A Journey Through The Old Testament - Elmer Towns

With the compromising Levite and Micah’s gods, the Danites themselves settled in
northern Palestine. They attacked and destroyed the isolated community of Laish and rebuilt the
city, calling it Dan. The Levite and, false gods were established as part of the worship at the
tabernacle, which remained in Shiloh.
Another Levite also strayed from his calling and took to himself a concubine. But the
concubine became involved with other men and eventually left the Levite to return to her father’s
house in Bethlehem in Judah. It was four months before the Levite made the trip to Bethlehem to
reclaim his concubine (19:2).
As the Levite traveled home with his concubine, he found himself unable to find housing
in the city of Gibeah. He decided to spend the night in the streets, but met an old man from his
home region who was at the time living in Gibeah and offered to house the Levite and his
concubine for the night. Later that evening, certain men of the city came to the house intending
to engage in homosexual acts with the Levite. In an effort to discourage the men from their
intended actions, the host offered to let the men abuse his daughter and the Levite’s concubine.
“So the man took his concubine and brought her out to them. And they knew her and abused her
all the night until morning; and when the day began to break, they let her go” (v. 25).
As the Levite prepared to continue his journey home the next day, he found his abused
concubine lying dead on the doorstep. He placed her body on his donkey and returned home.
There he severed her body into twelve pieces and sent the pieces to the different regions of
Israel. The severed body of the abused concubine angered the nation, “and the congregation
gathered together as one man before the Lord at Mizpah” (20:1). From there they attacked the
tribe of Benjamin. The battle virtually devastated the tribe: with some 25,000 Benjaminites dying
in that day. The 600 men of the tribe who escaped hid out at the rock of Rimmon for four
months.
Later, the men of Israel realized the civil war had virtually resulted in the extinction of
one of the tribes of Israel, but not before they had made a vow not to give their daughters to the
men of that tribe in marriage. When they repented of their actions against the tribe of Benjamin,
they proposed two plans by which the men who had survived the battle and escaped would
secure wives. First, because the amen of Jabesh Gilead had failed to join Israel in the battle, they
were attacked and destroyed. The only residents of the city who were preserved were some 400
young virgins who were then offered to the men of Benjamin as wives. That action only
provided wives for every two out of three men who had survived the battle. To secure another
200 wives, the men of Benjamin were encouraged and permitted to kidnap “the daughters of
Shiloh” that left the city during a certain feast of the Lord, which was held annually in Shiloh.
This second plan provided the rest of the needed wives for the tribe of Benjamin.