Today, I am reading and commenting on Judges 17-19.

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Up until today’s passage all of the accounts contained in the Book of Judges were in chronological order.  The writer does not tell us when either of the two accounts in today’s passage occurred (although the first one clearly occurred relatively early in the timeline of the Book of Judges).  These two accounts are included here at the end of the Book of Judges to highlight the writer’s goal of explaining why Israel needed a king.*  Before today I never really thought about the fact that both stories have a connection to Bethlehem, David’s home town.  The Levite who is at the center of the first account comes from Bethlehem.  The ESV (English Standard Version) says that he was a “young man of Bethlehem in Judah, of the family of Judah, who was a Levite”.  Considering that the writer makes clear in this passage that his purpose in writing this Book was  to show why Israel needed a king*, it seems likely that he is making a connection here with King David, who was also from Bethlehem.  I think the writer intends to suggest that while King David was of the tribe of Judah he had connections to the Levites, perhaps even implying he had a maternal ancestor who was a Levite.  Interestingly, the passage also says that this Levite was a descendant of Gershom, the son of Moses at the end.  I do not believe I have ever noticed that connection to Moses before.

In the second account, the Levite’s concubine was from Bethlehem and the story takes place while they were traveling from her home in Bethlehem back to his home.  As I was reading the passage today it occurred to me that the reason the writer was familiar with these two stories was because he was also from Bethlehem, or otherwise had connections with David.  Which brings me to the second interesting geographic connection to the monarchy of Israel.  Gibeah, where the central episode of this second account takes place, is the home town of King Saul.  If nothing else, this tells us that Bethlehem, where David grew up, was close to Gibeah, which was King Saul’s home town and capital.  According to this passage, Gibeah was significantly less than a day’s travel from Bethlehem.  Which explains the familiarity that Abner, the commander of King Saul’s army, with Joab, the commander of King David’s army, and his brothers.  I suspect that this account was included, at least partially, because it reflects badly on King Saul.

*At several points in this passage the writer makes reference to there being no king in Israel “in those days”, and that as a result everyone did what was right in his own eyes.

I use the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.