A priest cares enough for his concubine (and, yes, I said those two words in the same sentence "priest" and "concubine") that he goes after her to bring her back home even after she's unfaithful to him. Sounds like the story of Hosea. And then, the men surrounding the house asking for the man to send his visitor out sounds a lot like Lot.
But then, the rest of the story is, well, quite original.
The Levite's concubine is raped and abused by the men of Gibeah and dies. So the Levite cuts her up into twelve pieces and sends them to the twelve tribes of Israel. Imagine opening up that package. This wasn't your typical secret sister gift.
The tribes put the pieces together (figuratively) and share the Levite's outrage. So they kill a bunch of Bejaminites since the people Gibeah are of the tribe of Benjamin. Curiously, the Lord doesn't let them win right off. There's some suffering involved. Perhaps there are so many skeletons in their collective closets that God is outraged at their outrage...and so there's plenty of punishment to go around. Lord knows.
Then, once they've finally slaughtered a good deal of Benjamin's tribe, Israel mourns and come up with crazy scheme to have the Benjamin men without a wife to abduct the girls in Shiloh while they're out dancing in the fields. This, apparently in their minds, gets around the fact that Israel has taken a vow to never give their daughters in marriage to Benjamin. Ok, so abduct them while we look the other way. God, as far as I know, has only looked the other way once.
So the big question for me is -- is abduction of an innocent woman better than breaking a rash vow? Isn't this law over love? And why are those outraged over Benjamin's sexual morality asking them to abduct their daughters? I'd be outraged...if I weren't such a sinner myself. This is classic PCKB if you ask me. (Pot calling the kettle black.)
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