Did you notice that the first sentence we read is "In those days Israel had no king" and the last line of the chapters is "In those days Israel had no king; everyone did as he saw fit"....Israel regresses to the first civil war in these chapters of infighting among her own tribes....
There is a huge parallel in chapter 19 to Genesis 19, where the angels go to spend the night in the square; Lot shows them hospitality and the depraved citizens beat on the door for sex.....perhaps this is showing a cycle of behavior.....the Levite ends up throwing his concubine out the door (nice, huh? Way to treat a woman) and she is repeatedly raped and ends up dying. The Levite wants action and cuts her up into 12 pieces, and distributes the pieces to each of the tribes (I couldn't help thinking that Israel was not being one body here, there was dissention among the members of the body). The crime took place in Gibeah in Benjamin, and the Benjamites would not deal with justice. The Benjamites have war and are defeated.....now Israel begins to feel bad and they don't want the whole tribe wiped out and realize they need wives. Because of a vow, they can't marry their women so they go to Shiloh and kidnap wives (again, how nice and way to treat a woman!). An illustrious history! We finish this book on such shameful behavior. We of course, have never acted that way or put ourselves first. We have never fought within our own families because we knew what was best. We have never had any idols that come before God. I'm just so glad that I am not mentioned in the Bible by my behavior........however, people can still learn from our behavior, can't they? Whew.....we will take in a whole book of the Bible, Ruth, tomorrow....I'm so proud of your persistence......
Look what comes up from the depths of the sea.
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OK...kinda freaked out about the old man throwing his virgin daughter to the wild men for what ever....then she was cut up!!!! I can't believe this....how horrible!! These people have no thoughts of right or wrong do they?
ReplyDeleteWE all must remember to do what God wants, not what we want.....if we do as we want, problems will follow.............
where are you Carol?
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