Judges 19:16-21

The hospitality of the stranger 19:16-21

The old man who took the Levite and his traveling companions in for the night evidently had moved to Gibeah temporarily, perhaps as a farm laborer (Judges 19:16; cf. Judges 19:23; Genesis 19:9). The contrast between this stranger’s hospitality and the Gibeahites’ lack of it stands out in the text. The writer of Judges used a tragicomic literary style to emphasize the terrible moral and spiritual climate in Israel at this time. [Note: Stuart Lasine, "Guest and Host in Judges 19 : Lot’s Hospitality in an Inverted World," Journal for the Study of the Old Testament 29 (1984):37-59.] One 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? Judges 19:19 shows that there was no reason for the Gibeahites to refuse the Levite hospitality.

Beginning with Judges 19:21 this story begins to sound like a replay of what happened to Lot in Sodom (cf. Genesis 19:1-3). Gibeah proved to be New Sodom. [Note: Davis, Such a . . ., pp. 211-27.]