This incident and chapter closely relate to those that follow.
We meet another Levite in verse 1 who was paying no attention to God's directions concerning where the Levites should live (cf. 17:7). Since monogamy was God's standard for marriage the Levite should not have married a concubine (Gen. 2:24). This was doubly wrong in the case of a Levite because the Levites were to remain as holy as possible in view of their special ministry in Israel.
It appears that the Levite and his concubine had a disagreement that resulted in the woman leaving him and returning home to her father (v. 2).
"The reason for her return given in many ancient versions, because she was angry with him' (followed by RSV), is more plausible than that supplied in the AV and RV that she played the whore against him. The penalty against the adulteress was death (Lv. 20:10), but a heated argument would allow the Levite to seek a reconciliation when the passions of temper had subsided."340
This opinion rests on the Septuagint translators' rendering of verse 2 that is the equivalent of "his concubine was angry with him."However the Hebrew text has "his concubine was unfaithful to him,"and this is the preferable reading. As we have noted, the Israelites paid less attention to the Law in the period of the judges than they did while Joshua was alive. It is probable that the concubine had been unfaithful and the Israelites simply did not execute the penalty for that offense that the Law prescribed. The fact that the Levite waited four months to get his wife back suggests that he was not eager to do so.
The writer referred to the Levite as the concubine's husband because that is what she was in God's sight (v. 3). His tender words were insincere, as his later dealings with her prove. Apparently he wanted her back for selfish reasons. The two donkeys the Levite brought with him to Bethlehem were for his wife and him to ride back home. The concubine's father was probably glad to see the Levite because it was disgraceful for a woman to leave her husband in that culture. The Levite wanted to patch up the relationship, and that would have pleased his father-in-law.
The writer's mention of the hospitality of the Levite's father-in-law (vv. 4-9) points out the contrast with the Gibeans' lack of hospitality later in the story (v. 15, 22-26). Hospitality was a sacred duty in the ancient Near East when there were few public facilities for travelers (cf. 4:17-23; Gen. 18:5; 24:55). Perhaps it is significant that this man who practiced hospitality (lit. love of strangers) lived in Bethlehem, David's hometown. Saul came from Gibeah where the residents hated strangers, as the story will show. The fact that Israel's first king came from this city has led some scholars to conclude that by including this incident the writer may have intended to discredit Saul.341
Jebus (Jerusalem) was and is about six miles north of Bethlehem (v. 10). The Levite and his concubine would have reached it in about two hours. Gibeah (v. 12) was three miles farther north and Ramah (v. 13) two miles beyond Gibeah. Jebus was then, and until David finally captured it (2 Sam. 5:6-9), a stronghold of the Jebusites who were one of the native Canaanite tribes. The Levite expected to find hate in Jebus and love in Gibeah. He would have been wiser to have stopped for the night in Jebus since he found no hospitality in Gibeah. All the "motels"there were full or at least not open to the Levite and his party.
"The last clause in v. 15 would have been shocking anywhere in the ancient Near East. But it is especially shocking in Israel. The social disintegration has infected the very heart of the community. People refuse to open their doors to strangers passing through. It makes no difference that these travelers are their own countrymen."342
The old man who took the Levite and his travelling companions in for the night evidently had moved to Gibeah temporarily, perhaps as a farm laborer (v. 16; cf. v. 23; Gen. 19:9). The contrast between this stranger's hospitality and the Gibeans' lack of it stands out in the text.343One wonders if the men of Gibeah knew that the Levite was a Levite. Was their refusal to grant him shelter as a servant of Yahweh a deliberate act of disrespect for the Lord? Verse 19 shows that there was no reason for the Gibeans to refuse the Levite hospitality.
Beginning with verse 21 this story begins to sound like a replay of what happened to Lot in Sodom (cf. Gen. 19:1-3). Gibeah proved to be New Sodom.344
Only a group of "worthless fellows"("sons of Beliel,"i.e., ungodly men, AV, RV) surrounded the stranger's house (v. 22). However the men of Gibeah as a whole defended the actions of this group. Furthermore the whole tribe of Benjamin refused to punish them (20:13-14). This points to the Benjamites' sympathy for the perpetrators of this atrocity who lived in Gibeah. The "worthless"men repeated the request of the Sodomites in Lot's day (Gen. 19:4-5; cf. 1 Sam. 2:12). What had previously characterized the Canaanites now marked the Israelites (cf. Rom. 1:26-27).345
The Levite, and his aged host to a lesser degree, shared the callousness to sexual perversion that marked the gang from Gibeah.
"In his concern for the accepted conventions of hospitality the old man was willing to shatter a code which, to the modern reader, appears of infinitely more importance, namely, the care and protection of the weak and helpless. Womanhood was but lightly esteemed in the ancient world; indeed it is largely due to the precepts of the Jewish faith, and particularly the enlightenment which has come through the Christian faith, that women enjoy their present position. . . . The Levite himself, with a callous disregard for the one he professed to love, or, perhaps more pertinently, with a greater concern for his own skin, took his concubine by force and thrust her out to the men [cf. Gen. 19:6-9]."346
Evidently "the man"in verse 25 was the Levite. He was more guilty than the old stranger because he sacrificed his concubine to the homosexual terrorists.347He threw her out of the house as one tosses a scrap of meat to dogs. There is no mention that the old stranger did so with his daughter. Imagine the fight the concubine must have put up as her husband tried to wrestle her out of the door to save his own cowardly skin. Clearly he did not really love this woman or he would have defended her and even offered himself in her place. His actions speak volumes about his views of women, himself, and God's will. Now it is easier for us to understand why this woman left him earlier (v. 2).
The writer called the Levite the "master"of the concubine in verse 26 rather than her husband. Perhaps he did so because the Levite treated her as his property rather than as a person.
"The entire book presents a nation rotting at the core. Nothing is normal, least of all the Canaanite version of patriarchy. Normative biblical patricentrism perceives male headship not as a position of power but one of responsibility, in which the leader sacrifices himself for the well-being of the led. In the Book of Judges this pattern is reversed. Repeatedly women and children are sacrificed for males."348
"It is not only the action of the men of Gibeah which reveals the abysmally low moral standards of the age; the indifference of the Levite who prepared to depart in the morning without any apparent concern to ascertain the fate of his concubine, and his curt, unfeeling command when he saw her lying on the threshold (27, 28), these show that, in spite of his religion, he was devoid of the finer emotions. The sense of outrage does not appear to have influenced him until he realized that she was dead, when he lifted her body on to one of the asses and continued his journey."349
As soon as he arrived home the Levite callously cut his concubine into 12 pieces as one would slaughter an animal (Exod. 29:17; Lev. 1:6, 12; 8:20).350This shows his further disrespect for his wife. In that culture the treatment people gave a corpse reflected their respect or lack of respect for the dead person. He should have given her a proper burial. Instead he sent one piece of her body to each of the Israelite tribes explaining what had happened and calling on them to take action.
"Sending the dissected pieces of the corpse to the tribes was a symbolic act, by which the crime committed upon the murdered woman was placed before the eyes of the whole nation, to summon it to punish the crime . . ."351
Saul later summoned the tribes with a similar act involving an animal (1 Sam. 11:7).
The Israelites perceived this incident as the greatest act of moral corruption in their nation's history (v. 30; cf. Hos. 9:9; 10:9). The last sentence in the last verse of this chapter is perhaps the most significant. What would Israel do? Would she deal with this situation as God had specified in the Mosaic Law, or would she disregard His will as almost everyone in this story had done? The nation had faced a similar crisis in dealing with Micah (cf. 18:14). The next chapter shows what Israel did.
". . . it is truly remarkable that this nameless Levite from an obscure place in Ephraim was able to accomplish what none of the divinely called and empowered deliverers had been able to do. Not even Deborah and Barak had been able to galvanize support and mobilize the military resources of the nation to this extent."352
Chapter 19 is a story about love and hate. The major manifestation of love is hospitality. The major manifestation of hate is immorality (lit. what is contrary to manners). Webster's dictionary defines immoral as "contrary to the moral code of the community."353The idea that man sets his own standards of morality goes all the way back to the Fall (Gen. 3). Really God sets these standards. He does so in love and for the welfare of humanity, and He reveals them in His Word. When people abandon God's standards, life breaks down, unravels, and disintegrates.
Notice how the characters in this chapter behaved when they chose to disregard divine sovereign authority. The most admirable person was the Levite's father-in-law. He showed love to both the man and the woman by extending hospitality (vv. 4-9). The concubine loved the Levite enough to live with him temporarily, but she did not love him enough to remain faithful to him. The Levite loved the concubine enough to go after her, but he really hated her as a person. He handed her over as a coward, spoke to her callously, and treated her body contemptuously. He failed to protect her (v. 25), to assist her (v. 27), and to respect her (v. 29). The old stranger loved the other men in the story, but he hated the women: his daughter and the concubine. The men of Gibeah are the most despicable characters. They hated the men and the women in the house. Their profession of love (intercourse, v. 22) was a pretext for hate (attempted homosexual rape, heterosexual rape, and murder). This is how people, even God's people, may behave when they reject God's rule over their lives (v. 1).
