Commentary - Judges 19:27-30

Bird's-eye view

The book of Judges is a book of cycles, a downward spiral of apostasy, oppression, crying out, and deliverance. But the final chapters, from seventeen onward, are not part of that cycle. They are the bottom of the barrel. The refrain of these chapters is that "in those days there was no king in Israel. Everyone did what was right in his own eyes" (Judges 17:6, 21:25). This is not a political comment in the first instance, but a spiritual one. Their true king was Yahweh, and they had rejected Him. What follows is the outworking of that rebellion. This is what happens when men, even covenant men, become their own standard of righteousness.

The account of the Levite and his concubine is one of the most grotesque and stomach-turning narratives in all of Scripture. It is meant to be. It is a story of covenantal collapse from every direction. The men of Gibeah are "sons of Belial," worthless men from within the tribe of Benjamin. The host is a picture of compromised hospitality. And the Levite, a man who should have been a teacher of the law and a model of righteousness, is a pathetic, self-serving coward. This passage records the grisly morning-after, and the Levite's subsequent call to arms. It is a portrait of a nation that has hit rock bottom, a people thoroughly deserving of judgment, and a stark reminder of why we need a true King to save us from ourselves.

Outline

Context In Judges

These final chapters of Judges serve as an appendix to the book, providing two key examples of the spiritual and moral rot that had set in. The first story is that of Micah and his idolatrous shrine (Judges 17-18), which shows the corruption of worship. This second story, of the Levite and the atrocity at Gibeah (Judges 19-21), shows the corruption of morals. Together, they paint a complete picture of covenantal breakdown. When right worship goes, right living is not far behind. The Levite in our story is from the hill country of Ephraim, the same region as Micah. This is not a localized problem with one bad tribe; the cancer is systemic. The Levites, who were supposed to be the spiritual backbone of the nation, are here shown to be hirelings for idolaters and, in this case, worse than useless.

Clause-by-Clause Commentary

v. 27 Then her master arose in the morning and opened the doors of the house and went out to go on his way, and behold, the woman, his concubine, was lying at the doorway of the house with her hands on the threshold.

The first thing to note is the cold, detached language. He is "her master" (adon), not her husband. Though he had gone to retrieve her "to speak kindly to her" (19:3), his actions have revealed his true heart. He is a man looking out for himself. He gets up in the morning, ready to "go on his way." His intention is simply to leave. He has survived the night, and that is all that matters to him. He opens the doors, and there she is. The image is stark and pathetic. She had made it back to the doorway, her hands on the threshold, a final, desperate attempt to reach the place of safety, to reach the man who had thrown her to the wolves. The threshold was a place of covenant and protection. To die there, with her hands upon it, is a picture of ultimate betrayal. She was seeking refuge in the house of the man who was charged to protect her, the very man who had sacrificed her to save his own skin.

v. 28 And he said to her, “Get up and let us go,” but there was no answer.

The callousness here is breathtaking. He doesn't check on her. He doesn't kneel down. He doesn't show an ounce of compassion or remorse. He simply issues a command: "Get up." For all his concern, she might as well have been a sack of grain that had fallen off the donkey. He is annoyed by the delay. This is a man whose heart has been completely hollowed out by sin and self-preservation. He is a Levite, a minister of the covenant, and yet he is utterly devoid of covenant faithfulness, or even basic human decency. "But there was no answer." This is the great, silent rebuke of the story. Her silence speaks volumes more than any accusation could. The life has been crushed out of her, and her silence condemns him. He is speaking to a corpse. The wages of his cowardice, and the depravity of the men of Gibeah, are lying silent at his feet.

v. 28 Then he took her on the donkey; and the man arose and went to his home.

There is no grief recorded. No prayer. No lament. He just hoists her body onto the donkey. She is now just a piece of baggage to be transported. The text says "the man arose," a repetition of his rising in the morning. He is all business. He has a new plan now, but it is a plan born of outrage and a desire for vengeance, not of godly sorrow. He is not repenting of his sin; he is plotting how to avenge the wrong done to him. His property has been destroyed, and now someone must pay. He travels from a place of horrific sin back to his home, carrying the evidence of that sin with him. The journey home must have been a grim one, but the text gives us no insight into his thoughts, focusing only on his actions. This is because his actions are about to speak far louder than any words.

v. 29 Then he entered his house and took a knife and took hold of his concubine and cut her in twelve pieces, limb by limb, and sent her throughout the territory of Israel.

If the story was not already horrific enough, it now descends into a kind of madness. This act is a piece of shocking, grisly political theater. He dismembers her body into twelve pieces, one for each tribe of Israel. This is a perversion of covenantal signs. When Saul later calls Israel to war against the Ammonites, he cuts up a yoke of oxen and sends the pieces out (1 Sam. 11:7), a symbolic act to summon the tribes. But this Levite uses a human body, the body of the woman he was supposed to cherish and protect. He is treating her as an animal, a thing. His actions are a grotesque parody of a covenant summons. He is using the horror of his act to galvanize the nation into action. And while his outrage at the men of Gibeah is understandable, his own hands are filthy. He is a defiled man, using a defiled body to summon a defiled nation to a war of vengeance. This is what happens when there is no king in Israel. The very instruments of justice become instruments of horror.

v. 30 And all who saw it said, “Nothing like this has ever happened or been seen from the day when the sons of Israel came up from the land of Egypt to this day. Consider it; take counsel and speak up!”

The Levite's plan works. The nation is shocked out of its stupor. The arrival of a piece of a woman's body was a message that could not be ignored. Their reaction is one of universal horror. They recognize this as an unprecedented evil in their history, something worse than anything they had experienced since the Exodus. The Exodus was their founding act of redemption, the moment God set them apart as His people. To say that this act is the worst thing to happen since then is to say that the covenant community has reached a new nadir of depravity. The final words are a call to action: "Consider it; take counsel and speak up!" The horror has forced them to confront the evil in their midst. A civil war is coming. But notice what is missing. There is no mention of prayer. No calling on the name of the Lord. No consulting the Urim and Thummim. It is a human response to a human horror. They will "take counsel" among themselves. This is the tragedy of Judges. Even when they are stirred to action against sin, they do it in their own strength and in their own way. And this will lead to yet more tragedy in the chapters to come.

Application

This is a hard passage, and it is supposed to be. It shows us the unvarnished ugliness of sin when it is given free rein. When men and women, and especially covenant leaders, abandon the law of God, this is the kind of world they create. It is a world of cowardice, brutality, and self-interest. The Levite is a picture of failed leadership. He had the title and the position, but his heart was rotten. He stands as a perpetual warning to all who would hold office in the church. A failure of character at the top will always lead to disaster below.

More than that, this story screams our need for a true King. We need a King who does not sacrifice His people for His own safety, but who sacrifices Himself for His people. We need a husband who does not throw His bride to the wolves, but who lays down His life for her. This is exactly what we have in the Lord Jesus Christ. He is the good shepherd who lays down his life for the sheep, not the hireling who flees when the wolf comes. The horror of Gibeah shows us the world without a righteous king. The cross of Christ shows us what a righteous King will do to save that world. He takes the dismembered, broken body of humanity, which has been torn apart by sin, and in His own body on the tree, He makes it whole again.

The call to "consider it" is a call to us as well. We are to consider the depths of our own sin and the horrors it produces. We are to consider the utter bankruptcy of human solutions. And we are to consider the great salvation offered to us in Christ, our true King, who reigns in righteousness and who will one day return to judge all such evil forever.