Calamity of Calamities!
Calamity of Calamities!
Judges 19:1b & 14a & 16
… a certain Levite was sojourning in the remote parts of the hill country of Ephraim, who took to himself a concubine from Bethlehem in Judah. … So they passed on and went their way. And the sun went down on them near Gibeah, which belongs to Benjamin, and they turned aside there, to go in and spend the night at Gibeah. … And behold, an old man was coming from his work in the field at evening. The man was from the hill country of Ephraim, and he was sojourning in Gibeah. The men of the place were Benjaminites.
My little girl sleeps with a nightlight because she’s scared of the dark, but even with the nightlight she still wakes up most nights terrified by a bad dream, and that’s a picture of how I feel upon entering Judges 19. Without question, this account relays one of the darkest, most nightmarish, most haunting scenes in human history, bar none, and even with the lamp of God’s presence burning at my side, even though I’m comforted to know that the story doesn’t end here, I find myself shooting up in bed as it were, trembling in a cold sweat, and struck dumb from the ghastly specter of human depravity.
But, yet again, it all takes place in a day and age where men do whatever seems right in their own eyes. An age where even the priests are abandoning their ceremonial duties in search of penchants and concubines, wandering the hillsides for pleasure beyond their sacred calling, and where civic judges spin their wheels not in tearing down idols but in pursuing illicit affairs in brothels. But like all calamitous downfalls in human history, this hasn’t happened overnight. It’s taken time. One little compromise here, another there. One metal image at first; a rival tabernacle at last. A little innocent flirtation in the market; a cycle of adultery to follow. Little pockets of darkness encroaching on the light of life, little devious thoughts that turn into deeds, till the Promised Land gets shrouded in hellfire and brimstone.
Be warned at the outset, friend: falls like this don’t just happen in Sodom and Egypt and Philistia, but even in a holy land. Even among a people with true religion and a true Bible and a true God. All because we mistake proximity to the Almighty with a license to live how we please.