Judges 19 left me speechless. It is so disheartening to hear how the concubine was treated, despite the men’s desire to have intercourse with the male guest. When reading this story, it is easy to understand why no one came running to welcome the three of them into their house. However, this story also made me feel serious disrespect and objectification of the woman. The old man practically offered the concubine up for her body (as well as his VIRGIN daughter), and let the people of the town abuse her and do whatever they desired to her all night. Then, when the master found her in the morning and she wasn’t moving, he chopped her up into 12 pieces, one for each of the tribes. It’s interesting to see the similarities between the abuse that the concubine suffered to that of the slaves suffering. Despite it being a different type of suffering, both types were physical and were objectifying of people. When hearing these stories, the slaves and concubine suffered not only physical suffering but also mental trauma. Despite talking about some suffering that leads us to a stronger relationship with God, I think that this type of suffering is hard to recover from or see the positive from. The last part about how the people who saw what had been done to the concubine forgetting it, as if nothing happened, was absolutely terrible. I don’t know how you can keep quiet when you see something so traumatic.
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