Xenophobia Leads to Abuse

The Sodom Series, #12

What’s the moral of the story in Judges 19?

Boswell points out that “Jews and Christians have overwhelmingly failed to interpret [the Gibeah story] as one of homosexuality, correctly assessing it as a moral about inhospitality” (Boswell 95–96).

Why is this account not treated the same as the Sodom story in the eyes of believers today?

The Judges 19 passage isn’t considered an indictment of homosexuality because it focuses on the fate of the concubine, a woman.

Her fate shows that the men of Gibeah were not animated by overwhelming homosexual desire. … The men of Gibeah did not turn up to invite the Levite to an orgy, and the concubine had no power over what befell her. There can be no doubt that this story is one about attempted pack rape of a man, which is diverted into the successful pack rape of a woman.

Pack rape of a defenceless stranger is a particularly apt symbol of injustice and abuse of the helpless, which I would argue are the real sins of Sodom and Gibeah—not same-sex desire…. It is not the gender of the victims that is crucial, but their status, that of defenceless aliens. (Carden 25–26, emphasis mine).

The wicked Gibeahites accept only the Levite’s concubine and not the host’s virgin daughter. “To the mob, the Levite is clearly outsider, and the concubine is his woman and shares his outsider status. She is therefore a suitable substitute while the old man’s daughter is not” (Carden 37).

Comparing Genesis 19 with Judges 19

In comparison, the Judges 19 narrative is quite similar to the Genesis 19 account, but includes two serious crimes, one of which is brutal murder.

Both accounts:

Begin with a description of sojourners, two outsiders who dwell in the midst of immoral cultures
Two sets of visitors
Two hospitable households
Two confrontations by the local people
Two threats of violence
Two devastating conclusions

In both accounts, the violent demands of the local people are a way to denigrate the strangers in their midst, outsiders they did not like.

Neither Lot nor the old man of Gibeah defends his visitors to safeguard them from same-sex relations. “Instead,” says Matthew Vines, “they both expressed the concern that their visitors had come under the protection of their homes” (Vines 66–67). Both shielded their guests because of the sacred code of hospitality.

Those who are righteous make it their duty to establish rights for those who don’t have them, especially strangers and aliens.

Why protect guests?

Both accounts include hospitable hosts who believe it is more important to protect their guests over their own flesh and blood (daughters). But why?

Some have argued that Lot’s action revealed his belief that opposite-sex behavior was preferable to same-sex behavior. [It is true] that the gender of Lot’s guests played a role—not because of Lot’s concerns about the bodily “sameness” involved in same-sex behavior, but because of the greater honor men held in ancient times. …[M]en in the ancient world were considered to be of greater value than women, which made raping a man a more serious violation. … The issue in both instances is patriarchy, not the anatomical complementarity of men and women (Vines 67, emphasis mine).

What was their sin?

The sexual sin in Judges, although heterosexual in nature, isn’t fornication. It’s violent abuse and rape. They abuse and rape a woman until she eventually dies.

The accounts differ, however, in their result. Both hosts offer women, in their day considered to be of lesser honor and value than men. The people of Sodom refuse; the people of Gibeah accept, resulting in the sexual abuse and death of the concubine.

Another important difference is how present-day Bible believers interpret the stories and continue to use them to make moral arguments today.

Why are the stories interpreted differently?

In both accounts the locals demand the handing-over of male visitors and threaten violence.

Although actual violence to the visiting men happens in neither story, only the Sodom account is remembered and rehearsed as representing the evils of homosexuality. The Gibeah account, if mentioned at all, is never interpreted this way.

The word Sodomites refers to the inhabitants of the city Sodom. But their crimes, inaccurately interpreted as an indictment against homosexuality, have taken on such proportion that Sodomites is now used to refer to those who practice homosexual acts—sodomy.

Why hasn’t the same process of abstraction happened for the word Benjamites or Gibeahites?

Christian theology did not become preoccupied with a “sin of the Benjamites” (as the inhabitants of Gibeah were called), nor did European countries adopt penal statutes against “Benjamy.”

This is more striking because the incidents at Gibeah are more horrible than the events surrounding Lot’s hospitality to the angelic messengers in Sodom.

The citizens of Sodom do nothing in the end. They are blinded by the angels, who then instruct Lot to hurry his family out of the city in view of its impending destruction.

At Gibeah, there are no angels to rescue the sacrificed woman during the dark night of her torture. Nor does God punish Gibeah with a fiery storm. The Israelite armies must do it themselves, after sustaining heavy casualties.

Why is Sodom so infamous yet so misunderstood?

Why is it then that the story of Sodom had such a long afterlife? How does it come to be misread so systematically and for so many centuries?

The beginning of an answer lies precisely in the dramatic and total divine judgment executed on the city and its neighbors.

The sin of Sodom wasn’t men having sex with other men.

Their sin was xenophobia: the abuse, degradation, and violation of others, STRANGERS—the same sin as the men of Gibeah committed—although the Gibeahites raped a woman.

The Sodom story has taken on a life of its own because of the fiery judgment it ends with. This makes it imperative that it be interpreted correctly and not misread as it has been and continues to be to this day.

So we must get back to Sodom, where we left Lot in the lurch with wicked citizens banging on the door.

What happens when the angels pronounce judgment? We’ll find out next time.

More information:

To read the full story, get my book, The Sin of Sodom: What the Bible Really Says About Why God Destroyed the Cities of the Plain, for Kindle and in trade paperback.

The Concubine Was Abused to Death

The Sodom Series, #11

A Levite, his concubine, and servant spend the night at Gibeah in the home of a hospitable old man. But wicked citizens surround the house and demand he send out the Levite. The old man refuses, instead offering his virgin daughter and the concubine.

The Levite hands over his wife

But the men [of Gibeah] 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.
–Judges 19:25 NIV

Men here again is enôsh, “a mortal, people in general” (Strong’s, H582), the same word used in the Sodom account to refer to all the citizens, both men and women.

To save his own skin, the Levite throws the concubine out to them.

The word took is the Hebrew word hazaq, meaning, “to fasten upon, hence to seize; to bind, restrain, conquer” (Strong’s, H2388). The Levite forces his wife outside to appease these people. Because the concubine has to be forced outside, she must not have wanted to go.

This Levite, a man from the priestly tribe of Israel, had traveled to Bethlehem determined to reclaim his slave wife. He convinced her to reconcile with him, and she left her father’s household. Yet here in Gibeah the Levite throws her to the wolves to be abused.

The word abused is alal:

[To] deal with severely, abuse, make a fool of someone, mock. It is used to indicate the exercise of power over another person, generally in a bad sense, hence meaning ‘to maltreat.’ It signifies some great achievement, generally malevolent. This word is used to depict the exploitation of one person by another (TWOT, 1627, emphasis mine).

The woman was a slave, the man’s property. Her husband forces her out, and the people of Gibeah mistreat and abuse her all through the night.

The concubine meets her fate

As morning appeared, the woman came and fell down at the door of the man’s house where her master was, until it was light.
–Judges 19:26 NRSV

Who knows where the people of Gibeah had taken her, how many of them had been with her, and what shocking crimes they had perpetrated upon her. But she made it back alive.

Perhaps she pounded on the door just as the people who had abused her had pounded on it the evening before. If she did, no one answered.

27 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.
28 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.
–Judges 19:27–28 NIV

After a good’s night rest, the Levite steps out of the old man’s house to continue on his way to Ephraim. But there lies his wife on the stoop with her hands on the threshold!

As if nothing has happened, he says to her, “Get up! Let’s get moving!”

She doesn’t answer. He rolls her over and discovers she is dead. He throws her over his donkey and heads for home.

What is the result of this misogynistic crime and travesty of hospitality? Civil war that results in the death of tens of thousands of Israelites.

The moral of the story? We’ll find out next time.

More information:

To read the full story, get my book, The Sin of Sodom: What the Bible Really Says About Why God Destroyed the Cities of the Plain, for Kindle and in trade paperback.

Gibeah’s Violence Toward Strangers

The Sodom Series, #10

A righteous old man, an outsider living in Gibeah, invites the sojourning Levite, his concubine, and servant to stay the night in his home (Jdg. 19:20-21). Yet this good deed meets with violence from the townspeople.

The Levite accepts hospitality

It seems the old man is warning the Levite and his party not to spend the night in the square. Don’t you wonder why?

After exchanging social pleasantries, the Levite accepts the hospitality of the old man and goes home with him. There, the host tends to all the needs of his visitors, even though they already have all they require (19:19).

As mentioned in a previous post, it was the custom of Eastern peoples to provide for their guests as if they were members of their own family or honored dignitaries. If you were an ancient Easterner, whoever came under your roof as a guest could expect your provision and protection, even unto death.

This custom would soon be tried.

The children of Belial arrive

22 As they were making their hearts merry, behold, the men of the city, worthless fellows, surrounded the house, beating on the door. And they said to the old man, the master of the house, “Bring out the man who came into your house, that we may know him.”
23 And the man, the master of the house, went out to them and said to them, “No, my brothers, do not act so wickedly; since this man has come into my house, do not do this vile thing.”
–Judges 19:22–23 ESV

The word men here is enôsh, meaning “a mortal, people in general” (Strong’s, H582), the same word used for the citizens of Sodom who showed up at Lot’s door. It includes both men and women.

The King James Version says that “certain sons of Belial, beset the house round about” (Jdg. 19:22). This phrase “sons of Belial” means “worthless fellows, scoundrels, sons of the devil, children of evil” (Miller and Lane, Harper’s Bible Dictionary, 303).

Sons is ben, “not exclusively a reference to the male offspring of human parents,” but an idiom “for children generally, for descendants” (TWOT, 254).

These wicked people, both men and women, are depraved. They discovered someone new in town and determine to dominate and debase him.

This sounds much like the Genesis 19 account of the people of Sodom who demand audience with the angels who visited Lot. We’ll see just how similar the stories are.

The old man negotiates

Bound by the duty of hospitality, the old man slips outside and begs them not to abuse the Levite. He says, “No, my brothers….”

Maybe he is simply trying to be persuasive. Perhaps he has dealt with this group before. In any event, he caters to their unholy spirit and compromises with them in order to protect his guest.

“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 as for this man, don’t do such an outrageous thing.”
–Judges 19:24 NIV

The old man offers them his own virgin daughter, probably yet a teenager, and the Levite’s concubine. Note that he does not offer the young male servant.

Lot did the same thing the night the citizens of Sodom want to debase the angels. It may be that, because of previous dealings with these Benjamites, the old man knows if he doesn’t appease them, he and his guest will be harmed.

The Gibeahites become violent

Verse 22 says the people surround the house and pound on the door. They mean business.

In the same situation in Genesis 19, the angels with Lot at Sodom rescued him and struck the wicked men with blindness (Gen. 19:11), but there are no angels on the scene at the home of the old man in Gibeah.

For “use them” (v. 24), the KJV says, “humble them.” The word anâ contains the meaning “the idea of looking down or browbeating, to debase, deal hardly with” (Strong’s, H6031).

As in Sodom and with the U.S. military at Abu Ghraib prison, the custom of Gibeah is to interrogate and humiliate foreigners and strangers in their midst as a show of superiority and domination.

But the men would not listen to him. So the man took his concubine and sent her outside to them….
–Judges 19:25 NRSV

What happens to this unfortunate woman who has reluctantly reunited with her husband? We’ll find out next time.

More information:

To read the full story, get my book, The Sin of Sodom: What the Bible Really Says About Why God Destroyed the Cities of the Plain, for Kindle and in trade paperback.