Hosea 9:9

"They have deeply corrupted themselves, as in the days of Gibeah: he will remember their iniquity, he will visit their sins."

"As in the days of Gibeah ..." Following most of the modern commentators on this place, Hailey thought the reference here to Gibeah recalled, "the conduct of their fathers as recorded in Judges 19-20, when one of the tribes was all but exterminated because of its wickedness."[22] However, as Ward has pointed out, there were two important events in Israel's history associated with Gibeah: (1) the intertribal war over Benjamin's rape of the Levite's concubine (Judges 19-20), and (2) the establishment of King Saul's capital in Gibeah (1 Samuel 10:26; 14:2; 22:6, etc.),[23] We believe this second event of far greater significance than the first, because, it was in the very establishment of the monarchy that Israel initiated and sealed their rebellion against God. All of the subsequent evil of Israel's history "was already present in principle and prototype, in the kingship of Saul."[24] The monarchy itself was evil; and the eventual ruin and destruction of Israel were only the culmination of the chain of events initiated with the accession of Saul to the throne.

Gibeah is of course the first of three very significant historical situations in the prior history of Israel. The next occurs in Hosea 9:10.