"A Coarse Culture: the time of the Judges"

The Book of Judges has some of the weirdest stories you'll ever find in the Bible. It was a time of moral coarseness, of gross spiritual decline. In just two generations the covenant people who had once been godly under Joshua and his appointed elders had descended into sodomy, lawlessness, and moral outrages of every sort. It reads like today's headlines. The Israelites had forgotten the fear of God. And the judges of those days were hardly better than the worst of them.

Now here's what happened: a Levite, a holy man, goes to his in-laws to retrieve his runaway adulterous concubine. On his way back to his hometown he's forced to journey through the pagan territory of the Jebusites. Deciding not to spend the night there, he sojourns instead in the Israelite territory of Gibeah. The men of Gibeah demand that he come out of his host's house so they can have sex with him. The host of the house begs them not to do this wickedness, and sends out the man's concubine instead, whom they rape to the point of her death. The Levite demands justice, but the town won't give him justice, and what he does next is so bizarre that it's hard to believe it's in the Bible. But this is the event God uses to humble this coarse culture that once knew him, to bring judgment upon them, as well as remorse and repentance. But it was an enormous price to pay: civil war! Tonight (Thurs.) we'll talk more about it.

Tune in and take notes! Your host: Rev. Rick Anderson, on "Jewish Roots", each Thursday at 9:30 pm EDT. Listen through http://www.blogtalkradio.com/fougcrew, or through http://www.scripturesdramatized.com . To call in with question or comment: 347-324-5759.