Judges 19:22-26

The immorality of the Gibeahites 19:22-26

Only a group of "worthless fellows" ("sons of Beliel," i.e., ungodly men, AV, RV) surrounded the stranger’s house (Judges 19:22). However, the men of Gibeah as a whole defended the actions of this group. Furthermore the whole tribe of Benjamin refused to punish them (Judges 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 (Genesis 19:4-5; cf. 1 Samuel 2:12). What had previously characterized the Canaanites now marked the Israelites (cf. Romans 1:26-27). [Note: See Susan Niditch, "The ’Sodomite’ Theme in Judges 19-20 : Family, Community, and Social Disintegration," Catholic Biblical Quarterly 44:3 (July 1982):365-378.]

The Levite, and his aged host to a lesser degree, shared the callousness to sexual perversion that marked the gang from Gibeah. Note that the older man told the men of Gibeah, "Do to them [the Levite’s concubine and his own daughter] whatever you please [i.e., what is right in your own eyes]." And they did.

"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. Genesis 19:6-9]." [Note: Cundall and Morris, p. 197.]

Evidently "the man" in Judges 19:25 was the Levite. He was more guilty than the old stranger because he sacrificed his concubine to the homosexual terrorists. Recall Jephthah’s sacrifice of his daughter (Judges 11:39). The Levite threw his concubine 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 (Judges 19:2).

The writer called the Levite the "master" of the concubine in Judges 19:26 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." [Note: Block, Judges . . ., p. 584.]