Charles (Chuck) Kensinger

Judges 19 starts with the statement that Israel did not have a king.  The king was the one that would enforce the law given by Jehovah.  The people are the ones that should keep the statutes without a leader forcing them.

A Levite from the hill country of Ephraim took a woman from Bethlehem to be his wife or concubine.  For some reason, she leaves him and returns home.  As with ministers today, their lives were not perfect.  He goes after her and the actions of her father are interesting.  He delays their departure as much as he can.

When they finally leave, it is late, and they stop for the night in Jerusalem.  During the night some of the citizens want the Levite to have sex with them.  He finally pushes his wife out to them.  She is raped and eventually dies.  He dissects her and sends the twelve pieces to the leaders of each of the twelve tribes.

Four hundred and fifty thousand troops come to see the Levite after they receive the packages.  In Judges 20 they inquire about what this means, and the story of the rape and murder is shared.  The decision is made to attack the city.  The Benjamites are given an opportunity to turn the offenders over to the other Israelites, but they refuse.

It takes three tries and the Israelis seek Yahweh’s will and are assured that they are following what He wants.  Ultimately the village and most of Benjamin was destroyed.  This leaves a situation of one of the twelve tribes facing extinction.

The solution to this delima is in Judges 21.  All that remains of Benjamin are some men that had hidden during the massacre.  The other tribes had pledged not to give their daughters to them for wives.  One group of Israelites had not participated in the destruction of Benjamin.  The others decided to destroy all the men, married women, and children.  That left four hundred young girls which they sent to the Benjamites.

That was not enough.  A decision was made to allow them to kidnap some young women during a festival.  Time after time they seem to ignore common sensibilities in favor of honoring promises they made to Yahweh that never should have been made.  Judges ends with the statement once again that there was no King in Israel and everyone did what they thought was right. We call this form of government anarchy.

©Copyright 2020 by Charles Kensinger