40 Minutes In The Old Testament - Judges 19:13-30 (Episode 218)

Episode Date: May 29, 2020

Chad and Daniel wrestle with one of the darkest and most heart-wrenching passages in the old testament. The depravity of man is on full display and we find that we need a priest who is not like us. Have a listen. 1517 Podcast Network 1517 YouTube Donate

Welcome to another episode of 40 Minutes in the Old Testament. 40 Minutes in the Old Testament is a 1517 Podcast Network podcast. You can go to 1517.org slash podcast. Check out all of their podcasts that are delivered over there. while you're over there check out all the articles and if you're using that three-year lectionary on sunday morning you go over to crafted preaching and get some exegesis help man you can get it from like some some heavy hitters like bob kolb and john pless i mean you can't really do a lot better than that so you go over there and check it out if you're a if you're a

pastor or if you're just interested in uh in reading some exegetical work man uh also go over to the youtube channel you can check out the the series that we're putting out putting out over there. We just released the entirety of Conversations in the Decalogue with Chad and Scott Keith and I, and we go through the entire Ten Commandments. If you are interested in a more in-depth approach than we went through on 40 Minutes, you can check that out. We also went through the Formula of Concord with Eric Sorensen, and we are about to, I think when this releases, the first episode will be up of conversations on belief and culture, which we're going to be talking about postmodernism and questions pertaining to that. And that's Scott Keith,

Bruce Hillman, and I. And Bruce is sort of a postmodern expert. So I'm definitely playing the role of host in those conversations because I got thoughts on the Decalogue. I got thoughts on the formula of concord uh i've got some thoughts on post-modernism but i just don't know nearly as much about it as as bruce does so it's a fascinating conversation so you can check out the first video uh on that you might be wondering what is post-modernism well that's convenient because that is the title of the first video where we talk about what it is uh pros cons uh we're not just uh crapping all over post-modernism we're trying to talk about what it is what's good about it what's maybe problematic about it so check that out chad how's it going man it's good well

i'm i'm enjoying my last few days in the first half century of my life there you go yeah i turned 50 on on saturday so the day is approaching i keep i keep telling my wife it's it's all over now you can get married to an old man hey man 50 is the new 30 is that something like that yeah yeah but everything's good we uh uh this is the day after memorial day so we had a nice weekend and uh yeah it's uh it's turned out to be a uh you know a little return to normalcy my wife's back to work yeah and uh so it's uh not feeling quite as weird and twilight zone-ish as it has been for the last two months yeah there's nothing like um i remember i i saw that the the ozarks were trending on twitter uh on memorial day and i was like oh i live in the ozarks it was

it was a lake of the ozarks which is in missouri so i don't i don't live on the lake of the ozarks but uh if you ever watch the show ozark on netflix i live a couple just just two hours or so from there yeah apparently they were they were really having themselves a memorial day not a lot of social distancing going on there at the lake of the ozarks apparently so yeah well we've had the same thing in fact uh so I live in New Braunfels Texas and we're known as a as a river town so people come here in the summertime to go to Schlitterbahn which is our water park and they float the river and evidently uh some of the major newspapers national newspapers have been using photos from people floating the river in New Braunfels to uh to kind of you know go after

people who aren't social distancing so uh yeah our town has made national news there you go Yeah, I saw this hilarious thing where they were talking about Arkansas being very, very open. And the caption on the news read, Arkansas opens beaches, pools, campgrounds. And I was like, beaches? Yeah, I saw the picture. Yeah, beaches. You didn't realize that you weren't quite as aware of the geography as you stated. I didn't know.

I didn't know we had those We're just opening up everything If we don't have it, we're opening it anyway Is that the old George Strait song Oceanfront property in Arizona Yeah, I guess so I'm like, what happened There had to be a real catastrophe

For Arkansas to have beaches Southern half of the United States Dropping into the ocean A little bit of normalcy And Man, today, speaking of normalcy We've got some some crazy abnormality coming up and nothing nothing normal about what we're talking about

today no no so uh yeah so if you if if you listen to this uh podcast with with children you know just kind of give you uh our rating of uh what's coming up here this is some uh i think one commentator that i that i've been reading he says that this is the this is the lowest point in the book of judges if not the whole old testament yeah and it's pretty hard to argue against that that view yeah it's it's it's pretty rough yeah so we'll uh i will of course we'll talk about uh everything that happens and and and hopefully also just bring a little bit of a little bit of light in the midst of the darkness by uh talking about how uh this kind of has repercussions for other parts of scripture and in the end kind of how it all is uh is related to human depravity

and our need for a Savior from sin. So anyway, we're in Judges 19. If you haven't been listening over the last couple of podcasts, we're about midway through this chapter. And we're in the latter half, of course, of the book of Judges. These last couple of stories have to do with really two main episodes. We covered the first one, and that was all about a Levite and stolen gods and the setting up of a city for the tribe of Dan.

That ended with chapter 18. Chapter 19, we're introduced to another Levite. And just kind of a recap what happened so far through about the first 11, 12 verses. So the Levite had a concubine. Something went wrong, as we talked about last time. We're not exactly sure what. and anyway she she ended up leaving leaving the house running away from him and going back home to her father's house which was in Bethlehem so the Levite after a few months decides that he

wants her back so he travels to Bethlehem and everything at least at first seems to be going okay they seem to have at least reconciled enough to get back together and one major part of the story is that her dad does not want them to leave. This becomes important because of the latter half of the chapter, because he becomes the father of the concubine, becomes kind of the paragon of hospitality. I mean, like he is head over heels hospitable. He's wanting to give them food and drink and keep them there. And no, don't leave. No, don't leave. Until finally, the Levite basically has to say to his father-in-law, no, we're leaving. So they do leave, but the problem is that they've been detained during this day so long that they're not going

to be able to get very far. They're not certainly going to be able to get back home, so they have to find somewhere to spend the night. So they travel along, and they come by the city of the Jebusites, which is Jerusalem. Jerusalem was originally inhabited by the Jebusites, and And his servant, the servant of the Levite who's traveling with them, says, hey, you know, why don't we just spend the night there? And the Levite's like, oh, no, no, can't do that. There's no way that we Israelites are going to stay in the same city with those terrible non-Israelites, the Jebusites. Because, you know, who knows what might happen if we were to spend the night in a town that's full of Gentiles. Now, of course, you get the irony if you know this story, because as it turns out, the city where they end up is going to weigh out Canaanite, the Canaanites, as far as just the savagery and the immorality and the violence that takes place.

but that's part of the irony here is that they they bypass jerusalem because at that point in history it's a gentile town in order that they might stay in an israelite community and it turns out to be a night from hell while they're in this this israelite town so anyway that takes us to those first 11 12 verses and picking up with verse 14 it says they they passed long and they went their way and the sun set on them we have all these time markers in here there's all sort i don't know if you you picked up on that last time but there's all sorts of time markers with regard to like sunrise and sunset and what it's afternoon or it's the evening and we're going to see more of these come up as well i think this is kind of metaphorically included in order to indicate

the darkness is about to envelop them so that the sun had said it's going to be night of course as you know, from Genesis to Revelation, night is iconic of wickedness and death and depravity and all manner of evil. And light, of course, is the opposite. So the fact that these events take place under cover of darkness in night is just fitting with the whole biblical narrative of darkness being this metaphor for evil. So the sun sets on them near Gibeah, which belongs to Benjamin. Now with the inclusion of the name Benjamin, this basically sets the tone for the whole rest of the book. So the rest of the book of Judges is going to revolve around the tribe of Benjamin, because this is going to happen in a Benjamite tribe. Next chapter, we're going to see

that the tribe of Benjamin will not hand over the perpetrators of what's about to happen. And so there's this huge civil war that happens in Israel, which all the tribes go against the tribe of Benjamin, and it's almost annihilated. Then we pick up in the last chapter of Judges with how the rest of the tribes of the Israelites are arranging a manner in which the surviving Benjamite men can find some wives. So I say all that just because it's mentioned here, and so the tribe of Benjamin is going to be the motif that emerges throughout the whole rest of the book of Judges. So they go to Gibeah, and they turn aside in order to stay there for the night, and it says they entered, they sat down in the open square of the city, for no one took them into his house

to spend the night. Now to us, this is where you got to ditch your modern mindset, and you got to take on an ancient, Near Eastern, especially Israelite mindset. I was trying to think of, maybe Dan, you could help me out here. I was trying to think of like a modern analogy. But, you know, this would be kind of like if, I don't know if this is the exact parallel, but, you know, say you and your wife drove from Arkansas to Texas. And you parked out front.

And we wouldn't let you in the house. We're like, oh, no, you can stay in the front yard. Yeah. Just imagine how shocking and insulting that would be. Well, it's kind of like this. If you're an Israelite and you're traveling and you go into a city, it was not only expected, it was basically demanded that you be welcomed into somebody's home. That's just the way the law's hospitality worked. So because they're forced to stay in the open square of the city, at least at first, because no one takes them into their home, it's insulting. I mean, this is partially why they would go to an Israelite city as opposed to a Gentile one.

Right. That was the idea, right? Yeah, like, if we go to a Gentile city, we don't know if anyone's going to help us out. We don't know what they're about there. If you go to an Israelite city, we'll have a bed to sleep in. Yeah, yeah, that's precisely why they went here. So that's kind of the first scene, if you will, where they arrive, nobody takes them into their house. So, verse 16, what happens?

Well, lo and behold, actually, there is a word behold here. Most translations include that. I wish all would because, just throw this in here, anytime you see the word behold, that's a typical narrative device for indicating something that you should pay attention to or where there's a change in scene, maybe a new character is going to be introduced. I don't think the NIV included behold, but like the ESV does, New American Standard does. But if you see the word behold in your English translation, that's a narrative device. We might say, hey, look, or something like that. It's just a way in which Hebrew narrative is structuring itself so you pay attention to changes. So they get there. They're staying in the open square. and then Hinnay, behold, an old man was coming out of the field from his work at evening. And this

guy is not even from this town. It says that he was from the hill country of Ephraim, which by the way, happens to be the exact same place where this Levite is from. So both guys are from the hill country of Ephraim. And it says he was staying in Gibeah, but the men of the place were benjamite so he's an outsider now the reason this is significant and maybe you've already picked up on this but when you read judges 19 when you read this chapter we're in you have to read it with with one ear tuned into judges 19 but your other ear has to be tuned into genesis 19 because these two genesis 19 is the story of when the two messengers the two angelic messengers went to the city of Sodom in order to bring Lot and his family out before the Lord destroyed it.

So these, we'll get more to that in just a minute, but it's obvious that these two particular stories are to be read side by side. And right away, we pick up on one of, in this particular detail, one of the parallels between these two, because remember, Lot was an outsider. He moved to Sodom, but he wasn't a citizen of that particular city. He didn't belong to those people. He was an outsider, but he chose to settle there. Same with this guy. He's an outsider. He's from the hill country of Ephraim, but he decides he's going to live in Gibeah, whatever the reason might've been. So right away, we see two parallels between these two stories. Also the fact you notice when in Genesis 19, when the two messengers show up, they're just going to stay in the open

square of the city, but Lot meets them and he's like, no, no, no. Come to my house. I'll take care of you don't stay in the open square of the city so right away we're thinking okay i mean just as the story unfolds we're thinking ah this this guy must be you know kind of like lot he must be a uh of the same character or maybe have the same values same you know cultural norms so right away we're kind of comparing these these two we're wondering okay is this old man going to be like lot number two is he going to be like like that uh that guy from the patriarchal narratives you also start to think that maybe the reason that he thinks it's not wise

to stay on the square of the city doesn't have to do with it gets cold at night but it seems like in the story of Lot he's like you really don't want to be sleeping on the square of this particular city yeah he doesn't like give any details but he's like you can

just you can almost hear his tone of voice Genesis 19 right like no no you do not you do not want to spend the night here this is like it's not just like the bad part of town it's just like this is a bad town yeah you do not want to be caught out in the open in in the city of sodom yeah i think the old man's kind of like that too he's like uh no i know gibia yeah and you do not want to stay out downtown in gibia you want to

come home with me so anyway he says first of all i kind of got ahead of myself there he says verse 17, he sees them, and he sees the traveler, it says, in the open square of the city, and so the old man says, where are you going, and where'd you come from? And the Levite responds, well, we're passing from Bethlehem in Judah to the remote part of the hill country Bethlehem, for that's where I'm from, and I went to Bethlehem in Judah, but now I'm going to my house, and no man will take me into his house. One little comment about the Hebrew here, depending on if you're following along in the translation. It might say, I am going to my house, or it might say, I am going to the house of the Lord. There's a couple of different ways that you could read that.

I think it's probably my house. It's a little bit difficult to explain from the Hebrew, but the translation, my house, is probably the correct reading. Either way, if you notice a difference in your translation, that's kind of what's going on there. We have two different traditions as to how that should be read. But the point is they have this kind of give and take, a little short conversation. And he says, oh, okay, well, so I'm from the same place that you're from. And he kind of leaves out details. He doesn't say why he went to Bethlehem, but he said he went there and now he's, yeah, he's heading back. And he adds, no one will take me into their house. But he says, verse 19, yeah, we're good. I've got straw. I've got fodder for our donkeys. And we

got some bread. We got some wine for me and your maidservant and the young man who's with your servant. So there's no lack of anything. So he's almost trying to say, we'll be fine. Don't worry about us. But the old man is having none of this. He says, no, shalom to you, peace to you. Only let me take care of your needs. However, like Lot said to the two visitors, don't spend the night in the open square. So verse 21, he took them into his house, gave the donkeys the food they needed. They washed their feet, and they ate, and they drank. So far, so good. Everything so far leads us to believe that the story is going to work out fine.

Yeah. They're traveling. Go to sleep, wake up in the morning, finish the journey. It's great. We're going to get washed up a little bit, have a little bit to eat, have a little bit to drink, a little conviviality. And once we get tired, we'll go to bed. We'll get up in the morning.

We'll continue on our journey. everything will be all right so when was once we get to verse 21 except for the old man saying don't spend the night in the open square you know kind of a a leading comment except for that it seems as if everything's going to work out just fine for this uh this traveling this traveling group once we get to verse 22 things go go downhill precipitously immediately and verse 22 is, so from in Judges 19, 22 through 25, if you were to print those out and then side by side print out Genesis 19, four through eight, so those verses from Genesis 19, these verses from Judges 19, if you were to print them out, even in the English, but especially in the Hebrew,

you would be able to see that word after word phrase after phrase parallels each other in fact strangely enough and i didn't do this i'm taking this from a commentary i didn't sit there and count all the hebrew words but one commentator who compared these two sections of of judges 19 and genesis 19 said that they actually contained the same number of hebrew words which is crazy i I mean, this is how closely what happened in Genesis, in Sodom, and what happens in Judges, in Gibeah, how parallel these two stories are. That part's interesting because I think it's easy to take Sodom and Gomorrah and be like, that's what happens when you got a bunch of godless people. uh and the and it sort of built into that is that this isn't these aren't the children you know these aren't the children of god and that's why it goes like this these guys intentionally went to

an israelite town so just because you come from the right thing uh does not save you from uh having a town full of i don't know worthless fellows yeah and i think that's well i don't think that That is the point of the parallels here with Sodom is that, I mean, that's what the author judges wants us to pick up on. I mean, he's without actually saying it, he all but says it. He wants to make sure that you understand that Gibeah, this town of Benjamin, this town of Israel, the chosen covenant people of God had sunk to the level of Sodom. Right.

That's a point that he wants you to understand, that this was a 100% canonization of Israel that had taken place. And this particular incident is going to illustrate that graphically. Let me just read it. It's a few verses, and then we'll go back and we'll talk about some of the details. So I'm picking up here with verse 22. While they were making merry, behold, the men of the city, certain worthless fellows, literally certain sons of Belial, we'll come back to that, surrounded the house, pounding the door. And they spoke to the owner of the house, the old man, saying, bring out the man who came into your house, that we may have relations with him. Then the man, the owner of the house, went out to them and said to them, no, my fellows. please do not act so wickedly. Since this man has come into my house, do not commit this act

of folly. Here is my virgin daughter and his concubine. Please let me bring them out to you that you may ravish them and do to them whatever you wish, literally do to them what is good in your eyes, but do not commit this act of folly against this man. Or as the Hebrew would have it, but against this man, do not commit such an act of folly. But the men would not listen to him. So the man seized his concubine and brought her out to them. And they raped her and abused her all night until morning and let her go at the approach of dawn. As the day began to dawn, the woman came and fell down at the doorway of the man's house where her master was until full daylight. When her master arose in the morning and opened the doors of the house and went out

to go on his way, then behold, his concubine was lying at the doorway of the house with her hands on the threshold. And he said to her, get up, let's go. But there was no answer. Then he placed her on the donkey and the man arose and went to his house. When he entered his house, he took a knife and laid hold of his concubine and cut her in 12 pieces, limb by limb, and sent her throughout the territory of Israel. And it came about that 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. I feel like we should just like pause here for a minute. Every single detail of this is pretty hard to take in. Where to start? I guess we'll

start with verse 22, where we kind of picked up the story. So same thing that happened in Sodom, of course, in the middle of the night, the house was surrounded by all the men of Sodom. It says they were beating on the door and they wanted, in that case, they wanted Lot to bring out the two men who had come to stay with him. In this case, of course, it's they want just the Levite. They don't want his concubine. They don't want the virgin daughter of the owner of the house, the old man. They just want the Levite for some reason. Literally in the Hebrew, it would be bring out the man who came into your house that we may know him but as we know from a lot of other cases that verb yada does not mean they didn't want to like you know chat him up they don't want to be

introduced yeah they're not interested interested in introduction so this is the uh this is yada in the sense of of sex so they're wanting to uh they want to rape him more or less same thing that happened of course in the city of sodom so that a couple things here that are worthy of pointing out. As I mentioned, when it says worthless fellows, it's literally in the Hebrew, the sons of Baaliel. It's a little bit hard to get to the root of Baaliel as far as where it originally came from. But the way it's used in a couple of different sections of scripture, especially Psalm 18, it seems to indicate that it was connected with the underworld, with hell or Hades or death or something like that. It's, it's, there's one verse in there, which, which uses that,

that phrase bail, bail in connection with, with the underworld or with death. So however you want to translate it as worthless fellows or as godless fellows or as sons of death or whatever it might be, these guys aren't truly worthless. Now, later on, we know this from some of the Jewish writings that are around the first century. And we know it even from the new testament i believe it's either first or second corinthians where paul uses baliol in parallel with with the devil that by that point baliol had had come to mean the prince of darkness the the leader of the the forces of hell but at this point it just is kind of a i don't know what a modern english expression might be but anyway these are worthless guys surrounding

the house pounding the door and they want him to bring out the man now what does the guy do what does the old man do he said well he goes out to them he tries to reason with them first same thing that lot did exact same thing that lot did he's like no don't do this wicked act since this man has come into my house do not commit this act of folly lot also tried to reason with the people of sodom and just like they didn't listen to him so they're not going to listen to this guy either. Verse 24, same thing that Lot did. You know, Lot offered his daughters to the men. And this guy offers, he has one daughter, his virgin daughter, and he offers the man's concubine. Please let me bring them out that you may ravish them. And as I indicated when I read

this earlier, literally do what is good in your eyes. My translation is do to them whatever you wish i think it would be better if they were to translate it do what is good in your eyes because that of course is intentional because we heard in chapter 17 and we'll hear again in the very last verse of the book that this was a time when everyone did what was right or good in their own eyes by the way there's there's it seems uh we've heard this a number of times there was no king in israel people do what is right in their own eyes or just people do what's right in their own eyes regardless uh king or not king if there's one thing that we have discovered is that people doing what is right in their own eyes is always horrible always horrible yeah yeah that's exactly

right you know i i was thinking of when i was looking at this this morning in preparation uh one of uh one of my favorite luther quotes came to mind that is somewhat connected with this luther i think it's in his genesis commentary says that no one wants their sin to be to be sin, everyone wants their sin to be righteousness. I think the human skill, if you want to call it that, at which we are most adept is reasoning ourselves into a position in which we can justify every one of our actions as right in some way, no matter how horrible it might be. We hardly ever set out to say to ourselves, you know what? I'm going to commit this act of sin. Right. I'm going out to do evil. No, like, well, I'm going to do something to him because he deserves it. Or I'm going to get something from her because she doesn't deserve it. Or whatever it might be. We are excuse making machines.

now i don't know of course in this case how these guys were able to do what was good in their eyes in this particular case but i do know sinners i know myself and we are especially adept at transforming an act of evil into something which is in one way or another good in our own eyes so what happens well he offers a virgin daughter to the concubine and uh says you can do to them whatever you want this is hard of course for us to wrap our mind around and understandably so we're supposed to it's supposed to be impossible for us to wrap our mind around this verse 25 the men would not listen to him so the man seized his concubine the hebrew here well and the english too is ambiguous which man are we talking about is there's of course two possibilities

is the old man. The old man has been the subject up to this point, but I think probably this is meant to be the Levite. The Levite seized his own concubine and brought her out to them, and they raped her. Three verbs. They raped her, abused her, and let her go. So they raped her, abused her all night until morning, and then let her go at the approach of dawn. That's another one of these uh chronological markers telling us okay this all happened at night in the time of darkness in the time of evil oh this is hard to talk about uh verse 26 says as the day began to dawn so the woman survived at least for for a little while and this is the woman came and fell down at the doorway of the man's house where her master was until full daylight.

Interestingly, the Hebrew here does not use the typical word for husband. It uses the word for master. The noun is Baal. Of course, we're familiar with that, with the deity Baal. But Baal could also be used in regard to a ruler or a master. Sometimes it's used as a parallel for husband, although most of the time just the word husband is used. I think it's used here because this guy, of course, was acting anything but a husband to her.

So she goes back to the house where her master was until daylight. And verse 27, when her master arose in the morning, opened the doors of the house, went out to go his way. And behold, his concubine is lying at the doorway of the house. And here at the end of this verse, I think, this is just my personal opinion. I think these last six words are the most distressing and hopeless words possibly in the entire Bible. The words, the last six words are with her hands on the threshold. I mean, that narrative detail, every time I read it, I just have to stop and just kind of let that soak in because that image, I think, captures the whole story. Here she is.

I mean, she's caught between hell and hell. She's caught between the men who just gang raped her, and obviously, as we know from the rest of the story, are going to end her life. And she's caught between them, that hell, and the house where her master is, who threw her out to these savage dogs who abused her all night. But she's trying to get back to them. But she's so weakened, she's so abused, that she can't even open the door. She can't even knock on the door. She's lying there with her hands stretched out on the threshold, wanting to get into safety. And this guy, oh man, he walks out and doesn't bend down to check on her, says nothing except get up and let's go.

This guy, it's pretty hard to despise him even more, but he just seems to get worse and worse. And it says there was, but there was no answer. Two words in Hebrew, ainone. That was not responding. There was no answer. So what does he do? He throws her on the donkey, goes home, and then just to wrap up the chapter, he goes to his house, and he gets a knife, and he cuts her up into 12 pieces,

limb by limb, and he sends her all throughout the territory of Israel. We have one other example that is partially parallel to this. It's in 1 Samuel 11, although it is very different. I mean, it's parallel, but also very different. What happened in 1 Samuel 11? This is after Saul has been anointed as the first king of Israel, and some enemies have attacked Israel. And when Saul is informed of this, he's enraged, and he cuts up a team of oxen into 12 pieces,

and he sends these 12 pieces to all the tribes of Israel and it's a threat I mean it's a call to arms but it's a threatening call to arms because he says this will be done to your oxen if you don't respond to my call to duty so evidently this was and we have I'll mention one other example there's a they're called the Mari tablets m-a-r-i they're dated to around the 18th century, I mean, about 1800, 1750 to 1800 BC. So this is a few hundred years before the incidents that we're looking at here. But one of the letters that has survived from the Mari tablets talks about a similar situation where a leader of a city or leader of an army is wishing that he could cut up someone and send him, send the pieces to the various cities in order that

he might frighten the people into coming to help him. So maybe this was something which was practiced in that particular time period. We don't have enough examples to say safely, but there is that kind of fascinating parallel from a few centuries before. But this is the call to arms. It's a shocking, shocking graphic call to arms for all Israel. And people respond by saying nothing like this has ever happened before. I would assume that this also goes out to the 12 tribes. I mean, that's sort of implied, right? Yes, right, right.

Yeah, yeah. So all through the territory of Israel. So, I mean, that does tell us that it's a bigger time. They did understand themselves still to be composed of 12 tribes. And it was a call then for all the tribes of Israel to respond to what had happened. Of course, at this point, we're going to find out in the next chapter. At this point, nobody knows, right? Nobody knows what's happened.

All of a sudden, a messenger, presumably he used messengers, all of a sudden a messenger shows up with an arm or a foot or a head or whatever it might be, and what in the world is going on? What is this all about? So we'll find out in the next chapter exactly how everything goes forward from this point on. But, man, this is a rough story, as anyone listening realizes. But, you know, I guess I come away from this the same way I come away from reading Genesis 19.

You know, any of these just terrible, horrible, just depraved stories like this, as bad as they are, are, I think anyway, the scripture's way of highlighting just how far, how low humanity can sink. And implicit in this is also just how greatly we are in need of somebody besides ourselves, someone who is different than us as far as sinfulness goes, to come in and to save and redeem us because it's pretty obvious in stories like this that we're not going to be able to do it on our own when you when you have a priest who is willing to have like willing to have something like this happen to his concubine you you'd certainly see the insufficiency of merely human priests yeah yeah hebrews should have quoted this right yeah yeah i mean you need

a greater priest than this uh you need a priest who will who will go out in front of you uh and be uh torn apart for you and that is certainly shown here another thing is that and we're not there yet so i don't want to jump ahead but it is possible a part of what you what you think is happening here is that he takes his concubine home then like and kills her and cuts her up and sends her off know that that's exactly the case because her hands are on the on the threshold and he says something to her she doesn't respond then it says he put her on there and if you look at the uh at the next chapter he does say as the as the people are like what the heck's going on here and he says uh they meant to like these guys meant to kill me and they violated my concubine

and she is dead so i took hold of my concubine and cut her into pieces and threat set her throughout the country now i don't know exactly we i'm not sure we can tell um whether or not no yeah whether or not he's just saying that that's what happened but we don't have evidence that she is that she is alive that's exactly right yeah yeah yeah i mean they did let her go but she didn't make it back into the house and when he tries to speak with her there's no response and he certainly seems to be presenting it later as she was dead i took her home and then this is what i did to go and get revenge now i'm calling you to go to war with benjamin right we don't know we don't know he's lost all credibility yes as far as his response in the

next chapter i mean we'll get there next week but uh yeah i mean you cannot believe a word he says as far as his reporting of this right right so we don't we don't know but what we do know is that the initial action is not the action of the sort of priest we need yeah yeah and i think that's the you know if you were teaching or preaching on this that i think is where you you have to end up because yeah this this presents if you ever want a story to illustrate what sin looks like well you can always read judges 19 but you can also read judges 19 with understanding that yeah we we need someone who's not going to sacrifice somebody else in order to save themselves. Rather, we need someone who's going to go out into the midst of a violent pack of sinners

and lose his own life in order that our lives might be spared. So this is an illustration, Yao, of selfish sinfulness and of the need for a selfless Savior who's going to come and take that sin upon Himself and be the victim all the way to death in order that we might be redeemed from all our acts of folly and all our acts of wickedness. Yeah. Man, and that is it. We are out of time. It was dark today. Hopefully we were able to get to christ uh better better things for us uh to be sure but uh we will we will get to the the tribes of israel responding to this and uh next week and uh wrap up the book of judges yeah we're gonna we're gonna cover the last two chapters uh next week uh and be i think pretty easy to do that

it's a pretty tight narrative in both of these so we'll wrap up judges and ruth which is a much for a hopeful book yes is is right around the corner so don't leave us stay tuned all right we'll see you then