A House Divided (Judges 19:22-26)
A House Divided
Judges 19:22-26
INTRODUCTION:
Do you know in which war the United States lost the most casualties? It would be the Civil War, which beats out the lost lives in WW2 by about 200,000. A civil war - the war between the states, the war between brothers, the war that divided families. While our ancestors were fighting each other, if any of the major world powers at that time (Great Britain, Russia, France, Prussia, or Austria) had been antagonistic towards the US, we could have easily been defeated.
We studied Mark 3 a few weeks ago and we read where Jesus made the statement, “If a kingdom is divided against itself, that kingdom cannot stand. If a house is divided against itself, that house will not be able to stand” (3:24-25). The Swartz Creek church of Christ will not continue to exist if we do not fight hard for unity among ourselves. Our family will not continue to exist if Mom and Dad do not fight hard to keep unity among ourselves. Sin is what causes division. Always.
This morning, I want us to focus on that idea - the power of unity - by studying an obscure event from the life of God’s people, the nation of Israel, from the book of Judges.
When Joshua, the servant of Moses, died, Israel had been faithful to God throughout his lifetime and, remarkably, throughout the lifetime of the next generation. When the book of Judges begins, Othniel and Ehud (about whom Jared will have a lesson tonight) are good judges. The next judge is Deborah and she has to step up basically because they’re having trouble finding men with a spiritual backbone to lead God’s people. But then Israel begins spiraling downward.
We’ll probably have a sermon on chapters 17-18 next year (otherwise, I have preached a sermon on every significant judge in the book). But, the first text I want us to read together is 17:6: “In those days there was no king in Israel; every man did what was right in his own eyes.” Now notice 18:1: “In those days there was no king of Israel.” There was no leader, there was no one to direct God’s people back to God.
Read 19:1 and we’ll come back and study the text of chapter 19 in just a moment: “Now it came about in those days, when there was no king in Israel.” Finally, let’s read 21:25: “In those days there was no king in Israel; everyone did what was right in his own eyes.”
So, as we approach our study this morning, let’s keep in mind the moral and spiritual environment of this period of Israel’s history. There is no king; there is no leader to guide Israel back to God; there is no one to make sure that God’s people are united and serving God together. Since Moses and Miriam and Aaron, there have been two prophets mentioned in the Bible: Deborah, the female judge was a prophetess, and an unnamed prophet in Judges 6:8.
Now, let’s look at the text of chapter 19:
THE SET-UP - 19:1-15:
This “concubine” was considered this man’s second wife. She was not just a mistress. She had the legal status of a wife, but second to the man’s primary wife. Notice in verse 3 that the text refers to the man as her “husband.”
This concubine committed adultery against her husband (ver. 2) but the text doesn’t make a major issue out of that. The man goes to the woman’s father’s house, where she is, in order to bring her back. That shows how much he loved her and wanted to have her with him. He was forgiving and gracious, reflecting, of course, the love that God had for the nation of Israel despite how frequently she was unfaithful to Jehovah God.
We get the picture here that the father-in-law was very hospitable and did all he could to make the man feel welcome. He even wanted the man to stay longer than 5 days but the man knew he needed to leave and go home.
On the way home, the man needs a place to stay. He is close to the city of Jebus which will be conquered by King David and made into the city of Jerusalem. But, at this point, it is still under the oversight of non-Jews, “foreigners” (ver. 12), so the man will not stay there.
The man decides to stay in the village of “Gibeah.” “Gibeah” is listed within the tribe of Benjamin. There is a contrast in the hospitality that the man finds here in the tribe of Benjamin, in Gibeah. Notice in verse 15 that the man and his traveling group have to stay in the open square because nobody took them into their house to spend the night.
You and I live in a rat race today. Get up, go to work. Come home, eat supper, maybe spend a little bit of down time, and then go to bed, hoping to get 6-7 hours of sleep, and then get up and go to work again the next day. Spiritual matters are not always at the front of our minds. Asking ourselves, “What would Jesus do?” is not always the first thing that we think about on our way to work, not with cars speeding past us at 70 mph! Who has time to think about spiritual matters and who has time to think about fellow Christians? There’s things to think about at work. And if I don’t think about it, if I don’t think about my needs, nobody else will. If I don’t promote myself at work, nobody is going to notice me. If I don’t get myself noticed, I’ll be stuck in the same old cubicle for my entire working life. I’ve got to focus on me, my family, the here-and-now… That’s the set-up. Now let’s look at the sin.
THE SIN - 19:16-30:
We’ve already noticed that there was a contrast between the father-in-law’s hospitality in the village of Bethlehem and the hospitality of this village of Gibeah. Incidentally, Bethlehem was the home village of King David and Gibeah was the home village of King Saul.
In verses 16-21, we have a detailed account of an old man who came in from the fields and saw this visitor and his group sleeping in the open square and he insisted that they stay with him, so there’s some hospitality here.
But then things turn rough in verse 22. Some men of the city of Gibeah, “worthless fellows,” pound on the door. They want to have homosexual relations with the visitor, just like what happened with Sodom in Genesis 19! The phrase translated “worthless fellows” literally means “sons of Belial.” “Belial” is a word that means “useless, wicked, and good for nothing.” So, the historian calls these men “sons of uselessness” or “sons of wickedness.” They were completely useless people! But, they were gay.
And they want to have relations - the text says “know” - the male visitor. The old man, the owner of the house, begs them not to do anything to his visitor. Notice he describes their desires as “wicked” (ver. 23) and an “act of folly.” So, like Lot before him (and we can’t understand why Lot or this man would do such a thing), offered his virgin daughter and the visitor’s concubine for the sexual gratification of these men. Come to find out, these men are not homosexuals; they are bisexuals!
In verse 25, the men grabbed the concubine and gang raped her and sexually and physically abused her to such a degree that she dies from the wounds she suffered! They took the woman off somewhere to do to her whatever entered their perverse minds and early in the morning, the woman came back to the old man’s door and fell at the door and apparently died before the others woke up that morning.
The man finds the woman, his concubine, his second wife, laying dead at his door, picked her up, loaded her on his donkey, and returned home. When he got home, he cut up his concubine into twelve different pieces and sent each piece into each of the twelve territories of the nation of Israel to draw the attention of God’s people to such a horrible, wicked, lewd, disgraceful act in Israel. In effect, he was calling for revenge.
You and I have sin in our lives on a fairly frequent basis. Paul lists some of them in Romans 1:29-31: “unrighteousness, wickedness, greed, evil; full of envy, murder, strife, deceit, malice; they are gossips, slanderers, haters of God, insolent, arrogant, boastful, inventors of evil, disobedient to parents, without understanding, untrustworthy, unloving, unmerciful.” At the heart of most of these sins is selfishness. Self-centeredness. I’m concerned about me and my little world and I give little thought to you. Sometimes my little world includes Rachel and we give little thought to you. Sometimes my world includes my closest friends and we give little thought to you. At the heart of most sins is self-centeredness. I think rape and sexual abuse is the epitome of self-centeredness. In this case of Israel, that’s what leads to civil war. Remember, a house divided against itself cannot stand.
THE HOUSE IS DIVIDED - chapters 20 & 21:
“From Dan to Beersheba” (20:1) is a figurative expression to refer to the north and south of Israel: “from the north to the south,” Israel sent representatives to stand in the presence of Jehovah God at the village of Mizpah. They compared notes and they reckoned they had 400,000 soldiers trained with a sword. 400,000 infantry. The US army is around 1 million men and women. Out of that, only about 600,000 could get deployed into a combat zone. Out of that, only about 120,000 would see combat. Ancient Israel was a little less (13,000 sq miles), in land mass, than the upper peninsula (16,000 sq miles). Imagine 400,000 soldiers camped out in the UP!?
The leaders of Israel asked the Levite what happened and he told them (20:3-7). At this point, the men, the leaders do not ask God for His decision! They decide they are going to go punish the tribe of Benjamin for the sins of Gibeah. Gibeah has done a “disgraceful thing” in Israel (20:10) and so all these soldiers march down to Gibeah in unity, “united as one man” (20:11).
The law of Moses required the death penalty for homosexuality: Lev. 18:22; 20:13. Death was the penalty. Gibeah should never have allowed these men to engage in this practice! They should have never allowed the men of Gibeah to get to this point! They should have stopped this sin in its tracks. But, remember, there is no spiritual leader in Israel. Every man is doing what is right in his own eyes. And that is going to lead to civil war…
In 20:12-17, the leaders of Israel send ambassadors throughout the territory of Benjamin and they asked Benjamin to hand over these sexually immoral worthless men to be punished. But the men of Benjamin refuse to do so! Not only does Gibeah itself refuse to practice the Law of Moses but now the whole tribe of Benjamin refuses to practice the Law of Moses! Instead, the men of Benjamin take a census of their own fighting men and they had a number of men who were left-handed, who were either employed in the army because they were left-handed, or they were trained to fight with their left hands. There were 700 of those guys. The whole army of Benjamin numbered 26,000. (Incidentally, the phrase “not miss” in verse 20:16 is the verb normally translated “to sin;” this illustrates for us the meaning of the verb “to sin:” to miss the mark.
So, we’ve got 400,000 fighting against 26,000!
Now, Israel goes to God and asks His opinion. Notice how Israel words the prayer in verse 18: “Who shall go up first for us to battle against the sons of Benjamin?” Notice the underlying assumption behind the question: Going to battle is the right thing to do. Who does it first? They are not asking for God’s advice! They are asking for God to rubber stamp their decision!
In essence, God does just that, but He allows Israel to be defeated - twice! At the first battle, the Benjamites kill 22,000 of Israel (20:21). When they wept before the Lord for their defeat in verse 23, they ask about going into battle again, and the Lord says, “Go again.” This time, the Benjamites kill 18,000 of Israel (20:25). This time Israel weeps and fasts (incidentally, this is the first time (20:26) the verb “to fast” [to go without eating] is used in the Bible). This time, Israel comes before God a third time and asks, “Shall I yet go again to battle?” Notice in verses 23 and 28 the expression “my brother.” Shall I go fight “my brother?” This is Civil War!
God says, “Yes, go fight and I’ll deliver them into your hands!” So the rest of chapter 20 talks about that final battle. Notice in verse 35: “And the Lord struck Benjamin before Israel, so that the sons of Israel destroyed 25,100 men of Benjamin that day, all who draw the sword.” They only had 26,000 fighting men to begin with! Now, they’re down to 25,100! Now, based on how God behaved earlier with Gideon, I believe God allowed Israel to lose twice, to lose 40,000 of her own men, 10% of her military, to teach Israel a lesson in humility, that they will not save themselves by their own strength, by their own power. But, God still wanted Benjamin to be punished.
Then, in their misplaced zeal, Israel nearly wipes out the entire tribe of Benjamin, recorded in one very sad verse (20:48): “The men of Israel then turned back against the sons of Benjamin and struck them with the edge of the sword, both the entire city with the cattle and all that they found; they also set on fire all the cities which they found.”
That’s the result of a house divided against itself. Israel almost completely wiped out 1/12 of their whole nation, one entire tribe! To make things even worse, when they met at Mizpah at the beginning of chapter 20, the leaders of Israel swore an oath in front of Jehovah God that they would not allow their daughters to marry anyone from the tribe of Benjamin! So now, they’ve practically wiped out the men and apparently, they have nearly killed all the women! What are they going to do?
Well, they start asking around and they find a village named Jabesh-Gilead who did not send leaders to Mizpah, so their leaders did not swear the oath about their daughters not marrying Benjamites. Israel kills the men, women, and children of this village but they found 400 virgin girls at Jabesh-Gilead and then later found some more women from the village of Shiloh and had them marry the men of Benjamin who were still alive. Otherwise, a tribe of Israel would have been blotted out (21:17).
Israel descended into civil war, a nation divided against itself, and they had weakened themselves and set themselves in a spiritual condition that made it more difficult for them to stay faithful to God. And it all began when a few men in Gibeah refused to humble their hearts to the word of God and repent of their sins. Then, it escalated so that the whole city of Gibeah refused to discipline their inhabitants. It further escalated until the whole tribe of Benjamin refused to discipline their own cities. When Israel stepped in to discipline, they did not, at first, consult God. They simply acted on their own desires and pleasures, motivated out of pride.
When you take the whole book of Judges into account, you learn that well over 100,000 Israelites meet a violent death in the book - all at the hands of fellow Israelites! No wonder Israel was susceptible in the book of 1 Samuel to being led away from God!
Take home message: We need to stop pride in our hearts as soon as possible because pride leads to sin, which leads to division, which leads to defeat at the hands of Satan.