Day 96 —  We have been reading the Bible daily for a quarter of the year and have begun a new month. Praise God! What have you learned about God? About yourself?

   Day 96 – Judges 19 – 21 (A very bad incident, civil war, and kidnap)

Wow, can it get any worse? Today’s reading, the last in Judges, shows how morally low people can get without the knowledge of God.

Chapter 19 tells a story about a Levite that parallels the story of Sodom in Genesis 19. A Levite’s concubine runs away to her father and he goes after her. After several days, the father allows him to take her away. On the way home, they stop in a town of the tribe of Benjamin. An old man advises him to spend the night INDOORS!  The reason is that the town is full of craving homosexual men! Like at Lot’s door in Sodom, these men demand that the old man send the Levite out so they can “have their way with him.” The Levite sends out his concubine instead and they ravish her all night so that she dies at his doorstep. (Can you believe it??)

He loads her body on his donkey and goes home, where he cuts it in pieces and sends one to each of Israel’s tribes. (Gag!)  In Chapter 20, the tribes muster soldiers to go after Benjamin to destroy them all. After two costly defeats, they use an ambush technique we saw Joshua do against Ai, and nearly wipe out all the Benjaminites – only 600 left. 

Remorse then hits the other eleven tribes, and in Chapter 21, they devise a plan to give these 600 min, wives to carry on the line. They notice that one city in Israel did not send soldiers to fight. So they go and kill all the men and married women, and steal 400 virgins for the men of Benjamin.  But, alas, there are still 200 wifeless men! What to do??

They hear of a festival in Shiloh. They wait in ambush (a different kind) for the young women to come into the vineyards dancing… and grab 200 of them.  With these new wives, the 600 of Benjamin return, rebuild their towns, and live in them.

The last verse in Judges says it all. “In those days there was no king in Israel (and) everyone did what was right in their own eyes.”