Orgy of Sin and death: Judges 19 -21

Perhaps the most disturbing sustained story in the entire Bible

Book of Judges 19 - 21

A random Levite is on the way home from partying with the father of his cheating concubine1 when they are accosted in a town in the Benjamin tribal region. He hands his girlfriend over to the mob so they won’t bugger him, but she does not survive being gang raped all night. He cuts her body up into twelve pieces and sends them to the other Israelite tribes. They respond by massacring all the Benjaminites except for six hundred men, then feel bad about it. In order to build a new tribe, the Lord has them slaughter everyone in a different town and take the four hundred virgins left alive as unwilling wives. Needing another two hundred wives, they kidnap the young women from a YHWH religious festival and carry them away to begin involuntary mating.  

Even considering the violence and misogyny found throughout the holy book, this tale at the end of the Book of Judges jumps beats all expectations regarding . It begins with an unnamed Levite (actually, no one has a name in this brisk narrative) setting out to find his promiscuous (“his concubine played the whore against him.” – KJV) runaway concubine. After four months of searching he locates her back home with her father in Bethlehem. 

After about six days of partying at the insistence of his father-in-law, the Levite convinces his party girl to leave with him. (There is a strong implication that the father succeeds several times in talking him into yet another day of drinking.) The couple heads for home. On the journey they take lodging in the Israelite city of Gibeah, located in the tribal lands of Benjamin. After sitting in the town square with no offers of hospitality forthcoming, eventually an old man from Ephraim invites them into his home.  
 

They are eating dinner with the old man when the debauched citizens of Gibeah surround the house and demand the Levite come on with his concubine for a night of swinging and sodomy. He is disinclined to participate so he hands over his concubine to the “worthless fellows,” who rape and abuse her all night long. She crawls to the door and dies there.  
 

There is an odd moment here, which the King James Version narrates as follows:  

“And her lord rose up in the morning, and opened the doors of the house, and went out to go 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. But none answered. Then the man took her up upon an ass, and the man rose up, and gat him unto his place.”- Judges 19: 27-28 [KJV]
 

Having given her over to the mob as a sex toy, his apparent lack of interest in how she spent the night is stunning, while his conversation with her corpse is darkly comedic.  
 

Once home, the cowardly widower cuts up the concubine’s body into twelve pieces and sends a part to each of the other tribes of Israel.
 

Don’t look at me, I didn’t write it.

The other tribes assemble an army of 400,000 mean at Mizpah, where the Levite tells them his story. He points out that this is an abomination on the soil of Israel. He does not reveal his own role in the crime.

The people of Israel travel to Benjamin and demand the perps be turned over, but Benjies will not rat out the bad boys of Gibeah. This sets off a civil war which quickly turns into genocide as the other tribes kill off nearly all of the Benjaminites. The Israelites bring their forces up against the much smaller Benjaminite army of 26,000 men plus seven hundred from Gibeah.

Nevertheless, the surprisingly fierce Benjies kill 22,000 of the Israelites on the first day of battle. The discouraged Israelite warriors find YHWH ten miles north in Bethel to inform the Lord about their tough day on the battlefield. YHWH tells them to not lose heart and get back to it tomorrow. Next day they lose another 18,000 men, return to Bethel to get another pep talk.
 

There ensues a drawn out and obtuse description of the final battle Israel vs. Benjamin battle, the outcome being that with the help of the Lord all but six hundred of the Benjies are eventually slaughtered, all their cities are burned and their livestock killed. The death toll for the tribe of Benjamin is 25,100.

At this point, some of the Israelites start feeling a little bad that they have almost wiped out one of their own tribes. And to compound the problem, the several hundred Benjaminites who escaped alive won’t be able to find suitable breeding stock to replenish the tribe because the Israelites had sworn previously that they would not allow any of the Benjies to marry their daughters.
 

The Israelites at this point are distraught, at wits end as to how to provide the surviving tribe of Benjamin with enough birth mothers to rebuild the population. 

They don’t call him “the Lord” for nothing: YHWH has a plan. What we need to fix this situation is a sneak attack, more murder and rape. The people on the wrong end of this new onslaught will be the people of Jabesh-gilead, an Israelite town.

 

What the actual fuck is Jabesh-Gilead you are probably asking? You could be forgiven for that, because the reader has heard nothing about this unfortunate village until now.

 

It is revealed that this town did not show up at the Mispah war council to denounce the Benjies and provide soldiers for the upcoming slaughter. That’s why all the people of Jabesh-Gilead are going to have to die except for their virgin daughters. Mind you, these are not Benjaminites, but rather fellow Israelites. The Israelites send 12,000 men to massacre the population of Jabesh-Gilead (who were not likely expecting them); they net four hundred attractive virgins for their efforts.

Now, with hundreds of nubile wives awaiting their new husbands,  the Israelites send a message of peace to the Benjies, now holed up at the Rock of Rimmon for several months. “Sorry for the genocide, man, but we would like to offer you several hundred slightly traumatized virgins so you can start a new tribe.” Nothing gets a teenage girl in the mood for love like having your family wiped out.

 

So that’s good news for four hundred of the remaining Benjie army, but what about the rest? Again, easily remedied. It turns out there is a festival of the Lord being held at Shiloh and there will be lots of young virgins dancing about, as they are wont to do at YHWH fests. All the Benjie men have to do is lie in wait for the unsuspecting young ladies should they wander away from the party and kidnap them. That’s what they do. 

The next passage makes very little sense:
 

“And when their fathers or their brothers come to complain to us, we will say to them, ‘Grant them graciously to us, because we did not take for each man of them his wife in battle, neither did you give them to them, else you would now be guilty.’” – Judges 21:22 [KJV]
 

To be clear: the Lord’s plan for restoring justice is to massacre 25,000 civilians  – his own people – who had nothing to do with the original crime, and then to salvage the diminished tribe by slaughtering everyone but the virgins in another town and then, coming up short a couple hundred, kidnap a few hundred more virgins and force them to submit as wives. This is why we teach the Bible. No matter how you spin it, these were young vulnerable women celebrating a YHWH religious rite who were abducted in a scene not dissimilar the Sabine rape in Roman history.

(still with me? – we’re reading the holy book here).

There is no shortage of theories, but no definitive answers. It is likely that whatever agenda is behind this tale is political, but even that is not readily obvious.
 

The Book of Judges, which also features YHWH-sanctioned human sacrifice, takes place in the pre-monarchial era, about 1100 BCE. The opening line tells us there was no king, and suggests this may be the reason for the rampant moral depravity that underpins the activities. In this sense, we may have a pro-monarchy writer or writers who are trying to make some other point about the tribe of Benjamin. The scriptural attitude toward the monarchy is ambiguous throughout this section of the Hebrew Bible.
 

It is notable that the tribal and geographic information for the characters is very specific, and yet not one individual is named. Why are the Benjies singled out, why does it matter that the “protagonist” is a Levite and why are the two cities of Jabesh-gilead and Gibeah selected as targets.
 

Another troubling topic is the degree of YHWH’s involvement in the actions of the Israelites as they nearly wipe out one of the tribes, and then try to fix it. YHWH clearly endorses the horrific warfare that results from the Israelite vengeance on the Benjaminites. He provides moral support and strategy for the effort. It is significant that the Israelite army makes its way to see YHWH at Bethel, which means “House of God.” It was about ten miles away from the battlefield.
 

Not for the first time one is compelled to ask why the loving deity is so fond of slaughter, in this case mass murder of his own people. Literally tens of thousands on both sides are killed over a single incident. A curious passage suggests that the Israelites conclude that they are only following the Lord’s orders and are not really to blame.
 

God did it, not us.
 

“And the people had compassion on Benjamin because the Lord had made a breach in the tribes of Israel.”  - Judges 21:15 [ESV]
 

We are often told that the Bible provides a moral compass, but it’s hard to suss out exactly what the lesson might be in this shit show of a tale. The cowardice of the Levite fellow is not noted, nor is the fact that he lies to the assembled tribes at Mispah.

The misogyny is off the charts of course. The whoring concubine, the gang rape, the double kidnapping of young women with the understanding that they are property to be acquired. All of this is done with the approval if not at the direction of YHWH. Even the old man in Gilbeah offers his own daughter for the townspeople’s pleasure seeking, if only they will not break the rules of hospitality by sodomizing the Levite. 

“He went out and told them, “No, brothers! Don’t be obscene—this man is my guest. Don’t commit this outrage. Look, my virgin daughter and his concubine are here. I’ll bring them out for you. Abuse them if you must, but don’t do anything so senselessly vile to this man.” – Judges 19:24 – [MSG]
 

Wonder where evangelicals get their patriarchal attitudes?
 

As a final point of interest, this tale is a creepy echo of Genesis 19, in which the people of Sodom surround a house and demand a male guest come out to be a party favor. Instead Lot (Abraham’s nephew)  offers his own daughters. That interlude concludes with the destruction of Sodom, followed by Lot mating with his daughters. How did they feel about Dad offering them to the mob?  
 

Their feelings are not recorded.

__________________________________ NOTES_________________________________

1. “Concubine” has a fungible definition, especially in the Bible. Mary, Jesus’s mom, for example, is a concubine.