You Be The Judge

At 10:30 pm last night, I was so tired and I couldn't get to sleep because I wasn't able to read my devotions that day. I should have started out first thing, but as life would have it, so many other things crept in first.

I was stuck on the story from the night before. It had even been apart of my dream the night before and it lingered on with me all day. This particular story is Judges 19. The title is "War Against the Tribe of Benjamin - A Levite and His Concubine." A catchy title for a movie. I've read this story before, but for some reason, it just didn't sit with me well and I could not go to sleep another night with that on my mind. I needed to read something a little less graphic.

In this story, the concubine ends up getting raped along with another young lady, from the way the story reads, by some homosexual men. These men originally wanted the man that was inside the house, but they offered the women to them instead. Then the concubine dies because of the abuse she has taken and then the man to whom she belongs, chops her up into twelve pieces and sends each part to one of the 12 tribes. Sounds like something from "C.S.I." or better yet, "Law and Order." I noticed that no names were mentioned. Probably to protect the innocent.

Its very interesting that this is the first book since Moses lead the people out of Egypt that the people do not have a leader. Through out the chapters the phrases that are most commonly repeated are, "The Israelites did evil in the eyes of the Lord, each man did as they saw fit, and Israel had no king." God had never intended giving them a king, but obviously we can see by reading this book that these people needed someone to keep them accountable. Someone who could hold them to the standards that God had set for them in the desert.

It makes me think about how we humans are. Rebellion is all about doing what we want and then justifying it. God wanted to be the one they were accountable to, but man's free will got them into trouble again and again. Honestly, I think the book of Judges is a picture of man and his free will. So often we "do our own thing," and most of the time, don't ask God what we should do. We just do it "as we see fit." We make a mistake and then once again turn our hearts back to the Lord and in His grace bails us out, then boom, there we are back to "doing as we see fit."

God wants to be our accountability partner. He wants us to choose right instead of wrong because He knows where we are headed. He sees the bigger picture.

I chose not to include the passage on this blog as it was so graphic. You'll have to read it yourself. Then you can be the judge.