I am considering Rejoice in hope, endure in suffering, persist in prayer,[1] as a description of love rather than as rules to obey. The story of the Levite and his concubine in the book of Judges qualifies as ἀδικίᾳ that love is not glad about. In the previous essay I wrote, “Dear God, I hope she was dead,” of the Levite’s concubine as she was sprawled out on the doorstep of the house.[2] The problem with that hope is that the text doesn’t specify exactly when she died.
If my Mom found dog pee on the carpet she would rub the dog’s nose in it. If that poor woman didn’t die from her injuries during the night I feel like my nose is being rubbed in the stench of the religious mind.
I’m trying to be mindful of our differing socializations, the Levite’s and mine. John Wayne and Clint Eastwood would never send a woman out to face a pack of rapists. “Women and children first” is second nature to me. The Levite never heard Jesus’ teaching, What defiles a person is not what goes into the mouth; it is what comes out of the mouth that defiles a person.[3] I’ll give him the benefit of the doubt that he could not know that sending his woman out to a pack of rapists defiled him infinitely more than any pack of rapists could ever hope to do to him (Matthew 15:18-20a NET).
But the things that come out of the mouth come from the heart, and these things defile a person. For out of the heart come evil ideas, murder, adultery, sexual immorality (πορνεῖαι, a form of πορνεία), theft, false testimony, slander. These are the things that defile a person…
“Get up, let’s leave!”[4] the Levite said the next morning to the woman sprawled out on the doorstep of the house.
Perhaps his apparent coldness to the one who saved his ass—literally—is just my misunderstanding of an ancient Hebrew idiom. I thought Jesus was terribly rude to his mother when He said, Woman, what have I to do with thee? mine hour is not yet come.[5] Jesus, his mother Mary and his disciples attended a wedding in Cana. All Mary had said to Him was, “They have no wine left.”[6] My mother argues that I’m wrong to hear rudeness in Jesus’ response, rather that I should hear the crosscurrents of the obligation an eldest son felt toward his widowed or abandoned mother, and a godly mother’s sense of obligation to push him out the door to accomplish whatever God had sent Him to accomplish instead.
“Whatever he tells you, do it,”[7] Mary told the servants. Jesus did this [turned water into wine] as the first of his miraculous signs, in Cana of Galilee. In this way he revealed his glory, and his disciples believed in him,[8] and his quiet life, and hers, changed dramatically overnight.
If the Levite put the woman’s unresponsive but still breathing body on the donkey and went home,[9] his negligence alone made him culpable for her death. Even a Samaritan, a pseudo-Jew, had more compassion on a total stranger who fell among robbers (Luke 10:34, 35 NET):
He went up to him and bandaged his wounds, pouring oil and wine on them. Then he put him on his own animal, brought him to an inn, and took care of him. The next day he took out two silver coins and gave them to the innkeeper, saying, ‘Take care of him, and whatever else you spend, I will repay you when I come back this way.’
This became the meaning of the law, love your neighbor as yourself,[10] when Jesus asked an expert in religious law, “Which of these three [the priest or the Levite who passed by on the others side,[11] or the Samaritan] do you think became a neighbor to the man who fell into the hands of the robbers?” The expert in religious law said, “The one who showed mercy to him.” So Jesus said to him, “Go and do the same.”[12]
If the woman was still alive when the Levite took a knife, grabbed his concubine, and carved her up into twelve pieces,[13] the reeking stench of the religious mind boggles the imagination, for she had become too tainted in his sight to serve any longer as his sex slave. If this is the understanding I am meant to perceive from the text’s reticence to state with any precision when the woman died, I will suggest that law is required to create a religious monster of this magnitude.
Before the law Judah was told, “Your daughter-in-law Tamar has turned to prostitution, and as a result she has become pregnant.”[14] The charge was true. Tamar had removed her widow’s clothes and covered herself with a veil. She wrapped herself and sat at the entrance to Enaim which is on the way to Timnah.[15] She did this so that men, one man in particular in fact, would think she was a prostitute.[16]
Judah said, “Bring her out and let her be burned!”[17]
While they were bringing her out, she sent word to her father-in-law: “I am pregnant by the man to whom these belong.” Then she said, “Identify the one to whom the seal, cord, and staff belong.”[18]
They were Judah’s, given in pledge to what he thought was a cult prostitute seated by the side of the road. Judah recognized them and said, “She is more upright than I am, because I wouldn’t give her to Shelah my son.” He did not have sexual relations with her again.[19]
It’s a complicated tale involving Tamar’s social security, Judah’s superstition and Onanism (like Ananias and Sapphira-ism, e.g., lying to the Holy Spirit). But before the law it was that easy for Judah to confess his own guilt and acquit Tamar. After the law this Levite earned his place in a fiery hell. And my own deliberations were so alarmingly like his.
I didn’t exactly grab my daughter and throw her out of the house to a pack of ravenous men. I didn’t exactly fill her with the confidence that she could be loved by one man for an entire lifetime either. I had my own σκάνδαλα (a form of σκάνδαλον; stumbling blocks) as he had his. The Levite had Lot, a righteous man in anguish over the debauched lifestyle of lawless men[20] as his example.
Look, I have two daughters who have never had sexual relations with a man, Lot had said to a pack of ravenous men of Sodom. Let me bring them out to you, and you can do to them whatever you please. Only don’t do anything to these men, for they have come under the protection of my roof.[21] The Levite’s host did essentially the same thing to save him: Here are my virgin daughter and my guest’s concubine, he said. I will send them out and you can abuse them and do to them whatever you like. But don’t do such a disgraceful thing to this man![22]
God spared Lot and his virgin daughters: So the men inside reached out and pulled Lot back into the house as they shut the door. Then they struck the men who were at the door of the house, from the youngest to the oldest, with blindness.[23] In his own story the Levite played the role of the visitor. He knew his host and his host’s daughter should be spared. He knew he could not strike men blind. So he did the only thing in his power to do: the Levite grabbed his concubine and made her go outside.[24]
My own deliberations during my second divorce, predicated largely on my own experiences during my first divorce, shared the Levite’s myopia. Not once did I consider, much less wait for, God’s miraculous intervention. I deliberated and acted with only my own abilities in view, never considering the possibility of God’s graciousness, believing instead that I probably deserved to be punished with another divorce, and so, living up to that expectation of my religious mind.
I have written a lot about the Levite and virtually nothing about the men who threatened him and raped his concubine. I relate to the Levite’s religious mind. It is more difficult to relate to the men who surrounded the house where he and his concubine stayed. To illustrate I’m reminded of a story told by artist Miru Kim in Esquire Magazine.
She takes beautiful, evocative photographs of deserted urban landscapes and ruins with either herself or her sister as the lone figure in the shot—nude. She was photographing herself, alone in an abandoned train tunnel, when the vagrant who lived there returned. A marginal man, underground, in the dark, far from any systems of social control, it was the perfect setting for a violent tragedy. Miru Kim continues in her own words:
“I was so scared. That was probably the scariest moment. I saw a figure coming through the tunnel, and he didn’t have a flashlight or anything, so it was completely dark. So I see this dark figure coming toward me, then I saw that it was just this old guy who looked pretty harmless, he just lived there. So I dressed up and explained to him what I was doing — ‘I’m doing an art project, sorry to bother you’ — you know? Because it’s like his house, you know? So I told him, and he didn’t say much; he was just standing there like, Okay. So I took off my clothes again and did it in front of him and he was kind of sitting in the picture, so I was like, ‘Do you mind moving forward out of the picture, please?’ And he was just sitting around watching, so I did my thing, then dressed up. It was really filthy in there, real muddy, smelled like urine, and I was wiping off with baby wipes, and the guy was like, ‘Do you want my shirt to clean off?’ He looked probably sixty or so, I’m sure he’s younger than he looks, and really skinny. He was really nice. Afterward, we were sitting around talking about his life. He kept on talking about Rikers Island, and that he likes it down there because it’s quiet. I told him I liked that, too. And then he was like, ‘Let me walk you out.’ He thanked me for treating him like a regular person.”
I understand this art lover. I relate to this lover of women. He is my brother. The mob that surrounded the house in Gibeah seems like cartoon evil to me. This is how old men portray the enemy to young men when they want them to fight their wars for them.
I recognize the humanity of the men in Sodom primarily by their religious minds. Lot offended their moral sensibilities: “Out of our way!” they cried, and “This man came to live here as a foreigner, and now he dares to judge us! We’ll do more harm to you than to them!”[25] The men of Benjamin were given no such cover. They were like irrational animals – creatures of instinct, born to be caught and destroyed.[26]
I played a week-long gig in an army town about forty years ago. When we finished the first night we had to excuse ourselves between two lines of soldiers wound all the way around our hotel. They awaited their turn for two women side by side on their backs in another hotel room. I had been in locker rooms in high school. I can at least extrapolate from that experience what kind of macho-anti-masturbatory-group-think might possess a young man to pay for the privilege to be third, fifth (?), eleventh (?), thirty-second (?), fifty-third (?) in one of those lines. I can’t find any experience to extrapolate from to get anywhere near the vigilantes (?) enforcing social norms (?) in Sodom or the welcoming committee (?) in Gibeah.
“Warm Bodies” is an interesting movie. It might have been a great film if it weren’t narrated from the wrong point of view with unnecessary voiceovers. A zombie eats a man’s brains. This allows him to see the man’s thoughts and feel his feelings. He falls in love with the man’s girlfriend. It’s not a sexual or romantic love, though there is a humorous bit where he attempts to comb his hair before assuring her in labored speech and pantomime that he will not eat her. “Keep you safe,” is his constant refrain. And he lives up to his word, not eating her himself and defending her from other zombies who would.
Eventually the mob in Gibeah came face-to-face with a woman. Like the vagrant in the abandoned train tunnel or the zombie in “Warm Bodies” they had an opportunity to see themselves in her frightened eyes and repent, but they gang-raped her instead. To say that they deserved to die implies moral reasoning and social systems of adjudication. The instinct to exterminate these men is more basic than that. It is the instinct, perhaps, which binds us together as a brotherhood of men. And the Levite’s macabre missive mustered four hundred thousand of the brotherhood.
A town in which most people are filled with the fruit of the Holy Spirit can afford one fat, lazy sheriff. The image and meaning of the good in that town will be some aspect(s) of the citizens’ love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness or self-control. A town in which most people are not filled with the fruit of the Holy Spirit must fund at least three shifts of virile nazis. The image and meaning of the good in that town will be those virile nazis. As Robin (Anne Heche) in “Six Days Seven Nights” replied to Quinn (Harrison Ford), who thought women preferred a man who was in touch with his feminine side: “Well, not when they’re being chased by pirates. They like them mean and armed!”
[10] Leviticus 19:18 (NET) Table