The Bethlehem Mistress

Day 49:  Judges 18–21; Isaiah 37–42; 1 Corinthians 10–12

Those who grew up in church all know Christmas Carol, "O Little Town of Bethlehem."  It is  a wonderful song celebrate the miracle of the incarnation, God becoming human.  It sounds like a lullaby with its sweet and gentle melody.  But Jesus' birth, the visit of the shepherds and magi; these are not the only things to happen there.

Rachel, Jacob's beloved wife died and was buried near Bethlehem (Gen. 35:19).  And of course Rachel weeps for her children when the Babylonians destroy Jerusalem (Jer. 31:15).  The prophet is quoted in the gospel of Matthew when King Herod massacres all the boys aged 2 years and younger in Bethlehem (Mat. 2:18).  It is the home of King David.  Bethlehem looms large in the mind of Israel, this little town 5 miles south of Jerusalem.  It is the home of saviors and sadness.

Judges ends with a terrible story about a concubine (a mistress, not a wife) of a Levite from the hills of Ephraim.  She is from Bethlehem.  She is described as unfaithful.  She leaves the Levite and heads back to her father's house in Bethlehem. 

Stop! Would a Levite dedicated as a holy servant for Yahweh have a live-in mistress?  Why wouldn't he marry her if he loved her?  Is he not the unfaithful one as well? Fornication is a sin, but hey...everyone else is doing it.  Even the patriarchs had mistresses on the agreement of their wives.  Sarai gave Abram her Egyptian slave Hagar to have a son through her.  So one could argue the Levite was not in the wrong from the ancient customs.  But today as Christians and the laws of most states in the USA, bigamy, polygamy are outlawed. Paul taught "each man should have his own wife, and each woman should have her own husband (1 Cor. 7:2)."  I concede to give the Levite the benefit of the doubt.  Men could have female slaves under the law of Moses and it is not unlikely they used them for sexual pleasures.

Feminist authors have much to say in these ending chapters in Judges.  The incredible abuses of women in these chapters astound the modern reader.  The women seem to have no rights and no voice. 

Jephthah's daughter is sacrificed as an thanksgiving offering to Yahweh because of his hasty vow (Jdg. 11:31).  God didn't stop Jephthah as he stopped Abraham from sacrificing Isaac.  I don't think God was silent.  I think Jephthah's ears are plugged with pagan traditions which he and his people have followed, disobeying Yahweh.  Yahweh very likely would have told Jephthah to not sacrifice his daughter. In fact he had two months to do so (Jdg. 11:37-39), but would Jephthah have heard since he obviously doesn't pay attention to the words of the covenant?  Was there even a Levite faithfully teaching the covenant so Jephthah could learn?

Preceding the story of the Ephraimite Levite and his Bethlehemite mistress, there is a story of a corrupt Levite from Bethlehem that moves to the hill country of Ephraim.  Coincidence?  I think not.  At very least Judges carries the theme of the fall of Israel from faithfulness to Yahweh to its extreme when holy men steal and abuse their privilege for personal gain. 

He moves into the home of Micah, a wealthy farmer who has idols like all the other pagan inhabitants.  Micah knows enough of the teachings and traditions of Israel to recognize the presence of a Levite to be a blessing.  Levites were chosen by the Lord as His holiest servants.  The Levite tribe bore Aaron and his sons, the priesthood.  And the rest of the Levites who were not sons of Aaron were servants of the holy tabernacle.  So Micah invites the Levite to become his household priest and serves him in his home. He will pay the Levite handsomely and give him a home.  So the Levite agrees.

A faithful Levite would have rejected the invitation because he was not a son of Aaron, called to be a priest. AND he would have rebuked Micah for his idolatrous practices having household gods (idols) and a gold ephod and installing his own son as a priest for pagan gods.  There is little doubt Yahweh's name was invoked in the these pagan traditions like the ancestors did when they made the golden calf and said, "these are your gods who brought you out of the land of Egypt (Ex. 32:4b)."

Instead the Levite rather liked the idea.  He shows his character when Danites who have not trusted Yahweh and driven the pagans from their inheritance go looking for some easy place to take.  They approach the Levite about becoming their priest.  So he steals Micah's idols and ephod and leaves with the Danite men of war. 

All this leads to a Levite from the Ephraimite hills taking his runaway mistress back from Bethlehem.  On the way back to Ephraim they stop in the Benjaminite city of Gibeah.  What he trusted to be a hospitable place because these were Israelites was another Sodom tragedy.  The story of Lot and the visiting angels is played out again (Gen 19:1-11; Jdg. 19:16-26).  Perverts from Gibeah want to have sex with the Levite man who has come under the protection of an old farmer.  They mean to take him by force, but the old man offers up his virgin daughter and the Levite's concubine.  The Levite pushes his concubine out the door and she is gang raped through the night.  The horrific sexual abuse and violence kills her. 

The Levite takes her dead body back to Ephraim to his home (no sense of ritual purity here). He cuts her body into 12 pieces and sends them to all the 12 tribes of Israel letting them know the horrible sin of the men of Gibeah. This leads to armed conflict. Israel has become like Sodom and Gomorrah.  They have fallen this far.  The 11 tribes rally against the Benjaminites.  They lose two battles before finally crushing the Benjaminites in an ambush much like the one Joshua lead at Ai (Josh. 8:3-23; Jdg. 20:29-42).

Then they are sorrowful that a tribe of Israel, one of their brothers, had been cut off.  They had no female survivors and the remnant of Benjaminites (600 soldiers) has no wives and no way to repopulate the tribe because the rest of Israel made a vow never to give their daughters in marriage to a Benjaminite. So they give 400 women from a town they had sacked and them offered them the opportunity to kidnap women from Shiloh who were dancing before the Lord in a holy festival!  Somehow in their reasoning this made it all right.  If the women were kidnapped by the Benjaminites, then they could not say they broke their vow never to give their daughters in marriage to a Benjaminite. 

If this sounds ludicrous, it's because it is.  The book of Judges ends with these chilling words that sums up this whole messy period in Israel's history.

"In those days there was no king in Israel; everyone did whatever he wanted (Jdg. 21:25)."

Guess where the first king of Israel comes from...Benjamin, one of Rachel's sons, Saul from Gibeah! 

I have little comment on Isaiah other than the fact that much my selection for this day is narrative about King Hezekiah and the Assyrian invasion of Jerusalem.  It is a rare piece in Isaiah, because the overwhelming majority of the book is a collection of prophetic oracles.  This leads to 2nd Isaiah which begins a pleasant series of comforting chapters where God promises restoration for His people.

"but those who trust in the LORD
    will renew their strength;
    they will soar on wings like eagles;
    they will run and not grow weary;
    they will walk and not faint. (Isa. 40:31)

Did you know the Apostle Paul was a Benjaminite?  By his time the tribe had risen back into notoriety.  Saul, Israel's first king came from there.  And Benjamin was the surviving son of Jacob's beloved Rachel. Joseph, her firstborn and Jacob's favorite, was believed dead although he was really in slavery in Egypt.  Paul refers to himself as a Hebrew of Hebrews (Phil 3:5).  The stain on Benjamin had washed away over time.  All Israel had failed to be true and all Israel was sent off into exile.

Paul tells the Corinthians to flee from idolatry (1 Cor. 10:14).  All these stories of God's wrath upon the stiff necked people of Israel are written scripture as an example for us (1 Cor. 10:11).  Paul wants worship to be holy and the celebration of the Lord's Supper (holy communion) to be sacred and in remembrance of Christ alone.  To allow old habits of paganism (or secularism) seep in is to drink "the cup of demons (1 Cor. 10:21)." 

Paul continues instructions about order.  He reminds them of the tradition at the time that women should wear head coverings as a sign of man's authority over them.  Men should not as a sign of his sharing in the glorious image of God.  There is a troublesome tone here that looks a lot like the abusive oppression of women at the end of the book of Judges discussed here earlier.  Paul really seems to be subjugating the woman and exalting the man.  This was the tradition of the time in Jewish thought.  However, reading further he says, "in the Lord, woman is not independent of man, and man is not independent of woman.For just as woman came from man, so man comes through woman, and all things come from God (1 Cor. 11:11-12)." 

Clearly Paul is speaking from his tradition.  This seems to me to be more opinion and tradition than to be purely of God.  I am entirely comfortable with women not covering their heads and preaching. I am comfortable with men wearing their hair long.  I grew up with long haired hippies all around me!   But Paul speaks the truth when he says, if anyone wants to argue about this, we have no other tradition in the churches (1 Cor. 11:16).  Well brother Paul, now we do.  I do not think it is an affront to God.

Paul ends this section talking about the Lord's Supper and spiritual gifts.  The bread and cup represent the body and blood of Jesus.  As we share in the bread and wine, we share in the body of Christ.  The baby from Bethlehem, like the Levite's concubine, was tortured and abused and died.  And just as her body was distributed in parts about the countryside to send a message about sin, the bread is broken and distributed among disciples to take, eat and do it in remembrance of Him.  We remember that our sin lead God to offer up His perfect and only Son to die on the sacrificial cross.  By drinking from the cup we remember that his blood washes away our sin once for all. Just as the Israelites destroyed the Benjaminites to remove sin from Israel, God conquered sin once for all in the body of His Son.

And He poured out the Spirit upon believers and gifted them to build up the church by sharing spiritual gifts. Each of us are part of the many members of the one body of Christ. We all have different gifts, but they all come from the same Spirit.  We need each other to be whole.

The Israelites mourned Benjamin for they sensed the nation was no longer whole if the Benjaminite died off completely.  A remnant was saved.  A king came through them. And the Apostle Paul came through them to write most of the New Testament.  God is always at work redeeming, saving, reconciling, delivering and fulfilling His good purposes. 

God, Your ways are a mystery and always right and true.  I thank you for the tragic story of the Bethlehem mistress.  May her soul rest in Your goodness. May every woman who has suffered abuse at the idolatrous altar to male ego be given justice, peace and rest.  Thank You, Lord for being broken for our sakes.  Thank you for dying for us, sinful men and sinful women washed in the blood of the Lamb of God. Amen.