Israel’s good old days were not good. The final story in the book of Judges took place very early in the history of Israel. It happened before the time of the judges. Israel had recently moved into the land of Canaan, but they did not have a king and they had no national identity. God had wanted them to identify themselves as his people but in their unfaithfulness that did not happen. When God’s people are unfaithful they quickly become unrighteous. There are no heroes in this story; there are only victims and villains. Even the good guys are not good.

The Levite belonged to the tribe of Israel that was intended to be its spiritual leaders, but there was nothing spiritual or edifying mentioned about his life or his actions. He took a concubine, which in the cultural context, means he took a second wife contracted for the purpose of sex and bearing children. She was unfaithful to him and followed that unfaithfulness by deserting him and returning to her parents home. She represented an investment to him and not a relationship so he went to get her back.

The way the story is written makes it clear that her father was more concerned with the husbands satisfaction and desires than with hers. Neither her husband nor her father treated her as a person but both objectified her. When they finally left to return home nothing in the story had yet been affected by the fact it was a story about Israelites and not Canaanites.

The first note that being an Israelite should make a difference is when the Levite refused to stop at the city of the Jebusites to spend the night. He believed he would be safer in the town of Gibeah because it was an Israelite town. If things were as they should have been he would have been right. A city of God’s people should be safer than a city of the world. But when God’s people are not godly, horrible things happen.