Appeal to the People

The aftermath of the concubine’s rape and murder is related in a strange, factual manner. The author makes no comment on the deed and tells us almost nothing of the Levite’s emotions. The Levite thus appears most callous, belying his loving pursuit of her when she sinned against him (Judg. 19:3). But we must not forget that he is culpable in her death, having given her to the mob rather than sacrificing himself to protect her, and perhaps he is stricken with this guilty knowledge.

We are told first that the Levite “arose” in the morning. Is it possible he has been sleeping as his concubine was being ravished outside the house? Next, he emerges from the house, not to seek her out but “to go his way.” Noticing her body on the doorstep and perhaps believing her to be asleep (wanting her to be asleep), he tells her, “ ‘Get up and let us be going.’ ” Her lack of response reveals the awful truth: She is dead. But even this brings no reaction. The Levite, we’re told, simply lifts her body onto a donkey and departs for his home in Ephraim, abandoning his plan of going to Shiloh (19:18).

What happens next takes the appearance of callousness to a new depth, but it implies one emotion on the part of the Levite—anger. He is furious and he wants justice. However, “There was no king in Israel, nor (for aught that appears) any sanhedrin, or great council, to appeal to, and demand justice from,” Matthew Henry writes. “He has therefore no other way left him than to appeal to the people: let the community be judge.” To make this appeal, the Levite cuts the body of his concubine into 12 pieces, then sends them to the 12 tribes, presumably to the leader of each (including Benjamin) and presumably with an explanation in some form. “The Levite designed hereby, not only to represent their barbarous usage of his wife, whom they had better have cut in pieces thus than have used as they did, but also to express his own passionate concern and thereby to excite the like in them,” Henry says. “And it had the desired effect.”

Indeed, we are told that as the Israelites hear the gruesome tidings of the woman’s ill treatment, they are uniformly shocked, declaring the crime of the Benjamites to be unheard-of in Israel. Amid the outrage, a consensus soon emerges that a national assembly must be held to decide what course to take in response to this great crime.