The Concubine

Series:Rest

Judges 19:5 MSG

I prepare lesson plans far in advance and I pray about each plan…i pray about each scripture for that plan.

Today’s scripture seemed strange when i first read it but when I re-read it and thought about the simplicity of it I was curious. I thought maybe choosing this scripture was a mistake, but I prayed and asked God if I should change the scripture.

God said to go ahead with the initial plan.

In the initial story we have a cast of three characters. We have a girl, her.father, and a man. The girl is a concubine. The man is her semi-husband; he has a wife and this concubine would be his second wife. Then we have the concubine’s father.

Judges 19:5, says, “on the fourth day they arose early in the morning, and he prepared to go, but the girl's father said to his son-in-law, “Strengthen your heart with a morsel of bread, and after that you may go.”

It became very clear in the Biblical narrative that the father was making it so the couple would not leave.

After I read this multiple times I started to see what was happening. In Judges 19:5 the girl’s father urged the man (his new son-In-law) not to leave. So the man decided to eat and stay another night.  The next night brought another stall tactic and so the story went until finally the man stood up to his concubine’s father and the couple left her childhood home.

The trip back to her new home was not an easy journey, but the husband did what was customary In that day. Every step of the trip there were men chasing the man and his concubine/wife. He did everything possible to try to protect her because she was young and had no experience with men.

But a band of Benjamites pursued them. Night after night they were pursued. The husband who had fought to protect her finally had no choice but to let them take her for one night. They (yes THEY) raped her and in the morning returned her to her husband.

She died on the doorstep before she saw her new husband again.

When word spread what the men did to her, the husband sent word out to eleven tribes of Israel to avenge her death. The word to the tribes went far and wide and every tribe except the tribe of Benjamin came to avenge her death.

The men from Israel and the husband of the girl prayed before God and asked God what to do. Yahweh God directed them to fight to avenge her death.

They fought valiantly.

They fought their own tribe of Benjamin.

As time went on more men from the eleven tribes came to fight to avenge her death.. Eighteen divisions of men from the tribe of Benjamin were wiped out. They were their best soldiers.

The men from the other tribes of israel were really sad for the tribe of Benjamin but God meant business here.

There were .22,000 men who died to avenge her death.

God meant business.

After they avenged her death they rested.

The tribe of Benjamin learned do not attack an innocent girl. Girls do not need to think of themselves as ‘just a girl’. God will fight for you.

Deborah

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