
alternative interpretation. “On the other hand, these are strange and evil
times; and we should not be surprised if, when she returned home, her father
sent her out to work as a prostitute to contribute to the family economy.
Perhaps this explains his reluctance to let her go.”
There
has been a great deal of speculation as to the reason that the text would say
that she acted as a prostitute and then went home to her father. Upon returning
to an older version of the text, it appears that the word translated in the NIV
as “unfaithful” may have meant “she was angry with him,” or “she despised him,”
both interpretations would fit the context. The writer’s do not present us with
whose fault the falling out was, but in light of what takes place later and
based on our writer’s known sympathy for women throughout Judges it is hard to
believe that he does not favor the woman.
The
woman returns home and is welcomed by her father. The reason for her return
home, whether because of anger, a quarrel or unfaithfulness, was not so great
as to preclude an attempt at reconciliation on the priest’s part. In fact we
see that when the Levite shows up at his father-in-law’s house, he is warmly
welcomed (v3).
19:3
explains that whatever the reason, angry over some marital crisis, the
concubine had left her husband went home to her father in Bethlehem of Judah.
The Levite appears to have waited for her to return, but after four months he
decides that she is not returning on her own and decides to go to Bethlehem and
bring her back.
In
preparation for the Levite’s encounter with his father-in-law and
reconciliation with his concubine, he takes with him a servant and a pair of
donkeys; his ultimate goal was to persuade his concubine to return with
him. The presence of a servant and a
pair of donkeys seems to have impressed his father-in-law and the young women
with the Levite’s seriousness. His wife appears to welcome him with open arms
when he arrives and she brings him immediately into her father’s home.
The
writer tells us in 19:4 that the Levite’s father-in-law rejoiced at the arrival
of his son-in-law. We have no of knowing way the father-in-law was so happy.
Perhaps he was looking forward to having his daughter reunited with her
husband, maybe he was tired of her company after four months and wanted to get
back to his empty nest, whatever the reason it seems in this verse that the
couple has been reconciled and that good times are head when the couple returns
home.
What
takes place in verses 5 through nine is hard to understand. We are left to wonder at the father-in-law’s
actions as he continues to want his son-in-law to stay and not leave. We can
feel the tension build as the father-in-law seeks to detain his son-in-law and
daughter, while the son-in-law is increasingly anxious to get away and get back
to his home. There seems to be more here than just taking the opportunity to
turn “normal oriental hospitality into a celebration with plenty of food and
drink and lasting for days.”
The
writer never explains why the young woman’s father is so intent on having the
couple stay around. Yet it is clear to the reader that the more the
father-in-law pushes for them to stay the more anxious the son-in-law is to
depart. Trying to be respectful of his father-in-law’s hospitality, the
son-in-law willingly stays three days but as the fifth day arrives the
son-in-law cannot bring himself to stay another night. Despite his
father-in-law’s continuing attempts to change his mind, and the fact that it
has already grown late in the day, the Levite makes a rash decision to leave
and that unwise decision will have repercussions that will almost blot out of
existence a tribe of Israel. If only the Levite had left in the morning then he
would have been able to travel well beyond Gibeah and he would have been forced
to spend the night in a town so lacking in hospitality.
Can
too much hospitality be a bad thing? The writer doesn’t seem to think so or at
least he doesn’t criticize the ways of the father-in-law whose hospitality can
only be contrasted with what lies ahead for the Levite, his concubine and his
servant in the town of Gibeah.
In
our next session we will look at the consequences of the young couple’s delayed
departure for home in “The Rape at Gibeah.”
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