Day 18 of 90 - Judges 8 - Judges 19

Day 18 - COMPLETE!

On Day 18, we read Judges 8 - Judges 19, and at the end of our reading today, I was stunned by the horrific act recorded in Judges 19. The first verse begins with an important fact. Israel had no king. And as a result, they did whatever they wanted to do. One man, a Levite, took a concubine from Bethlehem, and she left him after being unfaithful to him (2). She goes back to live with her parents, and after 4 months, the Levite goes to convince his concubine to come back home. After prolonging his stay at her father’s house, they end up in a town they shouldn’t be in. An old man offers his home to them, and wicked men in the city start pounding on the house to engage in inappropriate behavior with the Levite.

This is where it gets crazy. The owner of the house tells the wicked men no about their request to be with the Levite, but the owner offers his virgin daughter and the Levite’s concubine. Then, after the wicked men insist, the Levite “sends the concubine outside.” They rape her, abuse her, and let her go. She returns to the house, and lays at the door until daylight. When the Levite gets up in the morning, he discovers that she is dead.

So he puts her on a donkey, travels back home, takes a knife and cuts up his concubine limb by limb into twelve parts, and spreads her parts throughout all of Israel. When those in the town see it, they are outraged and apalled, and they decide, “We must do something! So Speak up.”

Those words resonated with me because many of us see injustice happening in our neighborhoods, in our nation, and around the world. But what are we doing about it? Here are some sobering facts:

Since 2007, more than 49,000 cases of human trafficking in the US have been reported to the National Human Trafficking Hotline, which receives an average of 150 calls per day.

In 2018, advocates tracked at least 26 deaths of transgender people in the U.S. due to fatal violence, the majority of whom were Black transgender women.

One in 9 girls and 1 in 53 boys under the age of 18 experience sexual abuse or assault at the hands of an adult

One in five women and one in 71 men will be raped at some point in their lives

The average age at which girls first become victims of prostitution is 12 to 14 years old, and the average age for boys is 11 to 13 years old

There are so many problematic parts of this text, but one thing I want to focus on is this: WE MUST DO SOMETHING! SO SPEAK UP. Don’t be silent another day about the injustice you see. Do more than pray…speak up. God is asking us to advocate for those on the margins, and to help those who are in dire need.