This is the story of how the death of one woman caused more than 65,000 people to be killed:
A Levite from Ephraim got himself a concubine from Judah but the woman left him and went back to her parent's home.
Just over four months later the Levite went with his servant and a couple of donkeys to his in-laws house to fetch the concubine. He stayed with the family for four nights enjoying their hospitality and having a wonderful time but on the fifth day when the dad was begging him to stay another day he insisted on leaving with his concubine.
The Levite decided to head towards Jebus (which is the previous name for Jerusalem) but when the group got there it is was getting late so the servant advised his master to stop there for the night. Probably thinking that he knew best the Levite insisted that he didn't want to stop at a place where the people weren't Israelites and that they should keep going. This was would prove to be a serious mistake.
The Levite and his concubine kept going until they reached Gibeah a town in the area where the Benjamite tribes lived. When they got to the city where they expected to find a place to say amongst their own ethnic group, no one took the couple or their servant in. Instead they had to stay in the city square. Whilst they were in the square an old man was on his way home from working in the fields and he kindly invited the couple to stay with them so that they wouldn't have to spend the night in the city square.
The Levite and his concubine were given a chance to wash and get changed, then they were given a meal and some wine. They were enjoying themselves with the old man and his family when some evil men came and surrounded the house demanding that the Levite be sent out so that they could rape him.
The old man begged the men not to be so nasty minded and to leave the Levite along, even offering his virgin daughter and the Levite's concubine as preferable to homosexual rape but the men kept insisting. Finally the Levite took his concubine and sent her out to the men.
The group of men raped and abused the concubine throughout the night and only when day was breaking was she able to get away. She staggered back to the house where her husband was but collapsed outside of the door and died. Her body lay there until daylight.
When the Levite came out in the morning, he saw his concubine lying on the floor and asked her to get up but she was dead. The Levite put his dead concubine on the donkey and continued home.
When the Levite arrived home he took the dead concubine and cut her body into 12 pieces. He then sent a piece to each of the tribes so that everyone could see for themselves the terrible thing that had happened.
A great gathering of the Israelites happened to find out what exactly was going on and the Levite explained that the situation, explaining that his concubine had been raped to death by the Benjamites of Gibeah. As a result the other tribes decided to punish the rapists. They sent messengers to demand that the guilty men be handed over but the Benjamites refused and civil war ensued. The fatalities of which were 65,000 and the tribe of Benjamin was almost completely destroyed down to about 600 men and no women.
Later when it was realised that the Benjamite tribe would go extinct with no women, the other Israelites encouraged them kidnap some women from other tribes so that the men of those tribes could provide spouses for the Benjamites without breaking the oath they had taken to not willingly give their daughters in marriage.
Levite : a descendant of Levi, especially one appointed to assist the priests in the temple or tabernacle.
Concubine: a secondary wife, usually of inferior rank.
As for myself I find this story disturbing. Why would a man give his concubine to a group of rapists to save himself? Why would he chop up her body as proof of what had happened? The only explanation I can think of is that this Levite was not a particularly nice person himself (otherwise his concubine wouldn't have run off).
The key things about this story that stand out are that God is not mentioned as intervening once. No prophet or judge is named and at the end of the story the last verse reads:
In those days Israel had no king; everyone did as they saw fit. Judges 21:25 NIVThis seems to suggest to me that this story was included as an example of lawlessness, rather than to be taken as a model of behaviour. The Levite is clearly wrong, the miniature civil war was wrong, the rapists were also wrong as was the kidnapping of the virgins from Shiloh. Strangely enough the next book in the bible is Ruth, often used to show an example of feminine goodness. Why was this story of the unlucky concubine at the end of the book of Judges, placed next to a very short book about the perfect woman when quite frankly Judges could go straight into Samuel?
I had already started typing up this blog post when I happened upon the following answer on Quora in regard to the question:
One of my favorite Bible stories of all time is also, in my opinion, one of the darkest and most horrific stories. I read it the first time when I was around 8 and many times after that. I happen to love dark and horrific stories. It's from the book of Judges, one of the darkest and most horrific books of the Bible, full of rape, murder, genocide, misogyny, and more.
Let me set the stage for you. This is pre-Saul and David when Israel is 12 separate, loosely connected tribes. Those who are familiar with the story of Samuel the Prophet picking Saul to be king might remember that Saul claimed to be from the smallest tribe in Israel: Benjamin. Why was Benjamin the smallest tribe, so small that it effectively became absorbed into Judah when the kingdoms split? This is the story. [1]So a Levite (from the tribe of Levi) takes a concubine (basically sex slave and baby factory) from the tribe of Judah. She is listed as being unfaithful because she ran away from her owner to return to her father. Apparently she was valuable to him, so he sets off to pick her up.
He gets to her father's house and her father placates him with food and wine. They party for 4 days straight before the man decides it is time to go home. The father urges him to get a drink before leaving and they end up eating and drinking all day again. The father urges him to stay another night. This happens again the next day, but, perhaps sensing a trend, the man takes his concubine and, along with a servant, the three of them head back home. It's much too late for them to get home that day, so they stop in the town of Gibeah in Benjamin. They couldn't find a place to stay until an old man invited them in.
Now apparently strangers weren't welcome in the towns of Israel and if any strangers did show up, the norm was to have sex with them. The "wicked" men of the city surrounded the house of the old man, demanding they give up the Levite that so that they could "know him" (in other words, fuck him). The old man tried to talk them out of it, saying that the Levite was a guest, but offered the men his virgin daughter and the concubine instead (seems fair), but they would not be dissuaded.
Finally, the Levite grabbed his concubine, shoved her out the door, and locked it. Unable to break in, the men grabbed the concubine and raped and abused her all night long (while her master slept soundly inside), and then let her go at dawn. The poor girl crawled to the door and collapsed on the steps and died. The man comes out, sees here lying there and says, "Get up, it's time to go." Figuring out she is dead, he takes the body, brings it home, and proceeds to cut her up into twelve pieces. He sends each of the pieces to the leader of the twelve tribes with a message of horror. Claiming that such a thing had never been done before, he demanded action.
After the Levite tells his story (leaving out his own horrible actions and any culpability), the leaders of the 11 tribes (sans Benjamin) were horrified and they gathered together an army, demanding that Benjamin hand over the offenders.
The Benjamites refused and gathered an army of their own. Per the Bible, the numbers were 400,000 from the 11 tribes vs 26,000 Benjamites, but these numbers are likely wildly inflated. The Israelites asked God what they should do and God told them to send Judah to lead the fight (he was talking directly to them back then).
They attacked and were horribly rebuffed, losing 22,000 men. They prayed again and God told them to attack. This time they lost 18,000 men. They cried and prayed and God said, "Go, for tomorrow I will give them into your hands." (Apparently he was joking before and perhaps he's a bit of a sadistic prick.) So this time they hide part of their army behind the city and then when the battle starts, the main body breaks and flees. As the Benjamites pursue, the hidden men enter the city and set it on fire. Seeing the smoke and hearing the screams of the women and children, the Benjamites broke and fled. Showing no mercy, the Israelites slaughtered all the men, women, children, and animals in the city, and most of the army as they fled. 600 men survived and formed a defensive barrier on a hilltop, where they stayed for four months.Meanwhile the army of Israel went through the countryside, burning every town and city of Benjamin and killing everyone inside.
After the euphoria from the mass murder had settled down, the Israelites thought, oh shit, there are now going to be only 11 tribes of Israel (apparently 12 was a big deal). To further complicate matters, they had all sworn an oath to not allow their daughters or sisters to marry a Benjamite and they had just murdered all of the women of Benjamin. So they set about looking for a solution.
First they checked to see if there was anyone that didn't show up to fight who wouldn't have taken the oath. They found out that no one from the city of Jabesh, Gilead had shown up. So they sent an army of 12,000 men to murder everyone in the city who wasn't a virgin female. They netted 400 virgins, who had just been ripped from their homes after watching their families murdered in front of them, and gave them to the remaining Benjamites as wives. That still left 200 single men. So they told those 200 men, “Hide in the vineyards near the annual festival of the Lord in Shiloh. When the young virgins came out dancing, jump out and kidnap yourself a wife. When the fathers or brothers complain, we'll buy them off and tell them that their oath wasn't broken because the girls were kidnapped and they didn't give them to the Benjamites.”
And, minus all the dead people and the kidnapped and raped virgins, everyone went happily ever after back to whatever they were doing. And I suppose God got his satisfaction in making his chosen people fight each other to the death, satiating his sadism for a time, at least until he got bored and killed everyone in Jobs family on a bet with the Devil.
As a disclaimer, I do not believe this story to be factually correct or historically based. This story may have some basis in reality (likely an inter-tribal war) but the details are unlikely to be true.Edit: I have no desire to debate this story, religion, or my opinions on it with any theists. Any attempts to comment on this answer to start a debate will be deleted.Footnotes
[1] Bible Gateway passage: Judges 19-21 - King James Version
So after saying that he deletes any attempt to start a "debate" with theists, this anti-theist has a really cute little conversation with another of his elk:
What I ask myself is what is the motive for these people to sit on their computers and write up in their own words "hate-inspiring answers" to questions about biblical matters?
Why would someone need to delete "hate filled" answers rather than debating them? These people admitted that "there's a bit of sadistic pleasure when someone writes a 16 paragraph response to {their} answer and then it vanishes..." so in these people's minds, writing up their opinion which is based purely on a dislike of the subject matter and spreading it out to the world, then deleting any sort of contradiction to that and thus depriving readers of the opportunity to see a counter point is somehow pleasurable because apparently this is all about their amusement. As if Quora is some sort of chatroom instead of a question and answer site.
If someone can't allow counterpoints to their argument to be seen, if they can't be bothered to respond to any attempt at a debate of their opinions then do they actually have a valid point or are they simply a bigot?
(updated on Wednesday 18th December 2019 as I realised I hadn't finished the story and remembered I had a blog).
If someone can't allow counterpoints to their argument to be seen, if they can't be bothered to respond to any attempt at a debate of their opinions then do they actually have a valid point or are they simply a bigot?
(updated on Wednesday 18th December 2019 as I realised I hadn't finished the story and remembered I had a blog).
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