Now here's one that I wish I could poke fun at, but this text is flat our disturbing. That's the reason you haven't heard a lot of sermons or Sunday School lessons on it. This one would be hard to pull off in a 1st and 2nd grade Sunday School class using flannel-graph story-board.
Judges 19:22-24 reads:
While they were enjoying themselves, some of the wicked men of the city surrounded the house. Pounding on the door they shouted to the old man who owned the house, "Bring out the man who came to your house so we can have sex with him." 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 disgraceful 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 whatever you wish. But to this man, don't do such a disgraceful thing."
Huh?
Concubines were a normal thing in the time of the Judges--they were recognized companions of men, but with fewer rights than legitimate wives. Hmm. Sort of like common-law wives or live-in girlfriends in our experience. I don't suppose it would be socially acceptable or politically correct to use that word today. Try this at a holiday gathering: "Hey, Bob! I heard that you've taken a concubine. Congratulations!"
It may be helpful to understand the mention of "sitting in the city square" in verses 15 and 20 was a cultural norm, too--people sat in the city square to let others know of their need for a place to spend the night. Think of it as the BC version of Expedia.
Note also that this text in Judges 19 sounds hauntingly similar to a text found in Genesis 19--having to do with the sinfulness of Sodom.
How do we understand the very difficult sentences in this text? A group of citizens came to this man's house hoping to rape his male houseguest? And the man says, "Here, take my daughter instead?"
I'm afraid it only gets worse if you read on. In the next verse the man actually sends his concubine out, and the men of the city abuse her all night long. In the morning, it appears that he finds her dead on his doorstep. The story ends with the man dismembering her body. It is hellish.
Is this really in the Bible? It sounds more like a Wes Craven movie!
The whole narrative demonstrates the moral decay of the times. The book of Judges depicts a time when (see 19:1, for instance), "In those days, Israel had no king." Things had declined so severely that the people of God were behaving like the people of Sodom, so much so that one of those most deplorable acts in Sodom's history was now replaying itself in the lives of a Levite and his family. Offering to send out his daughter, concubine, or anyone to a rape-lusting mob is the perfect picture of just how lost this Levite was and this culture had become.
Here's a thought: Turn on your television news. I'll bet you'll see a story on domestic violence or child molestation that will turn your stomach. Check the headlines on the internet. You'll come across stories of children enslaved or human trafficking going on somewhere in the world right now. It's no surprise when we read a story of a jealous cheerleader's mom killing one of her daughter's rivals, or a parent selling their child into prostitution for a drug fix, or a story of an angry mob going on a murderous rampage.
When we see these kinds of stories recorded in history, and when we see the headlines in our own times, we do well to recognize that some things never change. Whenever people turn their backs on God, we can expect depravity to rear its ugly head. When people wander from God--quite literally--all hell breaks loose.
