GOD’S WORD FOR YOU
JUDGES 19:9-15
Yesterday I made a mental error in some of the facts of the devotion—I apologize. The error was in assigning the coming atrocity to the city of Jebus (Jerusalem) rather than to Gibeah, where it actually took place. I will correct this error in the archived edition but I won’t send a corrected version to you unless there is an overwhelming cry for it. By my count, I think this is the third apology like this that I’ve written since beginning this series in 1999. It is better to admit my mistakes than pretend they never happen. Please accept my apologies.
9 The man got up to go along with his concubine and his servant, when his father-in-law, the girl’s father, said to him, “Look, the day has drawn to a close. Spend the night here. The day is ending, so spend the night here and enjoy yourself. Then tomorrow you can get up early for your journey and return home.”
Luther says someplace that the Scriptures are like a vast forest, and each passage like a branch. As a translator, he said that there is not a branch in that forest that he had not walked up to and given a good shake. This huge branch (30 Hebrew words, but not as long as Esther 8:9) shows the flowery way that the concubine’s father talked. He says, “the day is drawing to a close,” literally, “the day is sinking down.” And he says, “The day is ending,” literally, “the day is pitching its tent.” This is the language of a Bedouin, a desert traveler: when the sun pitches its tent, we all need to stop and pitch our tents.
10 But the man was unwilling to stay another night, so he set out and went toward Jebus (that is, Jerusalem), with his two saddled donkeys and his concubine with him. 11 When they were near Jebus and the day was almost gone, the servant said to his master, “Please, why don’t we stop at the city of the Jebusites and spend the night? ”
The Levite should either have agreed to stay one more night, or he should not have spent so long there in the first place. The evening was a most unwise time to set out on their journey. It would be like one of us setting out for a long drive in the car after a very long day’s work. The dangers of such travel are bad enough without adding the poor judgment of fatigue into the equation.
About five miles north of Bethlehem, the city of Jebus (later Jerusalem) stood on an outcrop of Mount Moriah. They would only have been walking an hour or so, but the Levite’s servant was already looking for a place to lie down.
12 But his master said to him, “No. We will not stop at a foreign city whose people are not Israelites. We will go on to Gibeah.” 13 He added, “Come, let’s try to reach Gibeah or Ramah and spend the night in one of those places.” 14 So they continued on, and the sun was setting as they neared Gibeah in Benjamin. 15 They stopped to spend the night there in Gibeah. He went in and sat down in the city square, but no one took them into their home for the night.
Gibeah was on a hill, about three miles north of Jerusalem, a mile or two south of Ramah. It was getting dark, and our travelers didn’t know anyone in town. The custom was for someone to open their home—even the prostitutes did this (Joshua 2:1). But no one invited them in. We know from a later verse that people were still entering the town from their fields, so the Levite may have thought that if they just waited patiently, something would turn up and things would go well for them. But nobody welcomed this Israelite brother.
When John heard of a member of the Christian church who refused to welcome Christian brothers, he called out the man’s other sins to show that he was really outside the Christian fellowship. He was a man who “will have nothing to do with us” – not even with John, one of Jesus own apostles. This man, Diotrephes, was “gossiping maliciously about us. Not satisfied with that, he refuses to welcome the brothers. He also stops those who want to do so and puts them out of the church” (3 John 9-10). Here was a church leader who thought that he could run his little non-denominational church and have nothing to do with anyone else. He didn’t have doctrinal reasons for what he did; only selfish ones. John finally judges his actions by calling them, purely and simply, evil. “Do no imitate what is evil, but what is good” (3 John 11). It’s unfortunate to have such negative examples, but notice how much they are contrasted by the good and positive examples of Boaz and the concubine’s father (both from Bethlehem), and by the constant, welcoming love of God, who invites us home to heaven, who has prepared us through the blood of Christ, who has assured us of a place, and who has invited us to live with him there forever.
In Christ,
Pastor Timothy Smith
Archives by Wisconsin Lutheran Chapel: http://www.wlchapel.org/worship/daily-devotion/
Pastor Smith serves St. Paul’s Lutheran Church, New Ulm, Minnesota