My last post was about Leviticus—well, Leviticus and how to read the Bible—and Leviticus won. The post was much longer than I would have liked. The writing was boggy. The reading was probably no better, a slog. And worse, for all that I may have not made clear what I was trying to make clear. Nevertheless, I still think that the point I was trying to make is important: if you are going to read Leviticus, read Leviticus, not a couple of quotes from Leviticus ripped out of context to make your point, whatever your point might be.

Which is exactly what the recent Christian Reformed report on human sexuality did with Leviticus. And, for that matter, with the other LGBTQ-clobber texts. It used the Bible more than read it. Used the Bible to make its point. If there is any value in my previous post, it’s this: take the Bible seriously. Read it, even Leviticus.

This means that if you are going to read Leviticus, get the question right. Not the question you are asking but the question Leviticus is asking. And the question in the Holiness Code (Leviticus 17-26) is not narrowly about sex; it’s about holy community. What should holy community look like? We have the same question, and while we might answer it differently in the light of Christ and the rest of the Bible, and science and what has happened since, I might add, it remains the same question. Instead of isolating a few texts that interest us, we should pay attention to how the ancient community that produced Leviticus answered for themselves. And then, having understood that, we can and should mine it for the wisdom it contains for us.

The problem is that when we read Leviticus, we get distracted. Some things pop out at us, like the rules about not “bedding a male as if bedding a woman,” while other things we read right over, like the prohibitions on mixing kinds of cloth or kinds of seed. With respect to these latter, we think that Leviticus is just being, well, Old Testamenty, and we rush on to what interests us. But this is not to read Leviticus; it’s to use Leviticus for our purposes. Using Leviticus is not the same as reading it. Or honoring it.

But enough about Leviticus. In this post I’ve come to tell a story, a Bible story, although I doubt that this story ever made it into the Catherine Vos Bible story book my mother used to read to me. It’s a story about sexual violence. Male sexual violence. Male heterosexual violence. It’s a piece with some of the most distressing chapters in the Bible, the conclusion to the book of Judges.

Actually, the story comes in two versions. A (slightly) prettied up version is found in Genesis 19, as part of the Lot story. It’s the better known, ending as it does with the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah. But a rawer version of the story is the one found in Judges 19. It’s on that version of the story that I focus in this post.

The story opens on a schlemiel, a man from the tribe of Levi who lives in the far flanks of the Ephraimite hill country. Like any schlemiel, an unfortunate nobody. He has taken a concubine (Hebrew pîlegeš) from Bethlehem of Judea. “Concubine” means that she has less than full legal status as a wife. Perhaps in our culture, we would call her a common law wife. The relationship has not gone well. The Hebrew tells us that she ran around on him; the ancient Greek translation, the Septuagint, tells a different story, that he had angered her. It’s more likely that the Greek is right. The man after all is a schlemiel. In consequence, she runs to her father’s house in Bethlehem.

She is there for four months before he, the Levite, decides to go after her and try to persuade her to come back. He takes with him a servant and a brace of donkeys. When he arrives in Bethlehem, the woman’s father greets him gladly. 

What follows is a comic show of hospitality on the part of the woman’s father. He prevails on his son-in-law to stay, and for three days they eat and drink together. When the fourth day comes, the man makes as if to go, but his father-in-law suggests that before he leaves he should eat a bit of food, and once again, they eat and drink together, and he is persuaded to spend another night. Again, on the fifth day he makes ready to go, and the father-in-law persuades him to wait until the afternoon. But this time, although late in the day, the man decides to start out. He heads in the direction of Jebus—later Jerusalem.

Soon it’s dark, and in those wild times, they need the shelter of a walled city. They are near Jebus. The servant tries to persuade his master to turn in, but the Levite will have none of it. “They are not Bene Yisrael,” he says, somewhat pompously. We will not stay in a foreign city. And so they press on to Gibeah, leaving Jebus behind. The politics of this choice are important. Jebus, the city we know later as Jerusalem, is the city of David; Gibeah is the city of Saul, the king who preceded David. Jebus will be later associated with Judah; Gibeah belongs to Benjamin. Who really are Bene Yisrael and who are not? 

And so in the story, as the sun goes down, our intrepid little company—the Levite, his common law wife, his servant, and the two donkeys—make their way past the safety of Jebus, arriving at last in Gibeah. They make their way to the central square. No one greets them. No one invites them. There is no room in the inn, not, at least for a traveler from the hill country of Ephraim. The story contrasts the excessive, male-bonding hospitality of the traveler’s father-in-law in Bethlehem of Judah with the coldness of Gibeah. It’s not a good omen.

At this point, just as it seems that they will have to sleep rough in the square, an old man, himself an outsider, also from the hill country of Ephraim, comes wearily in from the fields and spots the travelers. He asks where they have come from and where they are going. The hapless Levite pours out their tale of woe: no one to welcome them, no fodder for the donkeys, no food or drink for them. Nothing. In response, the old man says simply, “Shalom.” Welcome. And adds, “I’ll supply whatever you need, but whatever you do, don’t sleep in the square.” As in any good horror story, we’ve been warned. With that, the old man takes them in, feeds the donkeys, washes their feet (shades of Jesus in John13?), and sits them down to food and drink. 

All is well in the house until they hear pounding on the door. Having offered them no hospitality, now the city has come to them. They are surrounded by “men of Belial.” In his Anchor Bible volume, Robert Boling translates this as “local hell-raisers.” Playing on the double meaning of the word “know” in Hebrew, they say, “Bring the man out so that we can get to know him.” Know him, indeed. Rape is what they have in mind.

Perhaps it is best to pause here for a moment in our telling of the story. This is where many interpreters cluck their collective teeth and say something like, see, this is a story about homosexuality. Following the narrative not in Judges but Genesis—they are almost the same at this point—this is precisely what the report of the Christian Reformed committee on human sexuality does. They say, “But although Genesis 19:1-29 is not first-and-foremost a statement against homosexual activity, it is legitimately read as illustrating the overall biblical association of homosexual conduct with human perversity” (Agenda for Synod 2021:98).  The “overall biblical association of homosexual conduct with human perversity”? Where do we find that in the story? They don’t say.

The committee and other interpreters who use this story to condemn homosexuality mix  two definitions of homosexuality. One is sexual in the crude biological sense: a man penetrating another man. The other is what we mean by “gay”: men who are same sex attracted, who fall in love with other men, and who make love to them, often including but not limited to genital penetration. In the story, we have the first but not the second. The “men of Belial” are not same-sex attracted. Quite the opposite, their desire is for the man in the house, not to “make love” to him but to humiliate him. And by humiliating him, to humiliate his tribe. Their desire is to inflict violence on him and in this way to inflict violence on his people.

What we have here is not a gang of gays but a gang of rapists. The CRC HSR report makes the mistake in their interpretation of the biblical stories that has been made for generations. They assume that rape is about sex. It’s not. It’s about violence. It’s about humiliation. The story—we are back to the Judges version of the story—understands this. The central tension in the story is between members of one tribe and members of another, and that’s how in the remaining chapters of Judges, the story will play out. But note something. The interaction between tribal members is entirely male. Brilliantly, the parody cuts in two directions: first, the excessive bonhomie of the father-in-law and, secondly, the rapacious violence of the men of Belial. It’s male society that in this story is being held up to scrutiny. Not homosexual male society but heterosexual male society.

And in this brutal, testosterone-fueled tribal society, the ones who pay the price are the women. Always. And so the story goes on, moving from parody to brutality. As the pounding on the door grows more insistent, the old man says to the mob, “No, my brothers, please don’t do this evil thing. This man has come to my house; don’t commit this offensive thing.” “Offensive,” as if it’s a matter of bad taste. And then, without taking so much as a breath, he offers the door-pounding mob the women of the house his own maiden daughter and the Levite’s common law wife. Take them, he says. “Attack them. Do with them what you please.” On the altar of male domination, it’s women who are sacrificed.

At this point the Levite steps in. I suspect that he thinks what he is doing is heroic. He will not have the old man throw his maiden daughter to the mob. One might expect that he would offer himself instead, but no, not in this story. Not in life. Instead he grabs his common law wife and throws her out to the mob, locks the door behind her, and goes to bed. 

The mob, we are told, spends the night raping her. When at last the sun comes up, they disperse. The woman staggers back to the house where her husband is sleeping. She falls at the door, dead, her hands on the threshold of the house.

One would expect that in any proper report on human sexuality in the Bible, the authors would spend a long time pondering that woman with her hands on the threshold of safety, not quite making it home. Pondering her, perhaps giving her at least a name, would lead to discussions of sexual violence, of male dominance, of rape culture, of how the community of faith should address these and other issues, but no. The CRC committee report on human sexuality never spends any time at all on the Judges story, and even on the Genesis version of the story pauses only long enough to include a tone-deaf quotation from Kevin De Young, who claims that these stories are about homosexual violence. 

Remember what the CRC committee was supposed to do: “articulate a foundation-laying biblical theology of human sexuality.” How can one articulate a biblical theology of human sexuality without pausing long on this story, for in this story we have exposed what human sexuality has come to.

In the morning, the Levite gets up, unlocks the door, and makes to leave. Finding his wife lying at the door, her hands on the threshold, he says to her, “Get up. Let’s go.” She doesn’t answer, of course. The Hebrew plays on two verbs, near homonyms, ʿônê, “answer,” what she cannot do, and ʿinnâ, “rape,” what was done to her. He loads her on the donkeys, takes her home, and cuts her up into twelve pieces, which he then sends to the military men of Israel, summoning them into war. His actions will lead to more violence against more women before Judges ends.

I’ll end with a few questions. Why, in pondering what the Bible has to teach us about human sexuality, would we not begin with this story? And add to that question another: why would we suppose that this story has anything at all to do with a loving relationship between two men or two women? And, last, why would we suppose that the work of the church is to condemn such loving relationships rather than to condemn the sort of male violence this story explores in such horrific detail?

Why?

Clay