The Bible Chapter that Makes Me Angry

Anyone who knows me well knows that I love the Bible. I read it through once a year by reading portions of it every day. It encourages me, convicts me, refreshes me, inspires me.

I love the Bible.

However:

The sixty-six books of the Bible vary a lot! Some are historical, some are prophetic, some are didactic, some are poetic. When I finish one of the books and start another, I have various emotional reactions depending on which book I am about to start. If I am about to begin Isaiah, or Psalms or Hebrews, I have eager anticipation. And when I am about to start the book of Judges, I steel myself for what’s coming.

The book of Judges recounts the people of Israel turning away from God (who had delivered them from Egyptian slavery and had led them to and into the Promised Land) and worshipping idols instead. They then suffer as God allows their neighbours to oppress them. They cry out to God and He sends someone to deliver them. After a while they go back to worshipping the pagan idols and the whole process begins again. In spite of the fact that we get to see a very patient and loving God, who does not abandon His people even when they abandon Him, this cycle is depressing to read about.

But then there’s chapter nineteen.

The chapter that makes me very angry.

In this chapter a man has a concubine (basically a wife – her father is called his father-in-law) who leaves him (In some translations it says that she became angry with him) and returns to her father’s house. After four months he decides to go and “speak kindly to her and bring her back.” He stays at his father-in-law’s house for a few days, and then they start on their journey home. They stop at the town of Gibeah, where at first no one offers them hospitality (hospitality was expected in those days). Finally an old man sees them sitting in the square of the city and takes them in. Then “the men of the city, worthless fellows, surrounded the house, beating on the door.” They told the man of the house to send out his guest so that they could have sex with him. The host says, “Do not act so wickedly; since this man has come into my house, do not do this vile thing. Behold, here are my virgin daughter and his concubine. Let me bring them out now. Violate them and do with them what seems good to you, but against this man do not do this outrageous thing.” But the men would not listen to him. So the man seized his concubine and made her go out to them. And they abused her all night until the morning.” And she dies.

Do you see why I get angry? The host says it would be an outrageous thing if they violated the man to whom he had given shelter, but offers up his daughter and the man’s concubine instead? And then the man himself pushes out his concubine who gets raped all night? (The Bible is real and raw – it describes life as it was.) I am outraged that this man acted in such a self-preservation type way to the point of pushing out his concubine to be abused.

Note, though, that the last words of the book of Judges (a few chapters later) sum up life in those days: “Everyone did what was right in his own eyes” (Judges 21:25). And when everyone does what is right in their own eyes, bad things happen. Very, very bad things indeed.

Let us not do what is right in our own eyes, but what is right in God’s eyes.