Judges 19
A Levite and his concubine are refused shelter in Gibeah; the men of the city demand the Levite, and he pushes the concubine out. She dies on the threshold at dawn.
Summary
In those days, when there was no king in Israel, a certain Levite from the remote hill country of Ephraim takes a concubine from Bethlehem in Judah. She becomes angry with him and leaves, returning to her father's house. After four months the Levite goes to speak tenderly to her and bring her back. Her father receives him joyfully and they stay several days. On the fifth day the Levite rises to go; the father urges him to stay and eat, and he does. Then on the fifth day he rises again; the father urges further delay. They stay late into the day. The Levite finally rises and departs with his concubine and servant. He declines to stop at Jebus — not an Israelite city — and they go on to Gibeah, which belongs to Benjamin. They sit in the open square of the city, but no one takes them in until an old man returning from his field invites them to his house. He takes them in, feeds them, gives their donkeys fodder.
While they are enjoying themselves, the men of the city surround the house and pound on the door, demanding that the old man bring out the guest so they may know him. The old man goes out and says: no, my brothers, do not act so wickedly; this man has come into my house; do not do this vile thing. He offers instead his own virgin daughter and the Levite's concubine. The men will not listen. The Levite seizes his concubine and pushes her outside to them. They abuse her throughout the night. At dawn they let her go. She comes and falls at the door of the old man's house where her master is; her hands are on the threshold. Her master rises in the morning, opens the doors of the house, and goes out to go on his way, and there is his concubine fallen at the door of the house, with her hands on the threshold. He says: get up, let us be going. There is no answer. He puts her on the donkey and goes home. When he comes to his house he takes a knife and, laying hold of his concubine, he cuts her into twelve pieces, limb by limb, and sends her throughout all the territory of Israel. He commands those he sends: say to all the men of Israel: has such a thing ever happened since the day that the people of Israel came up from the land of Egypt until this day? Consider it, take counsel, and speak.
- Judges 1Chapter 1 functions as a historiographical preface to the whole book, cataloguing the success or failure of each tribe to dispossess the Canaanites after Joshua's death.
- Judges 2Chapter 2 is the hermeneutical key to Judges.
- Judges 3Chapter 3 introduces the judge cycle in action for the first time.
- Judges 4Chapter 4 is the prose account of the same events that chapter 5 will sing.
- Judges 5The Song of Deborah in chapter 5 is widely considered one of the oldest pieces of Hebrew poetry in the entire Bible, possibly dating to the twelfth century BCE, nearly contemporaneous with the events it describes.
- Judges 6Chapter 6 is the opening of the Gideon narrative, which runs through chapter 8 and is the longest major-judge story in the book.
- Judges 7Chapter 7 is the central action of the Gideon narrative and one of the most memorable military scenes in the book.
- Judges 8Chapter 8 is the darkest portion of the Gideon narrative.
- Judges 9Chapter 9 is the longest chapter in Judges and the only episode in the book devoted to an anti-judge — a man who makes himself king by violence and holds it for exactly three years.
- Judges 10Chapter 10 performs two functions.
- Judges 11Chapter 11 is one of the most morally complex chapters in the Hebrew Bible.
- Judges 12Chapter 12 begins with a conflict that is structurally parallel to the Ephraimite quarrel after Gideon's battle in chapter 8, but this time Jephthah's response is not diplomacy — it is war.
- Judges 13Chapter 13 is the birth narrative of Samson, and it is the most elaborate annunciation scene in Judges.
- Judges 14Chapter 14 introduces the adult Samson and establishes the pattern that will govern the rest of his narrative: a desire for a Philistine woman, a display of supernatural strength, a riddle or trap, betrayal by intimacy.
- Judges 15Chapter 15 escalates the private vendetta between Samson and the Philistines into a series of increasingly spectacular acts of violence.
- Judges 16Chapter 16 is the climax and conclusion of the Samson narrative.
- Judges 17Chapter 17 begins the two-part appendix with which Judges closes, and the shift in tone is immediate.
- Judges 18Chapter 18 is the first of the book's two closing appendices.
- Judges 19Chapter 19 is one of the most disturbing chapters in the Hebrew Bible, and the text makes no attempt to soften it.
- Judges 20Chapter 20 is the longest military account in Judges and is remarkable for what it shows about what has gone wrong with Israel as a political and moral community.
- Judges 21Chapter 21 closes the book and extends the moral horror of chapter 19-20 in a different register: the horror of improvised solutions to self-inflicted catastrophe.