The Depravity of Gibeah: Hosea 9 pt. 3

I would say that this is all I have to say about what God showed me from Hosea 9, but I'm just not sure.  There is a lot there and I still feel like there is something lurking just outside of my comprehension.  I continue to write about it as much for my own benefit and understanding as anyone else's.  Please bear that in mind because this is another post where there is going to be a lot of, "I think this is what it means."

Let's just start out with the scripture portion that got me started:

The time of Israel's punishment has come; the day of payment is here...you say, 'The prophets are crazy and the inspired men are fools!'  the prophet is a watchman over Israel for my God, yet traps are laid for him wherever he goes.  He faces hostility even in the house of God.  The things my people do are as depraved as what the did in Gibeah long ago.  God will not forget. He will surely punish them for their sins...They deserted me for Baal-peor.  Soon they became vile, as vile as the god they worshiped. I have watched Israel become as beautiful as Tyre.  But now Israel will bring out her children for slaughter, (KJV says 'murderer').  All their wickedness began at Gilgal; there I began to hate them.  From Hosea 9

I hope you have read the other two posts, Gilgal is Where I Started Hating You, and Return to Gilgal.  I'm going to try to make this a stand alone post, but I'm not sure how that is going to work out.

Many people look at the book of Judges and think the story of Gideon or Sampson are the take away.  I have written on both of them in this blog because they are, indeed, important.  That being said, I have known my entire Christian life that there are two stories in the book that are far more important than people ever give them credit.  Those are the story of Jael and the story of the Levite's concubine.

because I am a woman and these stories first show women as strong leaders but secondly, and unfortunately, as chattel.  But, as I grow in the Lord and in the knowledge of His Word, I realize there are many important lessons to be learned in these stories.

I will write about Jael someday.  I have tried to get my friends and relatives to name children after her; but for now, because we are studying Hosea 9, let's stick with the story of the Levite's concubine which is found in Judges 19.

Right off the bat, let's establish what a concubine was in those days.  She was a lesser wife.  A concubine was not a prostitute.  Maybe she didn't have a dowry or the primary wife was for political reasons but, she was a wife nonetheless.  She had all the wifely duties and she was cared for by her husband.

Consider Zilpah and Bilhah.  These were handmaids of Jacob's wives, Leah and Rachel, respectively.  Zilpah gave birth to Gad and Asher.  Bilhah was the mother of Dan and Naphtali.  They were cared for by Jacob and their sons were counted among the sons of Jacob.  Their sons became heads of their tribes of Israel and received an inheritance in the Promised Land.  

They didn't see things in those days as we do.  Sarah, Sarai at the time, gave her handmaid, Hagar, to Abram so he could have a son.  Rachel did the same with Bilhah to Jacob, as did Leah with Zilpah.  You don't see jealousy over the act of making babies.  You did see jealousy over the children, though. 

The concubine, who is given no name and no voice at all in the story, leaves her husband.  The Bible says she played the whore against him and went home to her father.  I'm not trying to speak for God here but I don't think 'played  the whore' meant then, what we think it means.  Let me explain. 

Right now, to this day, in Muslim majority countries, a woman can be killed for traveling alone.  It would be considered an honor killing.  The woman who travels unchaperoned cannot prove her faithfulness.  This is why, in many places under Sharia Law, a woman can't even go to the store alone.  

Countries like Saudi Arabia and Pakistan tell the world they are becoming more lenient towards women.  A little research will prove that honor killings happen all the time, even in the West, and go largely unpunished.  Even under the Law of Moses, if this woman had actually committed adultery, she would have been stoned to death.

As it is, her husband travels to her father's home to retrieve her.  Not only that, the Bible says that he spoke friendly to her.  The ESV says he spoke kindly to her.  Again, this doesn't indicate she committed adultery.  It actually indicates fault on the part of the husband. 

Another thing I think is that this was no 'woman'.  I think this was a girl, what most of us today would consider a girl anyway, late teens or maybe early twenties.  Why would I think that?  Because, it is usually only in youth that we are brave enough to buck social norms to the degree that this concubine did.  The King James Version will eventually come to call her a damsel as well. Not only that, where did she go?  She went home, to her father's house.  The fact that her father was still alive speaks to her age, but it is the fact that she ran home to her father that speaks to me.  She probably thought, "My father loves me.  He would not let anyone treat me like I'm being treated.  I'm going home."

We can see from the text that this assumption can't be too far off.  Her father took her in.  He didn't send her back.  She was there for four months before her husband came and got her. 

I'm getting too hung up on details but, what is the old saying? "God is in the details."  But these aren't the details I want to focus on.  I want to focus on the things that happened after the couple finally leaves the house of her father.

I'm going to summarize the story.  It is linked above. Please read it.

After much ado and feasting, the couple leaves the house of the father of the concubine.  They are accompanied by the servant of the Levite who encourages him to stop for the night because the hour was getting late.  The Levite declares that he will not stay among the heathen but they must go on so they can stay in a town of Israel.

They get to Gibeah which is a city of Benjamin.  It was customary for people to give shelter to travelers.  You will hear people say all the time that the sin of Sodom and Gomorrah was that they violated the custom of hospitality.  That is malarkey, pardon my expression.  But, hospitality was, and still is in places, a big deal.  Taking in sojourners was a commandment in the Bible.

"When a stranger sojourns with you in your land, you shall not do him wrong.  You shall treat the stranger who sojourns with you as the native among you and you shall love him as yourself, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt: I am the Lord your God" 

Leviticus 19:33-34

    "You shall not wrong a sojourner or oppress him, for you were             sojourners in the land of Egypt." Exodus 22:21

    "Then I will draw near to you for judgment.  I will be a swift             witness against the sorcerers, against the adulterers, against             those who swear falsely, against those who oppress the hired             worker in his wages, the widow and the fatherless, against those         who thrust aside the sojourner and to not fear me, says the Lord         of hosts." Malachi 3:5

I know the verse out of Malachi is after the book of Judges.  Remember that the prophets just give deeper insights into what God revealed in the Law.

Anyway, our first clue that something in Gibeah was amiss is the fact that no one stopped to take them in.  They were sitting in the town square waiting for shelter but there was none coming.  Eventually, an old man that was coming home from work stopped and asked if they needed a place.

I'll abbreviate what happens next.

They have their own provisions even fodder for their asses.  All they needed was a roof.  Old man takes them in. 

Sons of Belial come for the Levite.

Old man asks them not to do this evil (just like Sodom and Gomorrah) and offers them his virgin daughter and the concubine instead.

Sons of Belial won't have it and want the Levite who proceeds to throw his wife to the mob to save his own skin.

Mob abuses her all night, unto death (I covered all this in the other post).

Now our focus, what does the Levite do?  He throws her onto his donkey, takes her home, and then cuts her into twelve pieces and sends the body parts to the twelve tribes of Israel.  The tribes of Israel are appalled.  Here's something that struck me.  The Bible doesn't indicate that chopping this woman into pieces appeared out of the ordinary to Israel.   Chapter 20 indicates that the rape was atrocious as was the threat to the Levite, but dismemberment? Nah, no big deal.

The murder of the concubine and the wicked threat to the Levite caused a war that nearly wiped out the tribe of Benjamin. Tens of thousands died and there were only six hundred Benjamite men left.  

Man, I could really go on and on but I started this post to talk about a couple of details and their possible significance, not how Benjamin was saved from anhelation which, according to later verses in Hosea, the Lord would have been okay with (I think). 

The main detail that catches my eye is, the damsel was from Bethlehem.  I think that matters.  She was killed to save another, like someone else from Bethlehem - Jesus.  And, she wasn't just killed, she was brutalized, just like another was brutalized -  Jesus.  She didn't speak - like Jesus.  She was wounded in the house of her friends.  Just like Jesus.

Remember that the servant wanted to stay at another town but the Levite refused?  That town was actually Jerusalem, but at that time Jerusalem belonged to the Jebusites.  It wasn't until the time of David that Jerusalem belonged to Israel.  I think that detail is significant also. 

So, when I say she was wounded in the house of her friends, I mean that in the way Zachariah meant it about Jesus.  She would likely have been safer among the heathen at Jerusalem.  She definitely couldn't have been any worse off. 

So, this whole thing ties together Hosea's prophecy.  Saul as the type of the antichrist from this very town, Gibeah, where the innocent was sacrificially slaughtered; goes on to Gilgal where he is disobedient to the point of losing the kingdom and the presence of God.  And all this is because Israel never really got past what happened at Baal-Peor.  Phew! I think I'm done!

Wait! theirs that whole butchery thing.  Remember my post about cutting the covenant from Genesis 15?  Then there's that battle of Jabesh-Gilead that we went over in the Return to Gilgal post.  Saul slaughters his yoke of oxen and sends the pieces throughout Israel as a call to arms.  This poor girl was butchered in the same way.  It was like an ungodly cutting of the covenant and calling to arms.  It is significant but it is late and I'm done.  Thank you for your patience with me on this.