The Story of the Concubine
🔪 The Sin That Broke a Nation
The Book of Judges is not a book of heroes; it is a book about decline. It describes the Israelites’ worsening moral downfall in the period between the conquest of Canaan and the rise of the monarchy. While the early chapters feature leaders like Deborah and Gideon, the final chapters are marked by anarchy, violence, and profound injustice. At the center of this collapse is the story found in Judges Chapter 19—a narrative so shocking and devastating that many readers skip it entirely. It is placed deliberately at the end of the book as the ultimate evidence of societal failure.
The Concubine
The tragedy begins with a relationship rooted in inequality: the Levite and his concubine. Historically, a concubine was a woman who lived with a man in an intimate relationship without the legal status or protections of a wife. In many ancient societies, her social rank was always inferior to that of a legal spouse. Because she lacked legal rights, the concubine was highly vulnerable. In many cultures, including those described in the Bible (like ancient Israel and the Near East), a concubine could be a slave woman. If she was property, she had no legal right to refuse sexual relations and was considered the owner's possession, not a free individual. Families facing poverty might sell their daughters into concubinage. While this involved a transaction, the woman herself had no free choice and was being used to provide sexual and domestic services in exchange for financial support, which is a clear form of exploitation. While concubines often performed domestic duties, their primary explicit function was usually sexual companionship and bearing children for the man. When this function is non-consensual (due to slave status or economic coercion), it meets the definition of sexual slavery. Her life in Judges 19—marked by abuse, flight, betrayal by the Levite, and ultimate sexual assault—is the brutal proof of this inherent vulnerability.
Possession: The Levite "took for himself a concubine", using language that suggests acquisition.
Abuse: She fled him (suggesting abuse or deep dissatisfaction).
Betrayal/Commodity: The Levite eventually gives her over to the men of Gibeah to be sexually assaulted to save himself. This act treats her as a disposable sexual commodity, confirming her lack of protection and inherent value in his eyes.
The historical role of the concubine was institutionalized, legalized exploitation, meaning the risk of sexual slavery and abuse was not just a potential, but a defining characteristic of the status.
🔁 The Repetitive Doom
The Cycle of Sin and Deliverance
When we look at the whole book of Judges there is a recurring pattern of moral failure, known as the Cycle of Apostasy. This cycle is repeated at least seven times throughout the book:
Sin: Israel does evil in the sight of the Lord.
Servitude: God allows them to be oppressed by a foreign power or as I like to say they face the consequences of their actions.
Supplication: Israel cries out to the Lord.
Salvation: God raises up a Judge to deliver them, followed by a period of peace.
This repetition shows that the people learned nothing from the past, ensuring that chaos—and the need for rescue—would recur. The final chapters use two recurring statements to summarize the morals of this time in history:
"There was no king in Israel." (Repeated 4 times). This speaks to the collapse of all legitimate authority and accountability. The lack of a governing authority meant there was no one to enforce justice against the men of Gibeah.
"Everyone did what was right in his own eyes." (Repeated 4 times). This is the primary moral statement of this period. The complete abandonment of objective moral law for selfish, individual desires. This justifies the vile actions of the men of Gibeah and the callous abuse by the Levite himself.
My writings do not replace the Bible, and I sincerely hope you read the Bible as you enter my writings. When I first read chapter 19, I quickly read it, and like others got completely repulsed. My first thoughts were “God just needs to scratch the whole earth and try again, because this THIS ain’t it!” Can you imagine you are just in your house and men come banging on your door demanding they rape you, so you throw someone out the door? This concubine was raped to the point she died. Pause for a moment and read that again. How can this be in the Bible? It’s even more sad that we do not know anything about this woman, but as we read in the beginning that is the point. I reread chapter 19 in the kitchen with my dear Chiva (aka Jose), and it brought me to tears. It clicked. I never understood reading this book the first time why God just didn’t wipe the earth again, and it’s because Judges 10:16 “And he was grieved by their misery.” Another translation states, “His soul couldn’t bear their misery”… “And God took Israel’s troubles to heart.” I read chapter 19 with the same heart, completely shattered by her story.
Why have this world continue?
You won't find a single verse in the Bible that explicitly answers, "The world continues because..." The most direct answer to why such cycles of sin (like the one in Judges 19) continue is the concept of Free Will. Chapter 19 is presented as the ultimate proof of the summary verse: "everyone did what was right in his own eyes" (Judges 21:25). The evil in Gibeah was a result of human choices and the rejection of God's moral foundation ("doing what is right in one's own eyes" versus God's Law). If God forcibly stopped all human evil immediately, humanity would no longer have genuine freedom to choose good, love, or obedience. The Bible teaches that human beings bear genuine responsibility for their moral choices. The world continues because God allows humanity to exercise this tragic freedom, showing why redemption and transformation are necessary. The horror of Judges 19 is not a single, isolated incident; it is the final, logical conclusion of a generation that rejected authority and chose self-interest, confirming the destructive power of that repetitive choice.
The Book of Judges presents this narrative not to inspire, but to serve as a chilling warning. It demonstrates the severe, chaotic cost of a society that chooses its own morality over commands of God. The horror is presented to confirm the reader's moral outrage, screaming out the urgent need for a righteous authority and a total change of heart.
🛐A Prayer for Justice and Moral Clarity
Heavenly Father,
We come to You heartbroken and outraged by the suffering recorded in Judges Chapter 19. We mourn the unfairness, mistreatment, and harm towards the weak. Where humanity chose to do "what was right in his own eyes," we pray for Your absolute moral clarity. Grant us the courage to confront the darkness in our own hearts and in our world. Raise up justice for all victims, and hurry the day when the darkness of anarchy and abuse will be vanquished by Your righteousness.Amen.
This chaos raises the hardest question of all. Next, we tackle the core theological crisis: Is the lesson really worth the punishment? We examine God's concept of Divine Patience (2 Peter 3:9) and how it defines the continuation of the world.