Judges 19:1 Not Reading It!

 ”And it came to pass in those days, when there was no king in Israel, that there was a certain Levite staying in the remote mountains of Ephraim. He took for himself a concubine from Bethlehem in Judah.“

‭‭Judges‬ ‭19‬:‭1‬ ‭NKJV‬‬

a. There was no king in Israel: This set the stage for the terrible story in the following chapters. No king in Israel meant more than the absence of a political monarch; it also meant that they refused to recognize God’s leadership over them.

i. What unfolds in the rest of this chapter is so distasteful that the commentator F.B. Meyer recommended not reading it. Commenting on this first verse, he wrote: “It will be sufficient to ponder these words, which occur four times in the book, without reading further in this terrible chapter, which shows the depths of the depravity to which may sink apart from the grace of God.”

b. He took for himself a concubine: The Levite’s concubine was recognized as his legal partner, but she did not have the same status in the home or in society as a wife.

i. In this sense a concubine was a legal mistress. Many prominent men in the Old Testament had concubines. Examples include Abraham (Genesis 25:6), Jacob (Genesis 35:22), Caleb (1 Chronicles 2:46), Saul (2 Samuel 3:7), David (2 Samuel 5:13), Solomon (1 Kings 11:3 - 300 concubines), and Rehoboam (2 Chronicles 11:21). Significantly, we never see this kind of family life blessed by God. (Guzik)

Not Reading It!

Distasteful or not, the Lord had this recorded for us as a lesson and it’s up to us to study and learn from it, this is why I study the Bible from cover to cover.

Some will say as F.B. Meyer recommended, “not reading it” and if you do you’ll miss what the Lord is trying to teach you!

What will we learn from the Levite and the concubine?

Blessings