In my opinion, the book of Judges chapters 19-21 stands out as one of the most horrific and absurd stories in the Bible. It's treatment of women also stands out as one of the worst portrayals of women as property and objects that can be used by men for bargaining chips, abuse, an indirect means of punishing criminal acts committed by other people, and chattel that can be obtained through capture. Let's begin with a high level summary of the plot.
A little background for those who are not familiar with the context. Ancient Israel was divided into 12 tribes. Levi and Benjamin are two of the tribes that feature prominently in this narrative. This story also occurs in the period before the Israelite monarchy. This is the governmental structure Yahweh allegedly dictated to Moses. There was a class of priests that came from the Levites. The priests appointed judges to whom the people could appeal in a sort of legal system. We will circle back to this system at the end of the narrative, but the book of Judges is set in the time after the Israelites have escaped from their enslavement in Egypt and after they have settled in the land of Canaan, but before a monarchy was established.
The story begins with a man from the tribe of Levi who has a concubine. His concubine is unfaithful and leaves him. She returns to live with her family in another town. The Levite pursues her and convinces her to return with him (Judges 19:1-10). On their trip back, they stop for the night in the town of Gibeah where the people of the tribe of Benjamin lived. The Levite and his crew planned to sleep in the town square for the night, but a local, who happened to be a transplant from the same region as the Levite (Ephraim), sees their party in the square and suggests that staying the night in the open in the city center was risky. The local man invites them to stay at his house. As they are settling in at their host's home, a mob of sexual predators from the tribe of Benjamin comes to the host's house and they ask the host to send out the Levite man so they can rape him (Judges 19:11-22).
Students of the Bible will recognize this exact same scenario from the book of Genesis (chapter 19), but with a different cast of characters. Lot is the host in the Genesis narrative and his guests are two angels sent by Yahweh to figure out if the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah had any decent men so Yahweh would refrain from destroying those cities. Lot invites the angel guests to stay with him so they aren't harmed staying in the city center. A mob comes to Lot's home and they ask to have the guests so they can rape them. In both narratives, Genesis and Judges, the host offers the women in the home to the mobs to be raped instead of the male guests. 'Have my virgin daughters instead of this man/these men.' In the narrative in Judges, the guest's concubine is offered to be gang raped in addition to the daughters. They only push the concubine out the door. She is raped all night long (Judges 19:23-26).
The next morning, the Levite wakes up and prepares to leave. His concubine has collapsed on the doorstep of the house. Here is an exact quote from the passage. It's so callus and awful, it needs to be a direct quote.
When her master got up in the morning and opened the door of the house and stepped out to continue on his way, there lay his concubine, fallen in the doorway of the house, with her hands on the threshold. He said to her, “Get up; let’s go.” But there was no answer. Then the man put her on his donkey and set out for home. Judges 19:27-28 NIV
When they get back to his home the Levite chops her body into 12 pieces and has them delivered to each of the 12 tribes with an outrage letter urging the 11 other tribes to seek justice for the crime committed by those men in Gibeah (Judges 19:29-30).
The whole nation of Israel descends into a civil war against the Benjamites because they refuse to hand the accused men over to the mob to be killed. The priests are consulted and they guarantee Yahweh will be with the 11 tribes because their cause is just. Even so, the Benjamites prevail in two attacks, killing a total of 40,000 Israelites before Yahweh's promise for them to prevail is upheld. The Israelites wipe out the Benjamites except for 600 of men who retreat to the wilderness (Judges 20).
In chapter 21, Israel experiences cognitive dissonance about the genocide they just carried out against their cousins. They resolve this regret by committing genocide on another town and offering the virgins from that town to the remnant Benjamites, and then they have the Benjamites who still didn't have women to go kidnap virgins from a neighboring town when they are dancing at a festival.
So that is what the Benjamites did. While the young women were dancing, each man caught one and carried her off to be his wife. Then they returned to their inheritance and rebuilt the towns and settled in them. At that time the Israelites left that place and went home to their tribes and clans, each to his own inheritance. In those days Israel had no king; everyone did as they saw fit. Judges 21:23-25
What an adventure! I don't know if the narrative recounts some elements of an actual historical event, but I suspect it is largely exaggerated if not completely fabricated. In any case, what lesson can be drawn from it? What does it tell us about morality or the nature of the god that was supposedly involved with the story?
Before I go on, I would encourage you to stop and take the time to actually read through all three chapters on your own so you can fully grasp how bizarre, ridiculous, and cruel the whole thing is. Read it for yourself if you have any doubt or skepticism that I'm presenting some parody of the narrative. Now let's have a closer look at the narrative.
Women's issues: The concubine and virgin daughters in Judges 19
So let's now have a look at the Bible's treatment of the women. First, we have a concubine. What is a concubine? Well, a concubine is a woman that isn't your wife, but she lives with you and you can have sex with her. It's interesting that the Old Testament law allows for this as well as polygamy, but the Christian church definitely frowns on those practices. Heroes in the Book of Judges, like Sampson even sleep with prostitutes and other women they aren't married to and no one seems to care. Yahweh even blesses him and gives him super human strength while he's sleeping with them (Judges 13-16). It's a double standard that is common in patriarchal societies. Men are not expected to be sexually faithful as long as they weren't sleeping with another man's wife. Multiple wives, sex slaves, concubines, prostitutes, were all permissible.
Personally, if I were a woman at this point in history, I think I would prefer the status of a concubine. She seems to have had more autonomy that way. Wives were treated as property. If the woman was a wife, she could have been carted off whether she wanted to go with the Levite or not. This woman had to at least be persuaded, and when she was disinterested in him, she was free to leave.
Taking the story at face value, there was a mob of rapists who wanted to assault the Levite man. The situation begs a host of questions. Was this a normal occurrence in Gibeah? Were authorities aware? What was being done about the mob if this was a common practice? If it was a normal thing, it seems odd that the Benjamites were willing to fight and die in defense of the rapists. Surely people in the area wouldn't tolerate a mob of people running around raping everyone. And if they had no means of subduing the rapists, what would possess them to fight fiercely in their defense when the other 11 tribes came calling for justice? It makes no sense.
Was the local man's house substantial enough to just seal himself and his guests inside and wait for the mob to leave? Assuming it was not, why didn't Yahweh step in to protect them? Yahweh came to the defense of the angels in the story of Lot from Genesis. Was he too busy?
All of those things are really side considerations that distract from the real subject here, the women. The virgin daughters and concubine are treated like bargaining chips. Again, they are just objects that can be offered up to satisfy the appetites of the vulgar men. No need to ask the women if they are okay with the situation. They pushed her out the door to be devoured by the lions and when the rapists stopped banging on the door, the Levite and the host evidently finished their dinner and went to bed for the night.
The next morning, it's difficult to understand the response of the Levite. I don't know if the issue is poor story telling or if the story is related that way because that's the way it happened. The man walks out, finds the concubine passed out on the doorstep. The narrator felt compelled to include the emotional reaction of the host the previous night.
The owner of the house went outside and said to them, “No, my friends, don’t be so vile. Since this man is my guest, don’t do this outrageous thing. Look, here is my virgin daughter, and his concubine. I will bring them out to you now, and you can use them and do to them whatever you wish. But as for this man, don’t do such an outrageous thing." Judges 19:23-4
He calls the act they want to do vile and outrageous. Contrast that reaction with the Levite discovering his concubine lying unconscious after being raped all night. "He said to her, “Get up; let’s go.” But there was no answer. Then the man put her on his donkey and set out for home." (Judges 19:28) He sleeps the night through, gets up without checking on her until he is apparently packed and ready to go, and when he tells her it's time to go, she's not responsive, so he loads her on a donkey and leaves.
This lack of emotion is confusing given the fact that the Levite pursued the concubine to plead with her to come back and he freaks out when he gets home, chopping her body into pieces. It's also a horrifying thought, but the narrator does not say that the concubine had actually died. Here are the final verses of that chapter.
He said to her, “Get up; let’s go.” But there was no answer. Then the man put her on his donkey and set out for home. When he reached home, he took a knife and cut up his concubine, limb by limb, into twelve parts and sent them into all the areas of Israel. Everyone who saw it was saying to one another, “Such a thing has never been seen or done, not since the day the Israelites came up out of Egypt. Just imagine! We must do something! So speak up!” Judges 19:28-30
It's pretty safe to say she was dead by the time the Levite chopped her up. You can hope and assume she was dead before that, but that's not what the text actually says. If the concubine had not been abused to the point where she was weak and/or dead, would the man have been outraged? Would have have been okay with the situation if she had merely been raped all night, and then left to go home with him? The story doesn't touch on these elements. Perhaps they would have been understood by the culture in which they were written, but if this text is supposed to be a timeless moral message to humankind, then I think clearer explanation would be helpful. In the chapters that follow, Yahweh seems to be on the side of the Levite and the 11 tribes that ally themselves with his cause, so presumably, Yahweh was giving him a nod. The Levite must have done the right thing...?
Bible apologists and Christians will say "things were different back then". Granted, but what is just and moral is supposed to be eternal, isn't it? I challenge any believer who holds to the theological tenet that the Bible is the eternal inspired and perfect moral message from the one true god, to explain the message or moral lesson we should take from this story. ...but I get ahead of myself here. We're not yet at the end. Perhaps the moral of the story will present itself more clearly when we're finished.
Civil war and genocide: Judges 20
Without getting bogged down in the weird details of chapter 20, the 11 tribes unite in outrage with the Levite and the gather an army to confront the Benjamites in Gibeah. They demand that the men from the mob be handed over to their army to be killed, so their ire was at least initially directed at the party they believed were guilty. I would like to pause for one moment to point out that the reason modern democracies require due process instead of mob justice like this is because mob justice is not justice. Maybe Yahweh could have clued them into that fact here, but instead he gives them the green light.
The Benjamites refused to hand the individuals in the rapist mob over to the other tribes. Again, this is puzzling. Why would they like having rapists among them? Maybe things were so divided among the tribes at that point that it didn't matter to them what the other tribes were saying, they were going to stand by their guys. Given the modern political realm, I guess I can see that as a possible explanation, but maybe they were being falsely accused. We don't have a report from the perspective of the Benjamites. I suppose you could take it on faith because Yahweh seemed okay with sending in people to kill the mob and the ones who were defending them. It sure seems like Yahweh could have just plucked the rapists out of Gibeah and either killed them himself and declared from the heavens "behold my justice, now stop raping and killing each other". That might have been a cleaner way to handle this.
The total amassed army from all 11 tribes was 400,000 (Judges 20:17). For some reason, instead of having the amassed united army from all 11 tribes descend on the Benjamites at one time, Yahweh tells them to only send the tribe of Judah to attack. The Benjamites repel the attack. It says the Benjamites had 26,000 (from surrounding areas) soldiers plus 700 from Gibeah. And apparently there were 700 elite left handed swordsman...? Okay. So, a total of 26,700 soldiers on the defense (Judges 20:15-6)
Even though Yahweh told the Israelites they should attack, on the first two attempts, the defenders won. The attacking forces lost 22,000 soldiers and 18,000 in the second attack (20:18-23). The third attack was successful. The 11 tribes figured out they should try to employ some kind of strategy and they lured the Benjamite fighters out of the city and ambushed them. Benjamin lost 25,100 men. There were 600 survivors from Benjamin who escaped and hid in the wilderness (20:35-47) The town of Gibeah was burned and Israel "put all of the towns [of Benjamin] to the sword, including the animals and everything else they found. All the towns they came across they set on fire." (20:48)
In this chapter, women are not mentioned, but it is clear from context and what is coming in Chapter 21, that women and children were butchered and burned in the Benjamite cities. The end of the chapter does mention the animals being put to the sword, but the women and children were not mentioned. Israel was fighting a civil war and they had carried out a genocide because a woman was raped and killed. It is clear from chapter 21, Israel experiences cognitive dissonance about what they have done, specifically wiping out the Benjamites. The ones who remained had no women or children to carry on their legacy.
Reparations and women as a material asset and more genocide: Judges 21
Reading the whole story, chapter 21 can give you whiplash. I don't know how long it took for the 11 other tribes to experience the buyer's remorse for the genocide they carried out against the Benjamites, but suddenly, they're upset about it and crying to Yahweh to fix it.
“Lord, God of Israel,” they cried, “why has this happened to Israel? Why should one tribe be missing from Israel today?” (21:3)
Were the ashes from the towns they burned finished smoldering? There is no indication that any amount of time has passed in the text other than in the first verse, the tribes all gather to take an oath that they will not give their daughters as wives to Benjamites. Women's opinions on the matter were not taken into account ...because they were viewed as property.
While they were busy regretting what they had done, the Israelites realized that one of the tribes was missing from their assembly; Jabesh Gilead. That's not good, so the obvious thing to do is to carry out a genocide on that tribe.
So the assembly sent twelve thousand fighting men with instructions to go to Jabesh Gilead and put to the sword those living there, including the women and children. “This is what you are to do,” they said. “Kill every male and every woman who is not a virgin.” They found among the people living in Jabesh Gilead four hundred young women who had never slept with a man, and they took them to the camp at Shiloh in Canaan. Judges 21:10-2
I feel compelled to quote these things because they are so ridiculous and absurd, I suspect people might think I'm making it up. They have killed all the people except the virgins, and they offer those virgins to the remaining Benjamites as a peace offering (21:13-4)
That wasn't enough virgin women for all the Benjamites, so they needed to get some more. Israel decided the best thing for the Benjamites to do would be to kidnap some virgins who were celebrating at an annual festival by hiding in vineyards and wait until the young women were dancing in celebration. "While the young women were dancing, each man caught one and carried her off to be his wife. Then they returned to their inheritance and rebuilt the towns and settled in them." (21:23)
I don't know exactly whose daughters they were stealing here. It seems clear they weren't Israelite women because the Israelites had sworn an oath not to give their daughters to the Benjamites to be their wives. I guess other women are fair game to pluck up. One wonders what their parents and families thought about the Benjamites helping themselves to their daughters.
Lessons learned
As I indicated above, it's very difficult to discern a moral from this story.
1. It's fine to have a concubine. There is no condemnation offered in the text for having a sex lady friend who is not your wife. It's ironic because this is among the more progressive ideas in the Bible, but it is something modern Christians would firmly reject. The concubine in the story at least had the freedom to leave when she was unsatisfied. Having a means of escape offers some measure of protection from abuse.
2. It's better to offer up your concubine and/or virgin daughters instead of a guest if a mob of rapists is demanding that you supply them with a victim for sexual assault. If this was the only instance in the Bible where this kind of absurd values was demonstrated, you might be able to argue that the Levite or host were just panicked or wrong in what they were saying, but the fact that the same scenario happened in Genesis 19 by Lot, who Yahweh decided was the only upright man worth saving, serves as strong evidence that the action taken by the men in these two instances was the right one. Women's bodies are the property of men and they can be used as bargaining chips or property.
3. It is morally acceptable to start a civil war and commit genocide if you are upset about an injustice. Killing women and children as a result of what the men in a town or culture may or may not have done is an acceptable form of punishment.
4. It is fine to kidnap virgins women to take as wives as long as they aren't from your culture.
5. Yahweh might allow tens of thousands of people to die before he helps your cause. Yahweh told the Israelites to attack. He allowed 40,000 Israelite attackers to die before "handing the Benjamites over" to the Israelites.
6. Mob justice is justice. There was no trial here. There were no witnesses. There was no evidence brought. There was no jury. The author of the text offered no real criticism or insight into the situation. Critics of my claim will likely point to the end of chapter 21, which says "In those days Israel had no king; everyone did as they saw fit." (Judges 21:25) But Yahweh was allegedly interacting with the people when they asked him what to do before the battles. There is no indication of how that came about. Maybe they drew straw. Maybe they asked a priest what to do and the priest's response was written down as "Yahweh said...". Maybe there was a booming voice from the sky. If there was an almighty god watching everything happen within the tribes of his chosen people, why couldn't he have intervened to prevent bloodshed? As I indicated above, the easiest thing would have been to simply strike the rapists dead when they came knocking at the hosts' door and demanding the man be brought out. Why allow your chosen people to descend into civil war and genocide? Why allow the concubine to be raped and killed? Where Yahweh does intervene, he's not helpful.
7. Having no king in Israel was bad. That final verse in the book of Judges says there was no king in Israel, so everyone did what they thought was right. It's a criticism of the system of judges that Yahweh himself handed to the people. There is tension between this criticism (which is restated in other passages in Judges) and the view of a proposed monarchy from the prophet Samuel. Samuel articulates a view of a monarchical system as a betrayal of Yahweh and his prophets (I Samuel 8). Seems like different authors of the Bible had different ideas about the virtues of these different systems. It kind of makes one wonder if the book of Samuel was written shortly after the monarchy was established by some person who was resistant to the concept and the book of Judges was written later as a way of justifying the move to a monarchy, "you might not think things are great now, but look at the mess it was before!".
Missing Information and Moral Ambiguity
There are points of moral ambiguity in the story, in part because of ambiguity in the story telling. Was the concubine dead in the morning? Because it doesn't say for a fact that she was, it's unclear if the Levite was upset that she was gang raped all night, or if he is upset because she was killed, but may have been okay if she had only been raped all night. Apologists might argue that the cultural differences might mean we don't know, but it would have been clear to the readers in the day. Well, I'm not in that culture, and if I'm writing a text that is supposed to be timeless instruction that transcends culture, this seems like a poor excuse. If the concubine wasn't dead in the morning, when did she die? given the story, and our ignorance of the cultural context, I can envision a scenario in which the woman being sexually violated rendered her undesirable to the Levite who then killed and dismembered her in his outrage that his prize had been defiled. I'm sure believers would flinch at that thought, but given the way women were perceived in that ancient culture, this does not seem at all outside the realm of possibility.
I welcome counterpoints or opposing views. If you disagree with what I have written about this narrative, if I have made factual errors here, or if you agree, please comment. If you like my content, share with friends on social media.
Thanks for stopping by,
Gavagai
P.S.
It occurred to me that this article has been sitting in my drafts folder for years and it is the fourth installment of a series. Here are links to the other articles in the series.
OT Daughters Part I: Lot
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