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III. THE RESULTS OF ISRAEL'S APOSTASY chs. 17--21 >
B. The Immorality of Gibeah and the Benjamites chs. 19-21 >
1. The atrocity in Gibeah ch. 19 >
The hospitality of the stranger 19:16-21
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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
