Judges 17-21
The most telling verse of Judges is repeated at 17:6... "In those days Israel had no king, everyone did as he saw fit." It was always those times where everyone did as they saw fit that the Israelites got into the most trouble.
After Samson's death, we are introduced to a man named Micah who has apparently taken about 28 pounds of silver from his mother, then returned it. His mother decided to give it to God, yet her idea is to make an idol. That idol is cast and set up in Micah's house. A "young" Levite from Bethlehem enters the scene. As a aside, it's amazing how many times the little town of Bethlehem is mentioned in the Old Testament. In any case, the Levite is looking for a place to stay and Micah invites him to live with him and act as his personal priest for the idol god in his house.
I'm not sure why the Danites are still looking for land as an inheritance at this point in history. Perhaps they did not run out the Canaanites from their alloted portion and the Danites were themselves cast out.
The scouting party from Dan discovered Micah's stash when they recognized the voice of the young Levite. After scouting Laish, they organized their battle party of 60 warriors and went for the attack on unsuspecting Laish. On the way they stopped and took Micah's idols, ephod and even the Levite to serve as Dan's priest. Micah was outnumbered and gave up after a brief chase. The Danites continued and destroyed Laish and took the territory. They rebuilt the city and called it Dan and set up the Levite and his family as the tribal priests until the time of the captivity, which I would assume to mean the known captivity of Israel and not some smaller event, although I have no proof of that being the case.
The final three chapters of Judges is about as ugly as the Bible gets. Chapter 19 begins with a Levite and his concubine (interestingly not his wife). The woman was from Bethlehem, but the Levite lived in a remote part of Ephraim. The woman was unfaithful and eventually ran back to her father's home. Four months later, the Levite went to Bethlehem to bring her back.
For some reason, the father-in-law keeps stalling the Levite -- probably so that his daughter would remain with him a bit longer. Finally the Levite tires of the games and leaves, headed for home. He avoids stopping in what is now Jerusalem because the city is filled with foreigners, opting instead to walk as far as Gibeah where he, his concubine and his servant set up camp on the town square.
From here, the story of Lot in Sodom is eerily similar. A man from the Levite's home area comes and invites the travelers home with him for the night. Then a pack of evil men come around in some kind of sex-crazed frenzy and call for the man to send out the traveler to rape. As Lot had done, the man offered his virgin daughter as a substitute along with the man's concubine. Apparently there was no way to get this gang away from the house.
Finally the Levite sent his concubine out to the deviates and they brutally rape her until morning. She collapses trying to get back into the house. Her husband trips over her that next morning, picks her up, loads her on the donkey and takes her home with him. The text doesn't explain when she dies, but she must have been dead by the time he arrived home. He then cuts her body into 12 pieces and has the pieces sent to all the tribes, apparently to summon them to Mizpah for justice.
The other tribes go to war with Benjamin, although it takes the third bloody attack to finally rout them. The final battle for Gibeah sounds much like a battle back in Joshua with the same ambush ruse used. Six thousand Benjamites escape, but the rest are killed. As the result of a vow made during the assembly at Mizpah, the other tribes will not give the survivors wives, even though peace is finally made. Trying to give descendants to the Benjamite survivors becomes first priority. First, the virgins of Jabesh Gilead are taken because the men of that town had neglected to attend the assembly at Mizpah. All others in Jabesh Gilead were killed. They were still a good two thousand women short, so they instructed the remaining Benjamites to essentially kidnap some of the girls from Shiloh. This was done to skirt the vow made -- their fathers would not be "giving" their daughters, and thus no curse would come upon them.
I wonder about this whole debacle. The concept of justice seems quite odd. Of course no one is really any too innocent in all this. The concubine who was raped until she died was an unfaithful spouse who ran away from her husband. The Benjamites refused to turn over the offenders or give any justice to the Levite. Jabesh Gilead refused to take part in the battlefield justice. The whole passage is a mishmash of stubbornness and violence. God saw fit to punish the Benjamites for acting like the people of Sodom, yet he did not wipe the tribe off the face of the earth. One nagging thought is why the men of Benjamin were allowed to win two days worth of battles, killing thousands of Israelite warriors if God was fighting against them ultimately? What was the rest of the tribes supposed to learn from all of that?
Perhaps the biggest lesson is found in the repeated final verse of Judges. "In those days Israel had no king' everyone did as he saw fit."
After Samson's death, we are introduced to a man named Micah who has apparently taken about 28 pounds of silver from his mother, then returned it. His mother decided to give it to God, yet her idea is to make an idol. That idol is cast and set up in Micah's house. A "young" Levite from Bethlehem enters the scene. As a aside, it's amazing how many times the little town of Bethlehem is mentioned in the Old Testament. In any case, the Levite is looking for a place to stay and Micah invites him to live with him and act as his personal priest for the idol god in his house.
I'm not sure why the Danites are still looking for land as an inheritance at this point in history. Perhaps they did not run out the Canaanites from their alloted portion and the Danites were themselves cast out.
The scouting party from Dan discovered Micah's stash when they recognized the voice of the young Levite. After scouting Laish, they organized their battle party of 60 warriors and went for the attack on unsuspecting Laish. On the way they stopped and took Micah's idols, ephod and even the Levite to serve as Dan's priest. Micah was outnumbered and gave up after a brief chase. The Danites continued and destroyed Laish and took the territory. They rebuilt the city and called it Dan and set up the Levite and his family as the tribal priests until the time of the captivity, which I would assume to mean the known captivity of Israel and not some smaller event, although I have no proof of that being the case.
The final three chapters of Judges is about as ugly as the Bible gets. Chapter 19 begins with a Levite and his concubine (interestingly not his wife). The woman was from Bethlehem, but the Levite lived in a remote part of Ephraim. The woman was unfaithful and eventually ran back to her father's home. Four months later, the Levite went to Bethlehem to bring her back.
For some reason, the father-in-law keeps stalling the Levite -- probably so that his daughter would remain with him a bit longer. Finally the Levite tires of the games and leaves, headed for home. He avoids stopping in what is now Jerusalem because the city is filled with foreigners, opting instead to walk as far as Gibeah where he, his concubine and his servant set up camp on the town square.
From here, the story of Lot in Sodom is eerily similar. A man from the Levite's home area comes and invites the travelers home with him for the night. Then a pack of evil men come around in some kind of sex-crazed frenzy and call for the man to send out the traveler to rape. As Lot had done, the man offered his virgin daughter as a substitute along with the man's concubine. Apparently there was no way to get this gang away from the house.
Finally the Levite sent his concubine out to the deviates and they brutally rape her until morning. She collapses trying to get back into the house. Her husband trips over her that next morning, picks her up, loads her on the donkey and takes her home with him. The text doesn't explain when she dies, but she must have been dead by the time he arrived home. He then cuts her body into 12 pieces and has the pieces sent to all the tribes, apparently to summon them to Mizpah for justice.
The other tribes go to war with Benjamin, although it takes the third bloody attack to finally rout them. The final battle for Gibeah sounds much like a battle back in Joshua with the same ambush ruse used. Six thousand Benjamites escape, but the rest are killed. As the result of a vow made during the assembly at Mizpah, the other tribes will not give the survivors wives, even though peace is finally made. Trying to give descendants to the Benjamite survivors becomes first priority. First, the virgins of Jabesh Gilead are taken because the men of that town had neglected to attend the assembly at Mizpah. All others in Jabesh Gilead were killed. They were still a good two thousand women short, so they instructed the remaining Benjamites to essentially kidnap some of the girls from Shiloh. This was done to skirt the vow made -- their fathers would not be "giving" their daughters, and thus no curse would come upon them.
I wonder about this whole debacle. The concept of justice seems quite odd. Of course no one is really any too innocent in all this. The concubine who was raped until she died was an unfaithful spouse who ran away from her husband. The Benjamites refused to turn over the offenders or give any justice to the Levite. Jabesh Gilead refused to take part in the battlefield justice. The whole passage is a mishmash of stubbornness and violence. God saw fit to punish the Benjamites for acting like the people of Sodom, yet he did not wipe the tribe off the face of the earth. One nagging thought is why the men of Benjamin were allowed to win two days worth of battles, killing thousands of Israelite warriors if God was fighting against them ultimately? What was the rest of the tribes supposed to learn from all of that?
Perhaps the biggest lesson is found in the repeated final verse of Judges. "In those days Israel had no king' everyone did as he saw fit."
posted by rev-ed @ 6:50 PM
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