Judges 19:29

_AND WHEN HE WAS COME INTO HIS HOUSE, HE TOOK A KNIFE, AND LAID HOLD ON HIS CONCUBINE, AND DIVIDED HER, TOGETHER WITH HER BONES, INTO TWELVE PIECES, AND SENT HER INTO ALL THE COASTS OF ISRAEL._ Divided her ... into twelve pieces. The want of a regular government warranted an extraordinary step; and certainly no method could have been imagined more certain of rousing universal horror and indignation than this terrible summons of the Levite....

Verse Judges 19:29. _DIVIDED HER - INTO TWELVE PIECES_] There is no doubt that with the _pieces_ he sent to each tribe a circumstantial account of the barbarity of the men of Gibeah; and it is very likely that they considered each of the pieces as expressing an _execration_, "If ye will not come and avenge my wrongs, may ye be hewn in pieces like this abused and murdered woman!" It was a custom among the ancient Highlanders in Scotland, when one clan wished to call all the rest to avenge its wrongs, to take a _wooden cross, dip it in blood_, and send it by a special messenger through all the clans. This was called the _fire cross_, because at sight of it each clan _lighted a fire_ or _beacon_, which gave notice to all the adjoining clans that a general rising was immediately to take place....

A KNIFE - Rather, “the” “knife”. The single household implement used, not like our knives at our meals, but for slaughtering and cutting up the animals into joints for eating Genesis 22:6, Genesis 22:10; Proverbs 30:14. TOGETHER WITH HER BONES ... - Rather, “into her bones”, or “bone by bone, into twelve pieces”. The “pieces” are synonymous with the “bones” (compare Ezekiel 24:4). There is something truly terrible in the stern ferocity of grief and indignation which dictated this desperate effort to arouse his countrymen to avenge his wrong. Compare...

EXPOSITION JUDGES 19:1 WHEN THERE WAS NO KING (Judges 17:6; Judges 18:1; Judges 21:25). It appears from Judges 20:27, Judges 20:28 that the events narrated in these three last chapters of the Book of Judges happened in the lifetime of Phinehas, and while the ark was at Shiloh (see Judges 20:27, note). Phinehas evidently outlived Joshua ...

AND WHEN HE WAS COME INTO HIS HOUSE,.... Having taken the dead body of his wife from off the ass, and brought it in thither, and laid it in a proper place and order: HE TOOK A KNIFE; a carving knife, such as food is cut with, as the word signifies; the Targum is, a sword: AND LAID HOLD ON HIS CONCUBINE, AND DIVIDED HER, TOGETHER WITH HER BONES, INTO TWELVE PIECES; cut off her limbs at the joints of her bones, and made twelve pieces of them, according to the number of the tribes of Israel: AND SENT HER INTO ALL THE COASTS OF ISRAEL; that is, to every tribe, as Josephus says y: there was now no supreme magistrate to apply unto for justice, nor the court of seventy elders, and therefore he took this strange and unheard of method to acquaint each of the tribes with the fact committed; this he did not out of disrespect to his wife, but to express the vehement passion he was in on account o...

2. ISRAEL'S MORAL CONDITION AND THE WAR ON BENJAMIN CHAPTER 19 The Levite and His Concubine _ 1. The Levite and the unfaithful woman (Judges 19:1)_ 2. The fate of the concubine (Judges 19:22) The results of departure from God are now revealed in the awful corruption and violence so faithfully recorded in this chapter. The moral condition of Israel has gone down to the same level of the Canaanites; they sank even lower than the nations whom God had doomed to destruction. We do not repeat the horrible details of this deed of lust and violence. Apostasy from God, rejection of the truth is followed by moral corruption. Romans 1:26 shows the vileness of the Gentiles, who turned their backs to the

JUDGES 19-21. In the story of the outrage of Gibeah, there is a combination of history and midrash. Hosea (Judges 9:9) makes allusion to the days of Gibeah, as a time of notorious moral depravity in Israel, and the events which he had in view doubtless form the basis of the present chapter. But when Israel is called the congregation (Judges 20:18), when the elders of the congregation are introduced, and when the tribes come automatically together as one man (Judges 20:1; Judges 20:11), making a national army ten times as great as Barak's, it is apparent that this is a modernised version of the story, written in the language of the congregation. It is

_and divided her … and sent her throughout all the borders of Israel_ The same words in 1 Samuel 11:7, possibly implying that the present description has been copied from the other. But the two accounts differ in meaning: Saul's summons was intended to convey a threat, the Levite's to call forth horror. _Divided_is the regular term for cutting up a sacrificial victim, Exodus 29:17; Leviticus 1:6; Leviticus 1:12; 1 Kings 18:23; 1 Kings 18:33. twelve piece

AND SENT HER INTO ALL THE COASTS OF ISRAEL— No doubt, he enjoined the bearers of this sacrifice to relate all the circumstances of it; upon which a general indignation animated the tribes. They agreed that _no such deed_ had been _done or seen_ among them since they were a people; for it was a mixture of adultery and murder, with a vile attempt at sodomy upon a stranger, upon a Levite, a person consecrated to the divine service. Determined properly to avenge it, they said, as if with one consent, _consider of it, take advice, and speak your minds;_ which words are a prelude to what we find in the next chapter. A modern critic supposes, that the Levite's division of the body of his concubine was an anathema or devotion to the Lord, and that sending of the parts to each tribe clearly signified, that he invited them to revenge him, and to punish the guilty, on pain of being subjected to the...

The Crime at Gibeah and Its Punishment Judges 19:1 to Judges 21:25 _The Levite and His Concubine Judges 19:1-30_ And it came to pass in those days, when there was no king in Israel, that there was a certain Levite sojourning on the side of mount Ephraim, who took to him a concubine out of Beth-lehem-judah. 2 And his concubine played the whore against him, and went away from him unto her father's house to Beth-lehem-judah, and was there four whole months. 3 And her husband arose, and went after her, to speak friendly unto her, and to bring her again, having his servant with him, and a couple of asses: and she brought him into her father's house: and when the father of the damsel saw him, he rejoiced to meet