Judges 19:1,2 - Israel had no king

19:1

We now come to the final episode in Judges, spanning the last three chapters. So far things have not been great, but they are just about to get an awful lot worse. The section opens with the oft repeated refrain of Judges, “In those days Israel had no king”. This is an indication that what we are about to read is an account of the terrible state of affairs that existed in Israel. The events in Judges are presented with the clear message, “this is not how things should be”, and “this is how things are in a nation that rejects the Lord and His commands”. The report begins with a Levite who lived “in a remote area of Ephraim”. He took a concubine. Generally a concubine was a “secondary wife”, and was treated more as a possession, rather than a partner. I.e. they did not have the same rights as a wife. However, there is no mention of this Levite having a wife, though that may be was taken as read. On the other hand, her father was called the Levite’s “father-in-law”. It is interesting that these last two episodes in Judges involve Levites. Maybe part of the message is that the priestly system was in utter disarray.

19:2

“But she was unfaithful to him”. It is not clear what this means. Some translations say “she played the whore” (KJV, NKJV etc), but there is no direct indication of this. Some manuscripts even indicate she was angry with her “husband”. Whatever the case, she ran off back to her parent’s home in Bethlehem. It seems unlikely that she would do this if she had been “playing the whore”. Anyway, she was there for four months.