Failure of Levi (Part 2)
Times will appear once this episode's audio is aligned.
Welcome to Halting Toward Zion, the podcast where we limp like Jacob to the Promised Land and talk about life, the universe, and everything along the way. I’m Emily Maxson here with Greg Uttinger and Bryan Broome, and we are wrapping up the book of Judges today.
We have one more story about a Levite, and that’s all the introduction the story needs or could possibly have. It’s one you might not have heard in Sunday School but it is in the Bible, so what’s going on here?
Again this is one of two stories, a pair that go together, that finally answer for us the question “What’s with this cycle of apostasy/repentance/apostasy?”
We want to know, “Why can’t we break through this? Why is this so repetitive?” Even though some of these stories are fun and are, as you say, materials for Sunday School lessons and kids really like them, sooner or later if you’re serious you’ll ask the question, “Why is this? Is this just the way life is? Covenant living always ends in failure, and God’s people never get anywhere, and the enemy always wins, and sin is stronger than all of our grace, or is there something else going on?”
So at the end, having gotten our attention, the writer (whoever he may be) is telling us two stories about Levites. They’re kind of generic Levites, although of course they had real historical existence. One of them we get the name of right at the end, and the name adds punch to the story.
If you haven’t listened yet to our episode on that story, go back and listen to the last episode we released.
Yeah, you should go listen. In the second one we’re never told, so these are in a sense generalizations but, as God makes them, they are valid generalizations and they tell us what was going wrong.
The other thing we have to remember is that these stories are actually set at the beginning of the book of Judges. Although they come at the end, the historical markers say we’re going back to the beginning and showing you what has been going wrong from the start. We’ll note some of those markers as we go along in this particular story.
It begins with the familiar refrain, “There was no king in Israel.” This is not a political statement. This is a theological statement. God’s people were not submitting to their covenant king, to Jehovah, to Yahweh. They were doing whatever they wanted to do, and that’s kind of the lead-in to, “Why is that? Weren’t people calling them on the carpet? Weren’t people instructing them? Weren’t there ecclesiastical and civic consequences for doing whatever you wanted?” and the answer is, “No, not really.”
We’re going to see some civic consequences, some military consequences at the end of this story, and even then Hosea has an interesting note about the whole event, and we’ll look at that toward the end.
Anyway, we’re back to Levites and this one again is sojourning on the side of Mount Ephraim, so Ephraim gets highlighted yet again, the tribe that cannot be reconciled, that always wants to be in the lead – not that they are doing anything particularly here, but the spotlight goes over there and out of it comes this Levite who took himself a concubine out of Bethlehemjudah. Bethlehem had played a role in the last story, too, not a particularly great role.
We’re told that this Levite had a concubine. We need to remember what a concubine is. I don’t know about you, but growing up I was told it meant a mistress.
That’s not what it means. It means she’s a non-endowered wife. Now, sometimes men took concubines or even second wives in addition to their first wife. The crime is bigamy. It’s having more than one wife. But as you read through the Old Testament, sometimes the words wife and concubine are used interchangeably. What a concubine means is that she came into the marriage without a dowry. She didn’t have any money.
The Levite here may have given the bride price to the father, and the father kept it, so she is at some levels like a slave or servant in that she has no capital of her own. Of course, by that standard a lot of American wives are in exactly the same position, having no leverage, no education, no money, nothing in their own name. Maybe they have a wedding ring they could hock if they had to.
Which is why this is my little soapbox about why it’s not insane to think about six months of income going into a wedding ring.
No, it is not insane at all. It’s also why men should, as they are able, buy jewelry for their wives, and a life insurance policy, and a few other things – and why women should be educated and have the ability to provide for themselves, because in this world nothing is certain. Husbands die – disease, murder and more – and men are unfaithful and women are sometimes left high and dry with nobody to fall back on.
This could be a discussion in itself, but with the Mosaic law, one of the first things that Moses does in the book of the covenant, the case laws that follow the Ten Commandments, is to discuss concubinage and to spell out the rights that a concubine or un-endowered wife has, and they’re significant. She is not just a slave who can be bossed around, even if she does not have the full capacities and resources of a married woman. Also the concubinage thing is wrapped up in the sabbatical laws. That’s the context.
We take it in the new covenant that this particular position has passed away. Paul and Peter go out of their way to point out that Christian women are the daughters of Sarah, a free woman. Christian wives are free women. They’re not to be concubines and husbands are not to treat them as such.
I looked at that phrase because someone suggested that it doesn’t necessarily mean what it sounds like, and as I read through the commentators, quite a few said, “This could just mean…” but as I read the reasoning, the reasoning was sort of made up. The Hebrew word, every time it’s used in scripture, does mean to commit adultery, so I think the attempt from these commentators is a misunderstanding of the whole passage and a misunderstanding of the gospel, because here we have a representative of God, this Levite, this pastor, and his wife commits adultery.
Now, there is that moralistic thing within us that says, “Well, good for her. Good riddance. Let her go.”
Grounds for divorce, grounds for execution, and obviously there’s no taking her back. I actually read this. There was one commentator who said, “Well, the Mosaic law would actually forbid her from going back.” No, it doesn’t. There’s no Mosaic law that says that. It does say that if you divorce her and she gets married to someone else then she can’t come back, but even God overrides that one with respect to his covenant relationship with Israel – in Isaiah or Jeremiah.
So I think there’s an attempt to tone down what’s happening in order to guard the Levite, which is probably the last thing we need to do in this chapter, because God’s not guarding him. God is putting all his sins out there in the open.
So she apparently commits adultery and goes away to her father’s house, and everyone jumps on her father for taking her in, but it is a very human thing to do. And since we don’t know all of the circumstances, we should be careful about being hyper-critical here. Women didn’t just go out and get jobs and start over renting someplace. It was not that culture.
She’s un-endowered and she’d end up being a prostitute otherwise, so I don’t think we can be critical of the father at that level at any rate. Then some people have criticized her father, “Well, look what kind of daughter he raised.”
I’m sorry, but fathers have no control over what kind of daughters they raise. The question is have you taught, have you explained, have you loved, have you disciplined, have you admonished, have you pointed to Jesus – but in the end the father can’t be held responsible if his daughter fails in marriage.
I’m thinking here of Bible Hub, which I still think is an excellent resource, but every now and then you hit a passage where I think the pastors and commentators have not thought well through what they’re doing. They take it in bits and pieces with some assumptions in the back of their heads that could stand some scrutiny.
So she goes back to her dad’s house and the King James says was there four whole months. The margin says a year and four months. The reason is because of a rather odd expression in Hebrew. I watched the commentators fight this one back and forth and I’m in no position to judge, but the Hebrew says she was there days, four months. That is used elsewhere as a year, days. She was gone days. It was a whole year, and then four months, so that’s possible or it may be just four months. For our purposes it doesn’t matter, because whatever it is the husband is going to go looking for her.
If it’s four months, what’s with that? Why does it take so long for him to realize, “Oh, maybe I should go find her?” If it’s a year and four months it’s ridiculous.
Oh, I hadn’t even thought of that one. Maybe so. Sorry, I’m just processing that now. None of the commentators even brought that up.
And her husband arose, and went after her to speak friendly unto her and to bring her again, having his servant with him and a couple of asses: and she brought him into her father's house: and when the father of the damsel saw him, he rejoiced to meet him.
And his father-in-law, the damsel's father, retained him; and he abode with him three days. So they did eat and drink, and lodged there.
So far this is a soap opera. It’s a typical prime-time romance. There’s nothing much going on here and we’re kind of saying, “What?” and it’s about to get worse. It’s more boring.
And it came to pass on the fourth day, when they arose early in the morning, that he rose up to depart: and the damsel's father said unto his son in law, Comfort thine heart with a morsel of bread, and afterward go your way. And they sat down and did eat and drink both of them together: for the damsel's father had said unto the man, Be content, I pray thee, and tarry all night, and let thine heart be merry.
And when the man rose up to depart, his father in law urged him: therefore he lodged there again. And he arose early in the morning on the fifth day to depart; and the damsel's father said, Comfort thine heart, I pray thee. And they tarried until afternoon, and they did eat both of them.
Notice, both of them. Notice who’s being left out of these whole last few verses? The girl’s not there. Where is she? What’s with this? Why isn’t he spending time with her and rebuilding the relationship? Why is it all with dad? It’s a little off. And this whole delay thing – what’s this about?
We probably have all visited relatives and they press upon us to stay. “Stay one more day. Stay a few more hours. Stay for supper.” That’s human, but it just keeps going and going. And again, this is the Bible, this is the word of God, so where is spiritual truth here? It seems kind of dull and pointless.
And when the man rose up to depart, he, and his concubine, and his servant, his father in law, the damsel's father, said unto him, Behold, now the day draweth toward evening, I pray you tarry all night: behold, the day groweth to an end, lodge here, that thine heart may be merry; and tomorrow get you early on your way, that thou mayest go home.
So one more time. It’s just dragging out. There’s something in us on some literary level that says, “Come on, something’s got to be going on,” and we’re bored. “Can something happen?” Emotionally we’re saying, “You need to get home. The whole thing was to rescue your wife and bring her back and re-establish the relationship, show her you love her.” It doesn’t seem to be happening. True, there’s lots that we’re not told, but it’s not being highlighted for sure.
But the man would not tarry that night, but he rose up and departed, and came over against Jebus, which is Jerusalem.
At that point Jebus was still a Canaanite city, controlled by the Jebusites. David had not taken the city yet because David isn’t born yet.
And there were with him two asses saddled, his concubine also was with him. And when they were by Jebus, the day was far spent; and the servant said unto his master, Come, I pray thee, and let us turn in into this city of the Jebusites, and lodge in it.
In the ancient world, Ramada Inns and Holiday Inns and all that were not a thing. The only hotel-like things, the only inn-like things generally were brothels. You could go in and stay on the lower floor and get some food and sleep on the floor with everybody else by the fire, or you could use the services of other things available elsewhere.
Mostly, good civilized people hoped that someone would invite them in for the night. Hospitality was a highly-prized virtue. We did a podcast on hospitality quite a while ago from the book of Genesis. They were kind of looking for something along those lines.
And his master said unto him, We will not turn aside hither into the city of a stranger [someone outside the covenant], that is not of the children of Israel; we will pass over to Gibeah [which belongs to the tribe of Benjamin.] And he said unto his servant, Come, and let us draw near to one of these places to lodge all night, in Gibeah, or in Ramah. [Ramah is where Rachel’s tomb was, not far from Bethlehem.]
And they passed on and went their way; and the sun went down upon them when they were by Gibeah, which belongeth to Benjamin.
And they turned aside thither, to go in and to lodge in Gibeah: and when he went in, he sat him down in a street of the city: for there was no man that took them into his house to lodging.
Again, to us in the 21st century we think, “Of course not. Why would there be?” No, in that world you just stood there and looked lonely and lost, and someone would come up and say, “Hey, do you have place to stay?”
It reminds me of Paddington when he goes to the train station, expecting to be taken up as a lost child, and stranger danger – “Don’t look at the strange bear! We can’t just take a random bear home.”
“I’m not random. My name is Paddington.” No, they gave him money, didn’t they. What was his real name? Was that ever revealed?
And, behold, there came an old man from his work out of the field at even, which was also of Mount Ephraim.
And he sojourned in Gibeah: but the men of the place were Benjamites. And when he had lifted up his eyes, he saw a wayfaring man in the street of the city and the old man said, Whither goest thou? and whence comest thou?
And he said unto him, We are passing from Bethlehemjudah toward the side of mount Ephraim; from thence am I: and I went to Bethlehemjudah, but I am now going to the house of the Lord; and there is no man that receiveth me to house. Yet there is both straw and provender for our asses, and there is bread and wine also for me, and for thy handmaid, and for the young man which is with thy servants: there is no want of anything.
And the old man said, Peace be with thee; howsoever let all thy wants lie upon me; only lodge not in the street. [Odd note.] So he brought him into his house, and gave provender unto the asses: and they washed their feet, and did eat and drink.
He is to this point a very good host, doing all the things that hospitality demands, although the city itself shows none. Again, that doesn’t mean anything to us, but in that world it was huge. Also we at this point memory should be stirring of another time that men came to a city and received no hospitality, and the one stranger who then took them in late at night.
Now as they were making their hearts merry, behold, the men of the city, certain sons of Belial, [the devil] beset the house round about, and beat at the door, and spake to the master of the house, the old man, saying, Bring forth the man that came into thine house, that we may know him.
And now the memories come back like a flood. Yes, these are the exact words which the men of Sodom spoke to Lot concerning the angels, and the word ‘know’ means to know sexually. In other words, “We want to homosexually abuse your guest. Bring him out to us so we can do that.”
We’re not told that it was all of the men, although it’s a pretty general statement – the men of the city – so this city has become a second Sodom and we’re playing out that scenario all over again. And of course we’re left with the question, “Why?”
Now, there is something a little different. The angels in the story of Lot no doubt looked handsome and striking, as angels are wont to do, but these just looked like travelers. A Levite almost certainly would be dressed in a distinctive way to mark him out as a Levite, the way today many pastors wear clerical collars or something, and rabbis in Jewish culture are easily identified. It would be pretty easy to figure out this guy’s a pastor. He’s a teacher of the law, so in that sense the offense is in some ways worse.
The previous occasion is purely lust of the eyes turning into lust of the flesh. This is something else. “Oh, a pastor? Let’s have fun with him. Let’s abuse him and let’s get a thrill in the process.”
I keep thinking of Revelation, where the angels of the seven churches are the pastors.
Yeah, they’re messengers. They’re messengers of the covenant. Some are spirit beings and some are humans, and the Bible does treat them more or less interchangeably in a lot of ways, in that what you’re made of is not the point. Who you’re speaking for is the point, and who you represent.
So far the man from Mount Ephraim, this old guy, seems like he’s been a great host. He’s had foresight and he’s taken in the Levite and his party, but now something happens, because sometimes you can take one virtue and you can idolize it. Our generation has done it with love. We make love the most important thing in the world, but in the process we so transform it into something other than what God says it’s to be, that it becomes ugly and destructive.
In our generation it’s come to mean accepting everybody just as they are, not wanting to change them, and even supporting them and seeking government finance for whatever their perversities might be, because that’s how you show love. In this case the old man perverts hospitality.
And the man, the master of the house, went out unto them, and said unto them, Nay, my brethren, nay, I pray you, do not so wickedly [same words Lot used]; seeing that this man is come into mine house, do not this folly.
Behold, here is my daughter a maiden, and his concubine; them I will bring out now, and humble ye them, and do with them what seemeth good unto you: but unto this man do not so vile a thing.
To protect your guests is one thing, but notice that the concubine just slipped off the guest list. She is now sacrifice-able, as is his own daughter. Again, he’s taken this idea of hospitality and pushed it to unbiblical lengths.
Now, you can argue there’s no way he could have stopped this, and maybe he’s just trying to shame them and it’s a psychological – you can argue all sorts of things, but the simple fact is what happens is wicked. And the fact that he’s doing it to protect a pastor does not justify it. And so far the pastor is just standing there saying, “Huh? What? I dunno. Hmm.”
By the way, the daughter vanishes from the storyline because in the long run the man does not commit his daughter. He just throws the concubine out there.
It’s not clear which man, because man at this point has been the host, but man has also been the way the Levite is usually described, so one or both of them – and it doesn’t matter because if the old guy does it, the Levite should have stopped him. Standing by and watching it happen does not improve anything.
So the man took his concubine, and brought her forth unto them; and they knew her [had sexual relations with her] and abused her all the night until the morning [they did so in a very violent way] and when the day began to spring, they let her go.
Then came the woman in the dawning of the day [finally she’s released and she has been badly, badly hurt], and fell down at the door of the man's house where her lord was [the lord should be the protector and the savior] till it was light.
We don’t know what the Levite has been doing, but obviously looking out the window to see what’s going on wasn’t even on his radar, much less going out there and rescuing her or yielding himself as a sacrifice for her to release her. He’s not doing any of that. He is protecting his own skin and basically has given her up, not only physically but even emotionally and psychologically, because he gets ready to leave.
And her lord rose up in the morning, and opened the doors of the house, and went out to go his way.
He’s not even going to go look for her. He doesn’t know she’s dead. He’s just going to get out of there while he can, and she can take her own chances. She was sexually faithless in the beginning and she’s getting what she deserves, apparently. He’s leaving. So he goes his way.
And behold, the woman his concubine was fallen down at the door of the house, and her hands were upon the threshold. And he said unto her, Up, and let us be going.
What does he think? She’s taking a nap? The Hebrew is real short, just kind of a bark, “Come, go” or something like that.
But none answered. Then the man took her up upon an ass, and the man rose up, and gat him unto his place. And when he was come into his house, he took a knife, and laid hold on his concubine, and divided her, together with her bones, into twelve pieces, and sent her into all the coasts of Israel.
And it was so, that all that saw it said, There was no such deed done nor seen from the day that the children of Israel came up out of the land of Egypt unto this day: consider of it, take advice, and speak your minds.
There’s not precedent or warrant for cutting up dead bodies, to my knowledge.
No, there isn’t at all. There’s not. The body is to be treated with respect.
It’s significant that it calls the body “her” too. He took her up. It’s not the husk that was once her.
Yeah, it’s not the core, it’s not the remains, not the chemical afterburn. The Bible always assumes that the body is an integral part of the person, to the point that it can be called a person. Abraham buried Sarah. Joseph of Arimathea buried Jesus, not some after-remains of him, because we look forward to the doctrine of resurrection. Again, there’s no precedent of any sort.
Now, in the book of Samuel we have an occasion where Saul cuts up some oxen and sends them around, and of course the message implied is, “If you do not submit to this challenge, to this call, then may this be done to you,” or in this case to your wives and daughters, or in Saul’s case to your oxen. It kind of smells of the covenant formula of cutting up animals to start a covenant, but it is shocking.
We can ask why he did it. He has evidenced no serious love for this woman. We don’t know why he went back after her, because from the moment he gets there he ignores her, and at the first opportunity where he needs to save his skin he just throws her out. He does not try to rescue her. He does not try to protect her. He does not lay down his life for hers. He does not even go looking for her in the morning.
You can accuse him of cowardice, but that doesn’t mean in the morning when things have settled down he couldn’t at least go look for her. There’s nothing here. He treats her with complete callousness.
One of the things in the story that really stands out – and more to me this time as I was reading it than it has in the past – is how devaluing their covenant with God devalued their view of women. The woman is pushed aside all the way through the story. We do not hear her speak. She does not have any kind of voice. She’s ignored in the reconciliation process.
She apparently is included somewhat in the celebration. She’s part of ‘they’ apparently, who have a good time that night, and then she’s made into a sexual victim and target to save her husband’s life and the life of the old man. By the way in passing, the old man of Mount Ephraim doesn’t come off so well after all anyway, so there’s that.
But this Levite, we look at this guy and say, “This guy is a cad. He’s a jerk. He is a complete failure as a husband,” and that’s kind of the point. Remember we’re looking to see what went wrong in Israel, and one thing is becoming clear. We saw in the previous story that pastors would sell out the worship of Jehovah and the purity of worship for money, even not very much money, and here we see that pastors will not love their wives sacrificially.
If this had been Jesus, we know what Jesus would have done. He would have gone out there and, depending on whether he’s in his state of exaltation or humiliation, he either would have laid down his life for his bride or he would have blasted the people away. This pastor sits back and cringes and protects himself.
The pastor here completely fails to image Jesus in any way, with the result that here and in the story that follows, women continue to be treated very cheaply and unimportant, because that’s the precedent the pastor is setting. If a pastor will not value his own wife self-sacrificially, then what’s the congregation going to do?
You may remember that the qualifications for an elder is that he be a one-woman man, faithful to his own wife. That’s the starting point – not a seminary degree, not mastery of the original languages, not even a thorough working knowledge of the Bible, but first of all that relationship thing. Is he faithful to one woman, his wife? And does he have his children under biblical discipline? Does he love and admonish them?
Yeah, you’re not supposed to multiply wives to yourself. That’s what the law required. That’s not what’s happening.
Given our time constraints and that we’ve already seen the Levite pretty well, I want to kind of hustle through the rest of the thing, except for the one time when the Levite appears on camera again, because he shows up and then he goes away and we don’t hear about him anymore.
We’re in Chapter 20 of Judges. The children of Israel are gathered together to Mizpeh, everyone except the tribe of Benjamin, and they interrogate the Levite and say, “How was this wickedness?”
And the Levite, the husband of the woman that was slain, answered and said, I came into Gibeah that belongeth to Benjamin, I and my concubine, to lodge. And the men of Gibeah rose against me, and beset the house round about upon me by night, and thought to have slain me: and my concubine have they forced, that she is dead. And I took my concubine, and cut her in pieces, and sent her throughout all the country of the inheritance of Israel: for they have committed lewdness and folly in Israel. Behold, ye are all children of Israel; give here your advice and counsel.
Well, maybe, but they didn’t say that. They said something very different, and he completely neglects his irresponsibility, his dereliction of duty, and throws it all upon these people. Again we can ask – and I don’t know the answer – what his motivations are after he failed this.
Most men would at least have the non-self-respect to cringe and crawl into a corner and pull it in after you and not tell anybody that this has happened. Why stir up an entire nation to avenge you on your loss, when it was a loss that you didn’t even try to prevent yourself? He doesn’t love the woman, so is he just avenging his own self-perception of his honor? It’s very weird.
It reminds me of John Wick and the mindset of the son of the mob boss – not the actual mob boss who’s actually had to deal with people, but the son of the mob boss who thinks he’s entitled to all this respect.
Yeah. I honestly love it, if only for the fact that the audience reaction to it has been like, “So why did you go off and do all this stuff and take down an entire section of the mafia?”
But if the comparison is accurate, it does not say much about this Levite, at least nothing good.
So what happens here? Our first thought would be, “All right, well, this guy is wicked and a jerk and a failure, but now he’s called all of God’s people in. Things will go better now because the covenant people will handle it well. We’ll get some sort of justice, if not perfect justice.”
The people agree they have to do something about. They swear an oath that no one is going home until this has been dealt with, and they cast lots as to which tribe should go up against the town of Gibeah because they’ve wrought folly in Israel.
And the tribes of Israel sent men through all the tribe of Benjamin, saying, What wickedness is this that is done among you? Now therefore deliver us the men, the children of Belial, which are in Gibeah, that we may put them to death, and put away evil from Israel.
Okay, that’s pretty much the way things are done. That probably should have happened before they started doing war preparations, but war preparations take a while so maybe this is okay. Asking the tribe of Benjamin to get its act together and settle its internal affairs is more or less appropriate. They probably should have said, “You know what to do. You go execute them,” so it’s fudging the federal/state line a little bit, but it’s not too bad. They realize this is a serious sin and crime and it needs to be dealt with.
But the children of Benjamin would not hearken to the voice of their brethren the children of Israel.
We’re not told why. We’re not told if it’s because they did not consider this sinful. “You’re going after the gay/lesbian community and you guys just have a problem and an attitude. You don’t know what you’re talking about.”
Or was it more along the lines of, “Well, maybe something happened here and maybe it didn’t, but you have no business telling us what to do with our internal affairs, so go take a leap.” We don’t know exactly.
Yeah, we don’t know why they refuse, but they refused. It’s kind of gutsy of them. At this time they were a fairly large tribe, but they didn’t outnumber the rest of Israel so it’s gutsy that they took a stand.
And the children of Benjamin were numbered at that time out of the cities twenty and six thousand men that drew sword, beside the inhabitants of Gibeah, which were numbered seven hundred chosen men.
They were expert with slings. Everyone could sling stones at a hair breadth and not miss. And the men of Israel, beside Benjamin, numbered 400,000, so Israel outnumbered them by a lot.
And the children of Israel arose, and went up to the house of God, and asked counsel of God, and said, Which of us shall go up first to the battle against the children of Benjamin? And the Lord said, Judah shall go up first.
You notice what they ask and what they don’t ask. “Who should go first?” That’s a good question, but there’s a question you really should ask first – a couple questions.
Yes, and “Are we on your side? Are we in step with you? Are there any sins in our midst before we go and fight a battle, because when we fight battles and we’re in sin, that doesn’t go well,” but they don’t think through that.
Oftentimes, we as Christians are guilty of this. “The sin of the world over there is so horrible and evil that we need to draw all of our attention there and focus on that and fire off phasers,” and we haven’t stopped to ask ourselves, “But is there not sin amongst us?”
God cares more about the sins of his people ultimately than about the sins of the world. He can deal with the sins of the world in their time, but he’s in the process of sanctifying us, and if we get on our high horse and start attacking people who have done bad things, and yet we have done bad things before his face, we may be way out of line.
We should beware of mass movements to accomplish important things – not to say there’s never a place for them, but we should be careful as to how we get involved, and be afraid of our own self-righteousness and spiritual pride in the midst of such things. Oftentimes the leaders of those movements have a lot to hide, and by focusing attention on the evil ‘out there,’ they draw it away from their own personal evil.
So anyway, God simply says Judah without correcting, amplifying, or warning. In a sense, God is already withdrawing his grace from them, because at other times God might say something like, “Um, hello? Shouldn’t you be asking something else?” but he doesn’t. It’s just, “You want to know the answer? The answer is Judah.” It’s the kingly tribe, the princely tribe, the tribe through which Messiah will come. Obviously they should go first. They probably could have figured that one out on their own, had they thought about it.
So the children of Israel rise up and attack Benjamin, and the Benjamites win. They destroy the Israelites, 22,000 men. That’s a lot, men who are never going home to their wives and families again.
And the people the men of Israel encouraged themselves, and set their battle again in array in the place where they put themselves in array the first day. (And the children of Israel went up and wept before the Lord until even, and asked counsel of the Lord, saying, Shall I go up again to battle against the children of Benjamin my brother? And the Lord said, Go up against him.)
They’re asking a right question, but it’s still not the question they should ask, which is, “How are we standing with you, Lord? Why did you not give us victory? Why did you let the bad guys win? Why are so many people dead?” They do ask, “That didn’t go well. Should we stop?” but not, “Why did that not work so well?” and God simply says, “Go up against him.”
He is withholding grace in that he is not explaining this. In other times and places God will send prophets who will explain in no uncertain terms why you shouldn’t be doing this, but this time God is kind of holding his voice and letting them hang themselves.
And the children of Israel came near against the children of Benjamin the second day. And Benjamin went forth against them out of Gibeah the second day, and destroyed down to the ground of the children of Israel again eighteen thousand men.
At this point we can project, and eventually we will reach a point where we will start gaining people instead. That’s what statistics has taught me.
Then all the children of Israel, and all the people, went up, and came unto the house of God, and wept…
They’d gotten emotional before. They’d wept before, and God had not been impressed.
…and sat there before the Lord, and fasted that day until even, and offered burnt offerings and peace offerings before the Lord.
They’re coming back to worship, yeah – gospel worship, worship that emphasizes the blood of the Savior, the blood of the lamb.
And the children of Israel enquired of the Lord, for the ark of the covenant of God was there in those days, and Phinehas, the son of Eleazar, the son of Aaron, stood before it in those days.
There’s our historical marker, Phinehas. Phinehas appears in the book of Numbers. He’s the one, when the Midianites try to seduce – well, do seduce the children of Israel. When one of the princes brings a woman right past the tabernacle to take her to his tent and commits fornication with her, Phinehas is the guy who grabs a javelin, goes after them, and runs them both through.
He knew Moses. He was a very, very younger contemporary of Moses, but he was a young man who was at least 30 when Moses died, so we are way at the beginning of everything if he’s still alive. And given his stance for holiness, we can kind of wonder what would happen here. Very likely, knowing the way these things go, he got overruled. He may have had the spiritual insight to know what was going on, but he may not have had the backing from the other tribes and leaders, but whatever the case, he’s there.
Shall I yet again go out to battle against the children of Benjamin my brother, or shall I cease? And the Lord said, Go up, for tomorrow I will deliver them into thine hand.
What follows is a plan, and it’s a plan that comes directly from the book of Joshua. “Let’s put liers out in the fields before light, and then we’re going to go engage the people and draw them out of the city, and when they’re out, the liers in wait are going to rise up and go into the city and take it and burn it with fire. When the smoke goes up we’ll realize we’ve got the city. The guys inside will come out, and the guys who are in the field will turn back and will catch them all and will kill them all.”
So just because God said you’re going to win, it doesn’t provoke them to carelessness and “Let’s just go out and hack and slay.” It provokes them to strategy. They actually think about it, and oddly enough they find their answer in the Bible. The Bible isn’t a textbook of military tactics, but it contains a few. They decide to borrow one and it works.
They engage, and the Benjamites think that they’re winning and they pursue and move away from the city. The liers in wait rushed upon Gibeah and set the city on fire. Then the others turn and…
When the flame began to arise up out of the city with a pillar of smoke, the Benjamites looked behind them, and, behold, the flame of the city ascended up to heaven [think Sodom and Gomorrah] And when the men of Israel turned again, the men of Benjamin were amazed, for they saw that evil was come upon them.
They tried to run away into the wilderness, but by and large didn’t make it.
Thus they enclosed the Benjamites round about, and chased them, and trode them down with ease over against Gibeah toward the sunrising. And there fell of Benjamin eighteen thousand men
Those that remained turned and fled into the wilderness to a huge rock called Rimmon. Israel killed 5,000 more men along the way, then 2,000 more, so all which fell that day of Benjamin were 25,000. Only 6,000 survive and make it to the rock and stayed at the rock of Rimmon four months.
Oh wow, I just caught that. That’s where we started, wasn’t it? Four months – four months of being isolated from what was left of their families and such. Actually, nothing was left of their families, as we’re about to see.
And the men of Israel turned again upon the children of Benjamin, and smote them with the edge of the sword…
They put them under the ban, basically, and they destroy everything – man, woman, beast, everything they could find, and set fire to their cities.
They treated them as if they were a heathen nation, as if they had fallen into apostasy. It was the prescription that was given for cities that had apostatized to worship other gods, and they figured – and nobody seems to contradict them – that what they had done by siding with the sodomites and the murderers and turning against lawful authority, both ecclesiastic and judicial, amounted to setting themselves outside the covenant as a heathen nation, and so they destroyed them.
That brings us to the last chapter of the book, which is a little happier, and yet still we’re going to be left with some, “What?” The elders of Israel are very upset. They had sworn an oath that would not give any of their daughters to the Benjamites – because heathen, complete separation – but now they realize they’ve destroyed an entire tribe. Now they’re sad about that. They hadn’t thought that out before.
They build an altar and offer burnt offerings and peace offerings, and they start looking around for a way to find wives for the Benjamite men who survived, so they need 500 of them. Their first thought was, “Well, we swore an oath up front that if anybody did not come inside with the Lord to fight the Lord’s battle, that they would go under the ban.” It turns that Jabeshgilead had sent nobody, so they sent out a strike force and take out Jabeshgilead but save all of the maidens, but that’s still not enough.
They found among the inhabitants of Jabeshgilead four hundred young virgins that had known no man by lying with any male: and they brought them unto the camp to Shiloh.
The people repented them for Benjamin, because that the Lord had made a breach in the tribes of Israel.
Yes, the Lord had. I don’t know, but I would like to see a little more personal responsibility here. You were the ones who killed them all, and don’t blame God for their sins. If you want to talk about Benjamin’s sin before the face of God that brought that, that would be one thing.
Yeah, and our overwhelming zeal that we’re now trying to repair, so kind of a confession after the fact that what we did wasn’t exactly what should have been done. So yes, God’s sovereignty doubtless overruled all of this, but a lot of this whole chapter – in fact, in the end of Judges and arguably all of Judges you’re constantly left with this, “Yes, but something doesn’t feel right,” which is often how you feel once you’re involved in the judiciary matters of any church.
“Yes, the elders did the right thing, and yes, you repented, but…and yes, the people are trying to receive you, but…” Sin is a hard master. Sin is destructive. Sin leaves its little burrs and cockles and seeds behind, and it’s hard for any of us to ever say that we got it all right and that we fixed everything.
If only we could fix all sin by throwing a ring into a volcano, one decisive act that makes everything perfect. Kiss the princess and she wakes up and everything is good. Of course, in a sense that’s what Jesus did, one decisive act that in the end does fix everything, but the message here is we’re not Jesus.
Even in the example of the one ring, if you are at least taking the books into account, there’s still the scouring of the Shire. There’s still wickedness in the world.
The mustard seed has to grow before the birds of the air can rest in them.
Well, someone comes up with a brilliant idea. “We can’t give our daughters to these men because of the oath, but how about this. There’s this feast in Shiloh and it’s accompanied by dancing. The young women come out and dance.”
One writer has argued that the words imply it’s some kind of coming out fertility announcement of “Look at me. I’m ready to get married.” That may or may not be so. I don’t care. It still doesn’t justify what happens. They’re ready to get married, but not like this.
“So these young women are going to come out and they’re going to dance, and you guys sit along the parade ground lines and watch and see the one you want and go and grab her and run off with her, and she can be your wife.” So we’re legitimizing kidnapping here.
Yeah, the Sabine women. I’ve never seen Seven Brides for Seven Brothers, but I’ve been told that in the story the brothers justify it by an appeal to the Sabine women and to this story. Do you know about that?
I don’t know if they use this story from Judges, but he’s reading Plutarch and he’s getting his book learnin’ in, and he says, “We need to learn about this. We need to go down and kidnap those women, and eventually they’ll like ya.” It’s Stockholm syndrome.
“When the fathers and the brothers come and say, ‘They stole my daughter,’ we’re going to say –
Be favourable unto them for our sakes: because we reserved not to each man his wife in the war: for ye did not give unto them at this time, that ye should be guilty.
The perception of the elders here is that when the fathers and brothers come their concern will be, “If we let this go, we will have broken our oath,” and of course breaking an oath is a capital offense – if not civilly, at least you can expect God to do something. And the elders kind of assume that that’s going to be their only complaint, not “She’s my daughter. I did not give my consent. I love her, I’m supposed to protect her, and this guy stole her. I’m going to go after her.”
This is kind of Hammurabi, isn’t it. It’s like, “Well, you didn’t fulfill your duty as a warrior of Israel; therefore, your daughter has to pay the price by being kidnapped and forced into marriage.”
And the children of Benjamin did so, and took them wives, according to their number, of them that danced, whom they caught: and they went and returned unto their inheritance, and repaired the cities, and dwelt in them. And the children of Israel departed thence at that time, every man to his tribe and to his family, and they went out from thence every man to his inheritance. In those days there was no king in Israel: every man did that which was right in his own eyes.
So all of these women are being treated as concubines now. We know that women could inherit, but women weren’t supposed to marry outside of their tribe if they had an inheritance, because it belonged to the family. There was something bigger than them that they belonged to, and they’re just like, “Oh, no, I’m sure all of these women have brothers who are inheriting, so they don’t need anything.” It’s all about the brothers and the inheritance. They’re not taking into account…I’m just mad.
I am, too. At first the commentary – and out of courtesy I will not name the author, because he taught me a lot about Judges and how it works and how to read it – but when he got to this he went real soft on these guys and tried to basically apologize for them and say, “Well, you know, the girls wanted to get married, and it’s really kind of a sweet tale. The guys came down and…”
No. They wanted to go to prom at most, if what you’re saying about the dancing thing is true.
Yeah, that’s the most you get out of it. They still would have expected everything to be done in the right order, in the right way, with their fathers and their brothers taking a part in the courtship. This is kidnapping, plain and simple, when the civil penalty for kidnapping was execution.
There is no way this is right, but remember we’re trying to find out why did things go so wrong generationally from the beginning, and here we have the second part of our answer. The pastors, the Levites, did not love their wives sacrificially and they set a pattern for all the rest of Israel. It was okay to treat women as subhuman and show contempt toward them.
We go out of our way as Christians oftentimes to defend that the Bible has a very high view of women, and the Bible does. Israel didn’t always. You get to the time of Jesus, and the Pharisees did not treat women with respect. It is the Bible, it is Christianity that celebrated the role of women, or at least put it where God says it should be, but God’s people have not always been there on that page, and here we have an example of a time where they most certainly were not, and the whole thing resonates with that.
In every little thing we see the women being disregarded, treated as property, assuming “Yeah, the women really want to be raped.” Um, no, they don’t.
This whole battle in Gibeah is mentioned one other time in scripture, and that’s in the book of Hosea, appropriately enough.
Yes, I think. There’s Gibeah and Gibeon, and I always get them confused. By the way, the city is mentioned, the battle isn’t except here, but it does kind of explain why when Jabeshgilead is in trouble – and this, of course, is like 300 years later – that Saul of Benjamin goes to rescue them, and that when Saul dies it’s the men of Jabeshgilead who go and rescue Saul’s remains and cremate them and hide them from the enemy.
This is the point where a lot of the women who become the mothers of Benjamin were originally from Jabeshgilead, because of this whole thing.
When Saul is chosen and Samuel tells him, he says, “Why me? I am of no account of my house and I’m of the smallest of the tribes of Israel.” He’s of the smallest of the tribes because his tribe was nearly wiped out, and it’s had to go back to the beginning in terms of reproducing.
So this thing is in the background all the way through, but there is one more point where God makes an actual comment on the battle. This is from Hosea 10:9 –
O Israel, thou hast sinned from the days of Gibeah: there they stood: the battle in Gibeah against the children of iniquity did not overtake them.
This is at the end of Israel’s history, just before the Assyrian invasion and the captivity, so the entire history of Israel can go back to the days of Gibeah, which again was right at the beginning, shortly after Moses’ death, shortly after the conquest of the land, so this sin has been at work from the beginning.
He mentions Gibeah because there was the chance when you had an opportunity to really seriously deal with sin, your own sin, not simply the sins of the city of Gibeah or the tribe of Benjamin. You had a chance to really look at sin and say, “This is disgusting. It’s horrible. It’s an offense to God. It’s going to bring God’s judgement upon us. It’s going to destroy our future, our children. We need to get right,” and God says, “And you didn’t. The battle against the children of iniquity did not overtake you. The battle never caught up with you. You didn’t understand the nature of the battle. You thought it was about punishing some of those guys over there. That was part of it, but that wasn’t the whole thing.”
Everybody lost. “You needed to repent and you didn’t. You thought it was enough to deal with a few of the external things, and yes, it was costly. It still wasn’t enough, and even that cost could have been avoided had you at the first gone to God and said, ‘This is all of our faults. We’ve let this happen. We’ve let the nation deteriorate. There are idols in all of our hearts and we need to repent,’” and they refused.
It’s ironic and appropriate that Hosea should be the one to point this out, because he is the anti-version of that Levite. He is the prophet to whom God says, “Go find this prostitute and marry her and be faithful to her,” and he does. Then she has children, one by him clearly, but the other two it seems maybe not. Then eventually she runs away from him and God says, “Go get her.”
Again, to look at the commentators – and I’m not just talking about a few modern guys, I’m talking about the old-time guys too – it’s amazing how many say, “This is a vision. It’s a parable. It didn’t really happen, because first of all God never asks his servants to do anything so disgusting.” What?
Well, I’m not recommending it now, either, but there’s a scene at the end where Armageddon is being averted, and an apparent representative spokesman for God, who remains behind the scenes, says something like, “Well, God doesn’t ask his servants to do anything that would be embarrassing or awkward.” Then the resident demon, Crowley, says, “Pfftt. He doesn’t know God very well, does he?” That is a profound observation, actually. The authors are not Christians, by any means.
It’s amazing how many people say either, “That would be immoral; therefore, God did not do it,” or “That would bring discredit upon the prophet and his ministry, and therefore God would not do it. So it’s a vision or parable. Not something that really actually happened.”
What’s going on there, of course, is the same thing that moralism always does. It fails to look into the heart of God. Now, does God normally tell his pastors that they should go find prostitutes and marry them? Of course, not. “That would be contrary to the holiness of God.” You mean the God who repeatedly called back adulteress Israel to himself, and in the end sent his Son to win back an adulteress bride by his own sacrificial death? That God?
Yeah. They have trouble making that obvious connection. Sometimes I just wish I could pop back in a time bubble and say, “Before you write that, have you considered this?” because it’s in those little moralistic corners of our thinking and our application where we betray the gospel.
Most of these commentators that I read, they’re very godly men who in other places strongly defend the gospel of grace, justification by faith, substitutionary atonement and all that. But when it comes down to, “But you’ve got to be good, and good will be defined by our sensibilities and what we’re used to in this Victorian era,” they get a little weird and they can’t always see the simple reflection of, “I am the man. I am the one who’s been faithless. I am the one for whom Jesus died. I am part of this bride that has apostatized, and you did come after me, like Hosea went after Gomer,” not like the Levite who sat back and watched it all and washed his hands of it.
So application for our time and our age – once again, we have no king in the United States, and that’s not a comment about our relationship to the House of Hanover or Windsor or whatever it is these days. It’s about our relationship to the God of nations. If he is not our king, then we do whatever is right in our own eyes and it doesn’t play so well.
Of course, even more abominable is when the church has no king. “Jesus will save you. If you want to make him Lord of your life that would be great, but that’s a separate transaction and it happens later. Yeah, Jesus isn’t king yet. He’s our coming king. That is, in the millennium he’ll be king and force people to obey him, but right now we’re back to he’s Lord if you make him Lord. And his law? Yeah, that was for the Old Testament.”
Just as a matter of legal process here – if you make him Lord, where does his authority come from?
The church is having a terrible time in our generation right now with recognizing that our first loyalty is to God. As I’ve seen it play out in these last couple years, mostly the obvious hallmark of this failure is the unwillingness of God’s people to go to church and to use all kinds of excuses now – that may have been valid for a short time or not – to stay away from the public assembly of God’s people because it’s not that important. It’s not that necessary. I can watch it on TV, yada yada yada.
If we can’t get to the first thing of “Your king calls you into his presence one day a week and you’re refusing to come,” that sounds to me like there’s no king in your life except your own passions and your own soft laziness, and you can expect exactly what you deserve and the church can expect exactly what she deserves.
Everyone is worried about the expanding power of the State. It’s a concern. But when the church does what it’s supposed to do, it’s not a concern. God can deal with that. God wants us to do what we’re supposed to do, and what we are supposed to do begins with faith in Christ and worship of the Triune God.
So how are we different? Their judges weren’t Jesus. Our judge is. We’re on the other side of the cross and we don’t have to keep reliving this cycle, but we need gospel preachers to call us back to reality.
We have gone way over time because the story required it. There was no avoiding it, so if you have a rapid-fire recommendation, please speak up.
Actually yes, because I’m planning to go watch this with one of my pastors tomorrow, along with my wife. The 2005 Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe. I recommend that. It’s a good movie and a fairly decent adaptation.
Every series has an episode or two that never really happened. I still have not seen Prince Caspian.
That’s for the best. And don’t even think about seeing Voyage of the Dawn Treader.
I’m going to recommend A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens, because it’s that time of the year and our school just did the play. Dickens was not a Christian, and obviously there are heavy moralisms in the thing, but as a Christian we can come and look at it and say, “Yeah, this is a lot like human sin, except you got the wrong answer.”
As Christians we can say, “Let me explain to you the right one. Children, what should this have said? What should our author have told us? What should these spirits be saying?” but it is still a beautiful parable.
It was aimed at social conditions in Dickens’ time. It was not written just for fun. He’d been planning to write an essay on how the industrial age was abusing children and fomenting poverty and all that. It’s got a little bit of a Marxist twang, but not wholly without some justification. He figured a story would do it best, and he was right. The story has endured, while all the other essays of that age have vanished.
It is interesting to look behind the scenes. I saw Patrick Stewart’s version, which I kinda sorta half-heartedly recommend. If he had had more money it would have been a better production, but it is fun to see Patrick Stewart going to church as the converted Scrooge, and the things that people who’ve not been to church in a long time – “Oh, I’m supposed to take my hat off? Oh, I kind of remember this Christmas carol, but I don’t know the words until someone holds up a hymnbook,” and then he’s able to sing with them. It’s just little cute touches.
And, of course, I love Patrick Stewart for other reasons so I point out that it exists without wholly recommending it, although he does an audio reading of the book that I have on tape someplace and it’s really good. So there you go.
Now that you’ve mentioned A Christmas Carol, I’d be remiss if I didn’t also say that the greatest adaptation you should all watch is The Muppet Christmas Carol.
Yes, except watch the DVD version that cuts out Belle’s song, because you don’t need it and it’s stupid and undermines her whole character.
Yeah, the DVD release. After they released the VHS they realized, “Oh, no, we didn’t need that,” so the next time they released it when the DVDs came out, they cut it out.
Okay. I’m watching the DVD version with my kids. We haven’t gotten to that part yet.
Thanks also to David, our producer and my lawfully-wedded husband. Thank you to our financial supporters. We appreciate you keeping the show rolling. If you’d like to join their number you can visit our website, which is anchor.fm/haltingtowardzion.
You can send us an email at [email protected]. Follow us on Facebook, Rumble, and YouTube. See you next time.