Do Whatever Seems Right.

Judges 17-21

There is precious little in the way of encouragement in today's reading. Instead, we get three or four vignettes that are each more discouraging than the previous, closing out the book of Judges without redemption. Following on the heels of Samson's tragic end, we find...

• The story of Micah, who stole a lot of money from his mother, only to return it when he heard that she has placed a curse on the thief. So how does she treat him? She rewards him with a fifth of the money which is used to make a silver idol for him "dedicated to the Lord." Huh? Then he hires a Levite to be his personal priest and assumes that surely the Lord will bless him now.
• Along comes the tribe of Dan (no relation) and they steal his idols, steal his priest, kill all the peaceful sidonian inhabitants of Laish and set up their new "home" with the idols. Oh by the way, they are not in the place that God had ordained for them (because that was too hard).
• Then there is another Levite who brings a concubine to his home in Ephraim, but she runs back to Jerusalem, so he goes to get her and gets sidetracked on the way home so he spends the night in Gibeah (since it is an Israeli town.) The next scene mirrors the scene at Lot's house in Sodom, when the men come to the place he is stayig and ask for the owner to send out the new guy so they can have sex with him, but he will only send out the women whom they rape and kill. The Levite is angry they killed her (doesn't seem real angry about the rape though) so he cuts her up into 12 pieces to send one to each tribe of Israel.
• The tribes seem upset about getting these body parts so they get together 400,000 troops and go to his house, but he tells then the story so they go to kill the entire tribe of Benjamin. In the first two days of battle, 40,000 Israeli troops are killed in battle and finally on the third day, the rest of Israel manages to kill off all but 400 survivors from the tribe of Benjamin. Then they feel bad for the remaining Benjamites (because they will die off and be gone forever) so they kill off the entire family of Jadesh-gilead (because they wouldn't help destroy the Benjamites) and steal their virgin daughters to give to the Benjamites, then allow the few reamining Benjamites who don''t have a wife to steal one of their daughters (because they took an oath that they wouldn't GIVE their daughters on marriage).

Perhaps most tellingly, the book of Judges ends with the following: "In those days Israel had no king; all the people did whatever seemed right in their own eyes." No kidding. Left to our own devices, we exalt the degradation around us, and degrade that which should be exalted. For all have sinned and fall short. May we never use our own eyes to decide what is right!