☝🏼🫤 This chapter is a problem for me. So, honestly, feel free to skip today and go do something nice out in the sunshine. ☀️

Seriously.

Go. Get out while you still can. 👉🏼

Shooo…

🫤 Are you still here?

You should know that reading the rant below could ruin your day. Ruin it.

Why would you do that to yourself?

😑 It was hard enough to read this awful chapter. No need to add to it.

So… Have a nice day. 😐👍🏼

I’ll see you next week when we’ll wrap up with Judges and enjoy the lovely story of Ruth.

Bye… 👋🏼

👋🏼

👋🏼 Buh-bye

(Still waving) 👋🏼

(You’re supposed to be going….) 👋🏼😬

😑

I’ve committed to blogging my way through the whole Bible so I have to stay, but you don’t have to read the mess that’s about to follow.

Ok… You were warned…

You’ll probably be shocked. 😬

And you may not like me very much after this. 😑

If I get the side-eye from you, I’ll know why.

It’s ok.

You. Were. Warned.

I have decided I will not swear. On paper.

Are you sure you don’t need to go wash windows or something?

Sigh….

😑

😑

🙄

🤨

😤

As far as I’m concerned, this is THE most wretched story in all of scripture. If I could travel back in time, I’d show up in this story. With a bazooka. 💥 And I’d blow all these 🤬$=%@$&!*$@#! to kingdom come. After stringing them all up and relieving them of their manhood. 🔪

I HATE that sexual abuse happens. HATE it. I don’t think I’d hesitate to kick an abuser into a raging inferno. 🔥🔥🔥 They are the WORST kind of scum on earth.

If we’re supposed to have mercy on these pieces of filth, Jesus is gonna have to do a miracle for me. I literally want them all DEAD. 💀 And in Hell. 🔥 Immediately.

So… as you can see, I cannot approach this story with anything like emotional detachment or clinical analysis.

But I will try.

(Huff) 😤

This narrative is exactly what would’ve happened to Lot’s daughters had the angels not been there to strike the men of Sodom blind.

There is absolutely no angle or argument anyone can present that will lessen my abhorrence of this old man and the Levite. Cowards. Worthless filth. 😡😡😡😡😡

They throw an adolescent girl out to a crowd of sex perverts. There is special place in hell for men like that. 🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥

But let me back up a bit.

Depending on if you read Josephus, the Septuagint, or various OT translations based on the Masoretic text, you get mixed signals about the relationship of the Levite to this girl. She is introduced as his concubine.

Let’s not mince words. A concubine is a sex slave that typically doubled as a household servant to do household chores, but make no mistake, she was purchased property for the purpose of sex.

If that doesn’t make your blood boil and kinda trigger a touch of nausea, steer clear of me. I hope that the men who excuse and hide this abuse wind up in hell too. If the roles were reversed and someone treated them like property to be be abused, they’d have a fit. But it doesn’t matter because it’s a woman?

Where’s my bazooka? 🤨💥💥💥💥💥

Boy have I digressed. See? I told you this would be rough. 😒 You can still bail now and go mow the lawn or something. 🌾

The text calls the girl’s father the Levite’s father-in-law. Josephus says they were married. But to the old man, the Levite calls her his servant. I don’t think she was his wife child bride. She was a slave.

Ugh…

And she is also called a “damsel.” That Hebrew term is applied to girls from infancy to adolescence. Let that sink in. 👀

Oh – and the Masoretic text is the only attestation to the girl “playing the whore.” The Septuagint has that she merely left and went home to her parents. Josephus agrees and says that she was “averse to him” and did not return his affection and they quarreled. Here’s the rendering of the Lexham English Bible –

“But his concubine felt repugnance toward him, and she left him and went to her father’s house, to Bethlehem in Judah; she was there some four months.”
‭‭Judges‬ ‭19‬:‭2‬ ‭LEB‬‬

Put yourself in her shoes. You’re an innocent girl of 11-12 (or thereabouts) and you’ve been bought like a heifer to be the sex slave of a man 2-3 times your age. Today we call this pedophilia and child trafficking. OF COURSE she “feels repugnance toward him!” She found an opportunity to go home and took it. Would that be considered “cheating on your master?” I don’t know. Probably.

All I know is there is no circumstance that makes me side with ANY male in this chapter. Except for the servant boy. He had the good sense to suggest stopping in Jebus (Jerusalem) and staying with the Jebusites for the night. They probably would’ve been better off amongst rank heathens than with “the people of God.” 😡😤

Commentaries say this narrative is in here to show how far off the rails Israel went. But remember, this happens early in their history – while Phinehas was still alive and serving as high priest (20:28). This chapter is like an appendix to the book of Judges. Israel didn’t eventually go off the rails. Most of them were off from the get-go.

Commentaries might also say something like – homosexual acts were SO perverse that handing over an innocent girl to be gang-raped to death was the “lesser of the two evils.” 🙄 I have a very hard time swallowing that. The man might have stood at least a small chance of escape. The girl, none.

Then this vile Levite cuts up her dead body like some psycho serial killer 🔪 and sends her severed parts to the other tribes which incites a war with the Benjamites – the tribe to which this gang of perverts belonged.

This evil event is the catalyst for the diminishment of the tribe of Benjamin. In the final 2 chapters of Judges we’ll get the repercussions of the death of the Levite’s concubine. The tribe of Benjamin is going to pay for this. Big time.

Now – how you’re going to have a decent day or night after this, I do not know. I tried to warn you. But would you listen? Noooooo.

🤓 Here – watch this. Maybe it‘ll help.

🤨 Watch what?

🤓 This scene from Pollyanna.

🙄 Oh great. Yeah. Let’s play “the glad game.” I’m sure that’ll help.

🤓 No. Not that part. The sermon. It’s basically how you sounded in this post.

😐