20

It struck me when my pastor Gareth preached on this passage how the Levite makes himself look better than he is when he tells the people of Israel what happened to his concubine. Instead of saying that the men of Gibeah wanted to rape him, he said they wanted to kill him. But more significantly than that he doesn’t tell them that he handed over his concubine to the men of Gibeah to save himself. It is always a temptation to make ourselves look better than we ought to in other people’s eyes.

Something else that strikes me about the passage is how it is possible to use virtuous characteristics for evil. When the men of Israel ask the men of Benjamin to give the men of Gibeah to them to be punished, the men of Benjamin refuse. This is loyalty, but the loyalty is misplaced. The Gibeonites have committed terrible evil. As much as it might pain the tribe of Benjamin to give up their own, that would be the just and right thing to do. This kind of misplaced loyalty can play out in any number of ways in all kinds of situations. But we shouldn’t pervert justice for our friends, even our family.

Another virtue which is turned to evil is courage. I can’t think of the number of times I’ve heard people say some evil thing that someone has done was cowardly when it wasn’t. Being evil sometimes requires courage. Courage can be part of what makes an evil act appear glamorous to some people. The Benjaminites drew up for battle outnumbered 400,000 to 26,000. That’s crazy, that would take some courage. Unfortunately sometimes courage is misdirected. I’d suggest in this case it was from the misplaced loyalty towards their depraved Gibeonite brothers. Who knows, maybe there were many among the 26,000 who were like the Gibeonites and would rather fight than risk the Israelites finding out later. Maybe they were proud or maybe they held a grudge against the other tribes.

Both Napoleon and Hitler strike me as examples of people who had what some people describe as physical courage as opposed to moral courage. They weren’t afraid of danger, they took huge risks with their lives, but they did it out of greed, or hatred, or for reputation.

It is part of the nature of sin to turn what is good for evil. For this reason we must be careful not to make heroes of the wrong people, or see ourselves as more virtuous than we are, not remembering that our virtues can serve our vices.

It seems to me that God doesn’t give victory to the Israelites straight away because he doesn’t want the victory to feel like a cause for celebration. After suffering unexpected and heavy losses fighting the Benjaminites for three days the Israelites finally prevail as God says they will. But they are weary and mourning. It brings home to them all the tragedy of the situation, that infighting has broken out within Israel.