Judges 19 - State of the nation

Again, this section starts with the words, "Israel had no king", a warning that we are about to get another episode of the depravity of the nation.

The incident starts with the rather tawdry relationships of the man and his concubine. She is unfaithful to him, but in the end they get back together. The concubine's father and the repeated efforts of the father to get the man to stay a little longer is an example of the hospitality culture of the time.

On the way back to his home town the man, contrary to his servant's suggestion, wants to stay in an Israelite town, expecting to receive hospitality. As it turns out they are very inhospitable. We tend to skip over this fact and shrug our shoulders, but hospitality was considered very important. The earlier part of the chapter is stressing what good hospitality should be like, and the contrast with the lack of it from the Israelites is a damning indictment of them.

One man does take the travellers into his house. A crowd from the town then gathered and they demanded the traveller be sent out for them for homosexual rape. The old man offered to send his daughters out, and in the end the traveller sent out his concubine. The crowd raped and abused her. The man then cut her up and distributed the pieces around the nation.

Now, the whole episode is horrible and appals us (rightly so). However, the main point of the incident is the depraved state that the nation had descended into.