The Barbarity of Men

Today I read Judges 19 which contains one of the most sickening stories in all the scriptures.  There is a Levite, which has to be one of the worst human beings ever to live on this earth, who has a concubine.  His concubine goes off to his father's house and he goes after her.  After finding her and staying with his father-in-law for five days, he takes his journey with his concubine back to his home.  On his journey they come to the town of Gibeah and he stays in the house of a man who sees them about to sleep on the street.

He invites them into his house and that night the men of the town come to the house and desire the Levite to come out so they can have sex with him.  When I read this my first immediate thought was how closely this resembled the story of the angels visiting Lot in the city of Sodom.  However, in this story, the owner of the house offers his daughter and the Levite's concubine to the men to placate them.  The men of the city of Gibeah take the concubine and proceed to rape and brutalize her all night long.  They let her go when the morning comes and she manages to make it to the doorway before dying.  The un-named Levite, having slept all night I assume as we are not told otherwise, orders her to get up, that it is time to move on.

I have never in my life witnessed such a complete lack of compassion for another human being, thankfully.  I cannot imagine a worse insult than to hand over the woman you supposedly love to a group of men, have her brutally raped for hours, and then when you find her collapsed on the door frame your only response is "Get up, it's time to go!".  This man is the worst kind of person imaginable.  I shudder to think what his day of judgment was like and am grateful that I did not sit in judgment for such a person.  I am not usually an advocate of rated "R" movies however in my younger days I watched quite a few of them and I must say that the best "reward" I can think of for such people comes from the movie the Crow.  If there was a way to capture that poor woman's memories of that night and force that man to relive them like the protagonist does to the antagonist in the movie "the Crow" that would only be justice. 

I just hope and pray that Heavenly Father was able to care for that poor woman when she passed on to the other side.  I know I should have more forgiveness in my heart for all mankind, but I just can't imagine much worse things to do another human being than what was done to this poor woman.  I can't say enough times I am glad I did not have to judge such men and I don't wish to dwell on it any longer.  Until tomorrow.