When Every Man Is His Own King Text: Judges 19:27-30
Introduction: The Anatomy of a Rotting Corpse
The book of Judges is not for the faint of heart. It is a book of cycles, a downward spiral of sin, oppression, crying out, and deliverance, followed by an even deeper plunge into corruption. But the final chapters, what we might call the appendix of Judges, are something else entirely. The cycle stops, and we are simply shown the rotted-out heart of Israel in those days. These chapters are a diagnosis. They are God holding up a mirror to His people to show them the full flower of their apostasy. And what we see is grotesque. It is appalling. It is meant to be.
The refrain that brackets this section is the key to the whole thing: "In those days there was no king in Israel; everyone did what was right in his own eyes." This is not, as some moderns might imagine, a celebration of libertarian freedom. This is not a portrait of a rustic utopia where everyone just gets along without a central government. This is the biblical definition of anarchy, and anarchy is not a political theory; it is a theological disease. When men reject the kingship of God, they do not become free. They become slaves to their own lusts, and every man becomes a petty tyrant, building a kingdom on the rubble of his neighbor's life.
The story of the Levite and his concubine is arguably the nadir of the Old Testament. It is a story of covenantal breakdown at every level: marital, communal, and national. It is a story of cowardice, lust, brutality, and a perverse, self-righteous fury. It is what happens when the people of God forget God. They do not become neutral; they become monstrous. They become like the Canaanites they were supposed to drive out. In fact, they become worse.
Our text today picks up at the grisly dawn after a night of horrific abuse in Gibeah, a town in Benjamin that had become a new Sodom. And what unfolds is not just the tragic end of one woman, but the catalyst for a national crisis. The Levite's actions are shocking, but they are meant to shock. They are a parable in blood and bone, a ghastly sermon preached to a nation that had gone deaf to the prophets of God. This is what you have become, God is saying. Look at it. Do not look away. Consider it.
The Text
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.
And he said to her, "Get up and let us go," but there was no answer. Then he took her on the donkey; and the man arose and went to his home.
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.
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!"
(Judges 19:27-30 LSB)
The Callousness of Self-Interest (v. 27-28)
We begin with the morning after the atrocity.
"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. And he said to her, 'Get up and let us go,' but there was no answer. Then he took her on the donkey; and the man arose and went to his home." (Judges 19:27-28)
The first thing to notice is the chillingly casual demeanor of the Levite. "Her master arose in the morning." He had apparently slept. After throwing his concubine to a depraved mob to save his own skin, he got his rest. His first thought is not for her, but for his travel plans: he "went out to go on his way." He is an itinerant preacher, a man of God, and his schedule is what matters.
He finds her at the doorway, her hands on the threshold. This is a posture of utter desperation. She had crawled back, perhaps trying to get to the safety of the house, her hands reaching for the place her master had shut her out from. She died reaching for a deliverance that never came, at the door of the man who was sworn to protect her. The threshold is a covenantal place, a place of entry and belonging. For her, it became a tombstone.
And what is the Levite's response? Not grief. Not horror. Not repentance. He issues a brusque command: "Get up and let us go." He treats her not as a person who has endured an unimaginable horror, but as an inconvenience, a delay to his itinerary. He is her "master," the text says, not her husband. His concern is for his property, his travel companion. When there is no answer, his response is purely pragmatic. He hoists her body onto the donkey. There is no weeping, no lament, just the cold logistics of a man dealing with a problem.
This is what happens when "every man does what is right in his own eyes." Righteousness is replaced by utility. Love is replaced by self-interest. This Levite is a hollow man. He is a minister of God's covenant who knows nothing of covenant faithfulness. He is a picture of Israel's leadership in that time: spiritually bankrupt, morally cowardly, and concerned only with their own position and convenience. He is a man who uses the forms of religion, but his heart is a stone.
A Grisly Call to Arms (v. 29)
The Levite's actions upon returning home are calculated, brutal, and utterly without precedent.
"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." (Judges 19:29 LSB)
This act is so shocking that it is difficult to process. He dismembers her body. This is not a random act of madness; it is a deliberate, symbolic act. He cuts her into twelve pieces, one for each tribe of Israel. This is a horrifying perversion of a covenantal summons. In the ancient world, an animal might be cut in pieces to seal a covenant (Genesis 15) or to summon the tribes to war (1 Samuel 11). The Levite is using this ancient symbolism, but he is using the desecrated body of his own concubine as the message.
What is he saying with this act? He is saying, "Look at what they have done!" He is casting himself as the victim. He is using this horror to stoke the fires of outrage and call for vengeance. But notice the profound hypocrisy. He is the one who threw her to the wolves. He is a central party to the crime. Yet in his self-righteousness, he presents himself as the aggrieved party, demanding justice. He is manipulating the tribes, using the broken body of this woman as a political tool to rally them to his cause.
This is the logic of a world without a king. When you do what is right in your own eyes, your own cause is always just. Your own anger is always righteous. You can justify any atrocity in the name of your own perceived victimhood. The Levite is not seeking God's justice. He is seeking personal vindication, and he is willing to commit a further act of unspeakable desecration to get it. He is turning a private sin into a public spectacle to serve his own ends. He is a master of propaganda, and his medium is human flesh.
A Nation Stunned into Action (v. 30)
The message, as horrific as it was, has its intended effect. The nation is shocked out of its stupor.
"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!'" (Judges 19:30 LSB)
The arrival of a piece of a human body was a summons that could not be ignored. The people recognized this as a singular evil. They rightly say that nothing like this had been seen since the Exodus. The Exodus was the founding act of their nation, the moment God delivered them from bondage and made them His people. To compare this event to that era is to say that the very foundations of their society have been shaken. This is a foundational crisis.
The response of the people is threefold. First, "Consider it." This is a call to sober reflection. They are being told not to react with blind passion, but to think about the implications of this evil. What does it mean that this could happen in Israel? What kind of people have we become? Second, "take counsel." This is a call for wisdom and deliberation. The leaders must gather and determine a righteous course of action. Third, "speak up!" This is a call to judgment. Silence in the face of such evil is complicity. A verdict must be rendered.
On the one hand, this is a good and right response. The moral conscience of Israel, though deeply calloused, was not entirely dead. They were capable of being shocked. They knew that a line had been crossed that could not be uncrossed. But on the other hand, we must see the tragic irony. Where was this outrage when Micah was setting up his idol? Where was it when the tribe of Dan was stealing priests and conquering peaceful cities? Where was it when the men of Gibeah were pounding on the door? The nation had become numb to a thousand smaller compromises, and it took a literal dismemberment to get their attention.
Their outrage is also being manipulated by the Levite. They are responding to his narrative, the narrative of the aggrieved victim. They are about to go to war, a bloody civil war, based on a summons from a cowardly, hypocritical, and wicked man. This is the danger of righteous anger when it is not submitted to the kingship of Christ. It can be channeled and used by wicked men for their own purposes, leading to a justice that is just as corrupt as the crime it seeks to punish.
The King We Need
This entire narrative screams one thing: Israel needs a king. Not just any king. Not a king like the nations, who would simply be a bigger version of the Levite, using his power for his own ends. They needed a righteous king, a true shepherd, a man after God's own heart. This story is a black velvet backdrop against which the necessity of David, and ultimately the necessity of Christ, is displayed.
When we do what is right in our own eyes, we end up here. We end up in a world of casual brutality, of self-serving rage, where human beings are treated as objects to be used, discarded, and even dismembered for a cause. Our world today thinks it has progressed beyond such barbarism, but it is a delusion. We simply have more sophisticated ways of doing the same thing. We dismember children in the womb and call it healthcare. We carve up the created order of male and female and call it freedom. We tear apart the covenant of marriage and call it self-fulfillment. We are the people of Gibeah. We are the cowardly Levite. We do what is right in our own eyes, and our hands are on the threshold of judgment.
The only answer to this horror is the true King, the Lord Jesus Christ. He is the Master who did not throw us to the mob to save Himself, but who threw Himself to the mob to save us. He is the one who came to a door and found us dead in our trespasses, not with our hands on the threshold, but utterly lifeless. And He did not say, "Get up," as a command we had to obey in our own strength. He took our deadness upon Himself. His body was broken, torn, and dismembered on the cross, not as a call to a bloody civil war, but as a summons to peace with God.
The cross is God's grisly message sent out to all the tribes of the earth. It says, "Look at what your sin has done. Consider it. Take counsel. And speak." But the speech it calls for is not a cry for vengeance, but the cry of repentance. The body of Christ was broken so that the body of Christ, His Church, could be made whole. He is the King who does not do what is right in His own eyes, but what is right in the eyes of His Father. And because He reigns, we are no longer left to the anarchy of our own hearts. We have a King, and His throne is a throne of grace. We must flee the self-made kingdoms of Gibeah and bow the knee to Him, the only one who can bring true justice and lasting peace.