The Levite’s Concubine — When Scripture Opens a Wound
This week’s Sex Scripture Series was heavy — and honestly, harder than I expected. It was my first time pre-recording instead of going live, and I opened my Bible hoping Judges might offer something new, something different.
It offered something different, but definitely not lighter.
Our passage was Judges 19, the story of the Levite and his concubine. And even though I didn’t think I’d read it before, the moment I reached the ending, I recognized it. I’d heard this story once — the dismembered concubine. I just hadn’t known where it lived in Scripture.
Reading it out loud brought tears to my eyes.
A Story That Mirrors Sodom — But Somehow Worse
Before I even processed the details, I felt the parallels to Sodom and Gomorrah:
A guest comes into town.
A host offers shelter.
Violent men surround the house demanding sexual access.
Women are offered in place of the intended target.
Assault threatens to break the entire community.
But the difference in Judges 19 is painful:
In Sodom, God intervenes.
In Judges, God is silent.
And instead of strangers, these are Israelites — God’s own people. That silence speaks loudly. It’s like Scripture is holding up a mirror and saying:
“You have become what you condemn.”
Sitting With the Story — And With Her
Reading the concubine’s experience out loud was brutal:
The mob dragging her out.
Being abused all night.
Collapsing at the doorstep with her hands on the threshold.
Her master telling her, “Get up. Let us be going,” not realizing she’s dead.
The coldness of that moment took my breath away. It wasn’t just violence — it was dehumanization layered on top of it.
She wasn’t protected.
She wasn’t mourned.
She wasn’t even seen.
And the Levite — a religious man — didn’t just abandon her, he used her death to spark political outrage by cutting her into twelve pieces and mailing her body across Israel.
Not grief.
Not repentance.
Not justice.
Just spectacle.
The Body Count Behind Patriarchy
Something that kept coming up in my body as I read was this ache around how women are treated in so many of these Old Testament narratives:
expendable
tradeable
used for leverage
sacrificed for men’s safety
blamed for men’s violence
and stripped of agency and dignity
The emotional weight of that sat deep in my chest.
And what broke me even more was how identical it is to modern patterns of sexual harm.
This Story Sounds Like Trafficking — Because It Is
The Levite handing over his concubine to protect himself reminded me painfully of my time volunteering with a sex-trafficking recovery organization. One of the hardest things to learn — and to accept — is that:
Most trafficking victims are trafficked by people they know.
Family.
Partners.
Friends.
Authority figures.
Not strangers.
Not random abductions.
Not the movie version.
People they trusted.
People they loved.
Reading Judges 19 felt like reading those patterns thousands of years earlier. A man gives up a woman’s body to preserve his own safety. Her wellbeing is irrelevant. Her suffering is an afterthought.
These aren’t ancient dynamics — they’re current ones.
The Deeper Pattern: When “Everyone Does What Is Right in Their Own Eyes”
Judges ends with that haunting refrain:
“In those days there was no king in Israel. Everyone did what was right in his own eyes.”
And honestly, that’s what this whole chapter feels like:
a warning
a mirror
and a commentary on moral collapse
People deciding good and evil for themselves inevitably leads to violence — particularly toward the vulnerable. It’s a pattern that repeats in Scripture, in history, and in our communities today.
What This Story Brings Up For Me
The fragility of women’s safety in patriarchal systems
How often violence is enabled by silence, not just action
How often harm is committed by familiar people, not strangers
The danger of moral superiority in religious communities
The need for accountability within our own circles, not just outside them
The heartbreak of seeing Scripture reflect a world that still exists
Most of all, it brought up grief — and honestly, nausea — for how easily a woman’s life is sacrificed to preserve a man’s.
A Note I Needed to Say
If reading or watching this touched something traumatic in you, I’m truly sorry. I should have given a stronger trigger warning at the start. These stories hit hard. They should hit hard. But that doesn’t mean I want them to hit you unprepared.
Closing Thoughts & Prayer
This passage left me with heaviness — but also with clarity about how deeply God’s heart must break over the exploitation and violence his children inflict on one another.
I prayed at the end for the protection of every person made in God’s image, for the softening of hearts that cause harm, and for a world where exploitation doesn’t get the final word.
Next week, we’ll be in the next chapter of Judges, where this story spills into a civil war. These early books are not easy — but I’m committed to staying curious, even when Scripture opens a wound.
Thanks for sitting with me in this.
If you want to watch the live conversation, you can find it here: