Open Bible Data Home About News OET Key
OET OET-RV OET-LV ULT UST BSB BLB AICNT OEB WEBBE WMBB NET LSV FBV TCNT T4T LEB BBE Moff JPS Wymth ASV DRA YLT Drby RV Wbstr KJB-1769 KJB-1611 Bshps Gnva Cvdl TNT Wycl SR-GNT UHB BrLXX BrTr Related Topics Parallel Interlinear Reference Dictionary Search
parallelVerse INT GEN EXO LEV NUM DEU JOB JOS JDG RUTH 1SA 2SA PSA AMOS HOS 1KI 2KI 1CH 2CH PRO ECC SNG JOEL MIC ISA ZEP HAB JER LAM YNA NAH OBA DAN EZE EZRA EST NEH HAG ZEC MAL YHN MARK MAT LUKE ACTs YAC GAL 1TH 2TH 1COR 2COR ROM COL PHM EPH PHP 1TIM TIT 1PET 2PET 2TIM HEB YUD 1YHN 2YHN 3YHN REV
Jdg Intro C1 C2 C3 C4 C5 C6 C7 C8 C9 C10 C11 C12 C13 C14 C15 C16 C17 C18 C19 C20 C21
Jdg 19 V1 V2 V3 V4 V5 V6 V7 V8 V9 V10 V11 V12 V13 V14 V15 V16 V17 V18 V19 V20 V21 V22 V23 V24 V25 V26 V27 V28 V29 V30
Note: This view shows ‘verses’ which are not natural language units and hence sometimes only part of a sentence will be visible. Normally the OET discourages the reading of individual ‘verses’, but this view is only designed for doing comparisons of different translations. Click on any Bible version abbreviation down the left-hand side to see the verse in more of its context. The OET segments on this page are still very early looks into the unfinished texts of the Open English Translation of the Bible. Please double-check these texts in advance before using in public.
(All still tentative.)
OEB No OEB JDG book available
Moff No Moff JDG book available
KJB-1611 1 A Leuite goeth to Bethlehem to fetch home his wife. 16 An old man entertaineth him at Gibeah. 22 The Gibeonites abuse his concubine to death. 29 He diuideth her into twelue pieces to send them to the twelue tribes.
(1 A Levite goeth/goes to Bethlehem to fetch home his wife. 16 An old man entertaineth him at Gibeah. 22 The Gibeonites abuse his concubine to death. 29 He diuideth her into twelve pieces to send them to the twelve tribes.)
In this chapter, the author begins to tell a story that provides further evidence that Israel needed a godly king. He describes an outrageous crime that Israelite men in the city of Gibeah in the territory of Benjamin committed against a helpless person.
This chapter describes how a mob of men in the city of Gibeah wanted to rape a Levite man who was staying in the city overnight. While the men were going to use sex as a weapon, what they intended was ultimately a crime of power and violence. The Levite believed they were going to kill him (see 20:5). So to save his own life, he pushed his concubine out to the mob, and they raped and killed her. The author describes this crime as further evidence that Israel needed a godly king who would maintain order and justice and protect vulnerable people. The author is not presenting what the Levite did, or what his host offered to do (surrendering his daughter and the Levite’s concubine to the mob), as exemplary. The Bible is not saying through this story that a sexual crime against a woman is not as bad as a sexual crime against a man. It is not saying that men may or should sacrifice family members in order to save their own lives. The example that the Bible presents for us to imitate is that of Jesus, who sacrificed himself in order to save others.
The author describes in 19:29 how the Levite brought the body of his murdered concubine home and cut it into twelve pieces and sent the pieces throughout the land of Israel. He probably had messengers carry pieces through the territory of each of the twelve tribes and explain what had happened. Cutting the woman’s body into twelve pieces was a symbolic action that called for collective vengeance by all twelve tribes of Israel. The implicit message was that this outrageous crime had defiled the entire land and that the Israelites corporately had a responsibility to cleanse the land by executing justice on the perpetrators. If it would be helpful to your readers, you could explain the significance of this action in your translation. You might say, for example, “and he cut her body into twelve pieces, one to send to each tribe of Israel to call for collective vengeance.”