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Chapter 19

The Levite’s Concubine.[a] In those days there was no king in Israel, and there was a certain Levite who lived on the far side of the hill country of Ephraim who took a concubine from Bethlehem of Judah. His concubine cheated on him and she returned to her father’s house in Bethlehem. She had been there for four months when her husband rose up to go to her in order to convince her to return to him. He took along his servant and two donkeys.

She invited him into her father’s house, and when her father saw him, he was pleased to meet him. Read full chapter

Footnotes

  1. Judges 19:1 In the absence of a single, stable authority, the religious anarchy that divided the people was accompanied by a moral and political anarchy; the royalist tradition likes to stress this fact. The story exaggerates the memory of grudges and acts of cruelty.