Judges 19:22-28
While they were enjoying themselves, some of the wicked men of the city
surrounded the house. Pounding on the door, they shouted to the old man who
owned the house, "Bring out the man who came to your house so we can have
sex with him."
The owner of the house went
outside and said to them, "No, my friends, don't be so vile. Since this
man is my guest, don't do this disgraceful thing. Look, here is my virgin daughter, and his
concubine. I will bring them out to you now, and you can use them and do to
them whatever you wish. But to this man, don't do such a disgraceful
thing."
But the men would not listen
to him. So the man took his concubine and sent her outside to them, and they
raped her and abused her throughout the night, and at dawn they let her
go. At daybreak the woman went back to
the house where her master was staying, fell down at the door and lay there
until daylight. When her master got up
in the morning and opened the door of the house and stepped out to continue on
his way, there lay his concubine, fallen in the doorway of the house, with her
hands on the threshold. He said to her, "Get
up; let's go." But there was no answer. Then the man put her on his donkey
and set out for home. (NIV)
The
Book of Judges is one of those books of the Bible that we do not read often,
and yet, we are familiar with several of the stories in that book.
We find Samson in the book of
Judges. You remember him – the strongest
guy in the Bible.
Gideon is also there.
But most of the stories in Judges
are ones we don't remember well, because Judges is a book we don't often sit
down to read or study.
Because we do not read the book of
Judges very often, when we do read it we are absolutely shocked at what we
find.
If
you were going to pick the strangest story of the Bible, then the top ten
finalists for that honor would have to come from the book of Judges.
It is in Judges you find the story
of dainty little Jael. While a warrior who was on friendly terms with her
husband was asleep, she took a tent peg and a hammer and drove the peg into his
head. She drove it all the way through
and into the ground.
Just as children of our age sing
songs of Lizzy Borden who took an ax and gave her father forty wacks, so did
the Song of Deborah sing about Jael being the Most Blessed of Women, and
(unlike her victim) the Most Blessed of Tent Dwellers. Hopefully no wives here will get any ideas
from Jael!
Then there is Jephthah, who vows
before going into battle that if he wins the war, when he gets back home to the
farm, he will sacrifice whatever he sees at the gate of the house. He wins the battle. When he goes back to the
farm what he sees at the gate of the house is not a goat or a cow. It is his daughter.
He sacrifices her.
Then there is Jair. His story takes all of one verse of the
Bible. We are simply told he had 30
sons, who rode 30 donkeys and who ruled 30 towns. There must have been more to it than that,
but who knows what it might have been.
But the strangest story of all is
the one that closes the book of Judges.
It is about a man who had a concubine.
A concubine was something like a wife, but not quite. She was something
like a slave, but not quite. She was
something like a mistress, but not quite. Well, this concubine gets fed up with
the man and leaves him and goes home to Daddy.
The man follows her and convinces her to come back to him. After a few days, she agrees.
But that's not the end of the story.
On the way home, they stay in a
stranger's home. That night, a gang of violent men come pounding on the door,
yelling, "Bring out that man, we want to have sex with him."
The owner of the house yells out to
the gang, "That is a disgraceful thing to do. You can't treat this man like this. But I
have young daughter, why don't you take her instead."
The men are not interested in the
girl and begin to get angry. So the traveling man takes his concubine, and
without asking how she feels about it, he throws her out the door. Then the traveling man and the owner of the
house go to bed and sleep, while outside the house, the gang rapes and abuses
the woman.
But that is not the end of the
story.
At daybreak, the gang leaves the
woman. She struggles back to the house.
The door is locked and she just collapses at the door. The men inside the house wake up and
according to the Bible this is what happened: "When the master got up in
the morning and opened the door of the house and stepped out to continue on his
way, there lay his concubine, fallen in the doorway of the house, with her
hands on the threshold. He said to her,
'Get up; let's go.' But there was no
answer." The woman is dead.
This is a baffling story.
But that's not the end of it.
This strange story gets stranger as
the master takes the body home. Once there, he does not give her a
funeral. Instead he takes a knife and
mutilates the body. He cuts off her arms
and legs and sends pieces of her all over Israel with a description of what
has happened. And he sends a message along with the body parts asking, “Ok
tribe, what are you going to do about this?”
As a result, an army of 400,000 men
gather and decide to destroy the Tribe of Benjamin. Now if you are wondering what the Tribe of
Benjamin had to do with this, it was in the boundaries of that particular tribe
that the woman was raped and murdered.
There is then a series of battles
and all of the members of Tribe of Benjamin are killed, except for 600 men who
hide in the hills. To insure that the Tribe would be destroyed, it is agreed
that it will be forbidden to allow any survivor of the Tribe of Benjamin to
have a wife.
But that is not the end of the
story.
So they make peace with Benjamin,
which is now a tribe of 600 men who have no wives. It is illegal to give these men wives, so
what does Israel
do? They throw a party. And they don't give the men wives, they let
them kidnap some innocent women, to be dragged off to be wives for the tribe.
NOW it is the end of the story. Just like that – that is the way it ends.
I read a good bit of Science Fiction
and as I read this story, I feel that I am reading something out of Science
Fiction. It is not because of some
scientific technology in the story, but because of the alien-ness of this
event. It is so alien, it feels as if it
must have happened on another planet.
What kind of story is this? At first it feels like a love story in which
there is a man whose lover leaves him.
He goes after her. But no, its
not a love story, because whatever this man feels for the concubine it
certainly is not love that he feels as he throws her out the door to meet her
fate.
It is a violent story, with rape,
murder, even genocide.
It is difficult to know exactly what
this story is all about. It is so alien
to our way of thinking.
Then again, maybe this story and the
behavior of its characters is not so alien after all. They may be more like us
than we would like to admit.
When you strip away the outer layers
of the cultural differences and work your way to the heart of the story, what
you have is a people in search of justice. That's all.
There is no justice in their
land. More than anything else, they want
to see justice. That's all.
It is a commendable thing to want
justice. It may be that this is the ONLY
commendable thing that you can say about any of the people involved with this
event. They want justice.
If there was justice, then a man
traveling far from home would not be attacked by a threatening gang. So in search of justice, the man stays behind
the safety of a locked door and throws out a woman to the crowd.
But - If there was justice, then a
woman would not have been treated that way - like worthless property to be
thrown into the hands of a gang, like a piece of meat thrown into the jaws of a
hungry animal. So in search of justice,
the nation of Israel
goes out to destroy an entire tribe of people.
But - If there was justice, a tribe
of people would not face extinction. So
in search of justice, their neighbors stand by and let the survivors kidnap
women to serve as their wives.
These people in this story are all
searching for justice, which is commendable, but they are so perverted in their
understanding of what justice is, that they simply continue to make this story
worse and worse and worse.
These people are looking for
justice, and are unable to find it. The obvious reason as to why they cannot
find justice is that they don't know what justice is. They would not know
justice if it were staring them right in the face.
You want to find some justice in
this world? Wonderful. The first step is to discover out what justice really
is.
This long biblical story presents a
wonderful case study of three common misconceptions we have about justice.
The first misconception is
that justice is something that protects YOU. In the story, the man is threatened. In a sense of what is just, he protects
himself, stays behind the locked door as he throws the woman outside to meet
her fate, while he goes to sleep.
The purpose of justice, so he
thought, was so that he would be protected.
That is not what justice is. But
that is not so alien a way of thinking.
WE sometimes think about justice in that way.
We think that if there is justice in
the world, we will be protected from all harm. Forget about the poor, forget about racial
hatred, forget about the fellow lost a job yesterday. If there is justice in
the world, protect ME, and my freedom and my job.
Justice means God watches over me.
Now that is not true, but it is not that far from the truth. Justice is not God watching over ME. Justice is God watching over ALL of us.
In Judges, the people thought that justice was a way of getting
protection for yourself. So the man in Judges feels it is right to throw the
woman out to the gang to be raped and murdered, as long as he is able to lock
the door, climb into bed and feel protected.
Justice, must be for all, or it is perverted. The traveling man in Judges had a right to be
protected, but so did the woman.
If we want justice for ourselves, fine, but let's make sure that we do
not gain it at the expense of another.
As we work for justice for us, let's work for justice for the poor in our
community, for the illiterate, for the powerless, for the other person. Not
just for us.
The second misconception
many people have about justice is that they have the impression that justice
means permissiveness.
The Tribe of Benjamin becomes the focus of the anger of the rest of their
neighbors not simply because the rape and murder happened within their
boundaries, but because the Tribe of Benjamin let it happened and did nothing
about it. The purpose of justice, so
Benjamin thinks, was permissiveness.
That is not such an alien way of thinking. WE sometimes think that this is what justice
is. It's your thing, do what you want to
do.
Permissiveness is not justice, but it is not too far off the mark. Justice is not permissiveness, but mercy. The two are not the same.
Mercy and justice go hand in hand. But mercy is not permissiveness. Mercy
does not permit someone to move into the future unbridled, doing whatever he or
she wants to do. Mercy reaches backward into the past and heals our broken souls
of our past disobedience.
In the New Testament Lesson from Matthew’s Gospel, Jesus rebukes some of
the people listening to his sermons because they give great importance to some
articles of the faith, but very little to justice and mercy.
Justice – you cannot have it without mercy.
The third
misconception many people have about justice is that it is the same as
revenge.
In the biblical story, the nation of Israel decides to destroy the tribe
of Benjamin. Revenge, they think, is
what justice is all about. Again, this
is not so alien to our way of thinking.
You push me, and I'll shove you.
Some people don't see a difference in the two – punishment and revenge. What is the difference?
Revenge is getting even. Revenge is inflicting hurt. Revenge is done with a sneer and a fist, with
meanness in one's heart.
Punishment, however, is meant to build up. It is intended to help someone
move beyond their mistakes and errors.
It is done with a love in one's heart.
This God, who is often described in the Bible as a heavenly “father,” is
a God who loves justice. Now, admittedly
the image of God as Father is stretched too thinly if one thinks of a father
who is absent or abusive. But when a
father conducts himself appropriately, we have excellent images of God. I remember my father punished me more than a
few times. I don’t remember him ever
seeking revenge against me. And yet, so
many of us confuse punishment as the same as revenge when it comes to justice.
This story from Judges is confusing.
At first glance you just want to ignore it. Go to something simple like the Beattitudes or
something. But here it is in the Scripture. And when you take a deep look, you find that
it portrays humanity at its worst moments.
It is a story of perverted justice.
You want to find some justice in this world? Fine. The first step is to
find out what justice really is. Strip
away the misconceptions and find the truth to what justice is about.
Justice is not for you, but for all people.
Justice is not permissive, but it is mercy.
Justice is not vengeful or angry, but it is disciplining punishment.
Copyright 2017.
Dr. W. Maynard Pittendreigh
All rights reserved
Ministers may feel free to
use some or all of this sermon in their own ministries as long as they do not
publish in print or on the Internet without ascribing credit to the author.