THE CREEPIEST AND MOST VIOLENT STORY IN THE BIBLE

 

Joshua > Judges 19 – 21 > Ruth

WARNING: Gang rape, cowardice, kidnapping, prostitution, mutilation, excess partying, murder, genocide, civil war; death toll 90,000
CONTEXT: ~ 1100 BCE  The “judges” were de factor rulers of Palestine between the Exodus and the Monarchy, a period of about two hundred years. They are better described as warlords than judges. This biblical era bridges the gap between mythical events and more or less historically true-ish ones. The stories in the Book of Judges are among the most alarming in the Old Testament.

STORY SUMMARY

A random Levite is on the way home from partying with the father of his cheating concubine when they are accosted in a town in the Benjamin tribal region. He hands his girlfriend over to the mob so they won’t bugger him, but she does not survive the all night gang rape. He cuts her body up into twelve pieces and sends them to the other Israelite tribes. They respond by massacring all the Benjaminites except for six hundred men. Then they start feeling bad about the near genocide. In order to build a new tribe, the Lord has them slaughter everyone in a different town and take the four hundred virgins left alive as unwilling wives. Needing another two hundred wives, they kidnap the young women from a YHWH-fest religious event and carry them away to begin involuntary mating.

The Complete Incredibly Sordid Tale

Even considering the violence and misogyny found throughout the holy book, this tale at the end of the Book of Judges is a clear winner. It begins with an unnamed Levite (actually, no one has a name in this brisk narrative) setting out to find his promiscuous runaway concubine.

“And his concubine played the whore against him, and went away from him unto her father’s house to Beth-lehem-judah, and was there four whole months.” – Judges 19:3 [KJV]

After four months of searching he locates her in Bethlehem at the house of her father. Following six days of partying at the insistence of his father-in-law, the Levite convinces his party girl to leave with him. (There is a strong implication that Dad succeeds several times in talking him into yet another day of drinking.) The couple heads for home. On the journey they take lodging in the Israelite city of Gibeah², located in the tribal lands of Benjamin. After some time in the town square with no offers of hospitality forthcoming, an old man from the tribal region of Ephraim offers them hospitality in his home.³ 

They are eating dinner with the old man when the debauched citizens of Gibeah surround the house and demand the Levite come outside with his concubine for a night of swinging and sodomy. He is disinclined to participate so he hands over his concubine to the “worthless fellows,” who rape and abuse her all night long. She crawls to the door of the house and dies on the ground at the front door. 

There is an odd moment here, which the King James Version narrates as follows:

“And her lord rose up in the morning, and opened the doors of the house, and went out to go his way: and, behold, the woman his concubine was fallen down at the door of the house, and her hands were upon the threshold.” And he said unto her, Up, and let us be going. But none answered. Then the man took her up upon an ass, and the man rose up, and gat him unto his place.”- Judges 19: 27-28 [KJV]

Having given her over to the mob as a sex toy, his apparent lack of interest in how she spent the night is stunning, while his conversation with her corpse is darkly comedic. 

Once home, the cowardly widower cuts up his erstwhile concubine’s corpse into twelve pieces and sends a body part to each of the other tribes of Israel. The details of which tribe received which specific corporal component are not specified.

[Don’t look at me, I didn’t write it – Author]

Wiping Out the Tribe of Benjamin

The other tribes assemble an army of 400,000⁴ men at Mizpah, where the Levite tells them his story. He points out that this is an abomination on the soil of Israel. He does not reveal his own role in the crime.

The people of Israel travel to Benjamin and demand the perps be turned over, but the Benjaminites will not rat out the bad boys of Gibeah. This sets off a massive civil war. The Israelites bring their forces up against the much smaller Benjaminite army of 26,000 men plus seven hundred more soldiers from Gibeah.

Nevertheless, the surprisingly fierce Benjaminites kill 22,000 (20:21) of the Israelites on the first day of battle. The discouraged Israelite warriors find YHWH ten miles north in Bethel and proceed to inform the Lord about their tough day on the battlefield. YHWH tells them to not lose heart and get back to it tomorrow. The next day, having lost another 18,000 men, the army returns to Bethel to get another pep talk.

There ensues a drawn out and obtuse description of the final Israel vs. Benjamin battle: with the help of the Lord all but six hundred of the Benjaminites are eventually slaughtered, all their cities are burned and their livestock killed. The death toll for the tribe of Benjamin is 25,100.

At this point, some of the Israelites notice that they have almost wiped out one of their own tribes. They begin feeling remorseful. To compound the problem, the several hundred Benjaminites who escape alive won’t be able to find suitable breeding stock to replenish the tribe because the Israelites had sworn previously that they would not allow any of the Benjaminites to marry their daughters. Can’t go back on a vow (just ask Jephthah).

The Israelites at this point are distraught, at wits end as to how to provide the surviving tribe of Benjamin with enough birth mothers to rebuild the population. What began as a run of the mill Old Testament genocide has turned problematic.

YHWH Has a New Plan

They don’t call him “the Lord” for nothing: YHWH has a new strategy for his chosen people. What the tribes need to fix this situation is a sneak attack, followed by more murder and rape. The people on the wrong end of this new onslaught will be the people of Jabesh-gilead, another Israelite town.

What exactly is Jabesh-Gilead you are probably asking? You could be forgiven for that, because the reader has heard nothing about this unfortunate village until now.

It is suddenly revealed that this town did not show up at the Mispah war council to denounce the Benjaminites, furthermore refusing to provide soldiers for the upcoming slaughter. That’s why all the people of Jabesh-Gilead are going to have to die except for their virgin daughters. Mind you, these are not Benjaminites, but rather fellow Israelites. The Israelites send 12,000 men to massacre the population of Jabesh-Gilead (who were likely not expecting them); they net four hundred attractive virgins for their efforts.

Now, with hundreds of nubile wives awaiting their new husbands, the Israelites send a message of peace to the Benjaminite remnants, now holed up at the Rock of Rimmon for several months. “Sorry for the genocide, man, but we would like to offer you several hundred slightly traumatized virgins so you can start a new tribe.” Nothing gets a teenage girl in the mood for love like having your family wiped out.

So that’s good news for four hundred of the remaining Benjaminite army, but what about the rest? Again, easily remedied. It turns out there is a festival of the Lord being held at Shiloh and there will be lots of young virgins dancing about, as they are wont to do at YHWH themed events. All the Benjaminite men have to do is lie in wait for the unsuspecting young ladies should they wander away from the party and kidnap them. That’s what they do. 

The next passage makes very little sense:

“And when their fathers or their brothers come to complain to us, we will say to them, ‘Grant them graciously to us, because we did not take for each man of them his wife in battle, neither did you give them to them, else you would now be guilty.’” – Judges 21:22 [KJV]

To recap: the Lord’s plan for restoring justice is to massacre 25,000 civilians  – his own people – who had nothing to do with the original crime, and then to salvage the diminished tribe by slaughtering everyone but the virgins in another town and then, coming up short a couple hundred teenage girls, kidnap a few hundred more and force them to submit as wives. No matter how you spin it, these were young vulnerable women celebrating a YHWH religious rite who were abducted in a scene not dissimilar the Sabine rape in Roman history. This was God’s idea. This is why we teach the Bible. This is why we fear the Lord.

What is the Point of this Scriptural Mess and Why Was it Written?

There is no shortage of theories as to how this dark narrative came to be, but no definitive answers. It is likely that whatever agenda is behind this tale is political, but even that is not readily obvious. 

The Book of Judges, which also features a YHWH-sanctioned human sacrifice, death by tent stake and other violent episodes, takes place in the pre-monarchial era, about 1100 BCE. The opening line tells us there was no king, and suggests this may be the reason for the rampant moral depravity that underpins these activities. In this sense, we may have a pro-monarchy writer or writers who are trying to make some other point about the tribe of Benjamin. The scriptural attitude toward the monarchy is ambiguous throughout this section of the Hebrew Bible. 

It is notable that the tribal and geographic information for the characters is very specific, and yet not one individual is named. Why is the Tribe of Benjamin singled out, why does it matter that the “protagonist” is a Levite and why are the two cities of Jabesh-gilead and Gibeah selected as targets.

Another troubling topic is the degree of YHWH’s involvement in the actions of the Israelites as they nearly wipe out one of the original tribes, and then try to fix it. YHWH clearly endorses the horrific warfare that results from the Israelite vengeance on the Benjaminites. He provides moral support and strategy for the effort. It is significant that the Israelite army makes its way to see YHWH at Bethel, which means “House of God.” It was about ten miles away from the battlefield. “Is God home? We have a bit of a problem.”

Not for the first time one is compelled to ask why the loving deity is so fond of slaughter – in this case mass murder of his own people. More than a hundred thousand on both sides are killed over a single incident. A curious passage suggests that the Israelites conclude that they are only following the Lord’s orders and are not really to blame. 

“And the people had compassion on Benjamin because the Lord had made a breach in the tribes of Israel.”  – Judges 21:15 [ESV]

God did it, not us.

We are often told that the Bible provides a moral compass, but it’s hard to suss out exactly what the lesson might be in this shit show of a tale. The cowardice of the Levite fellow is not noted, nor is the fact that he lies to the assembled tribes at Mispah.

The misogyny is off the charts of course. The whoring concubine, the gang rape, the double kidnapping of young women with the understanding that they are property to be acquired. All of this is done with the approval if not at the direction of YHWH. Even the old man in Gilbeah offers his own daughter for the townspeople’s pleasure seeking, if only they will not break the rules of hospitality by sodomizing the Levite. 

“He went out and told them, “No, brothers! Don’t be obscene—this man is my guest. Don’t commit this outrage. Look, my virgin daughter and his concubine are here. I’ll bring them out for you. Abuse them if you must, but don’t do anything so senselessly vile to this man.” – Judges 19:24 – [MSG]

Do you wonder where Christian evangelicals get their patriarchal attitudes?

As a final point of interest, this tale is a creepy echo of Genesis 19, in which the people of Sodom surround a house and demand two male guests come out to be party favors. Instead Lot (Abraham’s nephew) offers his own daughters. Unfortunately for the people of Sodom, the “men” are angel spies in disguise, working for El. The interlude concludes with the destruction of Sodom, followed by Lot mating with his daughters. How did they feel about Dad offering them to the mob? 

Their feelings are not recorded.

 

“On reaching home, he got a knife and took hold of the body of his concubine. He cut her up limb by limb into twelve pieces and sent them throughout the territory of Israel.“

– Judges 19:28

 

NOTES:

1. “Concubine” has a fungible definition, especially in the Bible. Mary, Jesus’s mom, for example, is a concubine.
2. The ancient location of Gibeah is thought to be about five miles north of Jerusalem. Today it is associated with Tell el-Ful.
3. The author adds this detail to differentiate the good man from the bad Benjaminites.
4. This is a very large army, about four times more than the estimated population of the entire regions in 1100 BCE.
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