BibleProject | One Story That Leads to JesusSample

By the end of Judges, the nation that crossed the Jordan with Joshua became unrecognizable. Israel’s promise to stay faithful has collapsed. God joined with Israel to lead the people into a new way of life, one intended to bless everyone (see Genesis 12:1-3). They were supposed to be different, but the Israelites we find in the final chapters of Judges look no different from the chaos and corruption all around them.

Today’s reading begins with one of the most disturbing stories in the Bible. A Levite sets out to retrieve a woman he took as a concubine from her father’s house. On their way back to Ephraim’s hill country, the Levite insists on spending the night in an Israelite town instead of a Canaanite one. The Benjamite city turns out to be a new Sodom and Gomorrah. A vicious mob starts pounding at their door. The Levite shoves his concubine outside, where she is sexually assaulted and murdered.

The woman’s brutalized corpse sparks an outcry against the Benjamites. The Israelites’ degraded moral compass means their botched and disturbing attempt at justice makes the situation worse. The ensuing civil war nearly destroys the whole tribe of Benjamin. Israel’s leaders use mass rape in an attempt to save the very group they were trying to punish for raping one woman. Total chaos.

Careening toward self-destruction, swept up in their own surging tide of idolatry and violence, the people must be wondering if there is any way out of this darkness. The book’s final sentence offers a faint glimmer of hope: Maybe a king can help.

Reflection Questions

• Meditate on the way women are portrayed in the book of Judges. How does their treatment act as a barometer for Israel’s deteriorating moral status?
• Woven through today’s reading is the loaded phrase “good in their own eyes,” a hyperlink to Genesis 3. What have you learned from Judges about the consequences of humans defining what is good for themselves instead of trusting Yahweh’s wisdom?