Ten Minute Bible Talks Devotional Bible Study - The Bible's Darkest Story | Historical Books | Judges 19:22-30

Episode Date: March 21, 2025

What's the point of Judges 19? How should we react to such disgusting sexual violence? Does your heart break for victims of injustice? In today's episode, Jeff shares how Judges 19:22-30 encourages us to see, feel, and live with the love of God. If you're listening on Spotify, comment below one takeaway from today's episode! Read the Bible with us in 2025! This year, we’re exploring the Historical Books—Joshua, Judges, 1 & 2 Samuel, and 1 & 2 Kings. Download your reading plan now. Your support makes TMBT possible. Ten Minute Bible Talks is a crowd-funded project. Join the TMBTeam to reach more people with the Bible. Give now. Like this content? Make sure to leave us a rating and share it so that others can find it, too. Use #asktmbt to connect with us, ask questions, and suggest topics. We'd love to hear from you! To learn more, visit our website and follow us on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter @TenMinuteBibleTalks. Don't forget to subscribe to the TMBT Newsletter here. Passages: Judges 19:22-30

Welcome to 10-minute Bible Talks, where we connect the Bible to your life. In the time it takes to get to work. I'm Jeff Parrott. Some stories cause you to feel just as much as they cause you to think. They don't just alter the way you see the world, but fundamentally shift the way you want to live in it. Our passage today in Judges 19 is a lot like that. It should make us feel and change the way that we live. But before we go any further, I do want to let you know that the end of Judges 19 might be one of the most raw and uncomfortable passages in the entire Bible. Here we find descriptions of violence and sexual violence that are disturbing for anyone to encounter.

This passage is part of the Bible for a reason. It's God's word to us. And its ultimate aim is to give us life and hope and the one who made all things. and is making all things new. And even with that in mind, I do want to pause and say something as a pastor, as a husband, as a dad, as a person who genuinely loves other people. I, out of love for you,

want to let you know that this could be an episode and a passage of the Bible that you consider engaging with differently. Especially if the tragedy of sexual violence is part of your life story, if that's you, I want you to know, that what happened to you is awful, heartbreaking, and it's not your fault. You are more loved by

God than I can possibly tell you in a little meager podcast episode. I hope that you know how important and meaningful you are as someone made in God's image and as someone God holds close to his heart. The point of this scene in judges is not for you to feel shame, but for you, you to feel seen, for you to know that God is a king of justice and compassion, and that he doesn't just love you, he delights over you, you specifically. So, no matter who you are or what your life story is, I do want to give you just the clearest, kindest heads up that you may choose to thoughtfully skip this episode, and that's totally okay. Another idea is to prayerfully consider reading the passage or listening to the episode and then intentionally discussing it with a friend or a church leader, a pastor, someone that you trust and who's going to be able to listen to you and love you well as you process what's going on here. However you engage with this passage, my hope is to help you feel seen and cared for. My hope here and really in all of our moments that we have together, my hope is for us to encounter the truth of the Bible and to encounter the truth that we are loved.

And I know I don't do that perfectly, but I'm convinced that that's the agenda that God has for us and our time together. So with that in mind, let's keep going and encounter God's grace and God's truth here in Judges 19. As we approach God's word together, especially in light of what we're going to talk about, let's slow down and ask for His grace, his presence to move through our time. Heavenly Father, thank you for the gift of life and breath, and thank you for your word. We bring before you every part of who we are, every part of our days and weeks, our joys and our sorrows, our anxiety and our excitement, our calendars, and our contingencies. God, meet us in this space and time. Jesus help us to abide in you, to remain in you, as we engage with your truth.

Holy Spirit, we ask you to move in and through this time in judges, and as we read these words, let these words of yours read us and restore. us. And God, I do in a special way pray for anyone listening today who's living with the pain of being sinned against by other people. But the pain of things that have happened recently or things that have happened long ago, God, I pray that you give them a special sense of your steadfast love and your healing presence. In Jesus' name, amen. Okay, so back in Judges 19 verses 1 through 21, we learned how a Levite, a religious leader of God's people, his concubine and a servant are traveling, and they stop in a city called Gibbia to spend the night. Now, as they stop, an old man in the city

welcomes them into his home, and he shows them hospitality. So so far, so good, like this act of hospitality by the old man, it's a little picture of how God's people, how humanity itself, is meant to be, sharing life and sharing love with other people. But then in verse 20, where we pick up today, this Polaroid of hospitality is completely spoiled. Men from the city of Ghibia surround the home of the old man and demand that the Levite come out of the home so that they can rape him. And if this scene wasn't awful enough and a completely self-absorbed and wicked turn of events, the Levite, this religious leader, throws his concubine out of the house. And she is tragically,

sexually assaulted by the men of the city of Ghibia until morning. As the Levite walks out of the house the next day, he tells the woman with curt callousness, get up, let us be going, only to realize that she's dead. Okay, even just reading that now, I can't believe this is heavy. This is very heavy. Let's pause for a moment and just say a couple of very important things.

First, this scene is so, so, so wrong. It is not the way that life is meant to be. It's not the way that God's people are meant to be, not the way that humans are meant to be. And this is also, this is painfully obvious from reading the passage, but I want to state it explicitly. What happened to this innocent woman was not her fault. It was the fault of sinful, twisted people who took advantage of her. She is an innocent victim of senseless violence, violence that reveals the loveless depths that the human heart can descend into because of sin. If this scene began with a picture of life and love, it's now a grotesque representation of life and love coming undone. In the story, as we read on, it takes an even

stranger and more sinister turn. In verse 28, the Levi takes, this innocent woman home and cuts up her dead body into 12 pieces, sending her throughout the territory of Israel. Now, some commentators mention how his act of cutting up the body of this woman is an attempt to rally the tribes of Israel against the city of Gibia. You see Saul doing a similar thing with animals in 1st Samuel 11, which we'll get two later. And while that's likely at play in the cultural context, this is also a very stark, physical, raw depiction of how life is divided, how life is undone and unraveled because of sin. Life and love, the realities that are meant to keep humanity together with each other and with God, but they're now cut apart. Versus 22 through 28

here may be some of the most, if not the most, vivid demonstrations. of how sin is inherently dehumanizing. And another thing connecting to the rest of the Bible, the events here in Judges 19, they remind us of a story in Genesis 19, where a man named Lot is about to offer his daughters to the violent and disturbed men of the city of Sodom, much like the Levite does here in our passage in Judges.

And back in Genesis, the violent men are eventually struck blind by angelic beings and are not able to, to carry out the depravity of their desires. But even though there's a different ending here, Judges is intentionally making hyperlinks to the story of Sodom and Genesis, this famous story of humanity losing its capacity to love,

back there in the first book of the Bible. So the point is this, things are so bad for God's people in the time of the judges, that they've descended into the depths of Sodom and Gomorrah. It feels as if things simply can't, can't get any worse at this point in the story. Now, when we reflect on this scene in judges, we're left feeling very disturbed and very confused. I mean, why does the Levite push this innocent woman into the hands of violent men? Why is he so heartless? Why on earth does he

continue the violence by cutting up this innocent woman? I mean, these are questions that long for clarity, but end with more confusion. And here's the thing. We, We should be confused and disturbed when we face the unvarnished ugliness of sin. We should be angry with the men of Ghibia, with the Levite, with the old man. If we're not angry or confused or disturbed or disgusted when we read this passage, then frankly, we don't get it. Because the goal of this passage in the Bible is to align our minds and our hearts more close. with the love and the justice of God.

But for that realignment to happen, we have to feel the weight of the tragedy that's going on here. The effect of this narrative reminds me a little bit of how a compassionate person responds when watching a film like Schindler's List, Stephen Spielberg's gut-wrenching depiction of the horrors of the Holocaust. The point when you're viewing it, when you're seeing this narrative play out, is that it should make you feel differently. and want to live differently.

The point is that it should drive you to hate evil and embrace love more deeply. Now, let's keep going and land the plane a bit further by going back to where we started. For God's people in exile, and for you and me today, this stomach-churning story is not trying to cause victims of violence and sexual violence to feel shame.

That is not the point. The point is to help them, to help you and I, to help all of them, to help all of us feel seen. God is not ignorant of your pain. The Bible is not coy about the problem of sin. It's candid about how ugly sin really is. And if this story painfully intersects with your story

or the story of someone you love, I want you to know that God sees you, the real you. He loves you, his heart breaks for you. This story is one of the ways that God is reaching out to you. So if this scene in Judges 19 shows us life and love coming undone, then it's also trying to make all of us into different people into the kinds of people who can cultivate and restructure life and love. How does this story cause your heart to break for other people?

Don't just think about people in general. Think about faces and names of people, you know. How does seeing God's love for people in pain deepen your compassion for them? How can you pray for them, serve them, be a faithful extension of God's presence to them? Judges 19 is inviting the ancient Israelites and you and me today to see and feel and live with a larger capacity for love, a larger capacity to not only give, but receive the the love that God has freely given us in Jesus. Heavenly Father, it's difficult to know how to end our time reflecting on such a tender part of the human experience. You have promised that you are making

all things new in Jesus through his death and resurrection, through his reign today. God help us believe that that's true. Help us to live like it's true. Holy Spirit, would you graciously connect us with other people so that we can lean on each other, lean on you, so that we can give and receive love and experience healing. Jesus, as we face this awful story, as we face the sin in our own stories, we pray, come Lord Jesus, come renew our world, renew our minds, renew and heal our hearts, remind us that we are more loved than we could possibly imagine. your name we pray. Amen.