Do you think humanity needs a Savior? God gives it to us straight. We are rotten to the core!
We must remind ourselves that “All Scripture…is profitable” (2 Tim 3:16) when we see Judges 19! First, we read of “a certain Levite staying in the remote mountains of Ephraim” (Jdg 19:1). Then, “He took for himself a concubine from Bethlehem in Judah” (v 1). There’s a red flag! But the tale continues. The woman is unfaithful to her husband and returns to her father’s house. Then we see one glimmer of decency: “her husband arose and went after her, to speak kindly to her and bring her back” (v 3). The father-in-law warmly receives the Levite, then “detained him; and he stayed with him three days” (v 4). The fourth day is the same. The fifth day, the father-in-law constrains him to stay again, but this time, albeit late in the day, the Levite insists they head off. Thus they must stay somewhere, and he feels “Jebus (that is, Jerusalem)” (v 10) is not the place because it was “a city of foreigners” (v 12). He might have fared much better there! They go on to Gibeah in Benjamin, where no one takes them in. They decide to bed down in the town square, but a workman, also from Ephraim, tells them that’s a bad idea. He invites them to his lodging. But as soon as they’re settled, men of the city, Sodom-like, demand: “Bring out the man…that we may know him carnally!” (v 22). Lot-like, the man offers his daughter, but is refused, so the concubine is placed outside. Abused all night, in the morning the woman is found dead at the doorstep. Oh the horror when men lose the fear of God! The Levite sends to all the tribes the grisly evidence of the crime, demanding justice. Shocked to their roots, they say, “No such deed has been done or seen” since the Exodus (v 30). What must be done? Will anyone think of asking God?