I read Judges last night and there was yet another rather disturbing story that I don’t know what to make of. So a guy and his concubine go to a town on the way back to his place. They specifically picked this place in order to be in a Jewish town and not a Gentile one. Some old guy offers them a place to stay in his house. Then it’s a repeat of what happened with Lot and the angels with a twist. Various townspeople pound on the door of the old man’s place demanding that he put the visitor outside because they want to have sex with him. The old man says no, that would be terrible, but he offers his virgin daughter and the man’s concubine instead. There is some discussion and then they throw the concubine outside. She is raped all night until she dies. The next morning, the man collects the body and goes home. He then cuts here body into 12 pieces and sends a piece to each tribe of Israel as “evidence” of the crime. The Israelites are so outraged they band together and attack the tribe of Benjamin (they were the ones responsible for the town in which this happened). There are heavy losses on both sides, but the tribe of Benjamin is almost wiped out, there are only 400 something men left. The Israelites feel bad for the men because they swore that they would never allow their daughters to mary someone from that tribe. So they arrange a plan where the men from the tribe of Benjamin can steal women from other tribes. This would be OK since they weren’t given to them…
I have a very simple question. WHAT THE HELL WAS THAT ALL ABOUT? It seems as though there is at least one story like this in each of the old testament books I’ve read so far. What are we supposed to do or think about these things? What are you supposed to say to your children when you encourage them to read the Bible and they come across a story like this? I am willing to believe that there are very useful parts of the Bible, and that sometimes terrible things can be very instructive, but I haven’t seen anything useful about these types of stories so far. I sure hope that the quality of material improves in the Old Testament, I’m getting downright discouraged…
5 replies on “Disturbing Bible reading example #56543”
I haven’t soldiered through much of the 1st testament but I did check out some of the apocrypha. Seems to be a lot of that dark sort of stuff that got cut from the bible as well as a lot that made the cut. Keep reminding yourself that Christianity is a religion of peace though ;-). Seems like an oxymoron… religion of peace. Except maybe Buddhism.
Hold out for the new testament.
Randy
Yeah, I know the New Testament is much more instructive… I think that Ruth is the first book in the Old Testament that was “nice.” I’ll keep plugging away.
Isaac
Yeah, I read somewhere that Ruth is a bit of attonement for the extremism of Ezra which amoung other things, posited that Jews who married outside the faith were to send away their foreign wives lest the the race/faith be corrupted. Not exactly a message of tolerance. Ruth was the first diversity mandate. 😉
Randy
Whoa, Randy the Bible scholar:-) Sounds like you’ve done more reading than I have on this topic. I’ve read some other weighty tomes, The Blue Cliff Record and the The Flower Ornament Sutra for example, but never did much with the Bible. I think I’ve always been put off by the Bible thumpers. Can’t say that my opinion has changed yet… Let me know if there’s other things I need to know:-)
Isaac
Bible scholar? LOL. Just another poser who took advantage of a momentary overlap in our interests.
Randy