I was once robbed at gunpoint. I was in the bad part of Nashville Tennessee. I had a good reason, so I took a risk, and I paid the price. Every town or city has a bad part where the wicked have greater control creating greater risk of harm. Attempting to explain why these places exist and what should be done about them involves more than just theology. It also includes politics, sociology, philosophy and criminology. There are no easy and obvious answers. I believe theology teaches that the root of the problem is sin, but that even where righteousness is not practiced God intends for government to protect the weak from the wicked.

When the Levite entered Gibeah he did not enter a bad part of town; he entered a bad town. It was a town controlled by the wicked. Even those who may not have been extremely wicked were unwilling to risk themselves or their households to provide the security of their home to a stranger. The law of hospitality was universal in the Middle Eastern culture. Even the nonreligious lived with an awareness of the requirement to practice hospitality. Of all the citizens of this town, only an old man was willing to risk opening his doors to the Levite and his companions.

While they were enjoying their evening meal, some of the wicked men of the city surrounded the house and demanded that the old man give them the Levite so that they might have sex with him. Their demand was almost identical to that of the wicked men of Sodom when Lot was visited by an angel of the Lord. The Levite sent his concubine outside to them and they raped her and abused her throughout the night only to release her at daybreak. She made it as far as the doorsteps and died.

I believe everyone would agree that the rapists were wicked men. But the text says that they were some of the wicked men of the city. Who were the others? The text does not make it clear, but I believe that every person in the city who could have done something to make the place safer and did not was wicked and shared in the evil that was done.

“Aven” is a Hebrew word that is translated into English as “sin.” It is used when the Hebrew is speaking of systemic evil, the power of evil let loose in the world. If you have ever baited a fishing hook with a nightcrawler you have experienced the slime that sticks to your fingers after putting the worm on the hook. That slime is hard to remove. You dip your hands in the water, you wipe them on your pants, and still the slime clings to your fingers. That is a word picture of Aven. The evil actions of the actively wicked people of Gibeah had left the town so influenced by the power of evil let loose in the world that the entire city was covered in the slime of sin.

The Levite was not much better. No clean and righteous man would have or could have sent a woman out to be raped and then gone back to sleep as if nothing had happened. He acted as if, because he was her master, and she was his concubine/sex slave, that it was only to be expected that she would service the wicked men of the city. When he saw her lying on the doorstep he told her to get up, and it was only when she did not that he checked and found she was dead. He was outraged but the Scripture does not explain why. Was he outraged because of the wicked way they had treated a human being or because of the way they had treated his property. Sin’s evil had left him slimy.

Because men and women who live in a wicked world soon become so covered in slime they are hard to distinguish from the actively wicked, Christians daily depend upon the cleansing blood of Jesus.