The Bible has some sad stories in it as well as some wonderful ones. There are some that are so dreadful that you wonder what they are doing in there at all. They are bloody and brutal, and they are avoided by preachers because they are too shocking – and because we can't think of what to say about them.
One of these stories is found in Judges 19. It's the time before Israel had kings (which is not irrelevant). A Levite and his concubine spend the night in Gibeah, a city in the territory of Benjamin. They wait in the town square for someone to show them hospitality, and eventually an old man does. However, "some of the wicked men of the city" surround the house and demand he sends the Levite outside so they can have sex with him. The old man offers them his own virgin daughter and the man's concubine instead; in the end the Levite puts his concubine outside and she is repeatedly raped. She staggers back to the house but is not taken inside and dies on the doorstep. The Levite cuts up her body into 12 parts and sends them to every part of Israel as a kind of war cry. The whole nation descends on Benjamin and nearly wipes out the tribe. One city, Jabesh-Gilead, refuses to send any fighters to the muster; they are all killed except 400 virgins, who are given to the surviving Benjamites. There are still not enough women for them, so the Benjamites are given permission to carry off more of them by force.
It's utterly bleak.
The Levite cares nothing for the concubine. She has no rights and she is worthless in his eyes. He is cowardly and heartless. The hospitable old man at Gibeah is willing to offer the mob his own daughter. There is a horrific act of sexual violence. There is large scale bloodshed, including the murder of women and children. What on earth can be said about this story? There are at least three things.
First, this is reality. It is an unflinching look at the world as it really is, in which violence – including and especially sexual violence – is routine. We don't like to dwell on such things, and when they come on the TV we might prefer to turn it off. But if we claim to be faithful disciples of Christ, and this is in the Bible, we don't have the right to ignore the way the world is.
Second, this is wrong. If the story were to stop at the end of chapter 19, it would be dreadful. A terrible thing has been done and no one has paid for it. But in fact, the nation revolts against wickedness. The bloodshed that follows, no matter how shocking it is to us today, is driven by a sense of morality. Wickedness must not go unpunished. The guilty must pay. God hates wrongdoing.
Third, there must be law. A repeated refrain in Judges is, "There was no king in Israel. Every man did what was right in his own eyes." The men of Gibeah – and the Levite – were able to do what they did because there was no justice. It was for Saul and David to bring that.
But that need for law says something fundamental about human nature. It is capable of goodness, but it is not good. It's been corrupted, and there is a bias in it towards evil. In a nutshell, we will do what we think we can get away with. Human society needs strong laws and codes of moral conduct if it's to work; left to ourselves, we tend towards anarchy and evil. Ultimately, we need a Redeemer.
There are those who say the Bible would be better without such stories in it. But it's often these "texts of terror" that teach us more about ourselves, and more about God.
Follow Mark Woods on Twitter: @RevMarkWoods
