Tues.’s Devo - The Demise of Benjamin

Read: Judges 19:1-20:48; John 3:22-4:3; Psalm 104:24-35; Proverbs 14:22-24 This story reminds me of the craziness of our nation. Yesterday we read about Micah from the hill country of Ephraim who had a Levite from Bethlehem. The Levite worshipped idols and followed the money instead of God. Today we have a woman from Bethlehem who married a man from the hills of Ephraim. The man had brought the woman home to be his concubine. She got mad at him and went back home. They might have argued over the fact that she hadn’t gotten pregnant yet and it had been four months. He married her just to have children. Anyway, he went after her and after staying at her home for 5 days, he left with her to go back home. On the way they had to stop for the night. They chose to stop in Gibeah since it was a Benjamin town (an Israelite town). They sat in the town square until finally an old man came and took them home. That night a bunch of evil men of the town came knocking. They wanted the man to have sex with him. The man threw out his concubine instead. In the morning when she made it home only to die, he gets mad at the town. What about him? I get boilings mad reading this story but it only goes to further show what happens to human nature when left to its own devises. The man cut his concubine into 12 pieces and sent them to the leaders of the 12 tribes. They all met at Mizpah and he told his story only he left out the part about shoving her out the door. Women were property and men were the kings during those days. A whole army of Israelites came together to confront the tribe of Benjamin. They asked them to hand over just them men responsible for the act. Benjamin had gathered 26,000 men plus 700 who were elite fighters. Israel brought 400,000. Before Israel fought, they went to Bethel to ask of God which tribe should go first and God said Judah. The first day, Benjamin’s army killed 22,000 Israelites. They were devastated and cried out to the Lord who encouraged them to go again. The next day they lost 18,000. Then all Israel went to cry out to the Lord and fast. They offered burnt offerings to the Lord and asked God again if they should go and fight. God answered that they were to go and that He would deliver them into his hands. God led them to do an ambush and ended up killing all but 600 men. In the New Testament, John defends Jesus. His disciples try to make him jealous of Jesus and he tells them there is no comparison. He is from earth so what he says is earth’s perspective while Jesus is from heaven so what he says is so much higher than him. Jesus also knew that the Pharisees were noticing how popular he was getting so he left and returned to Galilee. I think it is interesting that Jesus ran from the crowd and was not afraid to offend his crowd talking about eating his flesh and drinking his blood. He didn’t come to get a following; he came to make a few disciples who would carry his gospel to the nations. Lord, forgive us for wanting numbers over disciples. Show us who is to disciple us and who we are to be discipling. Thank you that you are the Great Shephard.