The Gospel According to Judges | Judges 19-21

Intro

When I was 13 years old, my family moved from Montclair, NJ to Brandon, SD. One of the most obvious culture shocks I experienced came while watching the local news. In NJ, our local news stations came out of New York City. Our local anchors also did the national news. Al Roker was our local weatherman.

But beside the low-budget production of news and commercials in Sioux Falls, we immediately noticed how different the content of the news was. This was 1998, and I don’t remember what the local news stories in Sioux Falls were. I just remember that they did not contain the kind of crime I was used to. Growing up in inner city Chicago and then New Jersey, the nightly news regularly contained stories of muggings, burglaries, rapes, and murders. When I was 5, a Korean man was shot and killed on our sidewalk one night, two doors down. As a kid, that was all I knew, and the news in Sioux Falls was shockingly different.

One of the most significant things about a society is what is considered normal. What is considered normal in your home? What is considered normal in Sioux Falls? What do we consider normal in our nation? And what does our idea of “normal” say about us—about our spiritual condition?

False Worship, Moral Insanity, and Social Collapse

The Book of Judges concludes with a moral indictment of normal life in Israel in those days. The last narrative—the longest in the entire book—begins and ends with these words: “In those days there was no king in Israel” (Judges 19:1, 21:25). And the closing line of the book adds, “Everyone did what was right in his own eyes.” These stories portray the spiritual and moral insanity of life in those days.

As I mentioned last week, the Book of Judges has two conclusions. We looked at one last week, the story of Micah, his house of gods, and a priest for hire. And we saw that the true God does not accept false worship. God is not fooled or manipulated when people pay God lip service and go through the motions of worship while trying to secure their own health and prosperity. Worshiping God is not the means to an end; God himself is the aim of true worship.

This final story shows that false worship produces moral insanity and social collapse. Israel’s spiritual idolatry resulted in appalling sin and drove them to the brink of ruin. Sin is not immaterial and harmless, like an imaginary monster under a child’s bed. Sin manifests in the real world with devastating consequences.

And the root of moral insanity and social collapse is false worship. All of the depravity you see in the world, all of the violence, abuse, corruption, and injustice grows out of human hearts—hearts that are far from God and full of idolatry. Good fruit comes from good roots; bad fruit comes from bad roots.

And God’s redemptive purpose for this text is to warn all people everywhere of the devastating effects of sin while pointing to the hope of the gospel. In fact, the outline of the story presents the contours of the gospel. It’s one story in three acts; each chapter is an act. Chapter 19 recounts the appalling crime in Gibeah and the horrors of human sin. Chapter 20 describes the ensuing civil war in Israel and the severity of God’s judgment. And Chapter 21 shows Israel’s grief for Benjamin and the sweetness of God’s mercy.

Act 1: The Horror of Sin

“In those days, when there was no king in Israel, a certain Levite was sojourning in the remote parts of the hill country of Ephraim, who took to himself a concubine from Bethlehem in Judah. And his concubine was unfaithful to him, and she went away from him to her father’s house at Bethlehem in Judah, and was there some four months. Then her husband arose and went after her, to speak kindly to her and bring her back. He had with him his servant and a couple of donkeys. And she brought him into her father’s house. And when the girl’s father saw him, he came with joy to meet him. And his father-in-law, the girl’s father, made him stay, and he remained with him three days. So they ate and drank and spent the night there.” (Judges 19:1–4).

The story begins with a Levite sojourning in the hill country of Ephraim, which reminds us of the Levite wandering the hill country of Ephraim in Judges 17. It’s not a promising start. 

Like the previous story, this one drops into a relational conflict without context. A Levite has taken a concubine, but she has been unfaithful and returned home. This, too, should make us uneasy, since the only other use of the word concubine in Judges was negative. In Judges 8:31, Gideon’s concubine bore Abimelech, which led to trouble. A concubine was a “second-class wife.” One commentator says, “The word always identifies female persons, whose primary function appears to have been to gratify the sexual desires of the man/husband.”

Then verse 5–9 describe the father-in-law’s excessive hospitality, which delays the couple’s return. The two men eat and drink together until it’s too late to leave. Significantly, there’s no mention of the woman. Finally, on the fifth day, the man insists on leaving, and we’ll pick it up in v. 11.

When they were near Jebus, the day was nearly over, and the servant said to his master, “Come now, let us turn aside to this city of the Jebusites and spend the night in it.” 12 And his master said to him, “We will not turn aside into the city of foreigners, who do not belong to the people of Israel, but we will pass on to Gibeah.” 13 And he said to his young man, “Come and let us draw near to one of these places and spend the night at Gibeah or at Ramah.” 14 So they passed on and went their way. And the sun went down on them near Gibeah, which belongs to Benjamin, 15 and they turned aside there, to go in and spend the night at Gibeah. And he went in and sat down in the open square of the city, for no one took them into his house to spend the night. 

16 And behold, an old man was coming from his work in the field at evening. The man was from the hill country of Ephraim, and he was sojourning in Gibeah. The men of the place were Benjaminites. 17 And he lifted up his eyes and saw the traveler in the open square of the city. And the old man said, “Where are you going? And where do you come from?” 18 And he said to him, “We are passing from Bethlehem in Judah to the remote parts of the hill country of Ephraim, from which I come. I went to Bethlehem in Judah, and I am going to the house of the Lord, but no one has taken me into his house. 19 We have straw and feed for our donkeys, with bread and wine for me and your female servant and the young man with your servants. There is no lack of anything.” 20 And the old man said, “Peace be to you; I will care for all your wants. Only, do not spend the night in the square.” 21 So he brought him into his house and gave the donkeys feed. And they washed their feet, and ate and drank. 

22 As they were making their hearts merry, behold, the men of the city, worthless fellows, surrounded the house, beating on the door [lit., ‘hurling their bodies’]. And they said to the old man, the master of the house, “Bring out the man who came into your house, that we may know him.” 23 And the man, the master of the house, went out to them and said to them, “No, my brothers, do not act so wickedly; since this man has come into my house, do not do this vile thing. 24 Behold, here are my virgin daughter and his concubine. Let me bring them out now. Violate them and do with them what seems good to you, but against this man do not do this outrageous thing.” 25 But the men would not listen to him. So the man seized his concubine and made her go out to them. And they knew her and abused her all night until the morning. And as the dawn began to break, they let her go. 26 And as morning appeared, the woman came and fell down at the door of the man’s house where her master was, until it was light. 

27 And her master rose up in the morning, and when he opened the doors of the house and went out to go on his way, behold, there was his concubine lying at the door of the house, with her hands on the threshold. 28 He said to her, “Get up, let us be going.” But there was no answer. Then he put her on the donkey, and the man rose up and went away to his home. 29 And when he entered his house, he took a knife, and taking hold of his concubine he divided her, limb by limb, into twelve pieces, and sent her throughout all the territory of Israel. 30 And all who saw it said, “Such a thing has never happened or been seen from the day that the people of Israel came up out of the land of Egypt until this day; consider it, take counsel, and speak.”

What an awful story. Words fail us, but Barry Webb helps when he remarks, “It is the most appalling abuse of a woman in Biblical literature and perhaps in any literature.”

Why is this in the Bible? I think the purpose of this text is to show the horror of sin—to display sin as utterly sinful—and to warn us of the consequences of idolatry. Some stories provoke visceral horror in response to moral evil; this is one of them. I recently listened to an interview with the parents of a man kidnapped by Hamas in the October 7, 2023 attack on Israel. To imagine one of my children enduring such brutality was unbearable.

This past week, an illegal immigrant from Venezuela was found guilty of murdering Laken Riley, a nursing student at Georgia. The details of that crime are heartbreaking and sickening.

This story is able to make you know and feel that sin is far worse than you think. How seriously do you take sin? How often do you shrug at sin, excuse sin, or even laugh at sin?

My point is not to flatten sin or engage in moral equivalence. It’s not accurate to say, as some do, that all sin is equal. All have sinned, and the wages of sin is death for everyone. But some sins are worse than others. Jesus said to Pilate, “He who delivered me over to you has the greater sin” (John 19:11). My point is that all sin is repugnant and should be far more revolting to us than it often is.

One of our problems is that we tend to think of sins (plural), rather than sin (period). When we speak of sins (plural), we usually refer to various sinful acts. But sin (singular) describes our corrupted human condition. It’s not just that we commit sins now and then, some bigger and some smaller. It’s that every human is born into sin, enslaved to sin, and lives in a constant state of sinful rebellion against God. 

If you think mainly of sins (plural), you will tend to rank sins (specific acts) in your mind as more or less bad. And when you rank sins, it’s easy to start excusing and overlooking “small sins.” Compared to gang rape, your own sin may seem much more polite and palatable. But all sin is far more evil and repugnant than we think.

Judges 19 also proclaims the universally offensive truth that all have sinned. “No one is righteous, no, not one” (Rom 3:10). 

The whole story began, if you recall, with the concubine’s own sin. She was unfaithful to her husband (19:2); literally, “played the harlot.” To be clear, her unfaithfulness does not at all justify what happened to her. However, the author does tell a story in which there are no moral heroes. The old man is despicable, offering his own daughter and his guest’s wife (vv. 23–25). The Levite is cowardly and cold. And there is no opprobrium sufficient for the lustful men of Gibeah.
What’s perplexing about Judges 19–21 is that everyone acts like they have deep moral convictions while committing outrageous atrocities. The old man expresses disapproval at the mob, then offers them his own daughter. The Levite spreads the news of his concubine’s death like he wants justice, but he has been nothing but callused toward her and did nothing to defend her when he had the chance.

Later in the story, the tribes of Israel express moral outrage at the crime of Gibeah:

“And all who saw it said, ‘Such a thing has never happened or been seen from the day that the people of Israel came up out of the land of Egypt until this day …’” (Judges 19:30).

“And the tribes of Israel sent men through all the tribe of Benjamin, saying, ‘What evil is this that has taken place among you? Now therefore give up the men, the worthless fellows in Gibeah, that we may put them to death and purge evil from Israel’” (Judges 20:12–13).

And yet those tribes, so outraged over the crime of Gibeah and so deeply committed to keeping their word, later perpetrate some of the most shocking crimes. By the end of the story, they will have slaughtered countless women and children and kidnapped hundreds of young girls.

Here’s the thing: morally depraved people are not necessarily amoral people. They hold “moral convictions,” but their moral standards are tragically miscalibrated. The story shows the insanity of a world where everyone does what’s right in his own eyes. Did you catch that? Every character in this story is doing what he thinks is right.

Morality is not a matter of whether, but which. The question is not whether people will hold moral convictions … or not. The question is which moral convictions they will hold.

This is true for all people in all places at all times on earth, including America today. The pro-abortion argument is not that there are no moral standards. The argument for abortion is framed as a matter of “reproductive rights.” Abortion bans are decried as an injustice and a threat to women everywhere. Even gang members and violent criminals operate by a moral code. They think it’s wrong to snitch. They despise people who abuse children. They feel justified to seek vengeance against a rival gang.

If the moral will of God revealed in Scripture is not your standard of justice, the only alternative is a society where everyone does what is right in his own eyes—which ends up looking like Judges 19. 

Which standard do you live by, the Word of God or what’s right in your own eyes?

Act 2: The Severity of Judgment

Chapter 20 describes the near-annihilation of the tribe of Benjamin. When each tribe received a part of the concubine’s body, they were outraged:

“And the chiefs of all the people, of all the tribes of Israel, presented themselves in the assembly of the people of God, 400,000 men on foot that drew the sword. … And all the people arose as one man, saying, ‘None of us will go to his tent, and none of us will return to his house’” (Judges 20:2, 8).

This is the largest assembly of the people of Israel recorded in the book of Judges. The scene recalls Judges 1, when the people of Israel united to inquire of the Lord and complete the conquest of Canaan. But now they are arrayed against their own brother, the tribe of Benjamin. (The word brother is used four times in chapters 20–21.) Imagine if Israel had ever been this united to trust the Lord and take possession of the land he had promised them!

In verses 12–17, Benjamin is utterly unrepentant and resolved to harbor the perpetrators.

“But the Benjaminites would not listen to the voice of their brothers, the people of Israel. Then the people of Benjamin came together out of the cities to Gibeah to go out to battle against the people of Israel. And the people of Benjamin mustered out of their cities on that day 26,000 men who drew the sword, besides the inhabitants of Gibeah, who mustered 700 chosen men. Among all these were 700 chosen men who were left-handed; every one could sling a stone at a hair and not miss” (Judges 20:13–16).

A civil war ensues across three bloody battles, which are described in 20:18–48. Somewhat surprisingly, Israel began by inquiring of God, asking him which tribe should go up first to fight against Benjamin (20:18). Perhaps even more shocking is the fact that God responded: “And the LORD said, ‘Judah shall go up first’” (20:18). This makes sense since the woman was from Judah. Judah was also the first tribe to go up in conquest (1:2), and the tribe from which kings would come.  So we might expect God to bless Israel with swift victory, but our surprise only increases when Benjamin kills 22,000 men of Israel in the first battle (20:21).

The same scene repeats in the second battle. Israel inquires of God (20:23), God sends them out, and this time Benjamin slaughters 18,000 men of Israel (v. 25). Now Israel has lost 40,000 fighting men (10% of their fighting force), and the wicked men of Gibeah remain unpunished.

“Then all the people of Israel, the whole army, went up and came to Bethel and wept. They sat there before the LORD and fasted that day until evening, and offered burnt offerings and peace offerings before the LORD. And the people of Israel inquired of the LORD … saying, ‘Shall we go out once more to battle against our brothers, the people of Benjamin, or shall we cease?’ And the LORD said, ‘Go up, for tomorrow I will give them into your hand’” (Judges 20:26–28).

Finally Israel has a divine promise of victory. That victory is described in Judges 20:29–48. By the time the dust settled, only 600 men of Benjamin remained. Everyone and everything else in Benjamin—man and beast—had been struck down, and every town burned with fire (20:48). In all, 65,000 men of Israel died in that civil war.

Verse 35 provides the summary and theological perspective: “And the LORD defeated Benjamin before Israel, and the people of Israel destroyed 25,100 men of Benjamin that day.” 

When the world is dark, the question is, Where is God? And here we are assured that God did not abandon Israel. God was present and God was at work. Only instead of being present to bless his people in the land of promise, he was present to judge them for their sin.

But why did God allow Benjamin to inflict severe losses against Israel those first two times? It seems that God was judging all of Israel as a nation. The men of Gibeah were not the only guilty ones here. The Levite and his host from Ephraim participated through their passivity.

But God’s judgment fell on Israel as a nation, not just for the sins of rape and murder, but for the sin of the nation. This story doesn’t follow any single character; each one drops out without resolution. Rather, the author seems more interested in showing how morally bankrupt Israel as a nation had become on every level. These characters are examples of what everyone was like. From marriage conflict to lack of hospitality, from violence and assault to a broken justice system, this story depicts a nation in total spiritual and moral disarray. Is it any wonder that the stroke of God’s justice fell on the whole nation? No one will escape God’s just judgment just because other people are worse sinners.

And yet not even the death of 65,000 men—warriors and men of valor—could atone for Israel’s sin. Full atonement for sin requires the blood of a sinless substitute—a perfect Redeemer who is fully God and fully man. Paul writes in Romans 5:18–19, “Therefore, as one trespass led to condemnation for all men, so one act of righteousness leads to justification and life for all men. For as by the one man’s disobedience the many were made sinners, so by the one man’s obedience the many will be made righteous.”

Act 3: The Surprise of Mercy

When the bloodshed finally ends, there is a drastic change in Israel.

“And the people came to Bethel and sat there till evening before God, and they lifted up their voices and wept bitterly. And they said, ‘O LORD, the God of Israel, why has this happened in Israel, that today there should be one tribe lacking in Israel?’ And the next day the people rose early and built there an altar and offered burnt offerings and peace offerings. … And the people of Israel had compassion for Benjamin their brother and said, ‘One tribe is cut off from Israel this day.” … And the people had compassion on Benjamin because the LORD had made a breach in the tribes of Israel” (Judges 21:2–4, 6, 15).

The theme of this final chapter is Israel’s sorrow and compassion for Benjamin. The entire population of Benjamin had been reduced to 600 men. And there were no wives for those men, and thus no future for Benjamin. This fate was sealed by an oath the other tribes had taken before the war never to give their daughters in marriage to Benjamin (Judges 21:1).

The rest of chapter 21 describes two attempts by Israel to procure wives for Benjamin. First, they reviewed the records and found that no one from the town of Jabesh-gilead had joined the fight against Benjamin(21:5, 8–9). Verse 5 explains: “For they had taken a great oath concerning him who did not come up to the LORD to Mizpah, saying, ‘He shall surely be put to death’” (Judges 21:5). This was a convenient solution to their problem. They would simply keep their oath and kill all the people of Jabesh-gilead, keeping the young women to become wives for the men of Benjamin. That plan produced 400 wives, leaving them 200 short.

Their second plan was to give the 200 remaining men from Benjamin permission to kidnap girls from the town of Shiloh. Which they rationalized thusly, “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).

What are we to make of all of this? None of it sits right with us, and there’s no need to justify Israel’s conduct here. What started with the horrifying objectification of one woman ends in the slaughter of all the married women of Jabesh-gilead and the kidnapping of 600 young women. No situation is so bad that you can’t make it worse. Remember the perspective that brackets the entire story: “Everyone did what was right in his own eyes.”

And yet even as sin makes things worse and worse, we detect glimmers of God’s great grace. The horrors of Judges 19 bear a striking resemblance to events that transpired in a city called Sodom (Gen 19). When two angels visited Sodom, Abraham’s nephew Lot took them into his house. In the night, the men of Sodom surrounded his house and demanded, “Bring them out to us, that we may know them” (Gen 19:5). Like the old man in Gibeah, Lot offered his own daughters instead. But in that story, the angels blinded the men of Sodom and dragged Lot and his family out of the city (Gen 19:16) before the Lord rained fire and brimstone from heaven on Sodom (Gen 19:24).

Sodom was completely destroyed, wiped off the face of the earth. The very name of Sodom is used throughout Scripture as a picture of God’s wrath. That is surely what the sin of Gibeah and the tribe of Benjamin deserved. But as the book of Judges comes to a close, it says, “Then they [the people of Benjamin] went and returned to their inheritance and rebuilt the towns and lived in them. And the people of Israel departed from there at that time, every man to his tribe and family, and they went out from there every man to his inheritance” (Judges 21:23–24). Israel was not destroyed; Benjamin was not cut off. 

S. G. DeGraaf says, “By these actions the tribe of Benjamin was preserved. But the Israelites had tackled the problem in a cocky, conceited, highhanded way. How estranged front he Lord’s service Israel had become! How little did it live by His light! It is a miracle that anything came of that people, that justice was practiced, that the fellowship of the tribes was preserved. There is no other explanation for this miracle than that God, in His grace in the Christ, wished to dwell in the midst of that people in spite of sin.”

Does it seem scandalous to you that God would choose to dwell with people like that? It should! It is scandalous! And it is the scandal of the gospel that the holy God would offer his sinless Son to redeem sinners like us in order to dwell with us forever.

“For God so loved the world.” Just think what that means! God so loved this sinful world full of perversion and wickedness, infested with rapists and murders, defiled by adultery and abortion, blighted by idolaters, liars, and thieves. God so loved sinners, that he gave his own Son.

Next Sunday marks the beginning of Advent on the church calendar, when we celebrate the fact that God gave his own Son in history. Believe it or not, the conclusion of Judges is a story that points to Christmas. When the Levite and his concubine arrived in Gibeah, they had no place to stay, “for no one took them into his house to spend the night” (Judges 19:15).

Generations later, Mary and Joseph would arrive in Bethlehem, where Luke says, “There was no place for them in the inn” (Luke 2:7). We think of the manger as quaint and sentimental, but as an echo of Leviticus 19 and Genesis 19, it reminds us that the Son of God was born into a wicked and dangerous world.

Also, this story cries out for a king. “In those days there was no king in Israel …” (19:1, 21:25). The awful atrocities of Judges 19–21 cry out for a King to right every wrong. And that King who came to save the world from the horror of sin was born in Bethlehem, which was also the hometown of the concubine. It turns out she was not the only one from Bethlehem who would be beaten, abused, and murdered. But by his death, Jesus would destroy the power of sin and death, and by his resurrection he would begin to make all things new.

Under Adam, horrifying sin has been the norm on earth; but in Christ there is a new normal.