The Book of Judges is one of those books of the Bible that we do not read often, and yet, we are familiar with several of the stories in that book.
We find Samson in the book of Judges.
Gideon is also there.
But most of the stories in Judges are ones we don’t remember well, because Judges is a book we don’t often sit down to read or study.
Because we do not read the book of Judges very often, when we do read it we are absolutely shocked at what we find.
If you were going to pick the strangest story of the Bible, then the top ten finalists for that honor would have to come from the book of Judges.
It is in Judges you find the story of dainty little Jael. While a warrior who was on friendly terms with her husband was asleep, she took a tent peg and a hammer and drove the peg into his head. She drove it all the way through and into the ground.
Just as children of our age sing songs of Lizzy Borden who took an ax and gave her father forty wacks, so did the Song of Deborah sing about Jael being the Most Blessed of Women, and (unlike her victim) the Most Blessed of Tent Dwellers.
Then there is Jephthah, who vows before going into battle that if he wins the war, when he gets back home to the farm, he will sacrifice whatever he sees at the gate of the house. He wins the battle. When he goes back to the farm what he sees at the gate of the house is not a goat or a cow. It is his daughter.
He sacrifices her.
Then there is Jair. His story takes all of one verse of the Bible. We are simply told he had 30 sons, who rode 30 donkeys and who ruled 30 towns. There must have been more to it than that, but who knows what it might have been.
But the strangest story of all is the one that closes the book of Judges. It is about a man who had a concubine. A concubine was something like a wife, but not quite. She was something like a slave, but not quite. She was something like a mistress, but not quite. Well, this concubine gets fed up with the man and leaves him and goes home to Daddy. The man follows her and convinces her to come back to him. After a few days, she agrees.
But that’s not the end of the story.
On the way home, they stay in a stranger’s home. That night, a gang of homosexual men come pounding on the door, yelling, "Bring out that man, we want to have sex with him."
The owner of the house yells out to the gang, "That is a disgraceful thing to do. You can’t treat this man like this. But I have young daughter, why don’t you take her instead."
The men are not interested in the girl and begin to get angry. So the traveling man takes his concubine, and without asking how she feels about it, he throws her out the door. Then the traveling man and the owner of the house go to bed and sleep, while outside the house, the gang rapes and abuses the woman.
But that is not the end of the story.
At daybreak, the gang leaves the woman. She struggles back to the house. The door is locked and she just collapses at the door. The men inside the house wake up and according to the Bible this is what happened: "When the 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. He said to her, ’Get up; let’s go.’ But there was no answer." The woman is dead.
This is a baffling story. But that’s not the end of it.
This strange story gets stranger as the master takes the body home. Once there, he does not give her a funeral. Instead he takes a knife and mutilates the body. He cuts off her arms and legs and sends pieces of her all over Israel with a description of what has happened.
As a result, an army of 400,000 men gather and decide to destroy the Tribe of Benjamin. Now if you are wondering what the Tribe of Benjamin had to do with this, it was in the bounderies of that particular tribe that the woman was raped and murdered.
There is then a series of battles and all of the Tribe of Benjamin are killed, except for 600 men who hide in the hills. To insure that the Tribe would be destroyed, it is agreed that it will be forbidden to allow any survivor of the Tribe of Benjamin to have a wife.
But that is not the end of the story.
Israel begins to regret what it has done. The Tribe of Benjamin is on the verge of being wiped out. After all, there are supposed to be 12 tribes of Israel, and here they are about to destroy one of the tribes. There are supposed to be 12 tribes, but there is about to be only 11.
So they make peace with Benjamin, which is now a tribe of 600 men who have no wives. It is illegal to give these men wives, so what does Israel do? They throw a party. And they don’t give the men wives, they let them kidnap some innocent women, to be dragged off to be wives for the tribe.
NOW it is the end of the story.
I read a good bit of Science Fiction and as I read this story, I feel that I am reading something out of Science Fiction. It is not because of some scientific technology in the story, but because of the alien-ness of this event. It is so alien, it feels as if it must have happened on another planet.
What kind of story is this? At first it feels like a love story in which there is a man whose lover leaves him. He goes after her. But no, its not a love story, because whatever this man feels for the concubine it certainly is not love that he feels as he throws her out the door to meet her fate.
It is a violent story, with rape, murder, even genocide.
It is difficult to know exactly what this story is all about. It is so alien to our way of thinking.
Then again, maybe this story and the behavior of its characters is not so alien after all. They may be more like us than we would like to admit.
When you strip away the outer layers of the cultural differences and work your way to the heart of the story, what you have is a people in search of justice. That’s all.
There is no justice in their land. More than anything else, they want to see justice. That’s all.
It is a commendable thing to want justice. It may be that this is the ONLY commendable thing that you can say about any of the people involved with this event. They want justice.
If there was justice, then a man traveling far from home would not be attacked by a threatening gang. So in search of justice, the man stays behind the safety of a locked door and throws out a woman to the crowd.
If there was justice, then a woman would not have been treated like worthless property to be thrown into the hands of a gang, like a piece of meat thrown into the jaws of a hungry animal. So in search of justice, the nation of Israel goes out to destroy an entire tribe of people.
If there was justice, a tribe of people would not face extinction. So in search of justice, their neighbors stand by and let the survivors kidnap women to serve as their wives.
These people in this story are all searching for justice, which is commendable, but they are so perverted in their understanding of what justice is, that they simply continue to make matters worse and worse and worse.
These people are looking for justice, and are unable to find it. The obvious reason as to why they cannot find justice is that they don’t know what justice is. They would not know justice if it were staring them right in the face.
You want to find some justice in this world? Fine. The first step is to find out what justice really is.
This long biblical story presents a wonderful case study of three common misconceptions we have about justice.
The first misconception is that justice is something that protects YOU. In the story, the man is threatened. In a sense of what is just, he protects himself, stays behind the locked door as he throws the woman outside to meet her fate, while he goes to sleep.
The purpose of justice, so he thought, was so that he would be protected. That is not what justice is. But that is not so alien a way of thinking. WE sometimes think about justice in that way.
We think that if there is justice in the world, we will be protected from all harm. Forget about the poor, forget about racial hatred, forget about the poor slob who lost his job at work yesterday. If there is justice in the world, protect ME, and my freedom and my job.
Justice means God watches over me.
Now that is not true, but it is not that far from the truth. Justice is not God watching over ME. Justice is God watching over ALL of us.
In Judges, the people thought that justice was a way of getting protection for yourself. So the man in Judges feels it is right to throw the woman out to the gang to be raped and murdered, as long as he is able to lock the door, climb into bed and feel protected.
Psalm 99 speaks of a God who loves justice, who has established equity. Justice, must be for all, or it is perverted. Truly, that man in Judges had a right to feel that he should be protected from evil. BUT his mistake was that he felt so self centered, that he threw the woman out to meet her violent fate.
Justice, to be true, must be for all people. The man had a right to be protected, but so did the woman.
If we want justice for ourselves, fine, but let’s make sure that we do not gain it at the expense of another. As we work for justice for us, let’s work for justice for the poor in our community, for the illiterate, for the powerless, for the other person. Not just for us.
The second misconception many people have about justice is that they have the impression that justice means permissiveness.
The Tribe of Benjamin becomes the focus of the anger of the rest of their neighbors not simply because the rape and murder happened within their boundaries, but because the Tribe of Benjamin let it happened and did nothing about it. The purpose of justice, so Benjamin thinks, was permissiveness. That is not such an alien way of thinking. WE sometimes think that this is what justice is. It’s your thing, do what you want to do.
Permissiveness is not justice, but it is not too far off the mark. Justice is not permissiveness, but mercy. The two are not the same.
Mercy and justice go hand in hand. But mercy is not permissiveness. Mercy does not permit someone to move into the future unbridled, doing whatever he or she wants to do. Mercy reaches backward into the past and heals our broken souls of our past disobedience.
Again referring to Psalm 99, we read that God loves justice. “You have established equity, in Jacob you have done what is just and right..." And in verse 8, "You were to Israel, a forgiving God,
There is no permissiveness in justice. Only mercy.
The third misconception many people have about justice is that it is the same as revenge.
In the biblical story, the nation of Israel decides to destroy the tribe of Benjamin. Revenge, they think, is what justice is all about. Again, this is not so alien to our way of thinking. You push me, and I’ll shove you.
Again, Psalm 99 says that God is a forgiving God, though he punishes the people for their misdeeds.
Some people don’t see a difference in the two – punishment and revenge. What is the difference?
Revenge is getting even. Revenge is inflicting hurt. Revenge is done with a sneer and a fist, with meanness in one’s heart.
Punishment, however, is meant to build up. It is intended to help someone move beyond their mistakes and errors. It is done with a love in one’s heart.
This God, who is our king, is a God who loves justice, "You were to Israel a forgiving God, though you punished their misdeeds."
You want to find some justice in this world? Fine. The first step is to find out what justice really is. Strip away the misconceptions and find the truth to what justice is about. It is for all people, it is mercy, and it is disciplining punishment.
In the book of Judges, every story begins with the formula, "In those days, Israel had no king." Then the tale is told. At the end of the story, the Scripture repeats the litany, "In those days, Israel had no king, and everyone did that which was right in their own eyes."
My friends, in these days Psalm 99 tells us we have a king. The king is God, and He is a king loves justice -- REAL justice.
Copyright 2005, Dr. Maynard Pittendreigh
All rights reserved.
www.Pittendreigh.com
