Faith in a Dark Time

As we return to our studies in Judges, we find the author beginning a new narrative, one that he will follow until the end of the book. In it, he continues to illustrate the heart of darkness in Israel and the unfathomable depths of depravity to which the people plunge so soon after coming into the Land of Promise.

This narrative, like the one we followed early this month, features a traveling Levite. However, our subject here makes a journey that is the opposite of that made by Jonathan in Judges 17, going from the mountains of Ephraim to Bethlehem, where he takes a concubine and returns. A concubine was usually a slave, and the narrative does occasionally refer to the Levite as the woman’s “master.” Yet she is betrothed to him to some legal degree, for he is also called her husband. Thus, when she subsequently sins against the man, her sin can properly be called adultery, and she is culpable for it. However, no one among the people of Israel steps forward to call her to account (“there was no king in Israel”), and she flees back to Bethlehem, finding in her father’s home a refuge he should not afford her.

The Levite, perhaps being unwilling to expose her shame (like Joseph, Matt. 1:19), does nothing for several months, though he would be within his rights to demand her execution (Deut. 22:22). Finally, his anger having cooled, he sets out to go to Bethlehem once more, “to speak kindly to her and bring her back.” Here is one of the most noble deeds in all of the book of Judges. This man, who has been cheated against, determines in his heart to forgive his concubine and to seek to repair their ruptured relationship. Like Hosea, he truly seems to love his “wife of harlotry” (Hos. 1:2).

When the Levite finds his concubine, she brings him into the home of her father, who is glad to meet him and extends his most gracious hospitality to him, perhaps to make amends for harboring his daughter for so long after her sin. For his part, the Levite graciously accept the hospitality of his father-in-law’s home, and he remains there willingly for three days. To all appearances, the Levite and the woman are reconciled and no hard feelings exist. “Everything among them gave a hopeful prospect of their living comfortably together for the future,” Matthew Henry writes.