The Four Ladies of the Book of Judges #5

Exploring the “Seed-Bearer” Theme

A Levite’s Concubine

Written by Dan McDonald

 

            The Old Testament can be nasty and violent, but none of its scenes are more grotesque than the story found in Judges 19.  The chapter begins with a comment that “in those days there was no king in Israel.”  This surely is meant to be connected in the mind of the book’s reader with the conclusion drawn in the final verse of the Book of Judges, “In those days there was no king in Israel: every man did that which was right in his own eyes.”  Those are sentiments with which every self-professing “patriarchal Christian” could express his agreement.  But one could make a case from the story told in Judges 19 that Israel’s problem was not the lack of patriarchy but of a patriarchy gone very wrong.  That would of course lead to the question by some “is patriarchy at all such a good thing” and to others of “what would a good patriarchy look like?”  I will give my tentative view while leaving lots of room for others to develop their own answers to such questions.  For these are some of the most important questions being asked in the Christian community in our day.  I am part of an older generation and tradition that finds he is looking on with a sense of joy and pride at a younger generation asking its own important questions.  I wish I could jump right in with the younger set.  But I also count my own generation as those who have known Christ and made him known to me, with whom I have had too much the joy of fellowship to ever be comfortable casting aside discourteously.  So I do what seems to me I must do, try to introduce two sets of friends to each other; one set conservative and patriarchal and the other progressive and definitely not patriarchal.  Let them meet around this story.

            The writer introduces the story of a Levite who married a woman from Bethlehem.  Actually we are told that the Levite took for himself a concubine from Bethlehem.  Somehow concubine sounds already a bit tawdry.  A wife would be a full partner.  A concubine sounds sort of like a servant with benefits mostly for the master.  But this seems like the nature of the story found in the relationship between this Levite and his wife.  There is a form of a proper legal relationship on the surface with something not quite right just underneath the surface.  This thing not so quite right is always very near the surface.  No reader ought to be able to miss it.  It is blatantly open and not hidden.

            We discover that not long after the couple marry; that the concubine according to the passage “played the whore against her husband.”  But then we are told not of some sordid affair but that the concubine runs home to her father’s house.  Aren’t you a bit suspicious of what we really took place?  I suppose it is possible that she went home to her father to play the whore, but this sounds more like a writer speaking in satire.  Was she abused?  Did she find the whole experience uncomfortable?  Why did she go home?  Was she just immature?  Thousands of answers, we are not told the real one or ones.  But this is a story that a reader knows by instinct has some pieces missing.  I think I am not misreading the story, but simply discovering what this shrewd old story-teller wanted us to see so blatantly underneath the prim and proper reputable name of a Levite, the priestly tribe in Israel.  Something is amiss in Israel where every man does what is right in his own eyes.

            Four months after returning to her father, the Levite comes looking to fetch her back.  Does he love her, or is it his pride that says he needs her, or is it that he feels she is rightful property?  She is his concubine after all.  He and her father discuss her future.  That is the way things are done in a patriarchy.  The only way to make it more blatant is if the two of them were to say to her, “We are going to McNellie’s pub and grill to decide your future, why don’t you stay here and clean the house while we take care of this business.”  The father seems to like the Levite well enough, but every night he tries to keep the Levite from leaving with his daughter.  Why does he want to delay them?  Perhaps he loves his daughter a bit, but usually fathers want to see their daughters with a man they love.  Or does this father know for as much as he has agreed in principle to send this daughter back with her legal husband, that something not quite right exists between him and her.  I get the feeling always in this story that something is amiss just underneath the legal formalities of husband and wife or I mean "concubine".

            Finally they leave and they get only a few miles and they come upon Jebus (Jerusalem, named Jebus before it was taken from the non-Jewish Gentiles that ruled it).  The Levite, who receives his living from the other tribes of Israel as the priestly tribe will not stay in Jebus.  He goes further to a town in the tribe of Benjamin known as Gibeah.  He and she and at least one other servant will stay here for the night.

            It is almost dark.  Another man tells the Levite to stay with him.  He is not of the tribe of Benjamin, but is a sojourner from the tribe of Ephraim, a fellow sojourner in a town of the tribe of Benjamin.  None of the people from Benjamin took in the Levite.  Only the traveler from Ephraim gave him lodging.  Then the horror story began to take place.  There were the echoes and shadows of a night in Sodom long before Israel had been granted the Promised Land by God.

            It is I think important to discern the exact sin so horrible that night in Sodom and this night in Gibeah.  In both instances the men of the city surround a house and want to ravage the male guests.  In both instances the hosts offer women as acceptable substitutes, which has traditionally been viewed as proof that this showed the belief of the hosts that homosexuality was wrong.  Of course for modern sensibilities it suggests that protecting women seems a bit less important than protecting men.  Obviously the Bible speaks about inordinate sins, both in heterosexual and homosexual forms, but for the religion of Israel I think it important to realize that two greater sins were being dealt with than the ordinary individualized forms of inordinate sin.  One of the sins involved in modern terminology is that Gibeah had become a complete and total rape culture.  A rape culture is a culture that sees people “asking for it.”  If you are a visitor to a city near night in an open square you must be asking for it.  If you are a woman dressed a certain way you must be asking for it.  You can tell when a people are being overtaken by a rape culture when a judge assigns a thirty day sentence to an adult man who rapes a fourteen year-old girl because she was dressed provocatively.  One can speak about what is and isn’t modest dress but a rape is never justified by a woman dressing in a certain way or by a man being at a certain place when darkness falls.  The other great sin is that Israel had been commanded to honor and protect the sojourner in their midst for Israel had sojourned in Egypt only to be enslaved, an enslavement from which God had rescued them.  Therefore Israel was to treat with respect the sojourner in their midst.  This is one of the reasons why none of us should have respect for any right wing historians trying to make a Biblical argument for America’s allowance of slavery.  Not only was American slavery a dishonoring of those who sojourned with us, but it was a traveling over a mighty ocean to kidnap foreign men and women so as to bring them in chains on boats to our land to be sold to the highest bidder.  One cannot get riled up about the sin of Sodom and then fancy that it was alright to cross seas to make our economic windfall through enslaving people who would be forced to sojourn among us.  That is what Gibeah and Sodom were about.  The men of both cities saw sojourners as people to take advantage of.  This is why a Christian must wonder what is it to seek justice in determining the status of “illegal immigrants.”  Yes these passages may tell us a bit about inordinate sins, but they tell us a lot more about how we are to respect the sojourner and how we are to say an absolute no to the rape culture.

            The scene turns more grotesque as the men of the city clamor for the man that had come into the house.  The host makes the offer of the women, his daughter and the Levite’s concubine.  The men of the city argue for the man.  This time there are no powerful angels in the household to blind the men.  The men continue to want the man.  So what does the Levite, the member of Israel’s holy tribe do?  The Jewish Publication Society translation once more provides such a clear picture in its translation:  “But the men would not listen to him, so the man seized his concubine and pushed her out to them.  They raped her and abused her all night long until morning; and they let her go when dawn broke.”(Judges 19:25 (Sacred Writings, Volume I Judaism, the Tanakh edited by Jaroslav Pelikan, the New Jewish Publication Society Translation)

An image of an abused woman

            Here was a Levite, dedicated to God’s service, set aside to lead God’s people to know the peace or Shalom of God.  So the mob is at the door and the Levite, who should be a protector of God’s people and especially of his wife that he wanted so desperately to return with him, and instead he seizes her and throws her to the mob.  What a guy?  These men of Benjamin might in name have been part of Israel, but in reality they had become godless men.  The Levite, the man dedicated to protect Israel’s spiritual treasure had taken his wife and thrown her to a mob of godless men.

            It still gets worse.  In the morning after the woman has spent the night (when the earth is covered in darkness) suffering so horribly, she literally crawls and drags her own body to the threshold of the house.  We are told that the Levite rises up.  That implies that while his concubine suffered, he slept.  He steps out the door and says to her as she lay on the ground, her hands on the threshold; “Up, and let us be going.” (Judges 19:28)  There was no reply.  She had died of her abuse.  The Levite then took her upon an ass and took her with him to his home.

The Levite’s concubine at the threshold

            Perhaps somewhere on the road to his home, his conscience and his humanity began to become alive.  Israel, the covenant people of God had been broken asunder so that one tribe no longer respected another and every man did what was right in his own eyes, and this had affected the Levite and the whole of the nation of Israel, the whole of God’s people.  What was to become of the people of God?  How much worse could it get?  The Levite took his deceased wife’s corpse and cut it into twelve pieces to be sent to the twelve tribes of Israel.  It was a gruesome finish to this story, a macabre act of grief, a guilty conscience, and a cry of despair for God’s people to regain their senses.

Carving the corpse for distribution to all Israel

            This gruesome scene proved the pivotal exchange in Israel’s history as told within the Book of Judges.  As this woman’s body parts were distributed throughout Israel the people of God began to return one and all to renew their covenant with God.  The response to this Levite’s call of Israel to return to God’s covenant resulted in the most complete response of Israel in the entire Book of Judges.  The people of God renewed their covenant with God.

            This most gruesome and grievous of stories completes the story of how four ladies in the Book of Judges points to Christ.  For this woman suffered at the hands of Israel’s appointed religious leaders, was cast into the darkness to suffer at the hands of godless men and died with her hands on the threshold.  The Levite mourned as he looked upon her as many mourned when they saw the suffering they had caused to the Lord of glory.  Her body was distributed to all Israel bringing forth Israel’s renewing of its covenant with God, even as Christ’s body and blood is distributed to the Israel of God that we might partake of his sacred body, drink of his cup of salvation, and be restored into his holy fellowship, holy nation, royal priesthood, and become forevermore his own sons and daughters loved in our Lord.  This was all forced upon a woman by a deranged and fallen patriarchy.  The one true patriarch, born with the description among many titles of “everlasting father and prince of peace” shielded his bride, took upon himself her sins, and came before the mob to die on a cross and then in the power of his righteousness rose on the third day and crossed the threshold so as to bring his bride, his church, and the people of God safely across the threshold for God has willed that not one given to his hand would fall from his protection until all of Israel would be saved forevermore.  For at Calvary, on that cross a true patriarch took upon himself everything necessary to shield her from danger and to grant to her both abundant and eternal life.  The seed of the woman who crushed the Serpent’s head has become our one true patriarch and his patriarchy guarantees the redemption and restoration of health to his people when our days of trial and temptation have reached their end.

The body and the blood