The book of Judges closes with this astonishingly messy story. It starts out as if it will be a farcical comedy, with a Levite from the hill country of Ephraim going to Bethlehem to fetch his runaway bride, and not seeming to be able to leave his father-in-law’s home in a timely way (Judges 19:1-9). Eventually the Levite, his concubine, and his servant, get on the road, late in the afternoon; and they decide to spend the night in Gibeah (19:13-21).

Then it all falls apart. The Levite hands his concubine over to the street gang who rape her to death (19:22-27); then he cuts her body into twelve pieces to send to all the tribes of Israel (19:29-30). All the tribes mustered to find out the reason for this (20:1-7), leading to their decision to destroy the town of Gibeah (20:8-11). Then the tribe of Benjamin decided to defend Gibeah rather than hand over the gang of murderers (20:13-15). In the end, the entire tribe of Benjamin was destroyed, except for 600 men who managed to flee into the wilderness (20:41-47).

All the remaining tribes swore an oath that they would not give their daughters to be married to the men of Benjamin; and this meant that there would be no more Benjamites (21:1-3). This seemed wrong to the elders of Israel; but rather than go back on their oath, they burned another town, killing everyone but the young girls, and thus procured 400 wives for those 600 remaining Benjamites (21:8-14). They then encouraged the 200 men who were still without wives to kidnap girls from Shiloh to be their wives (21:16-23). And the story rounds off as if nothing particularly shocking has happened: “The Israelites departed from there at the time by tribes and families, and they went out from there to their own territories” (21:24).

It appears that the people involved were quite aware that things were going from bad to worse: yet each time they did something to fix the situation, their chosen action seems so horrible. Perhaps it is best to hear in the account a parable of our own lostness: as individuals and as communities, we have all gotten ourselves into messes where we flounder around, thinking there must be some decisive move we can make to set things right: but like a train wreck in slow motion we just keep crashing.

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Help us, Lord! This is the story of our nation, our churches, our families: we are the people who keep making wrong choices and poor compromises in order to set things right, and it keeps not working. Transform our hearts; for without you we have no hope.

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