The plight of the woman of Bethlehem a poignant cry for socio-religious repair in Israel at the dawn of the monarchy (Judges 19:1–30)
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.12775/BPTh.2025.008Keywords
concubinage in Israel, Gibea citizens’ crime, violence against women, era of judges, Judges 19:1–30Abstract
The subject of the research undertaken in this article is the message of the (post)deuteronomistic redaction of the account of the crime at Gibea (Judges 19:1–30), which opens with the book's epilogue on the unprecedented fratricidal war in Israel (19:1–21:25). Against the backdrop of the adventures of the relationship between the Levite from Mount Ephraim and the concubine from Bethlehem, and above all against the backdrop of the rape perpetrated on her, this tradition illustrates the deepening socio-religious and moral crisis that affected all Hebrew generations in the age of the judges. The dramatic picture of their social and moral corruption, evidenced and symbolised by the shameful violence on a defenceless woman perpetrated by the morally depraved Benjaminites with the reprehensible passivity of her companions (husband, householder and servant), becomes, in the context of the entire book, a resounding call for a thoroughgoing spiritual renewal in Israel. Based on the rules of a historical-critical reading of Judges 19:1–30, the following pages of the publication will show the assumptions for the reconstruction and evaluation of the most drastic scene of violence against women recorded in the Bible, which its editors suggest be viewed through the ideological and theological prism of the entire book.
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